Author: thad

Ze Germans

2012-11-27, 9:56 pm
Categories: Games, Status Updates, Stream of Consciousness, Tech

Not sure if I'll stick with OpenSUSE for the long haul or not.

I quite like YAST but it doesn't have the level of package support that any given apt-based distro does.

And it's slow. I heard OpenSUSE was faster than other KDE-based desktops, but that hasn't been my experience, even switching from HDD to SSD. Firefox routinely pegs the CPU. So does Xorg (which I think is down to my keeping LibreOffice open most of the time). RSSOwl -- which does not have an OpenSUSE package and was a straight-up bitch to set up -- is frequently slow and unresponsive (good ol' Java).

So why RSSOwl, anyway? Well, I like to keep my RSS feeds synced across my desktop, my laptop, my phone -- wherever. At the moment I'm using Google Reader for that.

I used to use Akregator, but it doesn't sync with Google Reader.

I tried Liferea, but...well, it's coded by a guy like me. A power-user who wanted specific network functionality and isn't very good at UI design. It's missing such basic functionality as being able to rename a feed (a necessity when it chokes on as simple a thing as an apostrophe -- my feed list contains "Kurt Busiek's Formspring answers" followed by "Neil Gaiman's Journal"), and its syncing with Google Reader is spotty as well.

Also its name resembles "diarrhea".

So I tried RSSOwl.

Under Ubuntu, it was simple enough to set up RSSOwl -- had to add an external repo, but that was it.

There's no repo for OpenSUSE. There's a binary download, but here's the rub: it doesn't work out of the box. It requires xulrunner 1.x -- 2.x does not work. And OpenSUSE 12.2 doesn't have a package for xulrunner 1.x.

It took me ages to find, but I found a good RPM package of xulrunner 1.9. It's for Scientific Linux, but it installed fine under OpenSUSE, and worked once I symlinked libhunspell-1.3.so.0 to libhunspell-1.2.so.0 . It throws the occasional warning when I run updates, but I've been able to navigate those just fine.

And that's another thing about OpenSUSE: YAST's options, when it runs across a version conflict on a dependency, are pretty opaque and incomprehensible (and it frequently lists the same option multiple times), but at least it gives you options. Ubuntu's package management, in my experience, just throws an error and quits when it runs across that kind of conflict. So score one for OpenSUSE there. Sort of.

Still and all, for all I like about its configuration center/package management system, I'm having a hard time seeing OpenSUSE as Worth It. Maybe when I've got some time to do yet another damn reinstall, I'll give Mint a shot, or something.

Playing: Got in some good Arkham City and Mass Effect 2 time today -- after my job interview. Working my way down that list...

Doctor Who: The Green Death

2012-11-26, 8:39 pm
Categories: TV

Originally posted brontoforum.us, 2008-12-03.

The Green Death is pretty good. By-the-numbers story, with too much wandering around in caves and futuristic businesses, but the Third Doctor and the Brigadier are in top form, and the villains are pretty awesome too.

The environmentalist bent to the story is obvious but still takes a backseat to rubber monsters and an evil computer. It does do a decently fair job of setting out the green-versus-labor dilemma and pit the down-to-Earth miners against eccentric hippie scientists, with the Brigadier somewhere in the middle, ever the pragmatist. It also strikes a chord in that the evil polluting corporation is so powerful that it has the full support of the PM, and in one scene the villain threatens to have the Doctor (I think it was the Doctor) arrested under the Emergency Powers Act.

There are some problems with the transfer in places -- I streamed it, so I'm going to chalk all the artifacting up to that, but there are bits where there's flickering light at the bottom of the picture and a couple of places where it looks like the master tape was crinkled. Nothing deal-breaking.

Anyway, it's become one of my two favorite Pertwee serials (the other is Inferno); must-see (streaming on Netflix!) and worth buying.

RDNZL

2012-11-25, 9:16 pm
Categories: Music, TV

Uploader StAlfonzosPancakes1 describes it as:

"Stockholm In Bondage"
Opopoppa Special
Stockholm, Sweden 08 21, 1973

and says that this is from the warmup.

GTK

2012-11-24, 10:37 pm
Categories: Music, Status Updates, TV

That's GTK the Australian music show, not GTK the GIMP Toolkit.

June, '73. Yet another fine upload by tomtiddler1.

Many of the commenters observe, and I'm inclined to agree, that Frank seems to loosen up once he realizes the interviewer actually knows his music.

His comment on censorship in Australia is on the money -- that's still a real problem down there. Last I heard they had banned porn involving women with A-cup breasts, and still didn't allow an adults-only rating for video games.

Get a Real-Estate License

2012-11-23, 11:56 pm
Categories: Music, Politics

Okay, I am running out of today, so phoning this in a bit with another interview posted on afka.net -- though the last one was from early in Frank's career and this one is nearer the end:

Frank Zappa Has a Tip for Serious Musicians: Get a Real-Estate License, by Laurence Vittes, Los Angeles Reader, October 13, 1989.

You're clearly concerned with the state of society today. Is it as bad as the sixties?

Much worse. The major challenge for every American today is to imagine a U.S.A. where the government worked, where you got bang for your buck, where everything they said was fabulous actually was. Probably more difficult than sticking a man on Mars.

