Just like Old Times…

Hey you guys, remember when I used to post here? That was great, I should start doing that again.

All kidding aside, I do have a lot to post about, but not enough material to make full posts about them. First off I was planning on writing about the Apple Tablet, but I feel that I should stretch myself to my utmost journalistic abilities in order to convey the sheer… tabletiness of this new tablet.

Also! I been and gone and went to the Hospickle (read Hospital) yesterday for a few X-rays on muh wrist, there’s a chance that I might have Carpal Tunnel in the left one which, by coincidence, is connected to my good hand, my other one isn’t as good. I hate you right hand, go fall in a well.

As some of you may know if you bothered to scroll down the tiniest bit on the page, you’d know that it was my birthday on the fifth. Using a gift card I received, I purchased Wii Sports Resort and have proceeded to sacrifice hours of otherwise posting-time for “Hey look, my sword movements are exact!” time.

Time for a link! This link guarantees that all your jokes will be funnier and more appropriate for all occasions! Use it wisely, for with great power, comes great responsibility.

Finally, I have converted a former Windows XP desktop to Ubuntu Linux. It was a dinosaur, and this helped to speed it up a bit, except now my Mom is wondering where Outlook Express is.

Ok, So Apparently I'm the Computer Whisperer...

My Ubuntu PC is back up and running. Pretty crazy.

All I had to do was switch the plugs and all of a sudden, it turns on. It's like a Zombie or something. So, with this startling revelation, a question arises: Should I kill it?

Sure it's fully functioning, just like it was before the lightning storm except now it goes by the name Ubuntu PC McZombieface, or some variation of that. I've read the Zombie Survival Guide, as well as World War Z and the Ninja Handbook for good measure, so I think that whether I decide to keep using it, or destroy it, I'll be prepared to go either way, so... yeah.

Now I'm kind of upset, I can't replace it anymore.

No more Chromes…

Friends, a lightning storm just claimed the artificial life of my Ubuntu PC. It just sits there now, like a paperweight. The post below this contains a screenshot taken around an hour before the incident.

Being an eMachine, it becomes obvious that this computer came from humble roots. Most likely, it’s origin was somehow related to Wal-Mart, and it is uglier than sin, but inside was a proverbial heart of gold (read: Silicon).

Lil’ Jim II (as we shall call it), came into my household with the attitude that it wasn’t gonna let those other computers push it around just because it’s system specifications weren’t exactly up to date. At all. It was from around, oh say, 2003 probably.

Barely being able to run Windows XP, new life was breathed into it with the installation of Ubuntu 8.04, which ran without a hitch (until today). Sure, it was noisy, made click sounds that I only heard from my old Windows 3.1 desktop, but hey, it worked.

While it may have been old and crippled from the beginning, not a single thing could ever replace it. So rest in peace, Lil’ Jim II.

 

Stop looking at me like that…

My Chromes. Let me show you them...

For the past few weeks, I've been using my Ubuntu PC as my predominant computer due to Lil' Jim still being in the shop (we miss you, man), so without the luxury of Windows Live Writer for writing my blog posts, I've been forced to use the in-house writer built into Blogger, but I digress.

The true nature of this post is to impart upon my fellow geeks and people who come here accidentally that Google Chrome is the bestest thing in the history of forever. Now, to some of you, you may think of this as some sort of metaphorical poke with a stick. Some of you may be thinking "But James! You cruel, un-moustachioed man! Chrome isn't available on Mac and Linux yet, stop torturing me!"

Well, you're right, Chrome is indeed not avai- Oh hey! Look at that!

That, dear reader, is Google Chrome running on Ubuntu 8.04.

Granted it's a dev build and not the final release, it's still Grease Lightning, no, it's Greased Grease Lightning. That's even faster.

I'm not kidding when I say that Chrome is fast on Linux, it's the fastest browser that I've ever used on any Operating System ever. However, it's not the final release for a reason, it's still not done. According to the splash page you see when you first open the brower, the following features have not been implemented yet:

• Plugins, including Flash (so no YouTube, Hulu, etc.)
• Printing
• Complex text
• Complex tab dragging
• Gears support

Looking at the first bullet, you can probably figure out why Chrome can be so fast, there's no plugins. That's not to say that it isn't still fast with the inclusion of plugins, it's just alot faster without.

When I first downloaded Chrome, I spent the first few minutes attempting to make it crash. I only found one way to do it, and that was to exploit the lack of Complex tab dragging. This is where you drag a tab out of the browser window to form a new window out of the tab. It's not too bad until you try to drag the new window back into the old one again.

At least that was a problem until the alpha build was updated. With the release of the new Dev build a few days ago, the complex tab dragging seems to be working, soooo I don't really know why that's still on the splash page.

Now I'm stumped. This build is supposedly a minefield, yet I can't crash it, but maybe you can! Just visit the following link to download the dev build of Chrome for Mac and Linux (32-bit, 64-bit). Have fun.