A mistaken rm -r and so disappeared half of my documents folder. Luckily i had lots of junk in the early letters, so only my backups and received files (folder name also started with “b”) are gone—and probably a bunch of files i will never miss (now i recall, probably all my never-used Photoshop brushes as well, but i have the raw downloads of those). So now my first way is to the phpMyAdmin of valerauko.net and backup my database. I really wouldn’t like it if my blog contents disappeared just how they already did once three years ago.

Also, tomorrow i’m going to “disappear” in the morning, because we’re heading for Tokyo. We, meaning a bunch of us living around this region west of the Biwa lake, Gifu, Nagoya, Hikone… The EEM provides me the cheap methods for travel, though of course it won’t be nowhere as fast as going by shinkansen.

My linux is complete as well. The only thing left is to change the minor details of appearance, such as menu font size and the like, to my tastes. The defaults are a bit too big, taking up too much of the not-so-big laptop screen. I started using all four desktop workplaces as well, the first being for browsing and such, the second for instant messengers, the third always has a sudo’d terminal open fullscreen and the torrent client is running in the fourth. I really will be going under Windows only for playing and browser testing.

This afternoon my internet provider managed to scare me pretty well. I was trying various benefits of the linux environment (ssh and stuff), when suddenly i was no longer able to access valerauko.net—nor any of the other websites that share the same ip address. After asking around if it’s accessible for others and checking Google Translate (it works server-side, thus even if an address is blocked from me, i can “translate” it and see the contents–true it doesn’t really work with logins), i had to realize that the university router apparently blocked my website for no reason. (At least not one i could figure.) For a while, i didn’t bother, just looked for a web ftp, because i wanted to quickly fix a layout bug in the blog. But i forgot my ftp pass. So i installed Wine, and tried connecting with Total Commander. It didn’t work. Then i extracted my pass from the Total Commander ftp memory, and using that i managed to finally connect via a web ftp and fix the bug.

Then, i started working on how to actually access my own website. It became obvious that i have no control whatsoever over the router, and also there’s nothing else blocked (even though my torrent client is running non-stop for Stargate SG-1). I had to go with a proxy, but i only know one: the servers of my home university. Luckily they didn’t erase my access codes, so using that and help from Shamalt i was able to route my browser through there. Ironically, as soon as i managed to do that, out of nowhere i was able to access valerauko.net without using the proxy as well. Work for nothing. Well, at least i know how to do it, now. Had i been trying to do this from Windows, i couldn’t have, i’m sure of it.

Today i downloaded and installed the most recent version of Ubuntu. For those unfamiliar with the word, Ubuntu is the linux distribution often labelled as the one easiest to use. Probably it’s right, but still linux is linux. Here you have to sudo to install the mp3 codecs, in exchange you don’t have to worry about security. I still recall how long i looked for a usable firewall for linux, but then rather gave up… I hope the university router will protect me for most of the time now. Also, it only takes typing in the search box to find and install most programs i’d ever want to use–in case they weren’t preinstalled (examples of such: Mozilla’s Thunderbird mailing client, Pidgin, VLC, GIMP, Azureus (still not used to calling it Vuze), SciTE, the Apache server and PHP for it, just to name the most important).

Thus from now on i’ll be mostly hanging on linux instead of Windows. I say “most of the time”, because as you can guess, i’ll still be going under Microsoft’s oft-cursed operating system to edit images (Fireworks) and to play (Warcraft). And, to test my designs on Windows browsers as well (couldn’t find Safari for linux, though i’m not surprised, it’s the Internet Explorer of the next generation).

I’m really happy with this system for now, though there are a bunch of stuff i’ll have to tweak for my own taste–as expected. My drives, although mounted, do not show up in “Computer”, for one, no volume control icon, for two, and i’ll write a quick script with which i’ll be able to ping last.fm about my listening to an internet radio. They don’t support that by default, so i’ll be doing it manually. It’ll be interesting to do shell scripting again, after more than a year…

Also, lynxes and big cats of their kind are simply cool. And this one’s lucid too.

Tomorrow the new Ubuntu LTS will be released. It’s at L already, this release is called, or will be called, or whatever, Lucid Lynx. (I still remember how “funny” it was when i asked my english teacher at the exam preparation class what the “dapper” of Dapper Drake means… no idea why, though.) I can’t wait to try it out. My laptop is quite old, and it’s really funny how everyone’s surprised that i’m still using XP. At first i didn’t get what’s the problem with it, then i realised that XP was released a decade ago… True, but. In my eyes Vista doesn’t count as an operating system, and i just don’t like the way 7 looks, so i had no temptation to try it out. Also, i tweaked my XP quite well. But truth is, it’s getting slow. Although with Ubuntu i’m confident my machine will still be sufficiently fast, i can foresee the purchase of a new laptop this year. The only problem is i either have to buy it online or when i go home, because i have no intentions to suffer with a japanese language os. Nor their keyboard layout (it’s a nightmare). I will get a laptop, neither a desktop or a netbook, because laptops have what i need: mobility, decent screen size and basic gaming capabilities (i will play StarCraft 2 for sure, if nothing else until WarCraft 4).