Archive for December, 2009

Ubuntu happiness!

Wednesday, December 23rd, 2009

Ubuntu logoUbuntu made me happy the other day. We’re talking the previous one here, 9.04. I didn’t dare upgrade yet :) What happened? I’ve been trying to get internet at my place, and ordered an ADSL line. For the time being, they graciously offered me a 3G-usb stick to get connected. Well, somehow Tango Luxembourg is having heaps and bounds of problems “flipping the switch” (the previous owner used Tango, and he thought it would be a matter of “only flipping a switch”. Well, perhaps, but they keep running into problems), so I told them to stuff it. I’ll just keep on using my 3G thingy. Works well, for now. Plus, it saves a bit on having to pay for a phone line :)

Anyway, the Huawei USB E1750 modem (can’t find an official product page :) is made to plug-and-play under Windows, and, admittedly, there it works well. I dreaded Unix, and had been avoiding it for the last weeks. That position was fast becoming untenable, especially if I avoided ADSL altogether. So, time to get it working under Ubuntu!

Was that hard? Well, google a bit and you’ll find solutions. The thing is: if you plug in the USB modem, it gets treated like a USB stick. The “mode” with which your pc accesses the Huawei needs to be switched to “modem”. There are some solutions out there, simplest way seemed to use this shell script. So I did. Then, Ubuntu found my USB modem, went into a wizard to set it up. The wizard asked “where are you?” (Luxembourg) and “which provider in Luxembourg” (Tango). That was it.

BAM BABY!! Modem working! Enter one pincode, and I am online in Ubuntu!!

I had prepared all this info: phone number, data packet size, whatever. Not necessary, Ubuntu is as pluggy and play-ey as Windows (okay okay, download one script and then it is). Awesome! Hats off, well done!

So that part is working out, next up: getting my new printer to work. Hope it’ll be equally easy :)

Update: The printer was plug-and-almost-play under Ubuntu.  It’s a Samsung ML-2240 laser printer, and Ubuntu can’t handle it. Upon plugging it in, it (eventually) proposes to install a printer, make: samsung (ok), then model: ML-2250. There are several drivers for the ML2250, the recommended one does not work. I didn’t try all, but the Foomatic/gdi one does work (found that by googling). Prints high on the page, which is annoying, but plug-and-play ease is preserved. (That’s important, because I’ll be reinstalling my laptop soonish, I think).

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A gamey Sinterklaas

Sunday, December 20th, 2009

Sinterklaas happened, as it does every year, and it was a grand event in our family (as always). It is getting harder and harder to find each other gifts. Part of this is that everyone has a regular job now, and they’ll buy the stuff they want themselves usually. Hobbies can form a pleasant exception to that. Case in point: I like gaming, so there might be a game out there that I like. (I’m not a 100% dedicated, hard-core gamer, but I do enjoy a game now and then.)
Bowser's inside storyThis year, there were a couple like that. I heard about Professor Layton and Pandora’s Box, and also about Mario & Luigi: Bowser’s Inside Story. Having previously immensely enjoyed Professor Layton and the Curious Village, as well as previous efforts in the “Mario & Luigi” serie (can’t remember which, probably played it at a friend’s), these two were no-brainer addition the the wish-list.
Slight hickup ensued: whereas Layton’s first adventure was multi-lingual (coming in the standard 5-in-1 languages of Nintendo Europe: English, French, Spanish, German, Italian — there’s a nice symbol for it, but my google-fu is weak right now), his second adventure was localised for every country. So the version you get in the Netherlands is only in Dutch, the version in Luxembourg is in French. Seeing as how this game revolves around solving puzzles, doing that in French: nuh-uh! In Dutch, it would be possible, but most likely cringe-inducing. So I needed the UK version… hence it got removed from the list again.
Sinterklaas visited my parents, and it was a wonderful evening (better, somehow, than the last couple of years… my brother went all-out again, was awesome!). I received (amongst others) Bowser’s inside story. Didn’t get round to playing it immediately, but a couple of days later I started.
And now I am writing to you, and I have finished the game. Put in about 33 hours to complete it — the game keeps track of playtime, and I hardly ever reverted to an old save, so I am estimating that that time is close to accurate, except you don’t get to save at the end, so I factored in 1 hour for a failed final battle (revert to save) and another hour or so for a successful one. In roughly 14 days, I spend 33 hours gaming :) wow.

It’s a really good game though, if you’re into the Mario RPG thing.

Posted in fun, gaming | Comments Off on A gamey Sinterklaas