James' Blog

OK, so you are a savvy user who knows their stuff and have become sick of Windows so have switched to Ubuntu. The problem is that you need to keep Windows because you like to play the odd game or two, and it is not convenient to have two separate computers. You decide to employ a dual boot setup so you can choose what to boot when you switch the computer on.

This is all quite easy to do even if you don't know about Linux, but once you've become accustomed to Ubuntu you might decide it would be better if you could share your Windows 'My Documents' folder with your Ubuntu 'Documents' folder, etc. Again, easy to do, but if you don't know your way around the Gnome environment you might not know what you're looking for. Even the easiest task can seem impossible if you don't know what you're doing!

To do this, you will need to make sure your Windows partition is mounted in your Linux environment. In later versions of Ubuntu, the default place where this is mounted is '/windows'.

To edit your system's bookmarks, you need to open a File Browser window (click Places > Home Folder) then click Bookmarks > Edit Bookmarks. You will be presented with this screen:



Customise your bookmarks until you are happy with them. Enter the filepath of your Windows directories into the Location field (if you are having trouble, find the folder you want in the File Browser then copy the filepath from the Location field shown at the top). You can delete all of the old ones if you like. Bear in mind that if you have files saved in your Documents/Pictures/Videos etc subdirectories of your home folder, they will not be deleted, but you will not be able to access them easily from the Places menu anymore.

Now you have customised your bookmarks in the File Browser, they will be integrated into your system in the same way that My Documents/My Pictures/My Videos etc are integrated into the Windows shell. This can come in very handy as you can save your documents in one operating system and be one click away from them in the other. Your old windows documents will also be much easier to access.

Copied from my post at Ubuntuforums.org.

I installed Ubuntu 9.10 64 bit edition this weekend, and am very impressed . From dabbling around in 64-bit Linux (Gutsy and Mandriva 2007.1) a couple of years back I vaguely remembered having problems getting Flash player to work. However, I didn't have too much trouble at all getting it to work this time, so I will share my experiences by writing a step-by-step guide on how i did it:

1. Download Opera 10.01 from the Opera website by selecting the .deb package for 9.10 Karmic Koala.

2. Before installing this you may need to go onto System > Administration > Software Sources and tick all of the boxes on the first tab.



3. Execute the installation package. You may need to download some dependencies but this will be done for you by Synaptic.

4. Once this is done, go to System > Administration > Synaptic Package Manager and install 'flashplugin-installer'. This is a non-free package so for it to be available you may have to enable extra software sources. If you cannot see it, double check you have done step 2.



5. Start up Opera and go to Tools > Preferences. Click the advanced tab. go to Content and click the 'Plug-in Options' button. You will be presented with this screen:



6. Untick the /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins. Make sure the /usr/lib/flashplugin-installer path is ticked. Also if you are running any other plugins make sure the /usr/lib/opera/plugins path is ticked too.

Now Opera is all set to use Flash. If you are having trouble, give it a go and let me know if it works for you!

Friday was a well earned break from work, riding and the somewhat dysfunctional household in which I live. It was great to to see the other half of my family whom I haven't seen for five months. I could go into lots of detail but it will probably bore you, and anyway, it's none of your beeswax.

There was a rate fit girl in Game who unfortunately was dressed like a twelve year old and was far too enthusiastic than what I deem acceptable for someone working in retail. Perhaps I was just jealous.

I played Blazing Angels 2 which was pretty awesome detail-wise. The gameplay was very addictive, and while the physics weren't completely realistic, this didn't hinder the playability one bit. I also tried out HAWX but the physics were something akin to Elite (pictured right).

By this point my phone's battery was down to one bar, and I had no charger with me so I was getting worried about the possibility of being stranded on the journey home the next day. Not much I could do though, so I just tried to sleep off the apprehension.

On the motorway, like many situations in life, there's a lot of stereotyping to be done. You have the sales rep in an estate, who travels pretty quick in lane 3 but won't move over to let you past in fear of knocking his coffee onto his laptop. There's the pair of lorry drivers which overtake each other every 5 miles (which you will notice if you're patient enough to follow/unlucky enough to get stuck behind them that long). Perhaps the most annoying is the person who sits in the middle lane regardless of whether they're overtaking or not. And of course the family who are out for the day in the most knackered car on the road, overloaded with kids screaming/jumping/hand gesturing as you go by. Let's not forget the white Volvo whom everyone slows down for.

I'm not sure exactly how bikes fit into the jigsaw. I've never driven a car on the motorway (not sure I want to), making this a side of driving 'culture' something I've never seen from a third person perspective. However, I can imagine the average biker being portrayed as the jammy sod who doesn't get held up by traffic jams (wearing a hi-vis giving you a noticeable advantage in this situation ), but apart from that I can't imagine anyone not interested in bikes actually noticing them at all.

