The Blaſphemous Bicycler

Hear Ye!
Hear Ye!We’re getting together on Thursday March 9th @ 6:45PM @ Passage to India

The official web page has all the details.

Let me know if you’re coming so I can get a big enough table.

I’ve had a few questions about running Linux (Ubuntu Dapper at the moment) on my new laptop. I’ll keep adding answers to this article. Hopefully the search engines will lead people with questions here.

lspci -n output:

0000:00:00.0 0600: 1002:5a31 (rev 01)
0000:00:01.0 0604: 1002:5a3f
0000:00:12.0 0101: 1002:4379 (rev 80)
0000:00:13.0 0c03: 1002:4374 (rev 80)
0000:00:13.1 0c03: 1002:4375 (rev 80)
0000:00:13.2 0c03: 1002:4373 (rev 80)
0000:00:14.0 0c05: 1002:4372 (rev 81)
0000:00:14.1 0101: 1002:4376 (rev 80)
0000:00:14.2 0403: 1002:437b (rev 01)
0000:00:14.3 0601: 1002:4377 (rev 80)
0000:00:14.4 0604: 1002:4371 (rev 80)
0000:01:05.0 0300: 1002:5a62
0000:02:04.0 0200: 168c:001a (rev 01)
0000:02:06.0 0607: 1524:1410 (rev 01)
0000:02:07.0 0200: 10ec:8139 (rev 10)

Video drivers:

I’ve had success with the fglrx driver, the vesa driver, and the official drivers from ATI.com. I havn’t tried to use the SVideo-out port yet.

Sound:

Sound works out of the box under Linux (both breezy and dapper), but the quality is quite poor. It’s kind of crackly under Linux, but it’s crystal clear under windows. I’ll have to look into this later.
Update: This is no longer an issue with the official release of Dapper

Wireless:

The wireless card was detected as ath0. I think I had to install the madwifi driver, but I don’t rember exactly.

Power Managment:

I have not yet figured out how to dim the screen brightness, etc. This stuff is handled by software under windows.

Kernel Wierdness:

I’m using 2.6.15-12-386. 2.6.15-16-386 is causing lockup on boot. I’m not sure why. I haven’t filed a bug, because I’m too lazy.
Update: This no longer seems to be an issue.

Brandi’s parents came to visit us today. They brought along her niece.

We went shopping, and then we ended up at the G-man for lunch. The G-man was all done up for Mardi Gras, and there was stereotypical New Orleans jazz playing.

The little one seemed to really like the music, especially the trombones.

Long Long ago, in a galaxy far, far away, I used to play the trombone. People even started calling me ‘Bone.’ Despite my protests, the name stuck. After I was assimilated by the borg collective, my designation was technically “Bonius of Borg: quaternary adjunt of unamatrix 1000101″ but most people still call me Bone.

Anyways, after our visitors left, I decided I would bust out one of my old horns and see what it sounded like. Out of consideration for the neighbors, I went down to Market St. Music to pick up a mute. I stopped playing the horn in 1992, so I wasn’t expecting much.

After about a half hour of noise making, scaring the cats, and inhaling moldy brass fumes, I discovered that I seem to have lost about an octave of range, and can no longer read sheet music. My embouchure is entirely atrophied. Nevertheless, I was able to play a B flat and an E flat scale, and even a couple of tunes that I must have memorized in High School Marching band.

Overall, I suck. Bad. But I didn’t suck as much as I expected. Maybe I’ll try to pick up the horn a bit more often.

It’s wierd to think that I have been carrying that music around in my head for the past 14 years without knowing it.

For inspiration, I went down to a local music store (which shall remain nameless) to pick up some jazz CDs. You always know you are in the right place for jazz when a roiling cloud of pot smoke rolls out of the back room whenever someone opens the door.

Now that there seems to be some progress on JoKosher, it should be possible to record with a proper linux app. Maybe I’ll get a mic and play “Row, Row, Row your boat” and post it up for public ridicule.

Important Insider Info:

Those of you who don’t know me in real life should be made aware that during the mid 1970’s, the government was conducting recombinant DNA experiments involving Yetis, Sasquatches, and telekinetic space aliens. I am the result of one such experiment. That’s why I’m 6.5 feet tall, am built like a cross between The Thing and the Pillsbury Dough Boy, and can bend spoons with my brainwaves.

Ok, on with our story…

So, my buddy calls me today to ask what I did to his wife nine months ago. It seems she just gave birth to a 10 pound, 13 oz. baby boy. As far as I can remember, I had no part in this. Just to be sure, I drove out to the Lehigh Valley Hospital, and there beheld a very, very large baby indeed.

_{Liam and his dad (secret identity mode)}

After careful consideration and invasive testing, it was determined that I was not the baby-daddy, as the baby did not seem to exhibit any of my telekinetic “Viking Super Powers.”

Babies cause boobs to do interesting things. There are trained boob professionals on staff to take care of any boobular emergencies.


_{This just cracks me up…}

Even Grandpa gets in on the lactation fun. There’s a vial of fresh boob milk!


_{Liam’s grandpa and a vial of boob milk.}

They have Wifi rigs about every 5 feet all over the place… I guess it’s so you can blog about boob milk.

_{There’s Wifi all over the hospital.}

I live in Cumberland county, about a mile from the border with York county. I think I might move across the border. York county has its head on straight. Not only do they have some nice bicycling infrastructure, their busses (which already have bike racks, unlike ours) are going to be switching to biodiesel.Biodiesel kicks ass.

Switchgrass… What the fuck is switchgrass?