For whom the bells tolls (6)

Yesterday spent practically the whole day changing and getting things ready for the upcoming TZ Change on Venezuela's servers from work.
As usual, they informed really, really late about this whole thing...
Deja vu... Once again? Yes...

The Unity Desktop

Well, here is a little screen shot I took a couple of days ago while testing Ubuntu 16.04 on the Thinkpad T60.
The Unity Launcher can now be placed on the bottom, and of course, the Global Menu can be set to "Always visible".

The most important settings used on the screen shot, that is, those that make the Unity desktop truly, truly useful are these two gsettings strings:


gsettings set com.canonical.Unity.Launcher launcher-position Bottom
gsettings set org.compiz.unityshell:/org/compiz/profiles/unity/plugins/unityshell/ launcher-minimize-window true

Some Handy Work Here...

An old related post...

Movies During The Weekend

Deep Web
I watched this one alone, the GF slept thru.
Liked it, I was actually under the impression than this one was an episode of the "Dark Net" series.

Experimenter
A damn good one!
remind me a lot to Wes Anderson's films, only darker.

Mr. Robot
We finished the first season.
A nice one, it started way better than how it finished, IMHO.

The Monster Squad
Yeah, nice.
Maybe the cult status is largely due to nostalgia...

Arrested Development
We watched the first episode of the second season.

Transcoding, ffmpeg, transcoding & more ffmepg

Well, I'm in the process of transcoding all the movies that don't play on my Roku to a format that will play without a hitch, using ffmpeg, of course.
it is a major PITA, yes, but the other option would be to use Plex, but at the moment I don't have a box to keep on a always on status, at least not one that has enough juice to make the transcoding on the fly and that, on top of that I can place some place on my house that doesn't break my ball on a daily basis.
So far this week I've transcoded:

• The Pickup Artist

• Silent Running

• The Killing of a Chinese Bookie

• Risky Business

Nose Dive

At last!
Winter is here, or, more to the point, summer is dead!

Linux Mint 17.3 On The Thinkpad T60p

Today it was time to make the upgrade to Linux Mint 17.3 the ultra trusty Thinkpad T60p.
The update took about 10 minutes and a reboot, and everything seems to be running smooth afterwards.
It even looks like the bug I used to have on selecting themes is fixed.

Dinner

(Last Sunday)

- Ravioli (Ricotta mixed w/ vegetables)
- Carrots
- Chicken
- The world famous GF stew

Just Like Yesterday

Yesterday afternoon played a bit with Ubuntu MATE (16.04 of course) on my really, really old yet somehow trusty T43.
It comes with a built-in Global Menu implementation (go figure and yet, gloria aleluya for the initiative!!!) which works with most of the programs (Open Office doesn't, for instance).
This particular distro seems like a nice enough option for my ageing hulking beast, the PowerMac Dual Proc, the infamous QuickSilver.
Or perhaps, this is the answer to the eternal question: Reasons to get (or not) a PowerBook Nowadays

96K and counting!

You know the drill...
Another thousand up, 4 to the BIG 100K..

The (New) LTS Has Landed!

Believe it or not, a new LTS is out!
I still remember distro/ Desktop Environmet hopping on 12.04...
Time flyes!!!
Anyways, already installed on a lappie to give it a testing twirl.
Ahh! The rush and the thrill of wiping the slate and start from zero (more or less) once again!
The chance to begin again, on a release of opportunity and adventure!

Movies During The Weekend

• Everest

Mighty good and entertaining.

• The Revenant

Boring, beautifully shot, but boring.
I like "Jeremiah Johnson" better than this looong pretentious piece of crap.

• All The President's Men

A re-watch for me, a first time for the GF.
Gordon Willis' at his best.

• Mr. Robot

We watched a handful of episodes.
Mighty good series.

Thursday 14-04-2016

Humidity Is Our Middle Name

Amazingly rainy/ humid/ putrid Autumn we are having around here (there has even been a tornado in Uruguay!!!)...
You can say that it has been raining for the last 20 days or so...
On top of that, temperatures haven't really dropped that much... All I can think is that, thanks to Jeebus, this crap weather got us not on the summer, it would certainly hit 35 degrees or more with all this humidity.

Linux Mint 17.3 XFCE on the Vaio PCG FRV37

Made a clean installation of Linux Mint 17.2, XFCE, obviously 32 bits on the trsuty, bulky, noisy and amazingly well built Sony Vaio PCG FRV37 last week, then, after all the updates were installed, updated the whole thing to Linux Mint 17.3.
The whole process was incredibly smooth, less than 30 minutes, and then the mandatory reboot, the system seems to be really snappy, considering the effing old hardware.

ffmpeg: From (soundless) mp4 to mp4

Used this to transcode a video file (an mp4, but nevertheless)  that played on the Roku3 without sound:

./ffmpeg -i My.Movie.mp4 -c:v copy -strict experimental -c:a aac -ac 2 -ab 256k My.Movie.2.mp4

It took less than 15 minutes to process the file on the T430.

Dinner

(Last Sunday)

- Ravioli
- Carrots
- Avocado
- The world famous GF stew

Wednesday 06-04-2016

Movie During The Weekend

Yes, that's right...
"Movie", once again... We only atched one film.

• Intruders

Well the title of the film seems to be somehow argued, but the movie was rather good.
The kid from the Apatow ensemble (Starr) has a great part, hope this is a new path on his career.

Sunday 03-04-2016

95K and counting!

And another thousand up!
The 100K seems close!!!!

The Optimess

Last Thursday, installing Ubuntu Server 14.04 on the Optiplex...
Made a mess of the working table during the duration.
The idea is to, eventually, get this server, via Plex, to work as a media server at home.
Will see..

Saturday 02-04-2016

Attenuator-less cable modem (II)

Last night my internet went down for about three hours, until I removed the attenuator, since a call to technical support hinted that the signal wasn't as good as it should on the whole building...

This is not news around here, at all... I had to do the same before.

The Unity Desktop

It's been a while since the last Unity desktop post around here...
Right now playing a bit with the Yosembiance theme, specifically, with the "Yosembiance-Ubuntu-Orange" variant.
This is hardly news worthy, but, once again, there are problems with Evolution.& Gedit's upper tab.

Movies During The Weekend

We are back on track, baby!
watched a helluva movies this weekend, it certainly looks like summer weather is finally dying...

• The Forest

A modern, slick, somehow indie, horror flick.
The GF picked this one.
Nice visually, yes, but the movie is so-so.

• Truth

Enjoyable, IMHO, better than Spotlight.
The best of this bunch.

• The Informer

A re-watch for me, but a first for the GF.
It really goes hand in hand after "Truth".
This movie is part of our ongoing attempt to cover the whole Michael Mann filmography.

• To Live And Die In LA

Another re-watch for me, and a first time for the GF.
I love this movie, watched for the first time in FHD, and obviously the cinematography looks even better.

• Don Verdean

A piece of crap.
Totally forgettable.
It is a pity, because the cast is really, really good.

• White House Down

Pure fun.
I think that Olympus Has Fallen was better, but we watched that a long time ago...

94K and counting!

And another thousand up.... I'm certainly listening to music like a wind-up monkey...

Sunday 27-03-2016

Dinner

(Last Sunday)

- Sorrentinos
- Meat
- Carrots
- Zucchini
- An egg