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This evening I had a pleasure to attend to my mother’s “broken” computer. “Oh, the internet doesn’t work — I can’t access my e-mail”. You know, the usual statement you really don’t want to hear. Trouble-shooting is a pain in the arse, and it’s one of the most least interesting tasks you can perform.

I jump on to her computer to start the trouble-shoot process. Immediately, I realise that someone has loaded a new operating system on the machine. Low and behold, it’s a counterfeit copy of Windows Vista. WTF? This machine was previously installed with Ubuntu Linux, an OS that my mother is most familiar with. Furthermore, she also purchased a new ADSL modem on the recommendation of whoever “fixed” her computer. Funnily enough, the internet is *still* broken. My mother explained that the “tech” took the computer and returned it to her as-is. I’ve always stressed the importance of contacting me first, but she usually relies on the advice of her [misinformed] friends. Admittedly, my mother and I aren’t particularly close — it’s not often that we talk.

At any rate, if the “tech” had bothered to diagnose anything, he’d have noticed that there is no sync between the ADSL Modem and the ISP. Wouldn’t that clearly indicate an issue with the hardware, phone line, telecommunications company; or the ISP? I’m unable to conclude how wiping a perfectly legitimate Ubuntu installation in favour of Windows Vista would “solve” her internet connection issues. I also found that he had replaced the DVD+/-RW optical drive with a CD-R optical drive. To top matters off, he had incorrectly configured the resolution for the display.

In addition, he’s wiped all of her e-mails and family photo’s. Way to go, moron. He also recommended that mother should purchase a new computer, because her existing machine is incapable of utilising Vista to it’s maximum potential. Again, WTF? FYI, it’s an AMD Athlon64 something something, with 1GB of RAM and a 80GB HDD. Mother browses the web, reads her e-mail and occasionally chats on IM. Vista… yeah right.

I’m so angry at this tech. Now I have to wipe her computer and install Ubuntu Linux again. At least installing Ubuntu Linux is 10x easier than Windows.

I arrived back from the city on Friday afternoon with a big, brown box.

After carefully removing the seals, I encountered another big box.

A peek inside.

Low and behold, a wrapped iMac.

Introducing my Apple iMac, featuring a 24″ display. The back is as elegant as the front.

First boot, it works!

After relocating my desktop computer and cleaning the work desk, my iMac sits nicely.

Specifications:

• 24″ LCD Display (1920×1200)
• Intel Core 2 Duo 2.16GHz
• 2GB DDR2 667
• nVidia 7300GT
• 250GB SATA 7200RPM HDD
• Built-in bluetooth, wireless and webcam

I purchased the iMac with the intention of becoming my workstation. I place an emphasis on work. The display is amazing, it’s insanely huge and the colours are vibrant. I haven’t had any difficulty adjusting from my dual 17″ LCD displays, an issue that I was concerned about.

Ultimately, I’m more than pleased with my purchase. If you’re interested in additional pictures, you can take a look here.

It’s official. I’ve registered “Bottlebrush Web & IT Solutions” as my business name with the Queensland Office of Fair Trading. In addition, I’ve purchased the domain name “bottlebrush.net.au” which was approved earlier this afternoon and now contains a temporary web site. Tomorrow I’m going to see if I can get business cards printed, and what options are available to me.

In late December of 2006 I switched from GNOME to Openbox, a lightweight and extensible Window Manager (WM). I wasn’t satisfied with many of the existing themes for Openbox, and created my own. I’ve been using it for about one month now, and I feel it’s time to share it with the rest of the world.

You’ll need to grab two theme files, one is for Openbox and the other for GTK. In addition, you’ll also require the Murrine-GTK-Engine. If you’re using Arch Linux, a package is already available in the community repository under “gtk-engines-murrine”. Other distribution users should look here for more information.

Darkness for Openbox
MurrinaDarkness for GTK2

If you’re seeking a greyish GTK theme for the GNOME/Xfce desktop, also consider MurrinaDarkness.

You may also consider browsing my Openbox configuration files such as menu.xml and rc.xml, which you can locate here.

In an attempt to add a complete touch to my MythTV setup I searched for high resolution logo’s of each TV network in Australia. Furthermore, I have created a “HD” emblem which has been applied to each network logo. This enables the person viewing TV to distinguish easily between standard and high definition channels.

They’re now located in my gallery and for use with a MythTV box. Please be aware that these logo’s are the property of their respective networks and copyright laws apply.

Installation:
Download these logo’s on to your system. I place mine in ~/.mythtv/logos. With mythtv-setup select “5. Channel Editor” and change the icon path for each channel to point to the location of the logo. Enjoy!

UPDATE: I’ve created an entirely new icon set, check it out here.

Nowadays, it’s not uncommon for people to carry USB thumb drives in their bags, laptops or even a lanyard. USB thumb drives are a convenient medium for transferring data easily between computers in different locations where it may not be possible to attain internet or network access. Recently, I discovered that Kingmax were manufacturing tiny, simcard-sized USB thumb drives. I thought that this would make a great addition to my keyring.

