Posted by Mathieu Jobin
Tue, 26 Feb 2008 23:35:54 GMT | no comments
You might all already know that Today is the day Apple has released his new notebooks featuring the Intel Core2Duo Penryn Processor and the now famous MultiTouch trackpad.
I am now sitting here, waiting for my new computer I just bought over the internet a few hours ago.
15" Pro 2.5Mhz 6MB cache, 7200rpm are the options I have chosen.
Core 2 Duo T9300 for the Win !!!
congrats to me ! yei yei !
It is so funny I had made myself waiting for so long. 7 years. Yes, 7 years ago, I fell on my knees for the G4 Cube, what a beautiful creature, running the new Unix-based operating system.
since then we've seen many more beautiful creatures from Apple, the G4 iMac, the G5 iMac. I also had the chance to work on a PowerMac G5 in Vancouver and an Intel iMac 20" and a ibook in Japan.
Now it's my turn, my first very own Apple. And god, do I know this is the best deal ever with this brand new Intel processor ... T9300 yattah !
Posted by Mathieu Jobin
Wed, 30 Jan 2008 15:49:34 GMT | no comments
well, I must admit, it rarely pass 150MB in normal circumstance... I just thought it would be fun to push it further up. I could have waited more but I was tired. As funny as it may sound, my 2GB ram WinXP system did not suffer too much from it. Eventually I should try to max up the ram entirely see what would happen.
and a copy paste from a Facebook update from the Green Party of Canada.
Breaking News: Greens are Canada's new third party!
2:58am Wednesday, Nov 14, 2007
Dear Friends,
Today is a historic first for the Green Party of Canada.
Today, for the first time in our 24-year history, we are polling as one of Canada's top three parties in a national survey of voter intentions.
The Green Party is nationally in third place. We can win seats. You can help us do it.
The latest Strategic Counsel survey for the Globe and Mail/CTV News shows that the Green Party with 13% has overtaken both the NDP (12%) and the Bloc Quebecois (11%) for the first time ever. Also, Green support in the west now stands at a strong 18%, ahead of the fourth-place NDP (16%).
We must ask for Canadians' help to ensure that Elizabeth May is in the nationally televised leaders' debates. If Elizabeth is in the debates, there is no doubt in my mind that we will elect Green MPs.
[The Green Party has never won any seats in Canada (federally or provincially), nor has the Green Party been included in any televised debates... yet]
Posted by Mathieu Jobin
Sat, 19 Jan 2008 14:59:23 GMT | no comments
Hey everybody.
I was at my friends place tonight. and we had sort of a geek night. we both work in <insert computer related fields here> and ... well anyway... we've got some trouble making his inboard sata raid controller working and I ended up on that website relating to a similar problem.
"Via VT8237 Serial ATA BIOS Setting Utility V 2.10
Scan Devices Please Wait!
Press <Tab> key into user window!
(Tab doesn't work BTW)
Hardware Initiate Failed Please Check the Device!!!
The BIOS does not be installed. Press <g> to continue"
the original question of the thread was that pressing TAB when the raid controller was asking us to would simply do nothing. and tonight. my friend figured out that the bios simply had PS2 support disabled. Microsoft Windows (the OS I respect very much hahahaha) is later on adding his own PS2 support so the BIOS did not need to support the keyboard device ... Until you really need it. mouhahaha.
Posted by Mathieu Jobin
Fri, 11 Jan 2008 04:08:42 GMT | no comments
first time in 8 years he is going to the countries he is destroying. Thanks god he is bringing wisdom to this world. determined to set peace between the two countries.Bush says: swiss cheeze ain't gonna work.
love you too
let's pay more tax this year, increase poverty and do war.
"do war" ? what...? war isn't a verb yet ? what a shame, I am warring you. wait, it is a verb.
Posted by Mathieu Jobin
Wed, 26 Dec 2007 12:31:41 GMT | 1 comment
I have been waiting for KDE4 for a while already.... And now it has gotten much closer to the goal and it's time for a real survival test...
Due to my old computer slightly lacking horsepower, I recently switched from Gentoo to Ubuntu. tried Gnome for a little while but wasn't for me, really. Then I installed kubuntu-desktop and followed the quick steps shown on kubuntu.org about KDE4 rc2. Really easy install...
