Been trying different distros lately (again), trying to find something that is easy to use both for beginners and those switching from Windo$e. One more requirement has been that it run on older hardware.
The machine I am on now (800mhz 384 mb ram) is older but is running much faster than the one I use daily (1000mhz 768 mb ram) running pclos. Both running KDE which I admit is a hog. However here on Vector Linux, with half the memory this machine flys whereas on the other one there is a noticable lag when doing things like there is a whole lot of stuff going on in the background.
Now to install it on a 250/300 mhz with 160 or less ram and see how it does… 😉
Treehugger: Strawbale Housing in Europe
More strawbale goodness from Treehugger!
Treehugger: Bulletproof Strawbale Police Stations for California
The concept of bulletproof strawbale police stations never occured to me for some reason. Never…
Treehugger: Barnes & Noble Want to Buy Your Books
Still thinking on this one. I suspect that this is a way to cut the small used book shops out of the loop. But I could be wrong and B$N could be doing this out of the goodness of their bank accounts…
Techdirt: How Dare You Actually Want Secure And Valid Elections?!?
Good ole Diebold. Head stuck in the sand and still stealing elections for the village idiot and crew. These folks need to be taken out to the village square and put in the stocks for a month or so…
Charter Street : Going Bedouin
Interesting concept. And with todays tech more than possible. I have been amazed at the stupid ostentatious (sp?) buildings that some major businesses have put up. Remember the Sears Tower? Built right before Sears nearly went bankrupt.
Oklahoma man asks Reg to turn off the internet | The Register
He really is far too stupid to be a city manager. I think he should run for president!
Either too much or not enough seems to be the standard. Bit of rain today just got the ground (that I had graded yesterday) damp. Not enough for mud, at least for now.
But back to the reason for this post. Last Friday (I think?) Steve G came over to borrow a laptop cable adaptor and after talking a bit at the yard sale trailer, we walked over to the qhut to get the adaptor. Cat detoured to get the mail. She handed me a letter from the Calhoun County Water Authority which I opened, to discover that we had used over 21,000 gal of water in the last month and as this is 4 to 5 times our usual they felt we might have a leak. Steve and I went out and started looking but didn’t find any obvious wet spots, so went on to the meter, to discover that it was in fact turning at about a gal a minute. I went down and cut off the line to the qhut and it quit turning. The 1/2 inch line runs inside a 3 inch pipe under the concrete floor and we didn’t have water in the floor inside so I figured it must be between the cutoff and the building where it entered the pipe. This left about 20 feet of line to unbrush, there being solid privit, sawbriars and blackberry vines over where the line went. Steve (being the bright person he is) swiftly exited stage north to attack problems of his own, while I went in search of tools of mass destruction.
Got the yellow toyoto (farm truck/tool hauler) from the yard sale trailer and drove back to the qhut (over a block) and proceded to cut at said saw briars, blackberry vines, privit, honey suckle, and assorted small trees of various kinds until I could see the ground. This also required moving an old refrigerator that I use for storage, assorted engine parts, and pieces of lawn mower and rock. But I perservered and upon locating ground started clearing the surface of leaves and assorted vines. Once I could see the actual dirt it did look wetter than elsewhere along the road. Took a shovel and locating the dampest looking spot dug in. First shovel full of dirt out and water started filling the hole. Another 2 and it was spraying out. Cut the valve off at that point and continued digging to expose the pipe. Only about a foot deep so no biggie. The crack was in the flair or curve at the first connection from the valve. 1/2 inch pvc schedule 40 (I think). Crach was only about 3/8 inch long. Stress crack from the look of it. We had a tree fall in the area of the valves during the last major storm so may have started it then.
Anyway the problem is to stop the leak. Went to the barn and looked in the usual places but was unable to locate either any fittings or any undried pvc glue. So cut a piece of heater hose about an inch long and found a screw type hose clamp and split the heater hose, wrapped it around the cracked area and put the hose clamp on and started tightening until it quit dripping. This is with the water still off at the valve but still coming back down line from that left in the pipes. Then another turn on the screw to set it and turned the water back on. No leak!
Now, several days later, the hole in the ground is still there, waiting for me to get the stuff to fix it for real, but the crack still ain’t leaking. Love the primitive repair!
Note to folks with websites that depend on flash—
NOT EVERYONE IS WILLING OR ABLE TO DOWNLOAD A PLUG-IN THAT WILL ALLOW THEM TO SEE YOUR OH SO CUTE FLASH CRAP SITE!
The web was built to operate using “HTML†as the primary language. ALL browsers support “HTMLâ€. Many DO NOT support “flash†which is a proprietary bandwidth hog and IS NOT designed to render entire websites with, no matter what Macromedia may claim.
If you just HAVE to have flash on your site try to have another site rendered in standard HTML that the browser is redirected to that will allow viewing of your site…
Thanks for reading.
Dave
David E. Patty
http://www.technoprimitive.org
Treehugger: Northern Dogtrot Retreat- a Nice Place to Unfold
Nice looking small retreat. Wish I could see the site, but as with so many of these architectural sites, they depend ENTIRELY on FLASH so I (and I am sure quite a few linux users) can’t even see the site.
Note to folks with websites that depend on flash —
NOT EVERYONE IS WILLING OR ABLETO DOWNLOAD A PLUGIN THAT WILL ALLOW THEM TO SEE YOUR OH SO CUTE FLASH CRAP SITE!
The web was built to operate using “htnl” as the primary language. ALL browsers support “html”. Many DO NOT support “flash” which is a proprietary bandwidth hog and IS NOT designed to render entire websites with, no matter what Macromedia may claim.
If you just HAVE to have flash on your site try to have another site rendered in standard html that the browser is redirected to that will allow viewing of your site…
UPDATE — I have heard from someone at this site and other than a problem with my remark “YOUR OH SO CUTE FLASH CRAP SITE” says that they are working on an html version of the site.
Also I want to clarify that I didn’t mean that their site is crap (I can’t view any of it so I really can’t know, now can I?) but that FLASH is a CRAP language in which to render an entire website.
Slashdot | Germany Accepts Strict Piracy Law
From the article: ‘Germans risk two years in prison if they illegally download films and music for private use under a new law agreed yesterday. Anybody who downloads films for commercial use could be jailed for up to five years.’ Many politicians defended the new law, amongst them Günther Krings, the Christian Democrat legal affairs spokesman, who claimed: ‘There should be no legal distinction between stealing chewing gum from a shop and performing an illegal download.'”
Makes me wonder how many of the idiots involved in voting for this stupidity have investments in prison housing and or construction and or supplying materials for the many new facilities that will soon be needed.
journal of a writing man
Check out the pix of the “Sausage, egg, chips and beans” part way down the post. Makes me want a breakfast like that! NOW!
Boing Boing: Steve Jobs, 2002: “You need the right to manage music on all devices”
Don’t you just love it when past words come to light and bite someone on the ass like this?
Treehugger: O2 Sustainability Treehouse
A different kind of tree house. Really different…
freesco.org
Freesco! Need a dialup router? Got an old machine with at least 16 mb of ram, a modem and ethernet card? Here you go!
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