Friday 26-04-2013

T430: The problem with shutdown

I have a couple of issues with turning off my lappie.
Don't know yet if this is Cinnamon related, but I can't turn it off thru the regular channel, that is clicking on Quit and them selecting Shutdown.
The lappie simply reboots itself, so in order to actually shut it down I have to click on the "Options gears" and then choose then choose shutdown.

The other problem deals with Suspend, today I had problems suspending it, the lappie simply jumped back to life, just like that. Had to turn it off for good, of course, after it rebooted itself...

The current Linux Mint desktop

Behold!
The Cinnamon desktop as of today!
With some very little tweaking.

20 days with the T430

Yes, 20 days went by...
So far, I simply love the lappie.
The screen is very good, the resolution does the job, the speakers are powerful enough and the new chiclet keyboard seems sturdy enough, not wobbling a millimeter.
Only drawback, and it involves the keyboard, is the location of the Page Up and Page Down buttons... They seem really, really awkward, and I tend to use those a lot to move fast thru emails.
I was thinking in remapping some of those keys to something more useful and friendlier.

Mike White is my hero

Last night finished "Enlightened" second season, too bad it won't be a third one.

If only you could see what I've seen with your eyes!

Watching Blade Runner the way it is was meant?
Because of my age I'm one of those who watched the film originally on VHS, too young to be able to go to a cinema to see the real thing.,
So, the first ones were a crappy VHS, then came the 1992 director's cut, the first time I got to see it on the big screen, an amazing experience, to say the least.

Then came DVDs with all the excruciating detail, but now, man, now... a Blue Ray rip, with full High Definition resolution.

Tuesday 16-04-2013

D'load sh*t lappie

Made a lean and mean install on the ancient Dell Inspiron 1000 lappie.
Went with an Ubuntu Minimal install, and on top of it a barebones XFCE; the whole thing took about 2 hours tops.
768 MB of RAM and a 80 GB HDD.
The thing feels pretty snappy.
I'm having a bit of trouble configuring the mouse pointer and getting the CAPSLOCK working as and extra Ctrl key.
Guess I'll have to use the old X Window DOT files config magic.

PJ 20

Last night finally got to see the documentary Pearl Jam Twenty.
It suddenly made me feel fucking old.

20 K and counting!

in the words of Spock: Fascinating!
20 K themes played.

The current Linux Mint desktop

The first one from Krull.

‘The incompetent leading the unwilling to do the unnecessary.’

Right after the one on the killing of UBL, got my hands on this one, my third electronic book, Generation Kill.
I've seen the HBO mini series, but the book seems more gripping.
It sort of might be like a Jarhead, but for the Second Gulf War.

Applet & cold

Cinnamon's weather applet in all its glory!
Showing a glorious autumn night.

VT-x features locked or unavailable in MSR

If you get this error message, and you Virtual Box machine fails to start, simply enable the virtualization support of your box (the real one that is) on the BIOS.

Failed to open a session for the virtual machine XXXXXXXXXX.

VT-x features locked or unavailable in MSR. (VERR_VMX_MSR_LOCKED_OR_DISABLED).

Result Code: NS_ERROR_FAILURE (0x80004005)
Component: Console
Interface: IConsole {1968b7d3-e3bf-4ceb-99e0-cb7c913317bb}

Weather Applet on Cinnamon

Yeap, I had to, I can't live without knowing how hot and crappy is outside...
Got it here Weather 1.7.3 Applet (where else, right??...)
Installation is pretty straightforward, except for a belched error message, that seems to be having no side effect what so ever.