From KDE 3.5.8 I could already see many applications in the menu which had got duplicate for their KDE4 counterpart letting me try them from within my desktop. but on the early morning of December 26th, without knowing if it would work at all, I decided to give the already installed KDE4 a try. Without expecting much it shine onto my screen promptly.
Fired up, I am looking at what is to become the next best and most popular desktop on the planet. Let see what Santa-san has in store... read on for more details ...
Posted by Mathieu Jobin
Thu, 20 Dec 2007 13:52:11 GMT | no comments
Maybe you guys can help me. Since 1995, I have been struggling with this Windows Explorer trying to manage my windows. But all I can see is files and directories. Every forum I went to over the last 13 years have been only filled with impolite people trying to tell me I did not understand a thing and that, of course, files and directories were shown in the Windows Explorer and not windows.
Then I ask, why isn't it called the File Explorer? After all, it is a file manager that lets you explore your files and directory.
Posted by Mathieu Jobin
Sat, 24 Nov 2007 21:28:00 GMT | no comments
I just found a great application on facebook which display pretty much everything there is to show about my ipod usage.
last played, last added, most played, artists, songs, etc. everything.
unfortunately, because it is a great application and well done, it will hardly become popular. why? because it is so good. There is no ads and it does not let you spread it like a facebook virus.
and its the one application I wish would spread over facebook like a virus.
Posted by Mathieu Jobin
Thu, 25 Oct 2007 23:08:52 GMT | 1 comment
Still today, Microsoft Windows is showing us the most annoying freeze ever. Recently I have been forced to switch to Windows from Linux.
I usually put it on sleep by doing Start => Turn Off => Stand by. Which requires multiple clicks and seconds for the menu to popup. One of my friend which happen to be an expert in Microsoft technologies suggested me to do Win+L for Lock(AFAIK). It worked....
but when I came back later that night, the computer would not wake up as it normally would from a regular Stand by.
I tried everything and I had a lot of time to wait between trials since I was reconfiguring my living room for my new purchase I had just bought at Futureshop.
thank you Microsoft for crashing our computers for now more than 12 years. (3.1 was not crashing that much as far as I can remember).
For those looking for solution, you can try to install either Kubuntu, Ubuntu, OpenSuse or Mandriva on your PC for more stability. Or simply buying a Mac.
Posted by Mathieu Jobin
Sat, 25 Aug 2007 08:48:43 GMT | no comments
I think I have been leaving my justbudget users in the blank for too long. I am really not blogging as often as I would wish. Sorry about that. I always intended to update the FAQ page on the site with the answers to the questions I receive. (by the way, many thanks for all your questions and comments and sorry for the delay).
Many of these answers would be useful to many users but unfortunately I never had the time to collect them all up and rewrite them properly into the FAQ. So I am thinking maybe I should just post the answer straight up on my blog (which is shown on the news page of justbudget). This way people can read them. It's google-able and information is never lost.
Another thing that might interest you is an article I found recently. I already talked about it on my regular blog. A friend of mine recommended me a personal finance related website. Get Rich Slowly which I found really interesting. Every page of the website invite us to read the "About" page which link to the origin of the website: A blog post. I highly recommend anybody interested in achieving financial independence to read this article first.
If you take a careful look at the "Step One: Prepare the Foundation" which includes 3 steps in its own. The second one of these is about cutting expenses. And I cannot stress this enough; The world as we know it keep pushing us to consume more and more, it's getting harder and harder to keep ourselves from buying all the new toys available.
anyway, the important point here is that if you keep spending, you quickly lose track of where all your money goes. Being always conscious can be stressful and very difficult. Just track your expenses somewhere so you can easily look them up anytime.
so you know where you can cut
so you can remember how much you paid for something the year or the month before.
so you can easily remember where and when you went somewhere.
and more
I love it.
So I am gonna start answering all emails directly on my blog very soon. stay tuned.
I just made a small discovery last night. I already knew about ext2fs but it was not really stable, rather incompatible and as far as I remember, read-only. So, rather useless.
Now there is something I would call "new". ext2IFS. IFS for Installable FileSystem. it is simply wonderful. and for anyone using windows who needs access to their ext2/3 partitions, try this one out.
As you already know. your data is the most important part of computing. and with all open source software, I recommend reading all the documentation. in this case, it is all shown during the install process. please read it or don't cry when something happen.
