bobafred

I have a need to edit/update an MS Word .doc file. OpenOffice works mostly for this task, but I’ve found that when I save as .doc, it blows up the file size by about 100kbs. Also, some things just don’t seem to work right. For me, table dimensions and layout seem to not be saved correctly. I have a Windows XP partition with Office, but it’s a hassle to reboot whenever I want to do something Windows based.

Enter VirtualBox. I’ve been meaning to see if I could setup my already installed winxp partition in VirtualBox without too much work, so today I did some Googleing and found these resources:

Boot an existing XP (Physical HD) install with VirtualBox.
VirtualBox (virtualbox): How to boot from an existing Win XP partition under Ubuntu.

Follow them closely, especially the first one, and everything should work. Of course, if this destroys your machine it’s your fault and not mine.

A few things I found:

1. Don’t install what’s in the apt-get repos. You need the non-ose version. Get the .deb or whatever binary for your os from the VirtualBox Downloads Page.
2. Make sure to add yourself to the disk and vboxusers user groups. I missed the disk group at first and received errors.

Good luck.

Tags: 8.04, hardyheron, Linux, ubuntu, virtualbox, windows, xp

First, I upgraded to the latest version of Ubuntu, 8.04 - Hardy Heron, from 7.04 - Feisty Fawn 7.10 - Gutsy Gibbon. Everything went smoothly and it actually fixed a bunch of broken shit on my machine. Gotta love when that happens. The only real complaint so far is that it ships with Firefox 3.0b5, which isn’t really a problem, but a lot of themes and extensions are not yet compatible with the latest version. I could probably figure out a solution to this, but that sounds like extra work.

Second, I upgraded to WordPress 2.5.1. I like the new admin screens, although it’ll probably take a little while to remember where everything is. Again, smooth upgrade with no problems. For the most part, I like the layout of the new Write Post page, but the Categories section falls below the fold on my crap monitor. It was better when that was in a small box to the right of the post area. I think older versions of WP admin allowed you to set the height of the post box, that might help. Also, Fluency Admin looks nice — more greys, less blues. Maybe I’ll check that out at some point.

Finally, I upgraded the yard with less weeds and junk. Thanks, Troy-Bilt.

Tags: feisty fawn, firefox, fluency admin, hardy heron, troy-bilt, ubuntu, upgrade, wordpress

I’ve used Winamp for many years. I think Cyanbane first introduced me to it way back in college days, probably around ‘98. It’s better than iTunes. There I said it.

The default skin for the new version is pretty nice looking (and gigantic). Usually I use a compact style theme and let the player sit top-right on my desktop with a little transparency, but I figured I’d give the new look a go. I like it so far. This version also adds album art support and other things I probably won’t use much. Basically, they’ve just continued the solid music listening experience. That’s good.

Really, the best part about Winamp has always been the global hotkeys. Being able to pause the music without the app having focus is great — especially at work. I seem to remember this used to be a 3rd party plugin, but has been part of the default install for awhile now.

Now, if only there was a Linux port…

I went ahead and installed the Gutsy Gibbon Beta tonight. So far, so good. Upgrade info can be found here and release info here.

Initial thoughts:

• The Compiz Fusion stuff is pretty cool. To minimize system resource drain, I’m not using all the fanciness that it has to offer. The new alt + tab interface is nice, though.
• Gnome gets updated to 2.20. Whatever version of Gnome I was running before had this annoying problem where the items in the toolbar (panel) at the bottom would resize based on the title of the application. So, if you were looking at a webpage that had a crazy long title, the Firefox button would take up a large portion of the bar. That is fixed in 2.20.
• NTFS writing is available with the help of the NTFS-3G project. This is pretty huge if you have a bunch of old Windows partitions lying around. I already had this setup on Feisty, but still, nice addition.

The upgrade was cake. Not only do I have a fresh OS, but a lot of other apps were updated too. Nice.

Hopefully, things will continue to go well and I’ll coast into the final release, which is due in October.

We’ve gone wireless in the new house, which meant a wireless card for my desktop. I ended up with a TRENDnet TEW-443PI from Newegg after reading many positive reviews. The important thing was that some stated it worked well with Linux.

Some reviewers also recommended dumping NetworkManager in favor of wicd to manage the wireless connection. I did and it rocks.

According to the website:

The official releases are for Ubuntu, but it has been known to work in Debian. It may also work in other distros. wicd will work on any version of Ubuntu Dapper 6.06 and above.

So, if you’re having problems getting your Ubuntu to connect wirelessly, give this a look. Of course, I only used NetworkManager long enough to download wicd, so I never really had any problems with it.

Ok, the real reason I wanted to post this was because of the title.

There are some minor things that bother me with the default Firefox install on Ubuntu. An example of this is when you single-click in the address bar. Instead of selecting the whole URL, the cursor goes to the end of the line. I hate this. Had to be fixed.

Google led me to this post at Scatterism that provided the fix for this and a few other things. Be sure to check out comment #4 for the fix to using the Backspace button as Back in browsing history.