Feb/101
Who Will Buy an iPad?
Not so long ago Apple has released their brand new product called the iPad and the web has been buzzing ever since. Some people like it, others don’t. Andreas Louca talks about Taking on the iPad in his post which points out some very good arguments.
So I come and ask you. Who will buy an iPad? Well the answer to that very question is My Mother and people like my mother. Why you may ask. Let me explain.
My mother want’s a computer to do the following.
- Check her emails.
- Browse the web and read the news.
- Watch videos / Listen to music.
- And of course play Tetris
So does the iPad do the following? Of course it does. And it does so much more than that. Some might argue that a laptop does that also, but a laptop is more expensive than the iPad (Well an Apple laptop).
So given the requirements that she wants I do recommend the iPad and I would go as far as say that she would use it even more than if she bought a regular laptop.
What do you think?
Mar/090
Ubuntu: Stuck Sound
If you are like me then there is no doubt that you’ve had the sound stuck while you where playing something, watching a movie or checking out a new software.
Now if the sound has stuck and you keep hearing something through the speakers even though you have killed the application responsible for the sound crash the sound won’t stop. If that’s the case you don’t need to reboot the machine all you need to do is stop the sound.
As a first step you can try to restart the sound daemon using the following command although for me it never worked.
sudo /etc/init.d/alsa-utils restartIf it works then you can stop here, if not then carry on. The following command will show you the processes that are currently holding up the sound device.
sudo lsof | grep pcmHere is what my computer shows.
xine 20374 ckr mem CHR 116,6 13714 /dev/snd/pcmC0D0p xine 20374 ckr 9w CHR 116,6 13714 /dev/snd/pcmC0D0p
Then you will need to kill these processes. the first number of each line from the result shown above is the process id. You can kill each process issuing the following command replace the number 20374 which is my process id to yours.
kill -9 20374
After doing that you should hear or not hear to be more precise the sound. After that all you need to do is to issue the following command to restart the sound daemon.
sudo /etc/init.d/alsa-utils restart
Hope this works for you. If you know a better way please say so in the comments.
Feb/090
Custom Windows
How To: Auto Install of Software After A Reinstall
Anyone who has been using Windows for any length of time knows reinstalling it is unavoidable. Some people call technical help and some do it themselves. If you reinstall on your own, you know it takes a little time but the most annoying part of reinstalling Windows is that you have to reinstall all your software one by one all over again. Software like Firefox, Winamp, VLC and other indispensable programs that don’t ship with Windows.
I am very tempted to give it a try. For all those formats for friends I have to do.
