Category Archives: Computers

… or I’ll do to you what I did to Internet Explorer!

I imagine some suit at Microsoft sneering this line after emasculating poor Microsoft Security Essentials for Christmas laughs late last year. This info is a little old now, but since I’m on a “write about Microsoft products” kick on this here crappy blog, I thought I’d mention it anyway. According to a computer lab filled […]

Recycling bad ideas

Have I made fun of Microsoft Bob before on this blog?  I don’t believe I have.  Well, if you’ve ever heard about MS Bob before, you probably didn’t hear anything good. Read that link above to find out what the fuck was going on.  To this day, I don’t think anyone really knows why the […]

Pharaoh and the Pirate

I’ve been having a delightful time playing old PC video games on my Windows 98 laptop.  As described below, it’s a fairly new cheap laptop that runs Lubuntu as its OS and runs Windows 98 in Virtualbox. So I decided to fill up the massive 10GB hard drive I gave it in VB by installing […]

Y2K Compliant Desktop Publishing on the Information Super-Highway!

With Microsoft Works 4.5 for Windows 95!

The Joy of Windows 98 SE (part 2)

Since I run my shiny new (old) Windows 98 installation inside VirtualBox, there are some things that just don’t work.  Like I mentioned below, Midi is one of them. But a lot of DOS functionality seems to be broken too.  I’ve noticed that whenever a DOS window opens, my screen goes black and all I […]

The Joy of Windows 98 SE (part 1)

Okay, I’m 15 years late in celebrating this operating system.  And I think I can only celebrate anything Microsoft or Windows at all because it fills a particular niche for me. This is odd for me to like Windows 98 so much, because it was Windows 95 and Windows 98 that taught me to hate […]

My current favourite OS

I like to try out different operating systems.  This is mainly because I am a geek.  I like to see what some group of developers has done with a kernel and a desktop environment and a software ecosystem. Linux is a good example of this.  I should actually say GNU-Linux.  Technically (those of you who […]

Bodhi Linux

I’ve recently been playing around with a new-ish distro called Bodhi Linux.  It’s a light-weight distro, and since I’m a cheap bastard who likes to spend not much money on underpowered hardware, I like to get the most I can out of my OS. That’s why I use primarily Xubuntu and Lubuntu, and even Puppy […]

My Puppy

Oh how cute, Robotman’s going to bore the fuck out of you by talking about Linux again! Yes, This is a story about a Linux distribution called “Puppy Linux“.    I’m not much of a 1337 H4XXÁ˜R when it comes to Linux, so I pretty much stick to distros that I can install and use with […]

Song of the Day – “Breaking the Law” by Judas Priest

Go ahead and listen to this song right now. Watch the video if you want.  That Rob Halford is one entertaining dude.  My favourite singer, by the way.  He even edges out Dan McCafferty for that honour. But I digest digress. I’m not even going to pretend that this post is about that song you’re […]

Oy Mint!

Well, I tried to give Linux Mint another try.  This time I tried Linux Mint 13 with Cinnamon, 32 Bit.  And I tried it on a computer that I’ve never tried to install Mint on before. The live DVD wouldn’t even boot. So as not to make the downloading and burning of that ISO a […]

To the FUTURE!!!

Cue scientifical music. That’s better. This post is the first post written on my “writing laptop” since I dun reformatted the hard drive since I dun got me a rootkit on it.  See below for the horrid, treacherous details of that.  Sordid?  Yeah, add sordid to that list of adjectives too. Am I making any […]

Oh, Mint

I really tried to like you, Mint.  I really like your philosophy, and the fact that you’re moving away from the clone-Appleâ„¢ policies of Ubuntu.  So I was disappointed when I first tried installing you back in 2008.  The “Fluxbox” version I booted with a Live CD on my laptop looked so damn seductive, and […]

Thanks for the rootkit, Sony

You think I’d be leery of installing any software on a Sony branded disc after the horribly unethical way that the Sony rootkit scandal went down years ago.  But I was a fool. The long story short: I installed Blu-Ray writing software from Sony on my Windows XP laptop, and that software installed something called […]

The price of my computing needs

I meant to post this post a while ago.  Back when the details were fresh in my memory.  So please excuse me if they are fuzzy or wrong. This last Spring, I had two of my computers die on me – within 5 days of each other.  That fucking sucked.  One of those computers was […]

Suckers for punishment… or something

Yesterday on Reddit, I saw a post titled “How to install Internet Explorer 6, 7, and 8 in Linux”.  Why would anyone want to do such a thing?  Seriously? Okay, do something fun… look down at the very next blog post on this very site.  Okay.  All in good fun.  Ha ha.  I made this […]

Is it Xubuntu or is it Windows 95?

Or some bastardized mishmash of Windows 3.1 and Windows 95 and Windows 98? Actually it’s my writing laptop with a definite oldschool look that gives me a chuckle every time I use it. For the record, this is Xubuntu 12.04. It all started when I was bored and upgrading from Xubuntu 10.04 to 12.04.  Contrary […]

Hey, I remember this!

