Wanted to put down some useful things I have learnt about dual-screening in Ubuntu since I moved over to working under Linux full-time at work (and thus using a dual-screen environment more consistently).

1. The Intel driver for their gfx chips can’t do 3D on a combined screen size of wider or higher than 2048. So, if like me, you want to have your 1440 to the left of your 1280 monitor, with a total size of 2720, then you can’t have Compiz desktop effects enabled. (I think the solution would be to have them on top of each other, which would be <2048, but I haven’t tried that)

2. The guide here has some handy stuff about setting up xrandr to detect at login whether or not you have 2 screens connected - works great for me.

3. GNOME by default will always put it’s panels on the external monitor in a dual-screen setup. However, I discovered that you can tweak this by editing gconf when you login, adding a couple of lines to the ones added in step (2). (In file /etc/X11/Xsession.d/45custom_xrandr-settings:


if [ $? -eq 0 ]; then
xrandr –output $INTERNAL_OUTPUT –auto –output $EXTERNAL_OUTPUT –auto $EXTERNAL_LOCATION
gconftool-2 –type int –set /apps/panel/toplevels/bottom_panel_screen0/monitor 1
gconftool-2 –type int –set /apps/panel/toplevels/top_panel_screen0/monitor 1
else
xrandr –output $INTERNAL_OUTPUT –auto –output $EXTERNAL_OUTPUT –off
fi


4. If you have your virtual screen size set up appropriately, then the System -> Preferences -> Screen Resolution dialog also seems to work pretty well for times when you’re adding a projector on (although you’ll need to drag panels across from the projector as per (3) - haven’t worked out where I can add the gconf changes to make this happen automagically)

Anyway - still a work in progress. This was all done on Hardy - Intrepid upgrade on the to-do list once the relevant packages for my work software are available. The screen handling stuff may well be better in Intrepid.

mrBen

November was probably one of the busiest months I’ve had in a long while. All the weekends contained some sort of activity, split evenly between church and Invest events. Added to that a load of stuff at work, including a 2 day conference in Edinburgh and a job interview, and things were a bit hectic. Here’s to a quiet December!

At the Customer Contact Association conference in Edinburgh, a lot of folks were talking about Net Promoter Score(NPS), which is essentially a gauge of how likely people are to recommend your business to their friends. Interestingly (but not surprisingly) most banks score very low on this, although First Direct apparently is consistently high (60-70% better than most other banks, from what I could tell).

In lieu of this, I thought I would recommend a company that has been getting a chunk o’ money from me in the last few years. Regular readers of this blog, or regular visitors to our parties, may remember the infamous party at our flat in Haldane St that was a hotbed of inventiveness, being the source of not only vodka-cheese, but also a tasting ground for various bathroom products. By way of apology, the instigator of the madness purchased a number of replacement products for myself and Heather.

One such product was a set of King of Shaves lotions, and I’ve stuck with them from that day forward. The KoS shaving gel is great in that it produces virtually no foam, which makes it much easier to see what you’re doing, and doesn’t clog up the blade nearly as much. I also like their facial wash and aftershave kit. And, due to a need for replacement blades, I recently succumbed to try out one of their new Azor blades - a full review on that once I’ve used it a few times! (My previous weapon of choice was one of those vibrating Mach3 Turbo things, that I bought to shave off my goatee all those years ago, which was also a good blade, but replacement heads are a good deal more expensive than the KoS stuff)

Any products out there that you swear by?

mrBen

At the back of my mind… is what I originally wanted to post about. Damn, it’ll get back to me eventually. It always does.

I’ll have to remember to post about it then though, and not wait thinking I’ll remember…

Oh, well. To fill the space I’ll share this.

I has a mock assessment this morning at my course and I did… not brilliantly. That’s what comes from writing 50 thousand words when I should have been studying. Some things are just more important I guess.

And because of some unnecessary aggression from one of the students there, not me I can assure you, I was particularly taken by the last panel of this comic.

It truly is the simple things in life that keeps me entertained.

Oh, and before I forget, I saw The Mist last night. It’s a Frank (Shawshank Redemption) Darabont film based on a Stephen King novella. Genuinely terrifying.

Anyways, time to get some work done…

BigAl

Glad tidings one and all.

