Tuesday, August 21, 2007

A bad day

Today was a day quite special, everything went bad. Let me tell you what happened.

* I arrive at the university, log on to my computer and surprise: the system goes quite slow and my network wire is not working. Half an hour to solve the issues: use the wire of my room mate and reboot my computer (after almost two months up).

* I want to correct an error in the 3D acceleration of my graphic card. I follow the tutorial, all is good except the last step: my computer doesn't have graphic interface. I manage to start in a very rudimentary way, and try to find out what is going on. I get an email: I arrange an appointment at 3.

* Go to lunch, thinking what could be causing the trouble. Before I started touching anything, I have Xgl running together with Beryl. Now, I have a rudimentary gnome. It is awful! Read, google, repeat the tutorial.

* It is time for the appointment, I go to the office we should meet. It is 3:30 and nobody shows up. I go back to my office and read carefully the email: the appointment is for tomorrow. I get mad. Continue searching to solve the problem with my computer.

* Meanwhile, I try to reach by phone to my parents. The phone rings and rings, and nobody picks the call. I insist in finding the solution to the problem with the driver of my graphic card.

* I give up, decide it is time to work (it's 4:30pm). I read the paper, and meanwhile I check again the thing with the driver, and I got what was causing the problem: a conflict of version between driver and the kernel driver. I solve the problem: I leave the computer just as it was in the morning. The supposed error was just a bad understanding from myself.

* Time to work! But it is now 6pm, I'm exhausted, hungry and a music festival in front of the university, it is making noise, it doesn't make sense to stay here. When coming back home, I observe, the day is ok, 20 degrees, some rain in the vicinity which makes the air a bit humid and great to do some mountain biking. Decision made! Now, I go to do mountain bike.

* I enter the track in Best, it started to became wetter and wetter: after 5 minutes, I find out that all the rain fell here. I became muddy and wet, but badly muddy and wet. I go to the second track: it is just as wet as necessary to make it perfect. I kind of regret to have chosen this track first.

That was my day. And apart from all the above, it was Monday... a forgettable day.

Breaking news (21-08): I found out what has been going on with the cut of my internet cable: I was detected of downloading copyrighted material using e-donkey. They unplugged my cable to be sure of that. I didn't complain on that (because I exchange the wire of my roommate), but the guy from the computer facilities just came to let me know this. I got a warning: I cannot do it anymore, it is prohibited by the Dutch law. To be honest I didn't suspect on that as the reason, but anyway, let's follow the rule, apologize for not doing things right and let everybody (including me) be happy. And most interestingly, I haven't turned up e-donkey because of all problems I faced yesterday. Now, it is funny how this guy said to me: "those things you can do it at home, this is none of our business (...) The law does allow the exchange of music files but is doesn't allow videos files.". But if it is prohibited all across The Netherlands that also includes home, and why it is applicable for videos and not for movies. I'll investigate on this and try to avoid legal sanctions.

11 comments:

Gonzalo said...

Un detalle: xgl ya no es necesario, eso te evita otro server (sobre el server de X.org) X

José said...

¡¿ah si?!, ¿CÓMO?

Anonymous said...

Qué día!!!!!!! y bue... todos tenemos un mal día, lo bueno es llegar a casa, buscar un buen programa en la TV y acostarnos a tratar que termine el día cuanto antes no? Besos y paciencia para la próxima. Estye comentario lo puse en el post equivocado, pero tenía que ir aca... jaja será el comienzo de un mal día para mi???...GABY

Gonzalo said...

compiz y beryl pueden funcionar con aiglx que es una extensión que viene incluida con las últimas versiones de X.org ((trad: solo una extensión, como xv para la aceleración de video. Nada de poner otro server como xgl)). Tons, sería cuestión de actualizar tus X
apt-get dist-upgrade
Despues cambiar el xorg.conf para que tenga esto:(probablemente ya lo tengas)

# Dedicated "Extensions" section (may not be present already)
Section "Extensions"
Option "Composite" "enable"
EndSection

# Section "Device" of you graphic card
Section "Device"
# Already contains
# ...
# Identifier "..."
# Driver "..."
# ...
# Add this option :
Option "XAANoOffscreenPixmaps" "true"
EndSection

Y, si tenés una nvidia, además tenes que poner esto: Section "Device"
Option "AllowGLXWithComposite" "true"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
Option "AddARGBGLXVisuals" "True"
EndSection

Section "Module"
#Load "dri"
#Load "GLcore"
EndSection

Tomado del wiki de debian: http://wiki.debian.org/Compiz

Gonzalo said...

che, aquí entre nos: ¿le encontraste a eso alguna utilidad que no sea espejitos de colores para impresionar a los amigos?

José said...

Gracias pescau, le voy a pegar un vistazo. Y la única utilidad es mostrar que con linux se pueden hacer esas piruetas sin pagar ninguna licencia. Pero hasta yo mismo me acostumbré a los efectitos visuales, y algunas características que te dan facilidad en el uso de la intefaz :)

Gaby: conmigo no funciona eso, tengo que descargarme. La MTB es una buena opción... aunque en este caso medio que me cargué un poquito más que descargarme... y gracias por los buenos deseos: después de un mal día se vino uno que empezó por lo menos bien ;)

Gonzalo said...

Había un 3º en discordia: metisse. Ese está mas concentrado en la utilidad que la vistosidad. Al menos eso me pareció de ver los efectos, por ejemplo doblar una punta de la ventana como si fuera una hoja para ver lo que hay abajo (cuando la soltás vuelve a su forma original), o inclinar las ventanas para que entren mas... no se parece mas un 'escritorio' de los auténticos
Y un 4º pero no lo pude probar, el javadesktop o algo así de Sun

Gonzalo said...

me parece que al menos adrian y el mono ya no quieren vivir en netherlands :P

Adrian said...

Y si, no quiero vivir en un pais en donde no se pueda descargar! Ojo! yo descargo para escuchar (a ver si me lo compro) y luego lo borro...
La verdad, todo mal con tu dia. Hace poco tuve un dia parecido, pero no era el driver de la placa de video, sino la fuente de la PC!

José said...

Hablando de todo un poco, me podrían pasar algunos e-donkey links para bajar música argentina de moda y actual.

Obviamente hago igual que Adrián, la escucho y si me gusta me compro los CDs luego...

Gonzalo said...

hmm... yo no escucho música de moda, precisamente porque está de moda machacan todo el día en la radio y en la tele con la canción de moda... tons como que cansa un poco...
Y, si bien estoy en el gremio de descargadores compulsivos (dentro de la compulsión que permiten mis enlaces con la red), últimamente me dedico a la música rara y desconocida:
http://www.jamendo.com/es
esa se baja vía mula o torrents (o, se puede usar de radio, vos que tenés una buena conexión)
Otra opción es http://www.last.fm/ a medida que se arma tu perfil de música te busca gente con gustos parecidos y mirando que escuchan ellos podés encontrar cosas interesantes