Lines of Communications

Commemorating Sila’s birthday on the 29th, we have here a series of screencaptures taken from Skype on Atok Irfan & Alya’s computer in Sitiawan The proliferation of the internet and its communication applications has been one of the most amazing things to be invented in the last decade or so. I remember in the early 90s, when my sister’s vacation was over and she had to return to the States, it was the saddest time ever for me. Nowadays, or at least the last couple of times Sila and Vin were  on their way out of here, I was all like, “Going? OK, see ya when you get home.” So here are Alya, Alya’s Mom and Dad in webcam view. Alya catches sight of the webcam and is intrigued. Perhaps it tastes good. Grab the sucka! [[image:alya-skype-jan2009-01.jpg:Incoming flyer!:center:0]] [[image:alya-skype-jan2009-02.jpg:Attempting to acquire target:center:0]] Who are these strangle people crowded in the […]

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On the floor

And Now For A Word

We interrupt your regularly unscheduled pogrom (you know the one I’m talking about) to bring you the latest news. It’s more of a picture of where I’m working, rather than the news. It’s a photo of where I’m currently working from… at this moment… while monitoring stuff. Now that’s roughing it. Also, don’t ask how I’m connected to the interwebs.

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Team Ohio Skype Call

Communications As If It’s Science Fiction

Earlier today (well, about 5 minutes ago) Hisham, Ain and Irfan talked with Sila, Vin, Atok Irfan and Opah Irfan for almost an hour with one of those new-fangled tee vee phones. (Well, we used Skype.) We could hear them perfectly but not vise versa… no idea why. Irfan showed off his drawing skills live to the other side of the planet. Atok Irfan is contemplating installing a webcam on his machine at home. Here’s a screencap of what transpired.  

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Irfan at KL Tower

Irfan’s NimbleX

I’m currently running a new LiveCD within which resides the Linux operating system called NimbleX, and I’m writing this article with the Konqueror browser nestled deep within the LiveCD. The reason why this article is entitled “Irfan’s NimbleX” is because upon the startup of the OS, a voice says, “Welcome to Irfan’s NimbleX” in the voice of famed Star Trek and The Simpsons guest actor Stephen Hawking. The special thing about NimbleX is that the ISO file you download to burn into a CD is customisable! You get to decide what applications are included, how the default wallpaper looks like (and upload your own), the startup and shutdown sound and other neat stuff. This is how part of the custom ISO generator page looks like: Click on the thumbs to view the full images. I haven’t fiddled around with xorg to get the screen to conform to 1200 by 800 […]

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Hishgraphics H

The Layout Goes South

I’ve been trying to code the CSS file for the weblog all morning. I woke up and thought, how nice it would be if the site was optimised to a width of 1024 pixels. So I tinkered. And after altering and jury-rigging a bit of code here and a snippet of script there in the CSS file, I have arrived at a temporary solution before I needed to stop working on it. Here’s how it looks like using three different browser types on a 1200px by 800px screen: The left column is still there. It’s just overlaid by the centre column. I shall return to fix this for IE users.

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Hishgraphics H

Dreadwind Rising: A Blog Upgrade

Many, many months after the latest version of Pivot had been released, and remember that this weblog uses the Pivot content management system to… manage its content, Hishgraphics blog has finally been upgraded. It was for a very long time running on version 1.30 codenamed “Arcee”. As of yesterday, this blog has been upgraded to version 1.40.5 codenamed “Dreadwind”. It feels great performing the upgrade manually – uploading files individually and rebuilding everything – instead of using some automatic upgrade application. After about 4 man hours or so, it’s back in business. Not that it really matters for the regular visitors of the blog, but there you go. As a behind-the-scenes bonus, here are some pop-up images of the administration interface:

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Desktop-Adorning Mandalorians

[[popup:mandalorians.jpg:(thumbnail)::left:1]]So the other day I put up a thumb to the desktop wallpaper that was on my Ubuntu side of the computer. Here’s the wallpaper on the XP side of the laptop, its size reduced from 1280px by 800px. There’s a whole bunch of folks in Mandalorian armour. I found the image for the wallpaper on DeviantArt but now I can’t seem to find it again to link it here. Click on the thumb to view the image.

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Laptop Problem, and then a Solution

I still haven’t replaced my home workstation since it crashed and burned back in April. I’ve been using this work laptop 100% for my computing and browsing needs since. It used to work great until a couple of months ago when everything (in the Windows partition, mind you… Ubuntu still works fine) suddenly seemed to be work slow. The problem was very apparent when video and audio were running. Not all the time, but enough times to really annoy the shart out of me. Also, another annoying symptom is that it takes 10 minutes for the laptop to finish its startup cycle. But now… no longer. I did some googling (which I should have done months ago) and came upon some help in various websites. So apparently, the primary IDE hard disk switched transfer modes from DMA to PIO. I thought I’d post how to fix this problem if any […]

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Blue Underpants Goes On The Dragon

[[popup:nextwave_foom.jpg:(thumbnail)::left:1]]Since the desktop is deader than a doorknob now, I’ve been using the work laptop for both work and leisure internet use. The current desktop background that greets me every time I boot up the computer right now is… Well, just hit the thumbnail to see it. Please take note that it isn’t the dragon speaking in the picture. The lady, saying all the words in the word balloons, at the head of the fiery trail of the jetpack is Tabitha Smith of Nextwave.

