Apples – Page 2 – Kasperian Moving Parts

SUSE 10.1 On A Powerbook

Tuesday October 31, 2006

So, no, it’s not nearly as easy as it should be; it’s not nearly as easy as it is in kubuntu; and it has consumed the last few days of my life. But I’ve gotten things working for the most part and since I’ve been utterly unable to find any help on ye olde ‘net about the problems I faced, I’ll post some of my pain and learnings here… For starters, things sort of worked out of the box on my 15″ Powerbook with SUSE 10.1. You DO have to be VERY careful during the disk partitioning steps of the installation. For some unexplainably silly reason, by default, SUSE’s installation wanted to format my OS X partition. So watch out Read more…

Apples, Desktop, Life in General, Linux, Movies, Music, Work Stuff

In The Last 48 Hours

Wednesday May 17, 2006

I have had the pleasure(?) of living through the following: Getting two problems (ABS light and Airbag light were both stuck on) with our new-to-us 2005 Town & Country fixed only to find another problem (2 radiator fans refused to turn off when car was turned off). Had to disconnect battery overnight to turn off fans and prevent battery drainage. Took said vehicle back into the dealer who promptly and courteously fixed it. Again. Finding out that the family dog (who just yesterday started limping–refusing to set any weight on her left, front paw) has Lyme disease. $200+ later and doggie is now feeling much better, apparently. Beating head repeatedly against same problem at work for a week now is Read more…

Apples

This Just In: Apple Is Better Than Microsoft

Monday May 8, 2006

Well, I had to make up for my blah-stricken previous post full of my woes and travails. So, anyway, I once had a nifty little iPod nano. I loved her like a cat and gave her a name and talked in soothing tones to her. Oh, little Beethovina and me were inseparable, yes we were. *sniffle* And then one fine day, Beethovina got a crack in her display. I cannot tell you how distraught I was. Ohhhh, I was nigh unconsolable. Not to mention the fact that a 2-gig iPod shuffle sucks mightily, especially when what you really want is to be able to see the thingeys that you can’t see on the display. *sniffle* But I must tell you, Read more…

Apples, Desktop, Life in General, Linux

This Just In: Linux Is Better Than OS X

Thursday April 27, 2006

Well, at least it is for me. And it’s taken me $1500 to figure it out the hard way. How much is it to ask for to be able to {alt,command}-tab through ALL bloody open windows in OS X? You know… ALL of them. Like, ALL of them–including the X11 windows that all get bunched up underneath one stinking X icon. Or the 2 Firefox windows. Not just one of them. ALL of them. And yes, I do know about Witch. And no, it doesn’t work with X11 windows. And why would I want to use X11 to begin with? Because sometimes Free applications are much, much better than the ones you have to pay for. For example, kontact is Read more…

Apples, KDE, Life in General, Linux

After All That, Back to OS X

Sunday April 16, 2006

So I’m a little disgruntled right now. I’ve rebooted back into OS X and I’ll likely stay here for a while. As it turns out, the show-stopper for me to be able to run Linux (which I’d much prefer) on this powerbook is not anything to do with Linux itself, but rather with the commercial/proprietary software that I find myself needing to run. I need to be able to use Moneydance to do my family’s financial account management and bill paying. Moneydance runs on Java. Apparently, the only full version of Java for Linux PPC is IBM’s JRE. That’s right, Sun doesn’t provide Linux-PPC users a JRE, how nice of them. And yes, I did spend a couple of hours Read more…

Apples, Life in General, Linux

Ubuntu Linux, External Speakers, Your Powerbook, and You

Saturday April 15, 2006

Yet another small blip from the life and times of a powerbook owner and Linux glutton-for-pain… I think this issue has been fixed in the Alsa 1.0.11-rc4 snd-powermac modules, but since I haven’t taken the time to recompile the kernel yet and since Ubuntu Dapper Drake still only comes with 1.0.10, I’m stuck with a workaround for a time being. So, I have a 15″ 1.5G powerbook, and I just bought some really nice Altec Lansing speakers from the local Target and would like to use them with my powerbook in Linux. Sounds simple enough of a request, no? Well, believe it or not, it doesn’t work out of the box. I plug my headphones/external speakers in and sound still Read more…

Apples, KDE, Linux

Kubuntu On A Powerbook

Wednesday April 12, 2006

So, in an attempt to get back to hacking/programming again (since I’m definitely not getting it at work), I’ve installed Linux on my Powerbook. Actually, I’d installed SuSE 10 on it the day after I bought the powerbook 5+ months ago, but I’d never really done anything with it–partly because I really wanted to see what OS X was really like (it is REALLY, REALLY cool, but not conducive to feeling like I can start improving things/hacking/programming) and partly because neither the trackpad nor the wireless ethernet worked. But recently, the folks at the Broadcom 43xx Linux Driver project have made GREAT strides in getting the proprietary Broadcom wireless network card working in Linux. And, the kind folks with the Read more…

Apples, Life in General, Music, Open Source

Ecto, Amarok and Pink Floyd

Saturday December 3, 2005

I’ve long-been wanting a nice WYSIWYG editor for my WordPress blog. And, let me just say… there’s not one that I could find for Linux, which both sucks and is honestly quite a surprise. And yeah, I know there’s a partial resource in kdepim 3.5, and I had it on my TODO list to look at helping to finish it/get it working, but that’s obviously not happened yet. Oooh! Maybe that can be the itch that I need to scratch! But anyway, I’m sure I missed this killer app in my searches and there is, in fact, one out there, but I sure as heck couldn’t find it. So, it occurred to me that I now have one of those… Read more…

Apples, Life in General

The world may now end

Sunday November 13, 2005

Holy freakin’ crap, Batman. This just in: I’ve finally done it and went and bought a new (well, refurbished) Powerbook. 15″ beautiful widescreen. 1.5G processor. 1G of RAM. 80G of 5400-rpm hard drive sweetness. Superdrive (DVD burner, etc.). All for the unbelievable price of $1499 (plus $59 for the second 512 megs of RAM). This thing rocks my world in amazing ways. I believe that this has always been one of the signs that the world will soon be ending. You know… Jason buys a powerbook, cats and dogs living together… MASS hysteria. WOOOOT!! I love this machine! I’ve just spend the entire evening repartitioning the hard drive to give Mac OS X 45 gigs and Linux the rest, as Read more…

Apples, Linux

iChat Superiority

Sunday October 16, 2005

A wise man once said, “Never take a knife to a gunfight.” I have made that mistake. You can here see my attempt to challenge my friend’s chat client manliness. I thought this funny enough to share. =:) On the left, you can see the challenger, kopete, with its iChat style. And on the right, you can see Mike, using the real iChat, on a real Mac, laughing at me. Dangit I want a Powerbook! (psst! iChat Superiority was uploadd by: vanRijn).