Productivity

2012-11-23, 11:50 pm
Categories: Announcements, TV, Work

Welp, made some decsions on the house, did some freelance work for actual money (well, sort of -- maybe enough for a tank of gas), hit the elliptical and got one episode less behind on The Walking Dead. Not bad for a Friday.

Turkeyfuckers

2012-11-22, 11:37 am
Categories: Politics, Stream of Consciousness

Christmas Creep has bothered me since I was old enough to really notice it. Christmas starts earlier and earlier every year, and there's ever more pressure to consume! To buy shit, to go places, to be with family even if all it's going to do is stress you all the fuck out and make for a less-than-appealing family memory. Too much stress, plus too much traffic making for miserable driving, breathing, and shopping.

For a number of years I'd spend the week before Christmas out of town, out of the city, off at my mom and stepdad's quiet little home in Chino Valley. Unplug for a few days, though I don't think that expression was vogue yet.

Haven't done that these past few years but man it's tempting.

It should come as no surprise that I am not a huge fan of this "Let's have Black Friday -- on Thursday!" trend.

I don't shop on Black Friday. I sure as hell don't intend to shop on Black Not-Friday. I hold any company that tries to lure people away from Thanksgiving for holiday savings! in the same contempt they so clearly hold me. And their employees. And their customers.

I heard on the radio that last year showed a sizable dip in early-December shopping, theorized as "shopping fatigue". I hope that keeps happening. I hope it keeps happening until they learn. But unfortunately I don't think they'll ever learn -- any more than the airlines will learn that their business is dipping because they have made flying a fucking miserable experience.

I also heard there are folks saying people should support local businesses on Saturday. If that helps local businesses, hey, that's great -- but I don't really put much stock in "Everybody do X on Such-and-Such-a-Day to send a message!" as a strategy. You know all those "Don't buy gas on Saturday; that'll really show Exxon-Mobil!" forwards your idiot slacktivist friends constantly send you on Facebook? Do you recall any of them ever really showing Exxon-Mobil? No? Well that's because it doesn't hurt Exxon-Mobil's business when everyone just fucking waits until Sunday to buy the same amount of gas.

So while I wholeheartedly endorse supporting local businesses, I really think you should probably be doing it more than one day a year.

Fuck, the whole idea that people should only be encouraged to shop on a single specific day is the problem here.

So support your local business. Saturday, Sunday, whenever the fuck you feel like it. Friday, if you must, though I don't intend to leave the house that day myself.

But if you actually go out and support those turkeyfuckers at Wal-Mart and Target in making their employees knock off Thanksgiving dinner early to come in and sell you shit? Well, look, I know the economy's rough and beggars can't be choosers. But I don't think you need that new TV that damn badly.

On a more cheerful note: there's a whole lot in this life I'm thankful for (for example: not being a retail employee on Thanksgiving), and I hope there's a lot you're thankful for too. I hope you keep that in mind today and enjoy your turkey and gravy and cranberry sauce and what-have-you.

But that's just one more thing that shouldn't be confined to one day a year. Stay upbeat. Keep things in perspective. Remember the good things each and every day.

Now, cooking an entire turkey dinner, on the other hand? That's probably okay to confine to one day a year. That is a whole lot of work.

Incredible Boss Mother

2012-11-21, 10:42 pm
Categories: Music

afka.net has a pretty solid selection of Zappa articles. Here's an early one: Frank Zappa the Incredible Boss Mother, by Don Paulsen, Hit Parader, June 1967.

"Top 40 radio is unethical, unmusical and it stinks. Classical music stations aren't much better. They all have very rigid, limited programming.

"The Mothers were created to fill most of the gap that exists between so-called serious music and the mass public. Really good music with advanced tendencies has been kept from the public at large. This includes classical and popular music. A filtering system of little old ladies selects the music played by symphony orchestras and on radio stations.

"Once some people get to the position where they own a nightclub or control the goings-on in a concert hall, they become critics and tastemakers.

"Usually they hate music. They love business and just want to make money. Whenever I have to deal with this kind of people, I always tell them that I hate music and I'm only doing this for the money. They slap me on the back and we get along fine. I tell them I wish I could drive a cab instead, but I can't get a license.

"The public knows nothing of what's really going on in the outer limits of music. There 'are kids writing music who think they've just made up the most fantastic things. They don't know that the best they can write today was already written and performed in 1912.

"A piece like Ameriques by Edgar Varèse, written in 1912, would scare the average teenager to death. Really scare him. Varèse lived and died in New York. The average American doesn't even know he existed, yet what he wrote has virtually changed the shape of all the music of the other composers who have heard it."

In later years, Zappa would come to believe that the younger generation of execs, the ones who thought they knew music, were even more dangerous and closed-minded than their square, mercenary elders.

But never mind that. I could pontificate on how things are different today (Top 40 radio ain't what it was) and how they're the same (American Idol ain't exactly much of an improvement) -- but the best thing I can do is demonstrate the kind of instant access to non-Top 40 music that we have in this here futuristic utopia of ours.

Here's Ameriques, by Edgard Varèse, performed by the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra in 1997.