Pigsflew.com

So I updated about three weeks ago to the latest Ubuntu version, Hardy Heron. For the first time ever, on my largely unsupported laptop, everything works completely, without even the most minor reservations.

Previous problems were:

• BCM43xx Wireless (Didn’t work until Edgy, had to use NDiswrapper until Gutsy)
• ATI 300M Graphics (unable to get reliable hardware acceleration until Hardy)
• ACPI Support (Unable to sleep or hibernate until Hardy)

The most important improvement was that the ATI driver now has working ACPI support, meaning that I can put my computer to sleep and throw it in my bag, carry it around, and open up to continue working on what I’m doing. Nice!

It is beginning to ruin my life however. Before the Sleep function worked, I had to keep my browsing and coding in neat little sessions: Remember to save, quit, put a note on the desktop to remind me of what I was doing, then shut down.

Why do all of that when I can just put it to sleep?! Two reasons:

• I open it up and find three browsers open with twelve tabs each, and have *no idea* what’s important
• Without a sticky note to tell me what I was working on, I just have a bunch of text editors open with random code.

The idea here is actually one seen in code: Garbage collection. Shutting down was like taking a note of all the things I was working on (shifting the active memory over), then neatly closing out everything (freeing the old space), then eventually turning it back on and lazily reopening the things I need. Without it, I have all of this unfreed memory cluttering my desktop and slowing down my context switches!

Ah well. I guess now is as good a time as any to learn some organization.

Dear Senator,

I read in the paper the other day, yet another voter remarking their impression that “A vote for Hillary is just another vote for Bill, and he’s had his chance.” This common logic must be absolutely infuriating for you. Over the years you have shown yourself an incredibly intelligent, accomplished, and affluent woman in your own right, and just a quick glance at your Wikipedia entry (a dubious source perhaps, but the citations on that article are too many to re-list here), shows a list of feats so incredible that I am ashamed for those that would only recognize the feats of your husband.

According to the article, you had repeatedly denied Bill your hand in marriage before eventually consenting. When you did eventually marry, it states that you “still harbored doubts about marriage, concerned that [your] separate identity would be lost and that [your] accomplishments would be viewed in the light of someone else’s.” (Wikipedia.org)

While I do not claim to have done the due dilligence of checking the article’s sources, nor have I read your book, I now wish that I had, and will go purchase a copy of “Living History” immediately. If, however, the words in this article are true, then it must absolutely sting to know that your fears have come to light for many Americans, and only because you selflessly helped to campaign for your husband when you were still an active and well respected lawyer.

Madame Senator, you have more than earned the respect of myself, and of the nation, and I wish you only the best luck as you continue your campaign for the Presidency.

Thank you,

Adrian Sud

I wrote a script tonight to quickly and intelligently mount ISO images, so that I can treat them as cd’s without having burned them to physical discs.

Something like that already exists, in the form of Nautilus scripts. Some creative Googling found the ones from here, which is actually fairly basic. So I started with that and made it way better. Here’s how mine works:

- It uses a single mount point, /media/isoimage.
- If you run the script and something is already mounted there, it will ask if you want to unmount.
- If the directory already exists, it’ll ask you if you’d like to delete it–which it will fail to do if there are items in it.
- If there’s nothing mounted, it’ll attempt to mount whatever is passed in to it.
- If it succeeds, it offers the option to open it.

TODO: Make sure what was passed in is an iso file
TODO: Support other types of disk images

You can get my script here.

To set it up (the preferred way):

Open a terminal, navigate to the directory you downloaded my script to, and type the following:

adrian@Kashra ~$ chmod +x ./isomount && sudo mv ./isomount /usr/bin/isomount

Enter your password, then it should be set up.

Find an ‘iso’ you want to mount, and right click it, go to “Select program”, and in the text box, type in “isomount”. Then the next time you want to mount/unmount an iso image, just right click and select my script!

To set it up as a Nautilus Script:
Disadvantages: Does not show up for all users, and shows up on all files (not just isos).

Open the terminal, navigate to the directory you downloaded the script too, and enter the following:

adrian@Kashra: ~$ chmod +x ./isomount && mv ./isomount ~/.gnome2/nautilus-scripts/isomount

And you’re done. Note that you will still need administrative privileges to mount the iso itself.

Find an ‘iso’ you want to mount, right click it, select nautilus-scripts, and click on isomount!