Today is a momentous day for my ears. After years of mucking about with ALSA and .asoundrc files, I can finally say I have been able to achieve simultaneous sound streams on my linux box. Admittedly, by years I mean maybe a couple of times a year, for only a few hours at a time, but at least I have finally done it. I am not talking about some cheaters way of doing it either, like piping it through aRts, ESD or any other sound server. I have actually got ALSA itself to mix sound streams on the fly using Dmix.

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Since writing about the problems with the nVidia drivers and the 2.6.11 kernel I decided to repackage a custom installer that WILL compile against the latest linux kernel.

NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-6629-pkg1-heno-custom.run (4751.7K) – The latest nVidia drivers now work

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Version 2.6.11 of the Linux kernel has been released. The 2.6.10 kernel has only been the third from the 2.6.x branch that has seen more than semi-permanant use on any of my systems. 2.6.5 and 2.6.2 are the only other releases that I have had reasonable success with; 2.6.6 – 2.6.9 caused me nothing but headaches.

2.6.10 has been my favourite of the lot, and I have it humming along beautifully on a number of Slackware boxes. Udev is a brilliant feature and despite having to un-learn the devfs system, I really like the way it operates. Keeping device management entirely in userspace just makes sense.

One of the more interesting inclusions in 2.6.11 is infiniband support. This feature has been hyped up quite a bit, and I might be inclined to agree with the hype – if only I had a multi-million dollar super computer to actually justify using it on. Maybe I will enable infiniband support on my P200 64MB system with its 10Base-T network card and watch it soar!

Seriously though, I will try a few dummy compilations tonight and see how she goes on my dev-box. I have never been able to get framebuffering to work with any 2.6.x kernel using an nVidia card for some reason, so maybe I will have a bit more luck with this latest kernel, although I don’t have high hopes.

UPDATE 2:
Kernel 2.6.11.2 has been released, which patches a number of bugs. Also, nVidia has released a new version of its drivers which will compile against this kernel.

UPDATE:
Well my first compilation was a success and 2.6.11 hums along nicely. Although, there is one big problem. The latest nVidia drivers will not compile against this kernel version.

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Google’s latest brain-wave in its journey towards world domination, is a curious new feature in their latest toolbar called AutoLink.

If you can cast your memory back to 2001 you will remember the controversy surrounding Microsoft’s Smart Tags and the subsequent discussion over the adding of extra links your site without your knowledge. Well this is essentially what Google’s AutoLink does.

In response to this, a nice piece of javascript has emerged that strips any of these extra tags from the page, leaving your site in its unedited, de-googlefied form. So for all of you Wordpressors out there, here is my official De-Google Wordpress Plugin.

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Hot on the heals of my Top 5 Firefox Extensions I Can’t Live Without, I have discovered another nifty way to make your Firefox settings more portable.

If you already use the highly-recommended Bookmarks Synchronizer Plugin, then you know the convenience of remote location of your bookmarks, and how handy it is to cart your settings with you across multiple computers and operating systems. Well, while playing with my userContent.css this afternoon, a small, somewhat dim lightbulb went off in my head. I wonder if I could make this as portable as my bookmarks?

Turns out you can. With one oh-so-simple line of code, you too can drag your custom XUL hacks with you across multiple computers.

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As I have mentioned on this site before, I am a Linux user. More specifically, I am a Slackware user and as such, it goes without saying that I am not an Internet Explorer user.

I have been using Firefox since its pre-Firebird, pre-Phoenix days of 2002. Nearly three years on, and with the browser “all grown up now”, I have to say I am very much dependant on it. I have to admit I have strayed from time to time, experimenting with others such as the almost-had-me Opera and the looks-great-in-KDE-but-shit-in-anything-else Konqueror, but Firefox is undoubtedly the browser I have come to know and love.

One of the features that has become a necessity in my daily goings on are the plethora or Firefox extensions. So without further adieu, here are my Top 5 Firefox Extensions I Can’t Live Without.

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Every once in a while I surprise myself with the discovery of something so simple it makes you think “Why didn’t I know this already? And why haven’t I been told?”

Along the same theme as the first time I learnt that you could tab upwards, I was watching an apple.com trailer today when completely by accident I discovered something so simple yet so useful one would think I had just learnt how to operate a mouse for the first time.

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… across the gulf of space, minds that are to our minds as ours are to those of the beasts that perish, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely drew their plans against us.

These lines from the first paragraph of H.G. Wells’ book, “War of the Worlds” still sends a chill down my spine. Written in 1898, the book is undoubtedly one of the greatest, if not at least the most influential and inovative science fiction novel ever written. It was adapted to a highly successful (and equally amazing) musical in 1976 and now is being reborn once again as the child of none other than director Steven Spielberg.

View the teaser
View the website and extended trailer

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Some of the Internet’s strongest attributes in my humble opinion, are the “Three F’s”™ : Freedom, Fluidity and FUD.

In my pursuit of the “Second F” – Fluidity, I have created a small wordpress plugin to allow easy referencing of ones source material. (Think bibliographies people!)

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I never seem to write enough anymore. Gone are the days of a simple pencil and notebook stashed under my bed, giving way to the incessant buzz of my needs-to-be-upgraded CRT monitor and full-o-dust’n-shit case fans.

So in an effort to reorganise my life, I have begun cataloging all of the things I tend to forget and/or desperately need to remember.

If you care to read them, that is your own business.