And what have I been upto all this time that I have not been updating the blog? Well, i have been doing (and completeing) my NaNoWriMo for the year, more of that exciting journey can be found here, and i am very pleased about that.

Yes, indeed I am.

Classic Yak trundles on, being the indispensable guide to christian life that it is (or something). And there are the never ending lists of things that I have set myself and have yet to do/finish/start.

So today, after having finished my 50k words for nano, I am sitting in the 13th note and enjoying bashing some more words into the story that i am a baw hair away from finishing. Very exciting stuff there.

I have an almost few fully painted squads for Warhammer 40k, a project that I insist on doing even though I am 33 years old.

Hey, I tried to grow up and found it a distinctly unimpressive experience. Sue me.

Oh, and I braved the shops this morning. I was inspired by the winding queues in some of the shops I went into (and the inspired to leave just as quickly) and had a wonderful chat with one of the guys, Chris i think, from Games Workshop Glasgow about the benefits of running full ten-man squads of Grey Knight Terminators in games of 40K. Just have to get enough painted to play first.

And I popped into the Dragon and George (or George and the Dragon), on Parnie Street in Glasgow city centre (I am boycoting Static Games, you have to speak to me directly to find out why), and had a wonderful chat with the guy in there about the state of the gaming industry in the current economic climate. Always keep up wth current affairs i do…

And Ruthy is, with the bulk of the church, currently in the Whiteinch Centre doing something called a solemn assembly. Hopefully between her and mrBen i’ll get an idea of what I missed.

Perhaps I should have been there, but God knows I have to get this novel done…

BigAl

Thanks to Kyle.

In a vision John sees Jesus speaking to seven different churches.

I happen to just be back from an Alpha meeting, and so the closest book was Questions of Life by Nicky Gumbel.

The rules for this meme thing are :

* Grab the nearest book.
* Open it to page 56.
* Find the fifth sentence.
* Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.
* Don’t dig for your favorite book, the cool book, or the intellectual one: pick the CLOSEST.

And now I get to tag 5 other people with the meme

Heather
Al
Jono
Aq
Phil

Enjoy, folks.

mrBen

Wow, it’s been a long time since I posted. And there’s _loads_ of things I could say, but I’ll make do with a few catch ups:

• New phone - got myself a Nokia 6500 Slide phone on a contract from Orange, after my previous phone (an aging Motorola V220) lost the ability to put sound through the earpiece. First impressions of the new phone are good, although the keys feel quite small at times. And the preinstalled Golf Tour game is really addictive!
• Severed Fifth, which I have blogged about before finally released their debut album, Denied by Reign. If you’re into chugging heavy metal, then you might like it, although, in a weird twist, I find that some of the “clean” vocals sound a bit weird.
• Ubuntu have released their 8.10 edition, the Intrepid Ibex release. Came out yesterday - get it while it’s hot (or wait a couple of weeks for the servers to cool down, and initial bugfixes to be released )
• Classic Yak continues to chug along nicely. Episode 4 came out last Monday (just). We’re getting about 60-ish downloads for most of the episodes, which is not too bad. And the editing quality is getting better. Mostly
• Heather and I continue on the Invest course. But more of that to come at a later date.
• I’m finally getting round to building the relatively huge Django project that is the church website. Also more of that when there are things to actually see in production

That’s probably enough for now.

mrBen

Today part of my day, other than helping set up barriers and a tent for the Whiteinch Gala, involved getting the remaining stuff out of an old church premises called The Gateway. One of the things I had to see to was to get the Whiteinch Church of Scotland sign from above the shop.

So Alan went up the ladder while I held on and we successfully brought down part of it and another piece slipped and as I tried to get out the way it bounced of the back of my head cutting it badly three times.

Exciting stuff, eh?

We got to the Whiteinch Centre, where Sammy Mitchell helped clean all the blood off my head, and there was a lot to clean, and Gordie the resident medical expert checked that it wasn’t too bad and with fresh paper towels stuck to the back of my head to stem the flow of blood Alan and I were off to the Western Infirmary.

Ruth joined me in good time and the medical folks at the A&E were quality and fast. They cleaned it up, glued the gashes shut and gave me some horse tranqs.

Apparently I have whiplash to look forward to, from the impact of the sign.

Isn’t life exciting?

