George Files

Where there is rain, there is no pain, really?

Half a year ago, I got into the minds of those psychotic people placed at the Municipal Corporation and explained how they cause suffering and pain (willingly!) in 6 easy steps. I predicted that the process would repeat. I’m proud (and incredibly sad, at the same time, if that’s possible) to say that it has, and that my prediction has held true. All 6 steps have been completed, ahead of time, I might add. The painful efficiency of these people is unbelievable, six-sigma even.

The picture is the view from my 5th floor apartment after last year’s rains. So it wasn’t entirely the Corp.’s fault. But we all need someone to blame :D

In keeping with my new view, I’m hoping for some nice rains. Nothing more lovely than having summer cut short by good cool weather. Oh what I’d do to have just 28 degrees instead of 36 degrees!

Posted by roshan.george under Madras | Comments (0)

Football, Germany, and Klose.

This video of Klose is a perfect example of his brilliance. 4 years ago at the World Cup in 2002, I judged him harshly, thinking he was a one-trick pony only capable of using his head (no wait, I meant it as in, “only capable of heading the ball”). The way he’s played since then has made me look like a nutcase for having said that. Oh well, that’s perfectly fine by me, and a good enough reason to watch Werder Bremen play.

In this World Cup alone, I’ve learnt what a horrible judge of footballers’ talent I’ve been. Lucky it has no effect.

The World Cup itself has been a bit dissappointing, particularly because I didn’t get to see Brazil v Germany again. That match would have been interesting, especially since the German team at this World Cup plays such an interesting game (something you wouldn’t expect from the old one).

EDIT: I just saw Schweinsteiger’s goals and woah, is that guy a holy sniper or what!

Posted by roshan.george under Sport | Comments (2)

Impotent rage over death and war, necessary?

Firefox comes with this nice little “Latest Headlines” RSS feed. It’s quite alright for sports and some unimportant news, but my biggest problem with it is that it gives me real news too. Real news can be painful, shocking even, definitely not a pleasant experience.

Anyway, the link I was talking about is yet another US massacre in Iraq. People’s lives are important, yes, but I’ve reached a stage where I no longer want to see another report on another terrorist attack, another war, another incursion into people’s homes. So the question I’m asking is, “Is it wrong to not want to care?”

For the past 10 years, I’ve experienced feelings ranging from depressing sadness, to fiery impotent rage on reading about so many people being killed someplace because of so many other people. In fact, the only thing they all have in common is that they don’t help me at all.
That brings to mind the advice of a character in Ian McEwan’s “Saturday“, who encourages you to “think small”, which I think is pretty reasonable advice. No point getting worked up about something that’s impossible for you to change. For now, until someone convinces me otherwise, I’ll stick with that, it seems to work pretty well.

The ancients got it wrong, the line should’ve been “Indifference is bliss”

Posted by roshan.george under Musings | Comments (4)

Upgrading Ubuntu Breezy to Dapper using Alternate CD and jigdo on a Via system

I recently managed to upgrade from Breezy to Dapper, versions 5.10 and 6.06 respectively for you number nuts, and I got to keep all my files and settings, well, nearly all. So anyway, I just decided to put this here before I forget exactly what I did.

Don’t take this as a literal guide, I’m just saying what I did to get it working. Don’t even hold me liable if it doesn’t work. Skip the next two paragraphs if you’re uninterested in my self-centered rambling.

The reason I used the CD to upgrade instead of the internet is my connection is erratic. It’s fast enough, typical downloads from the repos go at 18-50kB/s but it keeps going down, and hence it’s not very nice keeping it on all night and finding only half done in the morning.

So, I downloaded the ISO. Again, there was trouble, the ISO is a file that’s so large that my proxy cache doesn’t permit it. The company that my dad works for gives us free internet with these restrictions, and once (if) I get my more liberal broadband connection later I’ll be very happy, but for now I have to live with it. So how do you handle this problem? One word: Jigdo! jigdo’s useful for those people who have to keep stopping and resuming too, because there’s less chance of corruption.
First, if you have a proxy, read this . Just follow the instructions for wget and apt-get, though apt-get isn’t really necessary here.

Jigdo

Jigdo is quite easy to work, and you’ll need 3 things.

1. A working internet connection.
2. The jigdo tools
3. The jigdo file for Dapper Drake : You don’t need to download this, just copy the link.

Now, extract the jigdo tools somewhere and run jigdo-lite in a terminal window, then paste in the URL to the jigdo file (Ctrl-Shift-V does the trick in the Ubuntu terminal).
To choose a mirror in the screen that comes up, just type in your country code (e.g. us for the United States, in for India) and see what turns up. Try a couple of the mirrors and if they work, then hurrah, if they don’t, you’ll usually get an Error 404 on the first file.
Copy paste that filename into google and then look for: (you can use the “only pages from if you want)
“index of”
and you’ll get a couple of links to directory listings of a couple of sites with that file. Now take the url Google gives you and strip it of everything after ubuntu/pool/….
For e.g. If you have http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/main/x/xserver-xorg-input-elographics/
you enter
http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/
into that mirrors list. After this everything is pretty much automatic, no trouble.

