Looking Younger

Sigh! Being 34 and looking 25-ish isn't really a good thing, especially when people equate youngness with immaturity, resulting in one being not taken seriously. In a world where everyone wants to look younger, there exists the few of us chaps like myself who don't seem to look any older as the years pass. I wonder... is this a blessing or a curse?
Sigh!

Cambridge Audio A1

The internals of my Cambridge Audio A1 amplifier, bought in 1995. It was awarded 5 stars by What Hi-Fi? magazine. The sound is still great after so many years of operation.
The amp paired with a Technics SL-PG570A CD player which is also a 1995 model.

Fedora 11 Audio Bug

The audio in my Fedora 11 is cracking and the volume controls are not working smoothly. I Googled the problem, and found that there's a bug with PulseAudio. I know for a fact that my laptop worked with ALSA in the past, so I decided to remove PulseAudio.

yum remove pulseaudio

After rebooting, the sound is smooth and clear, and the volume controls work like a charm. ALSA definitely works better than PulseAudio.

Fedora 11 and Citrix

I use a web Citrix thin client to access and run applications on a remote computer, which I can view with the Citrix Presentation Server Client. This is my guide on setting up Citrix Presentation Server Client on Fedora 11. I choose the Windows version of the client because I find it easier to setup using Wine.

1. Install Wine (version 1.1.23).
2. Install the Windows version of Citrix Presentation Server Client using Wine.
3. Go to the Citrix thin client and select the desired application server.
4. Fedora will ask whether to launch or save the ica file. Save the file on the desktop.
5. From the desktop, right click the ica file and select "Open with Wine Windows Program Loader".

The above works well for my particular thin client.

Fedora 11 Applications Installation Guide

I've just installed Fedora 11 using the Live CD. Here's my quick guide for installing the applications that I think are the most useful. I know there are countless other guides out there, but this one is meant to be quick and simple for most users. So here it goes...

To be able to install the applications, open a Terminal, then login as root by entering the 'su' command, followed by the root password.

1. Livna repository.

rpm -ivh http://rpm.livna.org/livna-release.rpm

2. RPM Fusion repository.

rpm -ivh http://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/rpmfusion-free-release-stable.noarch.rpm

rpm -ivh http://download1.rpmfusion.org/nonfree/fedora/rpmfusion-nonfree-release-stable.noarch.rpm

3. Adobe Flash plugin for Firefox.

rpm -ivh http://linuxdownload.adobe.com/adobe-release/adobe-release-386-1.0-1.noarch.rpm

rpm --import /etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-adobe-linux

yum install flash-plugin libflashsupport

Note: If you do not install libflashsupport you will have no sound when playing Flash in your browser.

4. DVD Codecs.

For playback:
yum install libdvdcss

Optional:
yum install libdvdread libdvdnav lsdvd

5. GnuCash, a great financial-accounting software.

yum install gnucash.

6. VLC media player.

yum install vlc.

7. K3B CD and DVD authoring application.

yum install k3b.

Wasp Nest

Found a wasp nest under the roof today.

Burn! Burn! Burn! The terminator in action.

Oh no! The roof is on fire!

Ridsect didn't quite work on those damned hard-to-die wasps.

The aftermath.

Burned roof. Those surviving wasps seem to be fire-proof, water-proof and chemical-proof.

The terminator with his telescopic flame thrower, sting proof head gear and space suit. Perfect for the war against the evil and dangerous intergalactic bugs.

Streamyx Sucks Big Time

Yup! Every Malaysian who subscribes to Streamyx already knows that it sucks and scams people with 1.0Mbps download speeds. In reality, everyone get's less than 1.0Mbps and still have to pay the RM88 monthly subsription price. WTF!

My Streamyx speed today.