Author Archives: Stephen

Microphone on compaq 2133

  By Stephen | July 9, 2008 - 1:43 pm | Compaq 2133, Computing
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Well I know I said I would update this yesterday after I install the latest alsa release candidate but I become really busy trying to fix an wireless connection between a linksys wga54g and a netgear WGX102. I am yet to fully fix the issues regarding the connectivity issues but that should be fixed tonight. I have the microphones working but not without issues. The main issue I had was that I did not have the patch utility install so I grab that with apt-get and then all seemed well. I would like to say cheers to ed for his help in my time of need. The microphones are working but require a bit of tweaking once this is done I shall post my settings to share the information.

caio for now

I should soon be wired for sound

  By Stephen | July 7, 2008 - 12:00 pm | Compaq 2133, Computing
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On my wonderful HP Compaq 2133 laptop the issue still lies where the sound card is not recognised properly which mean on microphone and a nasty bug with the inputting of a set of headphones in to it’s jack would not result in the speakers muting. Now it wasn’t really an issue for me as such as I didn’t really use the headphone socket or have needed to use the microphones on it. Now thanks to the developers at the alsa-project and the people using ubuntu and contributing to the forum this issue seems to have now been fixed well at least until the next kernel update. To get this sound card working the way it should go the alsa project download page http://www.alsa-project.org/main/index.php/Download, download the alsa-driver-1.0.17rc3 and follow the instructions on this ubuntu support forum topic http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=749693&page=14. Now although I haven’t tested this to see it work I am very confident as I have done all of the other instructions and got the wireless card working the graphics working better than just using the standard system. I shall be trying the instruction out tonight and shall let you know how it goes.
Also since I last posted I manage to kill an ipod nano 3rd generation by performing a simple firmware update. The ipod was just showing the apple logo. Now this happened at 22:30 one night and whilst trying to fix it the time got later and later until around 00:30 I decided to give up for the night. I then proceeded to fix it the next day but following the instructions from this article I found the night before and didn’t read properly http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1399?viewlocale=en_US. Now if I had bothered to read this properly that night I would have had it fixed within 20 minutes instead of wasting at least 2 hours. I always forget to read all the instructions before attempting to repair anything.

The draft booster deck that was made

  By Stephen | June 22, 2008 - 10:09 pm | Magic: The Gathering
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So here is the deck that I made at the booster draft.

Land

7 Plains
7 Forests
1 Vivid Grove

Enchantments – Aura

2 Fertile Ground
2 Soaring Hope

Enchantments

1 Sylvan Echoes
1 Entangling Trap

Instant

1 Spring Cleaning
1 Heal the Scars

Creatures

1 Veteran of the Depths
1 Lys Alana Huntmaster
1 Elvish Harbinger
1 Elvish Handservant
2 Cloudcrown Oak
1 Battlewand Oak
1 Bog-Strider Ash
1 Oakgnarl Warrior
1 Nath’s Elite
2 Gilt-Leaf Seer
3 Elvish Eulogist
1 Elvish Branchbender
1 Woodland Changeling

Sorcery

1 Primal Command
1 Woodland Guidance

Artifacts

1 Springleaf Drum

and in the sideboard there is

1 Glimmerdust Nap (Enchantment – Aura)
2 Herbal Poultice (Artifact)
1 Lace with Moonglove (Instant)
1 Gilt-Leaf Ambush (Tribal Instant – Elf)
1 Hunt Down (Sorcery)
1 Rootgrapple (Tribal Instant – Treefolk)
1 Amoeboid Changeling (Creature – Shapeshifter)
1 Nightshade Stinger (Creature – Faerie Rogue)
1 Hoarder’s Gred (Sorcery)
1 Facevaulter (Creature – Goblin Warrior)
1 Prowess of the Fair (Tribal Enchantment – Elf)
1 Exiled Boggart (Creature – Goblin Rogue)
1 Goggart Loggers (Creature – Goblin Rogue)
1 Quill-Slinger Boggart (Creature – Goblin Warrior)
1 (Blind-Spot Giant (Creature – Giant Warrior)

Now from the sideboard there wasn’t many cards that were green, white or colourless so the sideboard wasn’t much use although towards the end of the night I decided to move some of the instants,  sorcery’s and artifacts for some of the creatures that ended up in the deck list now. The plan is to see if I can make 60 card decks which are legal in most formats in the colours other than Black and I shall be playing them against the some decks that are to work in tournaments this Sunday in Bristol.

I shall let you know how my decks perform against these next week.

A Magic booster draft

  By Stephen | June 18, 2008 - 12:48 pm | Magic: The Gathering
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Well Saturday night I got invited to a booster draft with my brother and his mates. The boosters were from the set Lorwyn and with 3 booster packs each we went about making our decks. We were allow a minimum of 4 cards including land in our deck so I went ahead a started searching for my first card to take out before I pass the booster pack on to the next person (first and third booster pack to your left second to your right) and for so reason which escapes me I decided not to play the good old black deck like I always do, for some reason the act of mindless and complete destruction wasn’t in me that night I want a more structure attack with some cards making other cards a lot bigger (yes I do know that in the black cards there are lots of cards that well make other cards bigger but I never seem to manage it. So with this reasoning in my head I choose to go white and green deck(mainly green). Needless to say I didn’t go to well losing all my games yet again but I am starting to get a lot better and I think I should soon start winning games. I shall post the deck that was created up tonight so you can all see what you think.

