So I find myself once again in Atlanta, Georgia’s glorious airport, waiting on a flight to Jacksonville.  Fortunately this time, I should make this flight on standby without any major problems.  Of course that means that I’ve been here since 10:30am and will be here for another hour or so.

I’ve been getting letters in the past two weeks from a buddy of mine who joined the army.  He slowly seems to be figuring out that it’s as bad as I told him it would be (not that I have any firsthand experience, but it just looks like a bad gig…  Of course, he’s still in training, which I doubt can be a 100% like Fullmetal Jacket.  However, I have a friend whose uncle was in that particular “conflict” and said that movie seemed most accurate to him.

Anyways, I need to write him back.  I probably haven’t written a letter in almost 10 years, and the hassle of finding stamps, an envelope, and taking it out to the mailbox seems archaic.  Heck, I have trouble remembering to take my Netflix movies out to the box, and it comes with an envelope and postage

I’ve been meaning to post all week, but I don’t remember what it was I was going to post.  I’ll remember later I guess

This was just too funny.  If you haven’t bought Halo 3 yet, you should watch it first.  Or, if you’re a gamer type in general.

Or if you think Australian accents are funny

Cheers!

So I got around to upgrading my desktop to Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon today.  I’d like to tell you all about the new features such as the latest version of GNOME or the first iteration of Compiz-Fusion into Ubuntu, however I’m not going to.

Rather, I can’t tell you.

Yeah, Gutsy cratered my desktop.  Sorta.  I can get it to boot, but it looks like some combination of proprietary Nvidia drivers and Automatix, the fancy everything-you-ever-wanted-from-linux-and-more utility that is a large bone of contention in the Ubuntu community.  Personally, I thought that it was more of a philosophical disagreement, but now I’m finding that’s not quite the whole story.

Personally, I’m curious if any former Debian users have recognized the use of Christian Marillat’s site in the Automatix repositories.  As far as I can tell, quite a few of the packages are imported from there.  I remember the days running Debian Sid, trying to get the bleeding edge out of Linux.  I used quite a few of Marillat’s packages (Movie Player in particular, that was quite a day)then as well.  Of course running Sid, it’s hard to point to any particular link in the chain when your system goes belly up.  Christian received criticism in the Debian community along the same lines that Automatix has seen with Ubuntu

Fast forward to Automatix and Ubuntu.  Quite a different presentation here; an easy to use menu, automatic key ring negotiation, etc.  Which I think it is good that someone is trying to make the things we want and need easy to come by.  The #1 shortfall that I’ve seen with Linux is the gap between a fast, easy to maintain software distribution system and the learning curve.  It took me forever to figure out how to use and understand Apt and the Linux file system when I started fooling around with it.  Now I look back and laugh at Window$ and it’s so-called registry.

But even with tools like Synaptic, it’s still tough to find exactly what you’re looking for.  And if I were a new user, downloading and installing Automatix sounds much friendlier then pulling down “gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly-multiverse” from the repositories.

I think Ubuntu is eventually headed in the right direction; I installed Ubuntu Feisty on my laptop(the one I’m on right now in fact), and found that I was able to get most of what I needed through the regular Ubuntu repositories.  In some cases, I had better performance on my laptop then my desktop running Automatix.  And I should probably mention that my laptop was upgraded to Gutsy about 2 weeks before it was released, without a hiccup. 

Regardless, I have no intentions of installing Automatix in the near future

Well, not quite.  But it’s a way to start this blog off.  This blog will likely be more of an investigation into my interests, which include but are not limited to:

• Programming
• Philosophy
• Politics
• Circuit-bending
• Music
• ….

That’s probably a good enough start.  I’m trying to avoid the whining,day-by-day narrative that most blogs turn into, and perhaps provide some useful and entertaining writing.

Ehh