The Real Action

Upgrade problems:

1. Open-office dissappeared, but was easily reinstalled from the CD itself.
2. My proxy setting no longer sets username and password well, easily remedied.
3. Nautilus Actions for Nautilus no longer works, though the menu entries are still there, easily remedied.
4. Banshee no longer works. Haven’t downloaded the latest from the repos, so I can’t say if it can be fixed.
5. Xserver broke after installation but was okay after installing the via
6. gnome-cups-manager dissappears after upgrade, easily remedied by reinstall

So if you’re willing to go through that, then proceed.

1. Burn the ISO you have to a CD, you can install it off the ISO itself but it’s generally a nice idea to have the CD lying around.
2. Insert and mount the CD after booting Ubuntu.
3. System >> Administration >> Synaptic >> Edit >> Add CDROM… and add your Alternate CD.
4. Now go to a terminal prompt and type in "sudo cp /etc/apt/sources.list /etc/apt/sources.list.breezy“
5. Then, “sudo gedit sources.list” and then put a # in front of all the lines that start with deb-src. Leave the “deb cdrom” alone.
6. Now, press Ctrl+Alt+F1 and you should be at a console.
7. Type in, “sudo apt-get update && apt-get dist-upgrade“
8. Let it upgrade and remove stuff as it sees fit.
9. There shouldn’t be much trouble at this stage. Once it’s done restart the computer with “sudo reboot” . I couldn’t get gdm to start again straight from there.
10. Once it reboots you should be in Dapper. You may have trouble with your via driver (I did!), in that case, get back to console mode and type in “sudo apt-get install xserver-xorg-driver-via“
11. Now reboot and it should all be fine. (you could try running /etc/init.d/gdm , but I just couldn’t get it running that way)

Now, go back to console, and type “sudo gedit /etc/apt/sources.list” and uncomment everything that you commented. Then change every occurrence of “breezy” in the file to “dapper”. The replace tool comes in handy :)
That’s all, you have Dapper Drake, and it’ll update from the repos if you let it.
Now the fixes.

Fixes:

1. Open-office: sudo apt-get install open-office* and you have everything back.
2. Network Proxy: System >> Preferences >> Network Proxy. Now here replace every instance of “http://proxy:port/” with “http://username:password@proxy:port/“
3. Nautilus Actions: In console, type “sudo apt-get install nautilus-actions“
4. Gnome-Cups-Manager: In console, type “sudo apt-get install gnome-cups-manager“

That’s all I did, and now I have everything I had before working on Dapper.

DISCLAIMER: This is no guide, I’m just outlining what I did, even if my language seems to imply that I’m requesting you to do something. It worked for me, I hope it works for you, but I’m not responsible if your hard-drive turns into smouldering junk after you do what I did.

Posted by roshan.george under Ubuntu | Comments (5)

In the Beginning

In the beginning there was nothing, nothing but emptiness. Then…there was George. George was everything for there was nothing but George, and everything was George. Then, George created the Universe, and all things that were in it.

Time passed, and George grew bored of being alone. He created a sphere of water, and mud, and waited. After eons, George realised that a sphere of water and mud wasn’t exceptional company, and he decided to create “Life”. Drawing upon his creative powers, George created what he thought would be his greatest masterpiece! But therein lied the flaw, for George was too creative, and the being that was created was a hodge-podge of everything that George wanted, and it had too many legs, too many arms, and not enough brains. Little did George know that this being, Marc Zephyrin, would turn out to be his nemesis.

Not knowing or considering the consequences of his action in his rather excited state, George put Marc Zephyrin in a confined box that George dubbed “PSBB”. George then went on to create all the other beings that the world, but that is fuel for another post.

George’s world lived in peace, prosperity and happiness for years while Marc slumbered, and the very Earth exuded the joy that was George’s. This did not laugh long though, for Marc’s mind was awakened at the very institution that George put him in to protect him from the other, more normal, people. Marc’s anger at George for having created him from mud was horrible, and destructive, and there was little left of PSBB when Marc escaped from it. Marc would soon learn that that wasn’t a wise decision and that PSBB would be the best home he would have for a long time.

To the pacifist George, such an act of violence was terrible and he could not stand it, but it was the least offence that Marc would commit in the 20+ years he would carry on his terrorism against George and his beloved people and come to be known as While George was contemplating strategies to stop Marc, the violent Tyrant was testing out Besant Nagar. That was his first mistake. George was quick, he seized the moment, he took the opportunity, he took the bull by the horns,……, put his shoulder to the wheel, and committed a horrendous sin to save the world, he enrolled Marc in SJBN. That broke Marc and he hasn’t been seen since…

In case you haven’t got it yet, that’s the equivalent of “Testing, testing, 1, 2, 3..” on a mic.

Posted by roshan.george under Musings | Comments (7)