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Way Past Its Prime

[[image:compy001.jpg:Old Reliable:left:0]] Fracking great. I get back from vacation, boot up the computer and connect to the internet…. and after 10 minutes the computer crashes. I can’t reboot the computer. Ubuntu hands during the startup sequence. I try booting up an Ubuntu Live CD and it crashes. I try both Kubuntu and Knoppix and they crash. The nice people at Ubuntuforums.org advise me to try formatting the hard disk drive using a Windows installer CD. I get my hands on one, and it crashes short of the formatting menu, then I was unable to boot up from the CD. Methinks it’s not a hard disk problem. It might be a RAM problem or even the motherboard’s had it. It’s been a good desktop computer since 2002 and it hasn’t given me any big headaches since. It had operated with Win ME, Win XP and Ubuntu (both Gnome and KDE). It’s […]

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Optimus Prime desktop

I’ve Transformed My Wallpaper

So today I made a brand new desktop wallpaper, which I think looks great. Click on the thumbnail over there to the left to view it in its entirety. I’m wondering about that glyph etched into the metal above his eye. This is where I got the original image, which is substantially larger than what is seen on my desktop.

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Hishgraphics H

This Weblog Is China-Friendly

It’s been in the news since last year that China has been censoring internet into the country. So, thanks to a website called greatfirewallofchina.org, I am able to test whether the subject matters of Hishgraphics blog entries are forbidden to be view from within China. Apparently, we’re not blocked! Yay! (Or, who knows, perhaps because of this post we will be before long, heh.) Greetings to everyone reading from China! Peace, y’all!

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Ubuntu Desktop

Ubuntu Adventures: Survivors of the KDE Desktop

Last time I wrote about the Linuxification of the home PC, I mentioned that I turned my Ubuntu into Kubuntu by installing the KDE desktop. It turns out I prefer the old GNOME desktop and the Nautilus file browser more, so with the command line in Terminal, sudo aptitude remove kde-desktop and POOF! A KDE holocaust. Lots of K thingamajigs were culled and removed from the operating system. We’re back to the regular Ubuntu 6.06 Dapper Drake. Here is how my desktop looks like now: However, I did retain a couple of KDE applications which I can’t do without, survivors of the culling so to speak. Amarok Still a fantastic music organizer and player. I spent a couple of hours earlier this week reorganizing my tunes on Amarok, ensuring the ID3 tags for each music file aren’t screwed up. I used EasyTAG to edit by batch the ID3 data, and […]

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Irfan on the new desktop

A New Playgound (On the Computer Desktop)

After I vowed to install Linux into this here home computer some time last October, this machine is now 100% Linux. The 100% part was because my old two hundred year old Windows installer CD had reached the end of its days and I needed an operating system quick. Why didn’t I retain the old Windows XP already installed in the computer and go dual boot? I broke it fiddling with dual boot, thank you very much. The Linux distro installed is Ubuntu 6.06 Dapper Drake. Although its original desktop environment was GNOME, I’ve installed K Desktop Environment (KDE) over it, effectively turning it into Kubuntu. So cutting through all the techinical details for now, here’s what the desktop and its associated applications looks like. Take a look at the desktop. After years of using Windows, this took some time to get used to. The wallpaper is homebrewed with GIMP, […]

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Hishgraphics on Ubuntu

Two Views Of The Same Page

Because I’ve using Firefox on Ubuntu 6.06 LTS to surf the net, here are two different looks of this website’s index page. I have no preference on which is better looking, but apart from the fonts, there really isn’t much difference, thanks to Ubuntu not being able to display the Trebuchet MS font. The original screen resolution is 1200 x 800. The top is the WinXP Firefox with the Aluminum Kai 2 theme; and below is the Ubuntu Firefox on Ubuntu with the Ubuntu Tangerine theme. Click on the thumbnails to view the larger images. Last night however, the home desktop died a fiery death and I can’t reinstall any OS. Not WinXP, not Ubuntu. (Thankfully, God created work laptops.) Thanks to a suggestion from Kris Vanderwater the Atlantean, I’m now downloading Knoppix ISO file to see if I can run the Knoppix Linux-based OS off the CD. However, if […]

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Hishgraphics H

Quaked by Internet Problems

Now it seems that we’re unable to connect to servers in the United States and Europe. I can’t even access my work email. I couldn’t even access this weblog since this morning until about 1342 hours local time. And I hope before the connection flips out again, I’d get this entry written and saved. According to rumours from Jeff Ooi’s blog, last night’s Taiwanese disastrous earthquake caused Asia Pacific Cable Network 2 Segment 7 (APCN2 S7) to go tits up and caused internet connections between Malaysia, among other countries, to the United States to be congested. APCN2 is the longest international seabed fibre cable network, 19,000km in total length, in the Asia-Pacific, linking China, Japan, Malaysia, Republic of Korea, Singapore, and onward to linking America, Europe and Australia. The network went into operation in October 2002 for the initial phase. The project was spearheaded by 26 telecommunications companies, namely Advantel, […]

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