my life

http://everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=489380

Found this quote the other day, that I felt really summed up the whole East-meets-West phenomenon.

I am not asian, but this is a thought:

One thing that was particularly interesting in this node was the fact that you say that you prefer the company of American youth, and you criticize your fellow Asian youth for their floppy attempts at westernizing. The thing is, many of the young (North) Americans that I know are sucking down anime and sushi faster than you can say GAINAX!

I am willing to bet that, as objectively as possible, hip chyx walking down Queen Street W. wearing some Chinese printed t-shirt, (that for all they know says: I AM CHEAP AMERICAN WHORE), look every bit as ridiculous as your Korean boy bands. The West is craving Zen and Kanji at the same time as the East is going crazy for Rock and Roll and McDonald’s.

deb http://orinoco-usb.alioth.debian.org/debian/ unstable/
deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu hoary-backports main restricted universe multiverse
deb http://linux.csua.berkeley.edu/debian/ unstable main contrib non-free
deb-src http://linux.csua.berkeley.edu/debian/ unstable main contrib non-free
deb http://security.debian.org/ testing/updates main
deb http://wine.sourceforge.net/apt/ binary/
#opera web browser
deb http://deb.opera.com/opera/ unstable non-free
deb-src http://mentors.debian.net/debian unstable main contrib non-free
          

If you’re upgrading from a 2.4 series kernel to a 2.6 series kernel and you have SATA drives, beware!
The two kernels are not alike in accessing these devices. In the 2.6 kernel, they moved from using /dev/hd[a-z] to /dev/sd[a-z] for Serial ATA (SATA) drives. After you apt-get install you kernel, make sure you edit 2 files or you will be in trouble.

First, edit /etc/fstab

Change all of your SATA drives from hd[a-z] to sd[a-z]. Make sure you only do this to your Hard Drives, and not to you CDRom Drives. The only thing that has changed is the first letter ‘h’ to ’s’. Don’t worry about the rest, it has remained the same.

After solving problem with VSF and root partition, you must edit Grub’s boot loader config or you will get this error….

pivot_root: No such file or directory
/sbin/init: 426:cannot open /dev/console: No such file
Kernel panic - not syncing: Attempted to kill init!

So, edit /boot/grub/menu.lst
Change all the hd[a-z] to sd[a-z]

That’s it! you’re all done. Reboot and select the new kernel.

Here is my grub menu.lst
…

title Debian GNU/Linux, kernel 2.6.11-1-686
root (hd0,0)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.11-1-686 root=/dev/sda2 ro
initrd /initrd.img-2.6.11-1-686
savedefault
boot
...

Notice the change from hda2 to sda2

There are a lot of things to knock Microsoft for, but I do credit them for designing friendly, appealing interfaces. For instance, I prefer the IE look&feel to Mozilla/Firefox. There’s a solution to this problem! Install the IE Skin for FireFox.

Personally, I prefer this simple approach at http://pages.prodigy.net/zzxc/ieskin/
After you download the them, go to

Tools > Themes

Select the “Internet Explorer” theme, click “Use Theme”
But, if you prefer to go all out, you can try http://www.firefoxie.net/

The Firefox registry contains lots of untalked about variables you can modify. Some of the wonderful options like request pipelining and prefetch are turned off by default (with good reason, not all sites support it, but I could careless).

The easiest way to optimize these settings is to download and install
https://addons.mozilla.org/extensions/moreinfo.php?application=firefox&id=327

After you install it, close Firefox and re-enter.
1. Go to Tools > Tweak Network Settings
2. Select “Power” if you are on a Broadband connection or faster.
3. Click OK

Observe the dramatic performance improvement as you browse sites like http://apple.com/
Pages will just snap!

If you are experiencing problems getting your sound to work, try using the legacy devices in /dev/.static/dev/audio0

First you will need to set the permissions.. (by default they are 700)

chmod 755 /dev/.static

Now, use /dev/.static/dev/audio0 for you sound card.

Anecdotally, once I use the device this way, it mysteriously starts to work in /dev/audio as well.

apt-get install linux-wlan-ng-modules-2.4.27-2-386 linux-wlan-ng

Assuming that your SSID is ‘default’….

cp /etc/wlan/wlancfg-DEFAULT /etc/wlan/wlancfg-default

Edit /etc/wlan/wlan.conf, and make it read….

SSID_wlan0="default"
ENABLE_wlan0=y

Edit /etc/modules, and add on a line by its own….

prism2_usb
Edit /etc/network/interfaces

Add,

iface wlan0 inet dhcp
#iface wlan0 inet static
# address 192.168.0.101
# netmask 255.255.255.0
# network 192.168.0.0
# broadcast 192.168.0.255
# gateway 192.168.0.1
wireless_essid default
wireless_mode infrastructure

Uncomment the lines with # (and comment the dhcp line), if you want to configure a static IP.

Then run,

/sbin/wlanctl-ng wlan0 lnxreq_ifstate ifstate=enable
/sbin/wlanctl-ng wlan0 lnxreq_autojoin ssid=default authtype=opensystem
/sbin/ifup wlan0

For more information, please see this wonderful guide:
http://www.erikin.com/index/Docs/linux/wireless/dlink/dwl122/debiandlink