Wow!  This is a neat blog!  Some of it’s funny and some of it makes sense!  And it’s all about me and the silly things I like! Yes, it’s been a very long while since I’ve updated this blog.  Not to put too fine a point on things, but that’s because I have virtually no […]

A fun weekend of doing as little as possible

As little work as possible, that is.  I’ve been really busy this weekend with more Mikeification of more Jimi Hendrix.  The process shouldn’t have taken three weeks.  It doesn’t take more than about an hour to do an album.  But I have zero time during the week to get fun stuff like this done, so […]

How XScreensaver got me to use Xfce again

Here’s another nerdy story for you all!  Gather around the glow of the CRT, it’s time to get geeky! I recently got a DVD from Jolly Old England (that’s what the country is officially called, I think) because it’s so obscure I couldn’t get it here in Canada.  The video is this: Made by these […]

My writing laptop

Another update to my long dormant blog.  And only possible because I had a vacation day on Friday and therefore this is a long weekend for me.  Friday was a very bad day for me though.  Fuck you, weather headaches. Lately, I’ve been using my laptop more and more.  This was one I bought in […]

Another Ubuntu user

Last week, I had actually brought back my friend’s computer to work so that i could give it to her.  But before I did, I asked her if she would like to have an alternative operating system installed beside Vista. I explained that she would be able to choose which one to boot when she […]

Defraggler

Thanks again to the intrepid Uncle Furry, I’ve found out about a great program from the makers of CCleaner.  It’s called Defraggler, and if you use that steaming pile of shit known as Windows Vista, you need this program. See, since the old old days of Windows 95, Microsoft has included a utility to defragment […]

So…. Vista

I have been, over the last 10 days or so, been fixing up a friend’s laptop for her.  You see, I knew there was something wrong with it when she emailed me about great deals on Rolex watches. So, knowing that she had malware problems, and knowing that I’m a computer geek who actually likes […]

That post about dBpowerAmp

dBpowerAmp is a great program.  It is actually a suite of applications with different features, and the ones I use the most are the music converter and the CD ripping program.  Actually, I have used the CD ripping program a lot in the past and I will use it a lot in the future because […]

Bitching about the way things break in Linux

Just like in Windows… an update can fuck up your favourite programs.  I’ve blabbed before about how my favourite CD ripping program (Grip) no longer works, and now I’d like to bitch about how the replacement I found (Ripper X) doesn’t do as good a job as it should. Let’s start with mp3 tags.  I […]

My dedicated Civilization II terminal

Praise be to Uncle Furry, for he hath bestowed upon me a 10 year old Thinkpad with which to bask in the glory of Windows 98 SE! Hosanna! I had originally considered reinstalling one of the virtual Windows XP setups I run as a virtual OS inside Linux.  As you are probably tired of hearing, […]

Adventures in Servicepackland

FUCK.  This is one exciting blog I maintain here, isn’t it?  I mean, where else on the vast interwebs can you go to read what some random dipshit has to say about computers, old music and his perverted sexual interest in female androids? Nowheres, that’s wheres. If you want a gateway to the new “Information […]

Why geeks should ask for help in naming things.

Hoe-kay. Ubuntu comes with a nifty little screenshot application.  You just hit the “print” key (your keyboard has one, it probably says “Prt Scr” over “SysRq”) and voila, a nifty little application window comes up and asks you where you’d like to save the screenshot and what you’d like to call it. Nifty is one […]

So long, CivII

Here’s a long and uninteresting story.  Kind of like everything else on this blog.  Except some of this drivel is mercifully short. Anyway, I am a fan of the 1996 game Civilization II.  I play it a lot.  It wastes a lot of my time, actually.  I’ve spent hours playing it when I should have […]

I ride the turtle again!

Look at him!  He’s riding the turtle! Actually, it’s a tortoise.  But who cares! Look at him! And like all slow rides, this ride gets you there eventually. If you’ve been paying attention to this blog… and honestly, I don’t know who the fuck in their right mind would, I mean come on.  Even I […]

This is exactly how DRM works

If you didn’t know it already, DRM stands for Digital Restrictions Management.  Criminal cartels like the RIAA and their greedy asshole cronies will tell you it stands for Digital Rights Management, but remember: corporations want to take your rights away from you so they can have them for themselves. But that’s a separate rant. Now […]

All done and I like the results

I’ve got everything reinstalled now and aside from virtual Windows being slower, everything is better or the same as how I had it before. My grammar sucks but that is because I’m tired.  So sue me.  I actually spent a bit more time setting up Windows than I would have liked.  Reason?  Apparently Windows XP […]

Virtual trouble

Right here in Virtual River City.  With a Virtual Tea and that rhymes with “W” and that stands for “Windows XP”. Apologies to Robert Preston.  Theoretically, it is possible to take a virtual installation of a guest OS with you and use it on any computer that has your virtualization software installed on it.  To […]

Fixins

Well, my early night last night didn’t really turn out that way.  I couldn’t sleep.  So I went ahead and installed the new video card I got last night.  Thank you, thank you, THANK YOU Uncle Furry for carting me around town to get that card. AGP cards are a scarce breed these days.  The […]

Well fuckaduck

Okay, apologies to Nvidia, it’s not your latest driver that’s a steaming pile of shit.  It’s my video card.  More accurately, the capacitors on my video card are a steaming pile of blown capacitorific shit. So I need a new video card.  Meh.

