Chess

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I haven't been instant messaging much lately since I started playing chess on facebook and chess.com. It makes a change from reading endless philosophy.

I play chess at Chess.com!


I really like chess.com although they haven't yet sorted out their live play, their turn based rocks. I stopped playing at yahoo because of an annoying bug asking to clean cache. When I clear everything manually from firefox and flash lo-and-behold still same old cold message. Well doesn't matter I was fed up of people leaving games or my internet failing on me and finding I was returning to a lost game (they get someone (jerk) to join and resign on my behalf). Frustrating.

A few chess posts might appear when I feel like it. I was thinking about showing good games I have played or writing about the grandmasters I like. I like studying Ricard Reti. His style appeals to me.

If anyone plays, play me.

Roche Abbey

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Went exploring around Roche abbey. Never been before. Never knew it existed. Ben showed me where it was. A short drive from my town. Its all ruins now but there's a wood, river, small water fall and a lake.


Google maps link.
I have a few picture on my photo blog.

Update facebook status using twitter

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You can use the twitter application on facebook to update your status.
In its settings you will find status update option. Enabling it allows anything you post on twitter to automatically be set as your status.



Once you have twitter and facebook connected you can start using your terminal to update your status. Using curl of course. (sudo apt-get install curl for ubuntu users)
curl -u username:password -d status="Your Post" http://twitter.com/statuses/update.xml
Change user name and password obviously.

Weird and random petitions

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These are all from the official government E-Petitions website.

Introduce Compulsary Unicycle Riding Lessons For The Armed Forces

Let mice be allowed free travel on public transport

Ban Fallout Boy and Panic! At The Disco

Give borat complete control of england, making him more powerful than TB and the queen.

Allow Sheffield United FC to be exempt from relegation from the Premier League

Command the tide to go back

Wear bermuda shorts on a thursday

Move the UK to a warmer climate

Make cat owners responsible for their pets actions including fowling in peoples gardens

Invade France

Free the Chicken People!

Send cats to iraq in medieval battle armour mounted on weasels

Make Britain the 51st State of America and not part of a Federalised Europe

Banish Jade Goody to a distant land far far away so she doesn't make an even bigger fool out of herself than she already has!

Make Britain into a Pirate ship

Put a british monkey into space

Give cats the same rights as humans

Send an elite team of ninjas to the moon to combat the iminent chav invasion

Ban My Chemical Romance from headlining Download Festival 2007

Change the National Anthem to "We Will Rock You" by Queen

We must all hail HYPNO TOAD

Make me a cup of tea

Ensure that mashed potatoes are 100% mashed potatoes, not like turnip or nowt

Ban men from buying hair straightners

Ban broccoli as an edible foodstuff and reclassify it as a toxic substance

Provide every person of 70 years of age with a Grey Squirrel

Ban Tinned Fruit In Syrup

Please ban hangovers as we feel poorly

Bring back blue smarties!

Allow free prescriptions for elderly badgers

Have every Monday off

Notes on Ubuntu 8.04

I installed a fresh install of ubuntu 8.04. Sort of a jump for me since I was using 7.04. Should also note this ubuntu works on my intel 82830M card. Previous Ubuntu 7.04 had many xserver errors on it.

Installing a modem. Speedtouch 330. Easily done. Script on help.ubuntu.com just works. Adding pon speedtch to /etc/rc.local is better a solution than any of the boot scripts around.

Installing nvidia drivers was a little fiddly. I was about to download the packages from the repos but after messing around for 10 mins. Lots of unticking and ticking enable it downloaded them for me.


Once I had the nvidia drivers I could turn on the visual effects which are now in appearances.


Installing mp3 playback. This is one the biggest noobie questions around. The truth is it shouldn't be. What it comes down to is what player do you use?. See help.ubuntu.com/community/RestrictedFormats/MP3. I use exaile which is a gtk amarok like player. Its neat. It uses the gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly package.
sudo apt-get install gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly
It then installs liba52-0.7.4 libdvdread3 libid3tag0 libmad0 libmpeg2-4 libsidplay1.

NTFS hard drives were loaded with out fuss. First distro I have ever used that has done this. In 7.04 I used a tool to mount but with 8.04 I just put my password in and its mounted.

Final thoughts then. While I have read many mediocre reviews about the lack of anything new in this long term support version of ubuntu. Its a well packaged Debian GNU/Linux based distribution thats clearly moving forward towards user friendliness while still offering flexibility for advanced users.

Past few days I have...

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...Somehow gotten the internet to work on my main pc by throwing it down the stairs, only joking. Which now means I have ubuntu 7.04 running. Wondering if to upgrade but I can still install a lot of new software.

...Built a newer version of pidgin from source. Dependencies: libgtk2.0-dev libxml2-dev gettext libnss-dev libnspr-dev. Its quite polished.


...Bottled my english ale. It finished fermenting sooner than I thought. It looks as though its going to be smoooooth. Theres a lot of head retention.

...Planted pumpkins, corn and more potatoes. Future pumpkin beer?


Some potatoes have come up :D.


...Seen tad poles in a pond. So I guess it really is spring. I was thinking about taking some home. Except I have no pond! If I could find some cheap lining I could make a small one on the allotment.