BigAl

I went in this morning full of the coughing and wheezing, feeling under the weather and less of the joys of work. Especially as I was faced with a mild fcuk up that could have been avoided had I been more on the ball recently.

Gah.

Still, I managed to avoid the oncoming train wreck (for I am a silver-tongued gent) and to top it all off when I got home there was a letter waiting for me from the college telling me not to worry about the fees being paid.

Yowza. What a day.

BigAl

Been busy at work recently, started a part-time college course and been hard at work on the novel.

Too brief do you think?

Well right now I have some kind of chest infection, which is pretty bothersome, I’ve knuckled down with some classic The Avengers episodes and I have that listless feeling like I can’t concentrate on any one thing for too long. Perhaps an early night is in order.

After I’ve watched some more Avengers of course.

BigAl

There’s a small games studio in the UK called Introversion Software who have, over the past couple of years, quietly produced some of the most interesting games around. Moreover, their games all run not just on Windows, but Mac and (most importantly) Linux. There are 3 titles in their history, Uplink, Darwinia and Defcon (you can buy all 3 for only £20 for the download edition at the moment, or £10 for Uplink on its own). I have, in fact, talked about Uplink and Darwinia before.

Anyway, enough of the blurb. I got hold of a copy of Uplink the other day, and was a little concerned about how difficult it would be to install under Ubuntu Hardy. I needn’t have worried - it was so easy. But I thought it would be best to lay out how I did it for Google to find. All of this info can also be found on the Uplink Forums which are still active.

How to do it:

1. Download the latest patch. I used the Loki installer version of 1.55 (get it here) but it’s probably worth checking the Patch forum in case there’s a new release out
2. Run the installer - sudo sh uplink-patch-1.55.sh which installs the patch to /usr/local/games/uplink although you can install it to your home directory if you like.
3. Pop in the CD, and unzip the linux version somewhere convenient ( unzip /media/cdrom/linux/uplink.zip )
4. Copy the .dat files into the /usr/local/games/uplink/lib folder. ( cp *.dat /usr/local/games/uplink/lib )
5. Profit!

Once you’ve done all that, you should be able to run uplink just by typing uplink from the command line, or clicking Applications -> Other -> uplink.

Hope that helps someone enjoy the game as much as I do.

mrBen

I have been given an electric razor and as someone who has only ever used wet razors for the baldification ritual this was an all-new experience.

So all and new that I’ve made a bit of an arse of it. Although it doesn’t look like it, it feels like a chessboard on the noggin with alternating patches of stubble and no-stubble.

Still, I’m sure practice makes perfect.

BigAl

It’s been an odd couple of weeks. One of those times that things just seem to happen around you, you know?

Anyway, something that is good and solid (but still kind of part of that Twilight Zone feeling) is that I was at a pre-course meeting today for an NC Health and Social Care course in the neighbourhood centre run by Anniesland College.

So looks like from next Monday I’m a part-time student. I must remember to cut down on my personal hygiene to fit in with other students…

So it’ll be interesting to see where the course leads.

BigAl

(culled from The Resurgence)

A truly fascinating video (particularly the Q&A session at the end) of Tim Keller, a Christian author and apologist, speaking at the Google campus, as part of their Authors@Google series. He’s talking a bit about his book “The Reason for God”.

(or click here if it’s not embedding where you’re reading)

mrBen

The awesome project that is Classic Yak continues to gain momentum (and hopefully the odd listener). We released episode 2 last Monday, which is, I think, the best audio quality we’ve had so far, mostly because of the excellent screencasts that Tony Whitemore put up about using Ardour.

Thanks should go to Popey (again) for point me in the direction of SipGate who have provided us with an 0845 number for people to leave voicemails. Because it’s a VOIP service, they will email out the audio files for no extra charge, which means we can transfer the files directly into the podcast. We’re at 0845 867 6316 if you’re interested

mrBen

Footnote: At some point I will stop blogging about CY here, but at the moment we could do with the extra exposure

At work we’re closing one of the two locations that we have, we don’t use it enough to justify the expense, and the highlight of the day was getting up at Stupid O’Clock to head down there to meet one of the guys from the church to lug the heavy stuff to the office.

Where I’m going to find space for a lot of this is going to fun, but it’s all part of the job. Or something.

