Month: July 2010

Categories
Random Ramblings

Family without result…

It has almost been one year since this event took place… its time the "community" acted and get this resolved by assisting Police.

Family challenges killers: Speak up, cowards

BY ZARA DAWTREY POLICE REPORTER

"COME forward you gutless bastards. You may have silenced Shane, but you'll never silence me."

So says the brother of murdered Campbell Town man Shane Geoffrey Barker.

Mr Barker, 36, a divorced father-of-one, died after being repeatedly shot in the back at his East Street home on August 2 last year.

No one has been arrested – but his family is not willing to let those responsible get away with murder.

"We have our suspicions (as to who's responsible)," Mr Barker's brother Paul said yesterday.

"And our message to them is this – we are not going to forget, you cowards.

"What kind of person shoots someone in the back then moves on with their lives, after destroying those of our entire family?"

Paul and his mother Barbara, father Robert and sister Nicole Garwood gathered at Paul's Prospect home yesterday to issue a renewed plea for justice over a crime that has not only destroyed a family and left a six-year-old girl without a father, but has also divided a community.

Campbell Town residents have been left speculating whether a murderer is in the town since the night of Mr Barker's death.

But the Barker family believes it knows who is responsible – and that person is not a Campbell Town resident.

"Believe this, you coward, you are human trash," Paul said.

"We hope you're having sleepless nights the way we all are.

"We hope you spent Christmas thinking about what you've done to us.

"We hope you remembered Shane's 37th birthday in January and thought of the misery you've put us through.

"And we hope you suffer the way we have been for 11 months.

"And know this – we will spend the rest of our lives making sure you do."

Shane's father Robert said he wished the person responsible would anonymously tell the family "why".

"That alone would help us, so much," he said.

The Examiner contacted Mr Barker's former wife and the mother of his child Rachael Jordan yesterday, but she said she did not wish to comment on the family's appeals for information.

Anyone with information in relation to Mr Barker's murder is urged to contact Crime Stoppers on 1800333000.

Callers can choose to remain anonymous.

Police are believed to be considering announcing a significant reward around the anniversary of the murder.

If this happened to you… surely you would want "Justice" dealt to those that committed such a cowardly act.  Please assist and help us close this horrible chapter…

Categories
Me TV Random Ramblings

Me TV 1.3.1 Now in Debian unstable

I've just had my second update for Me TV accepted into Debian unstable (Sid)  😀

So I have also filed a bug report to sync this new release into Ubuntu Maverick and also uploaded to the Me TV development ppa on LaunchPad. This is to be the last package I do for Ubuntu Karmic, as this release although still supported for security updates has been superseded by Ubuntu Lucid.

Meanwhile, Me TV version 1.3.0 has merged into Debian Testing (Squeeze) and will be replaced with 1.3.1 in 10 days. Whilst version 0.5.33 is in Stable (Lenny)

Categories
Nonprofit Random Ramblings

LinuxMint 9 on my Eee PC 701SD

Just to test out the latest release of LinuxMint 9 So I've installed this on my Eee PC 701SD to give it a try. As this is an Ubuntu derivative, there is no real new features as such, just a different set of default applications and layout for GNOME.

So here is a screen shot, the layout having only one bar alone the bottom (much like MS Windows) the only addition I have added to the default install is Dropbox. The first thing I noticed when bringing the system up to date the mirror sites clearly have limited the bandwidth, because the average transfer was only 10-15Kb so in all it took just over 3 hours to update just on 300 packages. So this is a major backlash because I get around 800-900Kb transfer from Internode's mirror (unfortunately Internode are not a LinuxMint repository mirror) So if I was to make one complaint, the repository mirror bandwidth could be improved as to wait around 3 hours to update is a little excessive.

So LinuxMint won't stay for long on the Eee, but it certainly has improved since I last looked at it (I think that was version 4)

Categories
Nonprofit Random Ramblings

ASUS Eee PC 701SD

I've had my Eee PC now for almost 18 months and during this time I've tried many Linux distros on it but have yet to settle on one that I really like. the OS of choice for my Server and Desktop is Ubuntu, and this has mostly been what I've been using on my Eee (or ubuntu derivatives) I've come to the conclusion that I don't like the Ubuntu Netbook Edition's user interface, but the screen is way too small to use the standard desktop edition without major mods to the appearance. So at the time of writing I'm just installing the latest from Linux Mint (I know this is another Ubuntu derivative!) Oh just in case you hadn't guessed, I like Debian based distro's but there is a lot of work to get the wifi working in Debian 🙁 (it is doable I'm just too LAZY!)

The main issue with the Eee 701 is that the screen is only 800x480px so most property windows are larger than the screen height so one has to constantly use the [ALT] + LEFT click to move the screen around to get to the parts that can't be seen. Although some would say that's not a major issue, it is when the screen re-size application in the UNE doesn't work with all applications and leaves some being unusable or stuck behind the current window! Sadly, most NetBook friendly distros are targeted towards the Eee 901 or greater as the norm is now a 10" screen that allows a larger resolution so the window size isn't as critical. but as these units (701's) are the original NetBook they have been replaced with much better models … here is a clip showing the Eee PC 701SD


So although the Eee PC 701 was a good price, I still struggle to find an OS that I'm truly happy to stick with! But hey ANYTHING is better than Xandros!  😀

Categories
Random Ramblings

Sometimes it just easier!

