Hardy Heron – First Impressions

Sohaib Athar2 Comments

I just finished a clean install of Kubuntu Hardy Heron + KDE4 on my dual-boot laptop (Dell Inspiron 9400). My initial plan was to upgrade my Gutsy installation, but my harddisk was almost out of space, and upon research, I found out that resizing an ext3 Linux partition that is after an NTFS partition physically isn’t the easiest task in the world.

My partitions before installation were:
NTFS/FAT32/FAT32/FAT32/EXT3/SWP
So I backed up my Linux files, shed a few tears over losing all those custom installations, and deleted the last 3 partitions after booting from the LiveCD.
My new disk looks like
NTFS/FAT32/FAT32/EXT3 / / EXT3 /home/ / SWP
with plenty of space (24GB) for linux to use.

The installation went very smoothly – I was expecting that I would have to recompile ALSA to get my subwoofer back, but I can see the LFE controls in the default installation. My son was watching the installation, and after playing with the online wallpaper browser, he now wants Ubuntu, Kubuntu and Windows on his system.

I don’t like the new Panel – as of now, it is very restrictive. There aren’t enough applets (now called widgets) in the default installation – maybe I need to search Adept for addons. I was used to tweaking each element on the Panel manually, but that power has been taken away by KDE4 AFAIK. A right-click did not let me move any of the icons around, and after I added a few widgets that I didn’t like, removing them messed up the panel layout totally.

The only workaround to rearranging the items on the KDE4 panel that I could figure out was:

  • Remove ALL widgets from the Panel.
  • Add the widgets you want one by one, from left to right

So I added Application Launcher Menu, Task Manager, Application Launcher, Pager, System Tray and Digital Clock, in that order, and the panel became a bit acceptable.

Another small nuisance of KDE4… I have not used any wallpapers on my operating systems for a few years now, and prefer to keep my desktop black as it is easier on the eye (I didn’t know it was the “green” thing to do until this year). I was unable to find the option to NOT use a wallpaper so far (though I have used HH for about 20 minutes now) – maybe I will find it, or maybe I will need to use a 100% black image as a wallpaper, but the option should have been easier to reach.
The high of a new and clean operating system installation is wearing off now, so I will go install the applications I really need – and perhaps write a bit more about it later.

Kids Songs, Adult Songs and why Superman is like the US of A

Sohaib Athar1 Comment

When my son Harris was three, he used to go to sleep while listening to Nirvana, Pink Floyd and Alanis Morissette, so it is ironic that I found this video when I was searching for kids songs for him on youtube:

and while we are listening to songs, here’s some good advice that you may remember if you grew up in the 90s:

and this page verifies my years-old belief that Superman sucks!. I have never watched any of the Superman movies and don’t regret it

and press the red button here to see what death in Iraq looks like, when taken as a statistic

and free-will may not be as free as we think it is

and sorry about the title of this post, but I really need to make my “TO BLOG” bookmarks folder a bit lighter 😀

How to Win Any PC Game

Sohaib Athar

I have just discovered a quick way to beat any game that involves virtual currency – thanks to a request to me by a certain “leetkiss” on a freelancing website. I am very impressed by leetkiss’ understanding of reusable software patterns and C++ Interop and the clean code that he writes. He has written most of the software and is only missing one small piece now – one that he wants to outsource.

Even though I am too busy to take up his project, I am thinking of buying the program from him, once he gets it developed, so that I can be rich in the few MMORPGs that I play.

Here’s his complete request, please leave a comment if you can do this for him and I will get you in touch:

Hey

I want a program made, that can do the following:

The program will be called “Game Cheater” and It will make a troublesome PC GAME easier to win by helping you find the memory address where a desired quantity (like amount of money) is located so ou can change that quantity.

The program will find a hex address based on the input parameters you set and edit these addresses to my desired quantity.

Example (changing the money variable in a GAME from $50 to $999999999):

Call changeMemory(search_string, replace_String)

Call changeMemory(“$50”, “$999999999”)

It needs to be a .DLL file ( C++ )

I need to be able to use the DLL in my VB6 program. Here is ALL of the source code from my VB6:

Private Sub Command1_Click()
search_string = “$50”
replace_string = “$9999999”
changeMemory(search_string, replace_String)
End Sub

Children Riding Buses Alone

Sohaib Athar

ImageI leave my car at home and travel on a bus at least a couple of times a week so that I can stay in touch with the real world around me and observe the actual people that make up our country. Their discussions (and cursing) on current affairs is probably more informative than your average 30 minute daily news reports.

Yesterday, six little kids wearing school uniforms and carrying school bags got on the bus and rode for a few kilometers before getting off. They were unsupervised, but were totally at ease, joking and playing with each other. None of them looked older than 8 or 9 years old, with the youngest one probably 5 or 6. They were so confident that I wished I had my camera with me.

Watching the kids, I was reminded of the “news” that I read a few days ago – which was covered by a LOT of blogs and websites. The news was about about the “amazing” incident of a mother letting her 9 year old ride the subway alone. Hundreds of children, 5 or 6 years old, travel many kilometers in public transports private buses to go to school – all alone. Perhaps the NY Sun can come and cover these cute kids as well.

The mother commented:

Isn’t New York as safe now as it was in 1963? It’s not like we’re living in downtown Baghdad.

I wonder if she realizes that before “the war”, the Iraqi children from downtown Baghdad were probably also traveling alone – supervised – in public transport – just like our Lahori children… instead of being groped and raped.

The article linked above realizes that

The problem with this everything-is-dangerous outlook is that over-protectiveness is a danger in and of itself.

“A Nation of Wimps” is an apt title for the book mentioned in the article above, but a powerful nation of wimps can do a lot of damage – you can’t really blame the american parents as they are probably just following the footsteps of their leaders.

End of a somewhat disconnected thought-stream.