I snuck away early as I’m back there this evening for moving the smaller stuff so that’ll be easier. And being at home has given me a chance to catch up with the housework and painting my remaining Grey Knights.

Heh. All work and no play makes Al a dull boy.

Perhaps the highlight wasn’t getting up at stupid o’clock after all…

Last night I successfully took a small gouge out of the top corner of my right thumb. Gah. Idiot. Blood, blood and more blood. As you can imagine I’ve not been particularly happy about this.

So it’s all taped up and hurting like hell.

BigAl

mrBen

I’ve been called for jury duty.

The fools are letting me and 14 other random yahoos determine someone’s fate. Or that would be the plan if any of the people called were actually used for an actual jury. So far I’ve been called in at odd times on Monday and today and I’m due in at 11.30 tomorrow, and it’s disrupted my working week… Shame…

I was really looking forward to actually serving on a jury, seeing how the system ticks. Still, I’m always hopeful that Wednesday, Thursday, Friday bear fruit.

BigAl

Classic Yak Episode 1 (”Things to Sing in Lakeland When You’re Dead”) is now available!

You can download it direct from ClassicYak.org or listen from the streaming media player.

You can subscribe using your podcasting software from one of the links at the bottom of the main page.

You can find it on iTunes at http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=286589056

You can sign up for the forums or email us.

If you’re in church on Sunday, you can get a free sticker!

For those who missed my original post, CY is a monthly podcast aimed at discussion real-world issues from a Christian perspective. Hope you like it.

mrBen

OK - it’s been a bit late coming, but I thought I really ought to pen some words about LRL this year.

This was originally billed as the end of LugRadio. However, while the podcast has now finished, it was announced at the event that there will be an LRL 2009, which is brilliant. The only downside was that it meant that I completely failed to mourn the passing of LR properly.

If I was to sum up this years event in one word, it would be FUN. This was the most fun I have had in a long time. Not that the other LRLs weren’t fun (quite the contrary), just that this year was, well, “funner”.

I didn’t get to many talks this year, but I was involved in a fair few bits and pieces. The only talk I saw was Bruno’s “Baguette on Snails” talk, which was, as expected, hilarious, but also conveyed a serious point. I did my own talk on Saturday afternoon, which went well, and seemed to get some good response. I also got commissioned into the “Mass Debate” on Sunday afternoon - sitting on the stage with Jeremy Allison, Matthew Garrett and Max Spevack was, I admit, a little daunting. While they probably wouldn’t see it, I would regard them as “celebrities” of the open source world, and I felt a little, well, insignificant beside them. I managed to say some stuff - hopefully it was insightful

My main occupation during the weekend was to stroll around while dressed in a large chinny raccoon suit. It was swelteringly hot, but I had a brilliant time. It was like being Mickey Mouse at Disneyland. I was originally worried that it would be a 1 joke wonder, but it seemed to be immensely popular with everyone, and I got my photo taken loads. Oh, and got involved in a little stunt during Neuro’s talk

Socially, Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights were all great. The Karaoke on Saturday night was much better than I expected, and everyone seemed to have a good time.

I suppose I had better say a quick word about the Gong-a-Thong Lightbulb Talk Extravaganza this year, mostly because I ended up presenting it. I’d say that I would leave it to your imagination, but there are enough photos on the internet should you wish to corrupt your innocent young minds. There isn’t a proper explanation for this bizarre aberration in my otherwise normal behaviour, other than I was asked on the Thursday before, and agreed when it became obvious that they needed someone and it would require a hero to step forward. And I guess that’s the ultimate thing - the LR community has always made me _feel_ like a hero. The fact that it was, apparently, the funniest one ever (sorry Drinky and Aaron) was an added bonus. Oh, and the raccoon puppet on the front was there for additional coverage - the large, furry, stripey penis effect was just an added bonus.

A few thankyous need to go in here too - a number of people really made the weekend work for me:

• Heather - for letting me go in the first place.
• neuro - for driving me there and back
• Jono - for letting me sleep on his sofa/floor over the weekend
• MrsRon - for giving the crew breakfast and lunch
• Steph (aka babyRon) - for helping me in and out of my costume, and keeping me hydrated through the day
• Xalior - for buying the Chinnysuit, and helping out with the display stuff

(Hopefully I’ve not missed anyone)

Roll on LRL 2009

mrBen