Ubuntu on pIII

If any of you keep up to tabs on my twitter, almost a week ago I installed Ubuntu 9.04 (jaunty jackalope) on an old pIII donated to me by my father in law. It's got under 400mb of memory, a painfully slow proccessor, and I'm sure would crumble under the pressure of any windows distro.

With ubuntu though, it's practically a speed demon. I mean I've noticed a few slow-downs with Multi-tabbed browsing & multi-desktop stuff running at the same time, but this computer was about to be taking up a landfill.

I've been wanting to have another dev environment for some time now, and my collection of "broken" computers are far too broken to run period let alone install an OS. They've got BIOS problems, drives missing/broken, so I'm quite happy to have this new member of my network.

I've never really used a 'nix distro actually installed on a machine. I've played with pureDyne, Damn Small Linux, and Knoppix Live CD distro's and they're all great in their own way. The problem I've had with Live CDs is that they're hogging my CD drive, you can't install or change anything, and on some of them it's really confusing to mount an USB key, or even the hard drive.

The installation proccess with ubuntu was really easy (expecially on a machine I planned on making ubuntu-only.) I popped in the disk, filled out some forms, and let it chug away.

Mounting drives is now as easy as plugging them in.

My only issue now is that my internet connection is shite and upgrading, or installing anything is daunting (because if it fails, you have to start again.) But perserverence is key, and I'm sure someday I'll get a good connection.

I've been trying to install Pd-extended (the one ubuntu serves through apt-get is vanilla) But it's got 8 files that need to be upgraded & sure enough my connection craps out half-way through. so hopefully soon I'll have some fun playing with the linux-only capabilities in pureData.

Until then, I'll just enjoy the pre-installed games (they're crazy-fun) and keep trying.

update:

Ok. i figured out how to get a list of packages Pd needs installed, and now I'm only missing one.

It was pretty easy to find the list, just click the details button... the smaller files were easily downloaded & installed, the only one giving me headaches now is libflite1, it's like 14.1mb, and keeps failing on me. I downloaded it & some other attachments on a flash drive so hopefully this will get me on my way to actually installing Pd-extended.

Ableton Live Foot Controller & Electro-Supplies

Ever since I saw a post about using a keyboard with a bunch of the keys ripped off to control Ableton Live (see $10 Ableton Controller) I wanted to make one of them, but put it in a huge box, and use stomp-switches, unfortunately digikey & mouser have insane prices on them (like $5 - $15 each) Today over at CDM they posted about the footswitch pictured here, and It's a lovely beast. 21 keys (one controls the capslock) for a combo of 40 unique functions, woah.

To see more about the controller visit : http://forum.ableton.com/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=112242&start=0&sid=1f8e10848bc19d4eca657e02cd363dff

Anywho, as I was flipping through that post somebody meantioned the cost of those switches, and fortunately for us, provided a source to get them at a reasonable price, about a buck each... nice ... You can get directly to the switch in question here: http://www.rapidonline.com/Electronic-Components/Switches/Push-Button-Switches/Foot-switches/79208

I flipped through a couple pages ... and this shop is excellent, I'm thinking they'll get my business for my next major geek-out project.

DS HomeBrew Review:

I've had the R4DS for about a month now, and I love it. I haven't had an official cart in my gameboy for weeks... let's review what I've downloaded, where to find it, and what I think about it...

1. StillAliveDS: http://stillaliveds.free.fr/
   PORTAL clone. fun as hell, I've been obsessed... Might get a console just to play the real thing
2. LAMEBOY: http://lameboy.nutki.com/
   GameBoy emulator. Sure I have a real gameboy, but I can play those games on the DS instead of risking damaging my precious carts
3. ProteinDS: http://gorgull.googlepages.com/home2
   Crazy music app, 2 loops (that you can scratch) a sampler, and a controller (I think it's midi) I'm still fumbling my way around the details but it's great.
4. Population Tire / Secret Collect: http://www.mrphlip.com/ds/
   Videlectrix can make a good game, I'm glad somebody ported these, I'm just waiting for a version of 20 ex-dee 6
5. PocketPhysics: http://www.freewebs.com/pocketphysics/
   Draw something and then run it through your drawn world ... more fun than a barrel of monkeys, I keep making crazy domino runs with balls & pendulums and stuff.
6. Colors: http://www.collectingsmiles.com/colors/ds.htm
   Man, I love to doodle. If this thing had an eraser I'd be a lot happier, but the replay function replays every line of you making your drawing, sweet.
7. DS2Key: http://www.1emulation.com/forums/index.php?showforum=88
   A DS wardriver/gamepad emulator... I found 10 wifi networks on my street, some of them are completely open !!
   
8. ChorDS: http://nobkilla.free.fr/spip.php?article1&lang=en
   A Tab-viewer for DS soon to have a chord dictionary & a section called "Beginners"

I have some other things on there but none really worth mentioning, and a few things I have yet to even touch...