hertenberger.co.za

After many months of holding out, I’ve finally upgraded to WordPress version 2.2.2. Along the way, I’ve selected a new theme. I quite like it! Thanks to N. Design Studio for making this available.

In due course, I’ll get down to adding some widgets and rebuilding the sidebar.

And you thought only the Japanese to be tech-savvy! Ha! Here’s introducing a twist on the restaurant – ‘s Baggers in Nürnberg has done away with waitrons and put control in the hands of the patrons. Touch screens at each table are used to order gastronomical delights and tankards of beer. Not necessarily in that order, of course.

Vielleicht, u visch somessing laik Bradwörschd & Graud viss ure bier? Kein Problem! Franconian cooking at it’s best

Meals and drinks are delivered by a convoluted set of conveyor belts and such-like, doing away with the aggravation of having to wait five hours between empty beer glasses. And probably obviates the need for a tip. No more broken dishes or fingers in soups. Wunderbar!

Eish! Maybe something we could introduce locally?

With the anticipated new release of Ubuntu, codenamed Gutsy Gibbon, soon to be available, Gutsy Gibbon + 1 has already received a name: Hardy Heron. I assume Gutsy refers to some radical new features available in the October release, whereas Hardy refers to stability and long term support.

Gutsy‘s feature list includes

• the latest version of Compiz Fusion
• Gnome 2.19.5

I trust the end of the alphabet won’t see a Zealous Zebra, indicating a list of still missing features

The overall PIM functionality on the N95 is reasonable, but not as easy to use as that on a Windows Mobile device. I’m often frustrated by the inability to copy and paste appointments and to have alternative views of my calendar. I used a number of SBSH applications on my JAMin and was tempted to replace the existing, default PIM on my N95 with the new version of Papyrus.

Papyrus 1.3 apparently introduces a number of new features and enhancements, none of which I’m familiar with. The download is reasonably small and installation on the device painless.

A number of different views on the calendar are possible, including a detailed, full-screen view of the current period.

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According to Reuters, there are some issues with the new Nokia E90 Communicator.

Of all things, the microphone is not up to scratch and production errors have had to be corrected. Numerous users of the expensive mini computer have been complaining that the microphone produces or picks up extraneous background noise. Furthermore, some of the keys on the keyboard have had to be modified to prevent screen scratches. A few teething problems, I would imagine. Overall, Nokia is well known for decent products.

The use of P2P is becoming more and more widespread, and no longer confined to use by underground h4kz0r b0yz as it used to be. The Pirate Bay is still alive and well, having recently re-launched the Suprnova torrent tracker. A fascinating web application is BitLet, a browser-based BitTorrent applet. Simply copy and paste the URL of the torrent into the entry field:

If the latest Java runtime is installed on your machine, the BitLet download applet should get itself up and running:

No replacement for a decent desktop application like Deluge or µTorrent, BitLet is certainly an interesting alternative.

The new Dark Knight movie is in production, and Lego is continuing to crank out some new toys. The masked avenger takes on the Scarecrow in a helicopter and propeller airplane set.

And then, he gets medieval in his Bat-Tank, for want of a better Bat-Description.

The Apple store in Clearwater Mall already has a new model iMac on display.

Really nice! The only wire entering the unit is the power cable. There are no buttons visible on the front panel, which looks really stylish in the new aluminium look and the black Apple logo. The power button is found on the left-hand side, at the back of the screen. Starting at ZAR 12999, it’s slightly cheaper for the specification one gets than the previous model.

GRUB is a boot-loader, assisting in the selection of available operating systems on your PC. There are a couple of others, but the GRand Unified Bootloader seems to be preferred by many distributions to permit dual-booting Windows and Linux, for example. Mentioning dual-booting doesn’t do GRUB much justice: it’s a multiboot loader.

Recently, I reclaimed some space on my nx8220, effectively reformatting my existing Ubuntu installation. I had a brief idea that I’d have trouble booting back into Windows XP, but that was a very short thought indeed. Not using the notebook for a day, then the surprise when attempting a startup. GRUB bootloader error 17. And little else. I remembered my earlier space reclamation immediately, of course.

GRUB error 17 is not entirely serious: the bootloader is simply unable to reconcile its present knowledge of disk structures with the new one it is confronted with. In my case, the sudden change from a Linux filesystem to NTFS. As with all boot problems, don’t get carried away. The fix is normally quite simple. For this specific issue, or to get rid of a bootloader, you simply need to replace the modified Master Boot Record with a known-good one. In the case of XP, reboot the system with the installation disk and select the repair option. The biggest pain with that method is trying to remember the Administrator password… Get to the console, then enter fixmbr and fixboot for good measure. Remove the CD, and reboot. That should do it. If you don’t have the XP disk available, you should also be able to resolve the issue using fdisk /mbr.

That makes two years since the inception of my online presence. The overall readership is climbing steadily, with almost 200 visits on a daily basis. Nothing crazy, but that was never the idea!

The nomination for best technology blog certainly helped raise the profile of this here webspace. If I had the time, I’d really like to provide more extensive posting, but that’s just not in the bag right now. The planned move to a new hosting centre has also not yet occurred. With the amount of space I have available being eaten up quite rapidly, this is a definite next step. With the amount of space US-based hosting providers compete, there’s little doubt that local providers have to rethink their offerings. Then there’s the whole thing of re-designing and all that. Again, a difficult thing given time constraints. But I’ll get to it sometime, I am sure.

In the meantime, thanks to all who visit and especially to those who comment. The interaction is most welcome!