Waffle

After reading up on the mouse problem early this afternoon, I concluded that a clean reinstall was my best bet, so after backing up my remaining files (tip: K3b is useless if you don't have a mouse, but the CD burning software within the Gnome file manager Nautilus is accessible), I did that. Unfortunately, I mistook having planned to back up my email and profiles for actually having backed them up, so I lost a lot of email and passwords. Not that I expect to miss it much, but if I don't respond to that urgent message you sent me yesterday, this is why. The clean install did solve a lot. I now have two working mice, Internet and a scanner. Kopete, the messaging client, works properly for the first time in a year. Oh, and I can finally watch Xvid videos in Kaffeine, something that eluded me for years. Not that that worked out of the box, mind you, but I could compile everything I needed from source because I had a clean system with lots of development software already installed, and good, detailed instructions. The only thing I haven't got to work yet is the TV card. So it's likely that I'll be watching Doctor Who on torrented Xvid files again.

So I had a PC with a SuSE linux installation that was getting a bit crufty and error-prone, and a new TV card that I wanted to be able to use before Saturday. Time to upgrade my linux system, and because I wanted to avoid an afternoon spent in frustration trying to get a development version from the Net to work, I bought SuSE linux 10.0 and installed that. And spent the afternoon in frustration trying to get it to work.

I used the "Upgrade" option. My initial plan was to have a clean install, but on second thought, there was still some stuff on the drive that I might want to back up first, so I didn't go through with that just yet. I may still do so, if I can't fix the many problems I've got right now.

What I can't do: 1) use the mouse or the Wacom tablet. Oh, YaST will pretend to recognise and configure them (Logitech serial mouse, Wacom graphire) but neither it nor SaX cause the pointers to actually do anything. The keyboard accessibility of just about anything is severely wanting, by the way, with apps having seemingly arbitrary tab orders which skip some widgets within dialogues entirely. 2) Scan. Until today, I had a crap generic canon scanner hooked up to the PC, because the Epson Perfection 1660 had been used as the studio for a while, and when I got it back, the PC wouldn't recognise the Epson anymore. I had high hopes for getting the Epson scanner to work again, because upgrades in the past have always been useful for letting the PC recognise whatever was connected to it, but it's the same story as with the Tablet: the configuration tools (YaST again) pretend to configure it, but the end result of the process is that the scanner doesn't actually do anything. In fact, it doesn't even pretend to configure the scanner all that well: it adds a driver that is not associated to any scanner device to the list of entries while leaving the existing scanner device in the list as an unconfigured device. 3) Get online. I can kind of, sort of set up the DHCP connection to my cable modem, but it doesn't seem to find the name servers, and no data passes from my ISP to me or vice versa. I should note that none of the LiveCD -based distributions I've played with in the past year worked at all with my cable modem. They all report that they've found a DHCP service and then proceed to do exactly nothing. Is this a kernel 2.6-related problem? 4) Watch TV. Or maybe I can - I can probe the card and scan for channels but actually getting any moving pictures has proved elusive. Since I'm not familiar with the interfaces of linux TV apps, I have a hard time accessing them well enough to make sense of them and find a way to put pictures in those screens.

All in all, it's been pretty disastrous, to the point where I'm wondering if I shouldn't have got Windows instead. I expect some problems getting linux to work, but it's never been quite as bad as this, and without the mouse and the Internet connection, I can't do the things I usually do, which is try do figure out how to do things within programs, and go online to look for solutions from people who have had the same problems before. I tried to go online with the iBook, but it seems that the version of the cable modem I have doesn't support OS X. Will check out what to do about that when I can. If you read this, it means that I have cycled to the workplace with the iBook containing the draft of this message, and posted it from there. I will be looking for answers and solutions myself, but if you know what might solve the problem, please email it to reinder.dijkhuis@gmail.com or respond on the forum (because comments on the blog are still b0rked and I dare not attempt to fix them for fear of the entire server getting overrun with spam again. This fear is also the reason the forum is now registered users only and protected with CAPTCHAs), and I'll, er, write your answer down (because the studio currently has no printer), take it home, try it there, and if it doesn't work I'll just ride back in the studio to say so.

Technical stuff and updates (as they come in, which will be very slowly) below the fold:

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US Vice President Cheney attempts to pitch a ball at one of those games Americans like. Do I? Like hell I do! Cheney looks like he's at Death's door. Ariel Sharon looks healthier than Cheney right now and he's been in a coma for three months. It's hard to imagine that the man is only 65. Seeing the evil genius*) behind the Bush administration reduced to such a piece of human wreckage is almost enough to make a man feel very slightly sorry for himnaaah.

*)If by "genius" you mean "crazy and incompetent" and by "evil" you mean "evil".

You listen. Him smarder than me.

Is all.

I heard about Apple's Boot Camp yesterday and it ignited another round of "I need money, stat" in my head. Eric Burns has tried it and is raving about the performance of Windows XP and City of Villains on his MacBook Pro. Referring to the saw "It's not so much that the bear dances well, it's that it dances at all" he says that

The bear isn't just dancing. The bear is doing a freaking paso doble.

I had a long post written up in my head about how appalled I was about both Rita Verdonk's candidacy for the leadership of the "liberal" VVD and the notion that a person like Verdonk would have "crossover appeal" beyond the VVD's traditional voter base. But listening to the radio today, I've realised that Verdonk does have some redeeming qualities after all. To wit, Verdonk does not rule out a coalition with the PvdA, the Dutch Labour Party, unlike her allegedly more moderate opponent, Mark Rutte. This, you'll realise, rather changes things. While PvdA leader Wouter Bos seems to favour a coalition with the CDA if the PvdA wins the next national elections, I am sure he will appreciate having another option open to him. Bos doesn't favour a coalition of left-wing parties (neither do I, by the way), so assuming that the PvdA becomes the largest parliamentary fraction, with Verdonk leading the VVD he will have three serious options: PvdA/CDA, PvdA/CDA/VVD or (dream the impossible dream, my friends) PvdA/VVD - a return to the days of the Purple coalition except without a useless third party hanging on. Clearly, then, a VVD lead by Verdonk will be good for the PvdA and, again, given that a Left coalition just isn't going to happen, good for left-of-center political programs in general. A vote for Verdonk is a vote for Bos! So, as of today, my position is that I support the candidacy of Rita Verdonk as public figurehead and actual political leader of the VVD (I can't speak for the other people posting on this blog, three of whom are not likely to have even heard of Verdonk outside of what they read in Waffle), and I urge other left-wingers to support her as well, as loudly as you can. It's time we sent poor misunderstood Rita some loving. If you are a PvdA supporter, tell any of your VVD-voting friends that you think she is the best candidate for the job and that you look forward to joining forces with her in a coalition. It's the least we could do.