Not much happening

  By Stephen | June 12, 2008 - 4:10 pm | General, Ice Skating, Magic: The Gathering, Wii
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Well over the pass couple of weeks I have bee doing very little it regards to playing the wii, engaging in some magic the gathering and anything else to be honest and with that in mind I am going to start doing more again. even though I am constantly feeling tired. As the weather is changing for the better (Yes I do have my fingers firmly crossed) I am going to start running around Kintbury as well as using the wii fit package. This in the short term will make me even more tired but in the long run I feel I should be able to increase the stamina which should allow me to cope better with the day. might even post my route and the times I manage to do the route in. I haven’t been ice skating as much as I usually do as I have managed to find excuses not to go which will change next weekend as this Sunday is fathers day and Clare, myself and Ryan are going out for a meal. I am planning on creating the list of the Magic: the gathering shadowmoor cards tonight as well as continue in writing a simple website which is a little CRM and a little equipment organiser.

Well that is for today I shall write some more on here either tomorrow or the beginning of next week.

A good week

  By Stephen | May 22, 2008 - 2:22 pm | Compaq 2133, Magic: The Gathering
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Apart from getting my Compaq 2133 and getting rid of SLED 10 sp1 for ubuntu I also received my half a booster box of shadowmoor cards. My Plan is to over the next week create a page on here which has a list of all the shadowmoor card I currently own then with the new releases of sets it will be amended to have them on and maybe I will put the old cards I currently own on there as well but that could be a job and a half.

Updates with the Compaq 2133

Since I have put ubuntu 8.04 on there it has become a dream machine the things I still have to do on it to get it prefect are:

  1. Move from forcevisa drivers to openchrome
  2. Once the microphone drivers have been sorted out install them
  3. Make it so I can use my W960i to connect my laptop to the Internet

After that I shall have a kick arse machine which is fix for what I want it to do.

I would like to thank the ubuntu community for the forum in my last post as it has helped make this machine usable.

More on the HP Compaq 2133

  By Stephen | May 16, 2008 - 2:13 pm | Compaq 2133, Computing
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Well I have had this sub notebook for almost a week now and I must say that the device is great but shame about the OS variant choice. I have spent sometime today installing a different variant. This laptop comes with SUSe preinstalled and for a play it was great but when I wanted to install pidgin so I could chat with my friends on a more up-to-date client. well no rpms on the web or in the SUSe YaST repositories so I downloaded the source. It has been many years since I have had to download source and compile the program I want to use and boy was it painful. No gcc installed and then when I find cpp that would create executables files so off to find gcc, I managed that on the SUSe repositories for SLED 10 SP1 but as I installed that is removed x-org server. So that how my laptop stayed for ast night while a download and burnt the latest .iso of ubuntu 8.04. I connected a USB CDROM and inserted the CD and bang I now have a linux laptop again with working bluetooth and pidgin installed by default unlike the SUSe installation. So now I can see what the laptop can really do. If anyone else wants to install ubuntu on this model of laptop I suggest read this forum topic as it has lots of helpful pointers http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=749693&page=1

HP Compaq 2133

  By Stephen | May 13, 2008 - 9:19 am | Computing
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When I saw this sub notebook on The Register I throught WOW I must get one so I have ask for money for my Birthday which I know isn’t until the 25th of this month and managed to order one. The unit arrived yesterday and it is tiny but solidly made. so far I have found it great the screen is awesome at 8.9 inches and has a glossy finish. So far I have had issues with the bluetooth not connecting to my Sony Ericsson W960i but I shall get that resolved over the next couple of evening. I got the SUSe Linux version cause frankly if you sat Windows Vista on the machine it would be thrown out of a window due to frustration of having to wait for the bloody thing to start. I shall write a small note on how I got the bluetooth issue sorted.

The bank holiday weekend

  By Stephen | May 6, 2008 - 12:35 pm | General, Wii
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It was the first bank holiday weekend in May which is nice as it means it is getting closer to my Birthday, this year I will be turning to the not so grand old age of 26. Doesn’t really mean anything bar I am getting
older but definitely not wiser. I have been playing the Wii Fit game with the Wii balance board and as I thought I had natural balance. I was slightly wrong, I lean on my heals and slightly on my left foot. I am starting to fit this but it is a slow task as you have to be constantly aware of how you are standing, but I must say the whole idea of keeping fit on this board is great.

Also this bank holiday weekend myself and Clare decided to go into Newbury and watch the crafty craft event which is held by the Newbury Round Table. The ground was it usual muddy self but the sun was shining and the crowds were out so myself and Clare had a quick look round grabbed some lunch and headed to the pub :-) to meet up with Karen and Paul. At the end of yesterday we picked Ryan up from school having just spent 5 days in Germany.

More wii-ing

  By Stephen | April 25, 2008 - 2:28 pm | Wii
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Well I know and as my dad would and has said I am completely sad for going out at 23:30 to pick up a Wii Fit game with the balance board when it was first released at 00:00 on the 25th of April.

Now I have only played on the device for 30 minutes but from what I have done on it I must say it has alot of proteintal. Admittedily as 00:30- 01:00 my balance and general reaction time isn’t great I did quite well on some of the yoga and physical exercise tasks. The aim of wii fit is to act as an additional aid to keep you fit. It asks for your height and calculates your wieght and your BMI. so far my aim is to get my BMI down to 23.44 from 23.88 so I not to far to go but wii fit suggests my BMI being around the 22 mark.

More on Wii Fit and the balance board over the weekend when I have had a chance to play with it a little more