Another laptop. Acer 610TXVi

"Chris. Do you want another laptop" I hear this floating over the cubes. "Yes, I do" That was a no brainer. I had already been listing a little carefully as I heard a discussion of clearing out some stuff that we couldn't use anymore.

So now I get to add a smaller more portable laptop to the fleet. It will be better for taking the trips we have planned for the summer. It is missing the CapsLock,Shift, some other key, and Z. It still has the yellow rubber stubs that the keys were on and you can press them and they work.

It is an Acer travelmate 610TXVi. I have already removed WinXP and have Ubuntu installed and updating :o)

NEC 2500a DVD Burner talk...

In 2001 I bought a DVD/CD burner for the computer. It is a NEC 2500a. At the time if was one of the newer models. It was right before the prices on the burners started to drop. It was $90 at the time. You can get new burners for $30 now. Anyway, it burned DVDs that were rated up to 8x. That was the normal speed for the time. I have burned DVDs for years with out looking at the speed of the DVDs. The last time I went to burn DVDs i kept getting a message that the disc was illegal... Hmm? It took me a while to figure out that I had bought 16x DVDs and that they were now the norm and 8x were harder to find. I new that people find ways to tweak the firmware inside the burners and was able to track down the answer that saved me the money in buying a new DVD Burner. I just wanted to put it here just in case somebody else was looking for the answer.

How to make your NEC 2500a burn 16x DVDs and Dual Layer DVDs.

The basic idea is that you tell the 2500a that it is a 2510a (the 2xxx series were basically the same drive) and then flash the ROM to the tweaked Firmware.

1. Liggy's NEC drive converter :: This will change the drive from 2500a to 2510a
2. Dee's ND2510 modified firmware 2A5C :: This will flash the firmware to burn 16x discs

Reboot and burn baby burn...

Guilty of reading an email sent to me...

I received an email with UPS tracking number info in it. It had my email address but the info was ment for someone else. The funny thing was at the very end of the email in very small text was this message... I guess I am a criminal.

"This communication contains proprietary information and may be confidential. If you are not the intended recipient, the reading, copying, disclosure or other use of the contents of this e-mail is strictly prohibited and you are instructed to please delete this e-mail immediately."

Desktop goodness...

It took a while but I was finally able to get my desktop the way I like it. With a Linux OS you can really change anything you want.

I don't like to have a static desktop. I want to be able to have the laptop on and see things moving when I am not using it. In the screen shot below, starting at the top left, you can see a video playing on a 'screenlet' (it lets you put little gadgets and widgets on the desktop). This is a mini web browser screenlet and I have a video from Google Video playing. I then took the opacity down so that you can see the desktop through the video. So you can have it playing and it looks like it is part of the desktop rather than something sitting on top... its a cool effect. i like to just set it to play random things and then make it almost invisible, sort of like you don't really notice it to much unless you start at it.

On the right I have a weather screenlet, a picture frame that cycles through pictures in a folder, System monitors for things like Wifi, heat, battery and other things. At the bottom is an awesome looking dock that you can put shortcuts to applications or folders. it also has a Gmail icon that lets me know when I have mail and a clock/calender that is tied into my Google calender. Under the video you can see my IM buddy list.

With everything set to be opaque, it just look cool and things are always moving...