krull > ./install.sh 

 Installing applet in /home/XXXXXXXXXXX/.local/share/cinnamon/applets/weather@mockturtl...
[sudo] password for XXXXXXXXXXX: 
 Installing applet locales in /home/XXXXXXXXXXX/.local/share/locale...
./install.sh: 42: ./install.sh: msgfmt: not found
./install.sh: 42: ./install.sh: msgfmt: not found
./install.sh: 42: ./install.sh: msgfmt: not found
./install.sh: 42: ./install.sh: msgfmt: not found
./install.sh: 42: ./install.sh: msgfmt: not found
./install.sh: 42: ./install.sh: msgfmt: not found
./install.sh: 42: ./install.sh: msgfmt: not found
./install.sh: 42: ./install.sh: msgfmt: not found
./install.sh: 42: ./install.sh: msgfmt: not found
./install.sh: 42: ./install.sh: msgfmt: not found
./install.sh: 42: ./install.sh: msgfmt: not found
./install.sh: 42: ./install.sh: msgfmt: not found
./install.sh: 42: ./install.sh: msgfmt: not found
./install.sh: 42: ./install.sh: msgfmt: not found
./install.sh: 42: ./install.sh: msgfmt: not found
./install.sh: 42: ./install.sh: msgfmt: not found
./install.sh: 42: ./install.sh: msgfmt: not found
./install.sh: 42: ./install.sh: msgfmt: not found
./install.sh: 42: ./install.sh: msgfmt: not found
./install.sh: 42: ./install.sh: msgfmt: not found
./install.sh: 42: ./install.sh: msgfmt: not found
./install.sh: 42: ./install.sh: msgfmt: not found
./install.sh: 42: ./install.sh: msgfmt: not found
./install.sh: 42: ./install.sh: msgfmt: not found
./install.sh: 42: ./install.sh: msgfmt: not found
./install.sh: 42: ./install.sh: msgfmt: not found
./install.sh: 42: ./install.sh: msgfmt: not found
./install.sh: 42: ./install.sh: msgfmt: not found
./install.sh: 42: ./install.sh: msgfmt: not found
./install.sh: 42: ./install.sh: msgfmt: not found
./install.sh: 42: ./install.sh: msgfmt: not found

 *** You need to restart Cinnamon ( Alt-F2 => "r"  ) ***

krull >

After that I got the Buenos Aires "weather code" from here: 

http://xoap.weather.com/search/search?where=buenos%20aires

 And then setup the Applet ot use it:

gsettings set org.cinnamon.applets.weather@mockturtl woeid ARDF0127

And thats the whole of it.
Seems to be working welll, although the refresh of the updates seems a little slow.

Digitali second

Last night finished "The Finish".
The third book I read from Bowden, even tho there are some negative and there is a general feeling of mixed reviews on its Amazon page, I found it really good and entertaining.

T430: Installation log

Some stupid notes and a time log of last night's Linux Mint install on the T430.
One word comes to mind: Blazing fast!



04/03/2013 11:53:12 PM
Boot from USB

04/03/2013 11:58:33 PM 
Setup WiFi & start the Linux Mint installation... The usual stuff, the whole HDD for Linux, only a / partition and swap and, of course, an encrypted $HOME for this travelling laptop.

04/04/2013 12:07:33 AM
The installation is done. Mighty fast...

04/04/2013 12:08:57 AM
First Linux Mint boot on the lappie (!)

04/04/2013 12:13:22 AM
Start removing unwanted programs (Banshee, Thunderbird, Firefox, stuff like that...)

04/04/2013 12:24:15 AM 
Install updates - Need to get 426 MB of files...

04/04/2013 01:01:01 AM
Install dist-upgrade updates. Kernel and a couple of VLC packages.

04/04/2013 01:06:07 AM
Kernel reboot... The first one on the lappie (!)

04/04/2013 01:17:04 AM
Install extra programs - Need to download something like 340 MB of files...

sudo apt-get install openssh-server emacs23-nox openvpn virtualbox wine rar\
unrar gip chromium-browser gimp ia32-libs evolution skype rhythmbox

04/04/2013 01:49:25 AM
Start restore from USB external drive... On this case, only 73 GB of files, mostly music and some crap from work.

04/04/2013 03:01:35 AM
Finish restoring files.

Krull: my new baby

Got me a new baby, well, not new, but close...

A lovely T430 with 8 GB RAM and a 128 GB SSD drive.
The thing came with Windows 8 Pro on it... How on Earth is that being even remotely used by the people?

I named it Krull and it'll obviously have an installation of Linux Mint Cinnamon 64 bits.