ZOMGITSFROZEN!!1!

Alas, my internet PC has dun gone all fuckled.  I boot, she freeze.  I boot, she freeze.  Sigh.  Tarnation! I hadn’t upgraded or reinstalled Xubuntu on this thing for a while… it was still running 9.04.  And now I think I’ll have to reinstall the whole damn shebang.  Now, this computer has 2 hard drives.  […]

Windows “Security” rant

Windows started life as a stand-alone workstation OS.  Which is fine, if you don’t want any of that “networking” stuff bogging you down.  Back in the 80s, when Bill Gates was actually writing code alongside his Microsoft cohorts, and when Max Headroom stuttered his way into our hearts… No one wanted or needed to connect […]

A short rant about something that really bugs me about Linux

Okay.  Back in the days of Windows 95 and 98, I learned how to customize my setup as best as I could.  This included changing desktop wallpaper, the window buttons and title bars, the Start Menu, the sounds, and the mouse cursors.  I customized other things too, but let’s not get carried away here.  This […]

Update on my first PC

Because this is fucking VITAL information.  A few posts down, I talked about how I was reinstalling Xubuntu/LXDE on my first computer.  I use it for reading, so all I run is Firefox and a text-to speech program. Well, I dun got me everything set up.  I installed all the updates, got the codecs I’ll […]

Fuck upgrading… viva la reinstallation! – Part 2

So now the time has come to reinstall Ubuntu on my very first PC, and this thing will go from Ubuntu 8.04 with LXDE to Ubuntu 10.04 with LXDE. But I’m going about things a little differently on this machine.  First of all, when I tried to load the computer using the Ubuntu 10.04 Live […]

Fuck upgrading… viva la reinstallation!

I made a post a while back about how I upgraded my parents’ laptop from Xubuntu 9.04 to 10.04.  It went well.  But since I upgraded, I didn’t get to take advantage of the vast improvements in boot times that came along with the newest version.  Also, I didn’t get my chance to try setting […]

The sad state of text-to-speech in Linux just got less sad

I’m a lazy guy.  I read a lot while I surf the net, and I have a screen reader do all the work for me.  Currently, I have TextAloud mp3 do that for me on this computer.  It runs in a virtual Windows XP installation that I have in “seamless mode” in VirtualBox on my […]

Upgrading Ubuntu – Part 2

My experience with upgrading my Ubuntu (and Xubuntu) systems from version 9.04 through 10.04 seems to have gone well.  As I blabbed about in a post below, I upgraded my parents’ laptop first, then did the same to my own laptop. Now, I’ve done the process to my music computer.  I was worried about this […]

Upgrading Ubuntu

Well, the time has come again for me to run the “Distribution Upgrade” from the Update Manager window.  This usually means certain destruction.  I think I’ve only successfully upgraded an Ubuntu system once before.  Every other time I’ve done it, it has gone horribly wrong and left me with a broken and irreparable system.  Like […]

Peer pressure: All the cool kids are wearing plastic bags on their heads.

These are some things.  Not a few of my favorite things, but just some things I know. My parents’ 18 year old orange cat took over my new guitar’s case within a time span of five seconds I like big butts and I can not lie I’m sleepy I wish my parents were millionaires On […]

More fun with old computers

What a lazy layabout I am.  Also, I am a nerdy neerdowell, a silly scofflaw and a mischievous malcontent.  And I have had a day of fun with my two very old computers. One of these I have had since 1998.  The other is a recent acquisition, courtesy of Uncle Furry.  Thanks Uncle Furry! First, […]

I am tired and I am a video game geek and the world must know

I got off work at 2:30pm today.  And that’s a good thing because I’m mentally and physically exhausted from Wednesday… and the rest of the week too.  But mostly Wednesday.  What a fucking day.  And Wednesday is in honour of our god Odin.  Praise be to him! You see, Odin had some crows to help […]

Song of the day “End of the Line” by Traveling Wilburys

This is a kind of bittersweet song.  You could see for yourself what I mean had the copyright cartels not removed the official video from YouTube.  Listen to the music at the above link, but ignore the graphics because it was uploaded by spammers. Pretty fucking sad when we have to rely on spammers to […]

A new toy 2

I’ve still got that 10 year old Thinkpad.  And I’m still enjoying it.  Here’s a status update for those of you waiting breathlessly for such information. This puppy now dual boots both Ubuntu 10.04 and Windows 98 SE.  That’s a month-old operating system coupled with a 12 year old operating system on a 10 year […]