Some time back when I built my current PC I didn't bother with getting an optical drive (initially) but as time went on and finances allowed, I go myself a Pioneer DVR-218L

*-cdrom
description: DVD-RAM writer
product: DVD-RW  DVR-218L
vendor: PIONEER
physical id: 0.0.0
bus info: scsi@2:0.0.0
logical name: /dev/cdrom
logical name: /dev/cdrw
logical name: /dev/dvd
logical name: /dev/dvdrw
logical name: /dev/scd0
logical name: /dev/sr0
version: 1.01
capabilities: removable audio cd-r cd-rw dvd dvd-r dvd-ram
configuration: ansiversion=5 status=nodisc

Now I have a small issue with this drive, when I attempt to rip music CD's for local use (either as MP3's OGG FLAC the format is irrelevant) RhythmBox segfaults  🙁  This is due to an issue between RhythmBox attempting to acquire the Album/Song titles. This is a real PITA !! it's of course an easy issue to overcome…

Forget the pretty GUI application of RhythmBox, and go for a CLI one called RipIt, this is quite a powerful application (see man page for full detail) giving you many options on how to control the whole process! So now I simply use Ripit and then burn the disc via brasero or cdrecord and I'm done! It would be nice if this issue didn't exist, but then wouldn't it be nice if no issues ever existed!  😉

So sometimes its just easier to use the command line!

Categories
Random Ramblings

Google Adsense

I've re-enabled Google Ad-sense on my blog, I had removed them because of the type of ads that were appearing i wasn't too keen on seeing on my site (weight loss, get rich quick and the like) I've implemented some filtering to avoid displaying such, but if you happen to notice an ad that you feel is not to your liking then please advise, as I'm not 100% confident I have it right.

The only reason I have the ads on this was an attempt to try to make the server a self funding exercise, I've now come to realise that my server is really an education tool for me so I really don't care much now about the self funding portion … but if there's an ad you like by all means click on it and I may get 1 cent towards my life's ambition!  😀

Categories
Me TV Nonprofit Random Ramblings

Now a Debian maintainer for Me TV

As of last night I'm now the Debian maintainer for Me TV 😀

The first email that confirmed this was…

me-tv_1.3.0-1_amd64.changes uploaded successfully to localhost
along with the files:
me-tv_1.3.0-1.dsc
me-tv_1.3.0.orig.tar.gz
me-tv_1.3.0-1.debian.tar.gz
me-tv_1.3.0-1_amd64.deb

Greetings,

Your Debian queue daemon (running on host franck.debian.org)

Then not long after that I got this…

Dear Scott Evans,

Version 1.3.0-1 of your package 'me-tv' has just
been uploaded to Debian. We assume that a sponsor uploaded the
package for you.

Since your package is sponsored successfully it is no longer
needed here and has been removed from mentors.debian.net.

This mail was sent automatically by mentors.debian.net.
In case you have any questions please just reply to this email.

I must say a big thank you to Julian (aka JAK) for assisting me with some minor issues in the packaging that I hadn't dealt with prior, with his help this has helped me gain the confidence in being fully capable of future updates. This makes updates into Ubuntu much easier! as now all I need to do is a sync request and it will just happen  😉

My Q&A page is located here

Categories
Random Ramblings

Tweaking ADSL profiles on Internode

Most ADSL customers may not have the ability to change the ADSL profile that their ISP allows but hey Internode do! they have a selection of profiles that are targeted for different situations. So I thought I'd have a play to see if there was any gain in this. Well I can say yes there is! my speed once I was migrated onto ADSL2+ was around 8Mb down and 1Mb up. I'm now on a higher theoretical speed and on a few tests so far it looks like I'm now on around 14Mb down and 1Mb up.

So speedtest.net gives a rough guide to what you can expect to get out of your connection speeds.

The DSL speed reported by my ADSL router (modem)

As you can see the router hasn't been up long enough to make a true statement of better efficiency!  but its certainly a faster connection that my previous post on my ADSL2+ speed So does your ISP provide such an option? if so experiment to see how fast you can get.   😉

Categories
Me TV Random Ramblings

Me TV 1.3.0 new UI layout and more…

Ok so it has bee a while since I have mentioned Me TV, but I'm still actively packaging for the project and have recently been asked if I'd like to take over the Debian maintainer roll. I accepted this as it will lead to the possibility of becoming a Debian Developer.

Here are some screen shots to show how the user interface has been reworked…

Notice in the image above that the old tool bar that used to be along the top has now moved to the bottom, and it is only displayed when you move the mouse over the active Me TV session. the tool bar then disappears after a period of 5 seconds leaving you with a larger display area for the content.

So for using Me TV on smaller screens like those of Eee PC's this optimises the limited screen real estate  😉

Get the latest source for Me TV here and there are also PPA's for Ubuntu Karmic, Lucid & Maverick here… or if you happen to be using ubuntu karmic (or higher) you can simply add this repository by pasting the following into the terminal …  'sudo apt-add-repository ppa:me-tv-development/ppa && sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install me-tv' then you will have the latest available version, as the one currently in the ubuntu repos is quite old and there have been many issues fixed since that release! I've also pushed Me TV 1.3.0 to Debian Mentors this is still awaiting review, but one that has been accepted then version 1.3.0 will be available in Debian Sid/experimental.