Posted by Mathieu Jobin
Fri, 24 Aug 2007 05:18:21 GMT | no comments
If you are visiting Hikone city in Shiga-ken Japan. Make sure you pay a visit to my very good friend Akiyan. He own’s the Foolish Club. It's a little place but it's a great time guaranteed.
From the Hirata-cho corner, walk south 50-100 meters (opposite way from Family Mart) and it's on the left side of the street. A white sign. You really can't miss it.
Posted by Mathieu Jobin
Thu, 23 Aug 2007 11:42:54 GMT | no comments
It's so funny that such a Apple/Mac fan like me took so long. but I just bought my first iPod. And not that I think of it, my first Apple product. Well, I bought an Apple iMac G3 for my mother but it wasn't for me.
I paid 7600 JPY for it (shuffle). That's 9800 minus 2200 yen I had in credit at the shop ;) An extra reason for the compulsive buy. 7600 yen it's also US$65.08 or CDN$68.46 at this moment. which is much less than the $79+tax I would have paid in Canada.
Another guy factor that played in this compulsive and totally unplanned buy. Is the fact that I will spend 19 hours in a plane next thursday. As I am going back to Quebec on August 30th. 7600yen / 19 hours = 400yen/hour to have some music during this boring flight. which is priceless.
Now that I understood how to open the box, I will play with my new toys and put some songs in it. And wait for October to buy my Apple Computer with Leopard on it.
Posted by Mathieu Jobin
Thu, 23 Aug 2007 10:15:32 GMT | no comments
To follow my last post. Here is the list of interesting articles I fall upon today. As I already said. Today has been a very rewarding day for finding interesting articles. So, here it comes. I will not place them in order of preference but instead I will try to place them in order of accessibility (less geek to the geekiest)
The police to start analyzing our urine through the sewers. That's the cherry on the sundae. If they bring their sample extraction device all the way to our houses. Not only they will be able to know who use what drugs but also what other consumer products we use. Then use the data for marketing purposes. That's the beginning of real privacy violation. And people worry about computers?
Get Rich Slowly. No comments, excellent reading. And this article really makes me believe again that justbudget is totally appropriate and does help in financial Independence.
Computing article ... lots of good points. last page is Linux Kernel stuff
only, kinda technical. But the first two pages are interesting to anyone curious about computer history. It brings a fresh point of view on the truth. Linux lovers be careful. I knew XOrg had great optimization needs but this article simply make me wish I had something better than Linux to run my favorite desktop environment.
Call me ignorant but I don't even understand how a project like a free browser might need a CEO. This article explains it all. How is Mozilla Firefox making $US55million a year? (and much more...)
More Linux related articles from apcmag. I think today was the first time I was visiting their site and one of the reason I am blogging about it today is to make sure I will visit them again.
Posted by Mathieu Jobin
Thu, 23 Aug 2007 09:40:52 GMT | no comments
Today has been a very rewarding day for finding interesting articles. Apart from the articles that I will mentioned in my next article here is one for my readers who runs the Gentoo operating system.
Basically the idea is to mount a virtual file-system over the directory that stores temporary files used during compilation of new software (/var/tmp/portage). As most you you might know, Gentoo includes a system that automatically compile and install software for you. The great part is that it is very easy to use, the down part however is that it sometimes takes hours to install a certain software. The Hard Drive being the slowest part in the equation has just to be removed.
To try it out simply add this line to your /etc/fstab file and mount it as root or reboot.
You might also want to kill the content for the directory before, as it most probably contains lost of useless data which would then be hidden behind the mount.
rm -fr /var/tmp/portage ; mkdir /var/tmp/portage
Now the guy in the article use a 1412M sized tmpfs virtual partition on a 2G of RAM system. I really wonder how this would work on a 512MB RAM system. It might just swap all the time removing the whole idea. So I'm not sure this tricks helps people who really needs help. (the people with regular hardware)
What I really would like to understand is how the tmpfs kernel module know when to delete or not a file from the memory. I'd be afraid that it kills some .o out of the memory before the full compilation comes to an end. Or that it keeps all these temporary files in memory for hours after the compilation is done. I'd like to understand the magic.
Update: Then later I found in the comment it is useless to add an extra tmpfs as Gentoo always have one enabled.
And I Quote ....
"You can always do this by using the existing tmpfs, /dev/shm. /dev/shm will allocate up to 1/2 of your system RAM for tmpfs and it should already exist. To use it change/add the following three lines to your gentoo /etc/make.conf file:"