This is no where near as dorky as wearing a USB thumb drive around your neck on a lanyard or as inconvenient as having to search your bag for where you placed your thumb drive. Now, I thought to myself “What can I actually use this thumb drive for?” and then it clicked. My SSH private key and SAMBA passwords on a small, encrypted partition.

In an attempt to crack down on SSH security, I stumbled upon SSH publickeys. This method of authentication requires the user to possess a local private key and for the sever to contain the respective publickey in order to make a valid login. By disabling PAM and standard password authentication, it makes it rather difficult to break into the box without the key. Furthermore, you can protect your private key with a passphrase, further enhancing security. While some people will disable the passphrase to use password-less logins, I still feel that’s a massive security hole. If your system was ever compromised and someone attained your key, they could potentially gain access to your server. While this may appear unlikely, I don’t take any chances.

Currently, I’ve been busy with another [massive] project and I haven’t worked out how to encrypt the partition and ensure compatibility between Windows, Linux and Mac OS X. Therefore, the thumb drive only contains an individual SSH private key which I can use to remotely login to the server from outside of home.

This Kingmax 512MB USB thumb drive was $25 from Computer Alliance.

According to Neowin, Windows Vista will hit the shelves with a $499 CND price tag. That’s for the Ultimate Edition, which is the equivalent of Windows XP Pro. Home Premium and the Ultimate Upgrade are listed at $299. Any reasonable person would look at this pricing scheme in disbelief. You could build your own PC for the price of Windows Vista Ultimate Edition. Unfortunately, a lot PC gamers will be forced to upgrade if they desire DX10 support. In addition, with the advent of “Home Theatre PC’s” many private users will seek Windows Vista for their multimedia centres. From a corporate perspective, I don’t see any justified reasoning to upgrade from Windows XP/2K to Vista at the moment, at least on workstations.

What can we expect from this pricing? Firstly, it’s going to encourage further pirating which is a trait for [a great majority of] proprietary software - Especially from the gaming community who may posses the technical knowledge to do so. Secondly, I feel that many users will simply stick with 2K/XP labelling them as “Good Enough”. In contrast, I hope that it encourages users to seek out free [or less expensive] alternatives to Microsoft operating systems such as Linux.

I especially like the descriptions of the various editions of Windows Vista on the Microsoft website.

Windows Vista Home Premium
Whether you choose to use your PC to write e-mail and surf the Internet, for home entertainment, or to track your household expenses, Windows Vista Home Premium delivers a more complete and satisfying computing experience.

Windows Vista Home Basic
Windows Vista Home Basic is designed to deliver improved reliability, security, and usability to home PC users who just want to do the basics with their PCs.

They boast that the Premium Edition allows you to write e-mail and surf the web. Fantastic, but where does it leave the Basic edition? Well, it’s designed to deliver the basics. I was under the impression that e-mail and web browsing were already basic? Heh, that said I’m sure I’m just playing on their words.

Over the previous six months I have been pondering over the thought of purchasing a laptop of my own. Before this, I had been borrowing a rather low spec’d Gateway laptop from a family friend. I think it’s great to have a portable computer that I can take anywhere. More importantly, I can access zingers from anywhere in the world, provided that I have internet. I’ve never liked the idea of using public terminals as I’ve always preferred to use my own computer. It’s been configured the way I like it and I can assure myself that some snotty grub hasn’t previously used it. Therefore, I present Nuggets the iBook!

After much discussion with various people I concluded that a Macintosh laptop would be suitable. Originally, I had anticipated purchasing the Dell Inspiron 6400 for around $1500. Undoubtedly, it would outperform my iBook and I could at least run Arch Linux on it. However, after seeing a fair few 12″ screen laptops at uni I quickly become attracted to them. They’re tiny screens meant ultra portability, perfect for fitting into my backup and riding on the motorbike. At the same time, I’ve always been captivated by Mac OS X and it’s beauty. Having owned a PowerMac before I’d like to continue owning or at least, have interaction with a Mac. While I’d prefer to use Linux on anything, having Mac OS X provides me with a greater understanding of alternative operating systems. I will not deny that Mac OS X is very nice, it works out of the box and it works well. It’s better than Windows, but I still feel restricted by it which ultimately holds me back. In comparison, my favourite image editing application, Adobe Photoshop operates natively on Mac OS X. This means I can finally use Photoshop without having to use Windows, a big plus. The inter-semester break draws closer and this will provide me with ample time to load Linux on to the iBook and dual boot Mac OS X and Ubuntu.

I managed to purchase the iBook for $750 from the OCAU For Sale forums. It’s specifications are a G4 800MHz, 256MB DDR266, 30GB 4200RPM HDD, ATi Radeon 9200, Airport Extreme (Wireless), 12″ Screen. A rather good price relative to eBay, don’t you think? I’ve since upgraded it to 512MB of RAM and a 40GB 5400RPM HDD which has significantly increased its “speed”. All in all, this is about half the price of the Dell and it’s suitable for web browsing, IM, IRC and word processing. Maybe when I have some more money to my name I can resell the iBook and purchase one of those fancy Macbooks (Similar spec’d and priced the the 6400). That would be awesome.