Of course, us biking folk have our own stereotypes too. These do extend to the motorway, but not to the same extent as general traffic. Absolutely no idea where I would fit in this puzzle either.

The way I specifically ride is always in the top lane unless there's no one to overtake, or someone really wants to get past me that badly. When it comes to filtering, I'm not that confident so this is probably the only time on the road when I see other bikes (or anyone at all, for that matter ) passing me. There was a period of about a week of riding to college when I thought I could fit into any gap and was very confident at filtering. However, this ended when I clipped some bint's 'brand new' Corsa with my wing mirror. However that's another anecdote.

As Opera users, we have found an alternative to a mainstream browser. This could be for a number of reasons. The most likely one, I think, being that another browser didn't do things we wanted it to, or, even worse, did things we didn't want them to. I definitely ditched Internet Explorer for the latter reason, but more on this another time. This situation is the same in all kinds of software. Users choose what software they want based on what they want to achieve with it, and change their choices due to concerns, issues or problems which arise from using it. I'm going to put forward my views on the software I chose and why I use it.

Every week, I'm going to try and review a piece of software that I use regularly. Firstly I'll explain why I need this kind of software and what features I would like it to have. I'll also give a quick background on other programs that perform the same job and why I chose the program over the others. Then I'll give a basic tutorial on using it and setting it up, and finally say what I think it could do better.


Miranda IM is a multi-protocol instant messaging client. It can connect to a large number of protocols, most of which I've never even heard of, and can perform most features in each protocol as well as basic messaging and buddy lists. The protocols I use are MSN, AIM and ICQ, but MSN is the protocol that most of my friends use. My main goal is to have a program which contains all of the features of Windows Live Messenger, but none of the tremendous bloat, especially on the latest build which took up something stupid like 80mb of memory with no chat windows open. I have plenty of RAM, but that's ridiculous. I also don't understand why Microsoft haven't introduced tabs into Live Messenger yet. With more than two or three windows open, it becomes almost impossible to keep track of your conversations. There are other alternatives out there, I tried Trillian which seems too heavy on resources and lacking in certain features that I would like. I also tried Pidgin which has a well thought out user interface but again it lacks features like personal messages.

If you're a KDE user, Kopete is an instant messenger which includes pretty much every MSN feature including webcam and microphone support, and it integrates automatically with AmaroK and Kaffeine to alter your personal message to include your now playing. Very handy.

For MSN, the base package of Miranda includes support for sending and recieving messages in plain text, display pictures (sort of), and your contact list, display name and personal message which you can create or they can be downloaded from the MSN server. This doesn't sound like a lot, and it isn't. To start with, this is a very sparse instant messenger. However, the beauty of Miranda is that you can expand it by adding plugins which can be downloaded from the site. It's pretty difficult for the average user to do this, so I'll list the plugins I started off with:

• tabSRMM Unicode 2.0
• CList Nicer+
• Avatar Service
• Tooltip Info
• Popup Plus 2.1.0.5
• SmileyAdd Unicode
• History++ (2in1)

These should all come straight up if you type them in the search box at http://addons.miranda-im.org/. I will post a link to a zip file with my build of Miranda ready to go soon, I just want to get it right first! If you downloaded the Unicode version of Miranda (2000/XP/Vista), make sure you download the Unicode versions of the plugins. The opposite applies if you downloaded the ANSI build (9x/ME). This should get it going with pretty good functionality, although you will have to activate the plugins and restart the program first. You can then skin the contact list and the tabSRMM message window, which makes the program a lot more pleasant on the eye.

This is how I have my Miranda set up at the moment, and I must say I'm impressed. The best thing about Miranda is its low use of resources. Right now it's using 2mb of my physical memory, an unnoticeable amount on my system which has 2gb of RAM. This could well be a godsend for people who are running older PCs. One thing I hate is bloated programs, and it seems that some software vendors want to slow down our PCs as quickly as hardware manufacturers are making them faster, which is unacceptable.

I would like webcam and microphone support, better support for custom emoticons and smileys, and an easier way to configure the user interface, maybe a plugin which manages the contact list and the message window in one, but I'm happy to live without it as this is one seriously lightweight program, allowing me to not worry about it while I have other programs running.

This is in no way a program which someone without a fair bit of competence in computing could set up and use how they wanted it. If you just want to install and go, I would not recommend this software. However, if you're sick of using MSN but need to keep using the protocol because all your friends use it like in my case, and have a bit of time to spend setting it up and customizing it, the results will be rewarding.

**** out of 5