I recently decided to reinstall my operating systems, both XP and the recently-released Ubuntu 9.04 codenamed Jaunty Jackalope. The main reason for doing this was the release of Jaunty and that XP was getting sluggish because of all the bloat of the updates I was installing unknowingly.

At first, I tried installing Vista lite, the one that floated around the torrents and is a stripped-down version of Vista Ultimate that fits in a single CD. It was fast, but after a few updates it went sluggish and started warning me that my copy might be a pirated one. Heh.

I then proceeded to install the 64-bit version of Jaunty, letting Vista lite sit in there for a while. I ran into an issue where grub, a Linux boot manager/loader, wasn’t able to find the Jaunty installation, so I decided to reinstall it and made sure I installed grub in the hard-drive where Jaunty is also installed. It worked, and after a few minutes of tweaking Jaunty, I decided to check out my Vista lite install. Grub started spewing error messages one after another basically telling me that it can’t load my Vista lite installation. After doing some fixes that I know of, it left me frustrated.

This issue wouldn’t have happened if my IDE drive had a jumper that placed it in Master mode. I don’t know how it happened, but I lost that jumper and was running my operating systems while the IDE drive was in Slave mode. I decided to make a jumper of my own so I can set my hard drive to Master. It worked. I then decided to reformat and reinstall my legal copy of XP as I realized that Vista lite was going to cause me trouble in the long run.

After loading all the drivers for my desktop, and making sure I installed all the software I needed, I then proceeded to install Jaunty Jackalope, but this time, I decided to use the 32-bit version, because Adobe AIR apps, and more particularly, Adobe AIR, still has issues running 32-bit libraries installed in a 64-bit environment. I simply just can’t let go of my AIR apps. Maybe in a few months, Adobe AIR gets updated and have 64-bit libraries for 64-bit Ubuntu releases. Here’s me hoping Adobe does something about it.

For now, all is quite well, and so far, Jaunty is living up to the hype of being a more performance-oriented release of the much loved Ubuntu distro. Hats off to Canonical for another great release.

It has become quite a common routine for people to open a whole slew of social network sites upon opening a browser in one’s computer. My browser, Firefox of course, opens up about a half dozen sites when I start my online routine. There usually is no problem in doing this, but the problem lies in updating all of them with as little time in between when doing so. Thankfully, there are a number of web apps or services that help me update all of my social networks in one go. Also, the social networks themselves are adding features that let you update other social networks when posting updates. When left unchecked, it can cause feedback, much like a microphone that’s too close to a speaker. It gets loud. Too loud.

Twitter, by itself, does not post updates to other social networks, like Facebook, MySpace, Plurk, etc. Facebook, by itself, also does the same thing. The difference between the two is that Facebook imports “stories” from other sites, such as blog feeds, Google Reader, StumbleUpon, etc, and shows it in the home page. Facebook is noisy as it is, with updates from friends that answered quizzes, joined groups, became fans, etc. Twitter is noisy when the people you follow update their statuses by the minute, which is sometimes the case. I don’t mind the noise. Not at all.

Other social networks choose to do something different. Take, for example, Friendfeed. Although it functions like Twitter BUT with real-time updates, it also aggregates friends’ feeds from other social networks. So if a friend of mine is a Friendfeed user and I follow them on Friendfeed, I get their status updates to Friendfeed and any social network they have decided to add to their feed, like Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, etc. Friendfeed is great as it tries to be the one-stop-shop to check friends’ updates and start-slash-continue discussions by posting comments. The problem with Friendfeed is that it can’t post an update to other social networks, other than Twitter, at the same time.

Ping.fm solves this dilemma by providing a service that updates a number of social networks. So in one posting, I can update my status in all the social networks I belong to. It was great, at first. However, whenever I check my Friendfeed, it displays my Ping.fm-based update several times because the same message was posted to a number of social networks I added. It may not be a problem, nor would anyone care, but it was me who was annoyed by multiple instances of the same message. I decided to remove the social networks from Friendfeed that I update simultaneously through Ping.fm. So before, when I update my status, my Friendfeed displays the same message that I posted in Twitter, Facebook, and Plurk. Now, it just displays the update I posted to Friendfeed. This way, I don’t annoy my followers with a number of mirrored posts. The only difference in those mirrored posts is where it was posted.

There are desktop clients, whether AIR-based or otherwise, that let users post messages simultaneously to multiple social networks. Twhirl, an AIR-based desktop application, posts primarily to Twitter, but has extended its coverage by using Ping.fm’s service, posting tweets to other social networks. However, I still use Ping.fm’s service to update my social networks instead of Twhirl, mainly because I can’t use Twhirl on other computers or on my phone.

And then, there’s Plurk. Although the concept is similar to Twitter, the execution is very different. And recently, they have decided to add a feature where a plurk is also posted on Twitter and Facebook, among others. Since I was using Ping.fm already, I saw no reason to use this feature. It only made sense that I stick to one service, or method of updating my status, to prevent confusion and me annoying the hell out of everybody else.

If only Friendfeed’s aggregation features and Ping.fm’s updating service merge into one, with a desktop client to boot, it would make updating and keeping tabs on multiple social networks a whole lot easier. That would, in my very humble opinion, take the social network scene to a whole new level.

A week passed by with me not exerting any obvious effort to go online and check my social network sites and updates. Well, it was almost no effort as I checked in once, just once, using my mobile phone but not bothering to post any status updates. Now that I’m back online and on an almost regular update schedule as I’m still trying to shake off the cobwebs of a week-long and very unproductive vacation that hampers any ability to get back into the groove of a working corporate drone, some interesting, non-work related stuff happened while I was away.

TV Shows
As I am very delighted, and grateful, that Fringe is back with its 15th episode and that they will continue its first season with 22 episodes in its roster, Kings and Dollhouse suffered their respective setbacks as the networks decided to give them the axe. But of course, you already knew that. The reason for the axing was the low ratings it received. Considering the shows’ timeslots, I’m not surprised. Although I wish Kings gets picked up by HBO. I’m a little bit indifferent with Dollhouse. Good for them if the axe gets stayed, but I really couldn’t care less if it doesn’t as the show doesn’t really present any oomph story-wise. At least, for me. Whedon might have something up his sleeve, but all anyone can do is wait.

Comic Books
Batman: Battle for the Cowl issue 2 of 3 is out, so is Green Lantern #39, with the former having great art and story and the latter raising a lot of questions and has become very intriguing.

Intrigue goes up a notch as to who will eventually replace Bruce Wayne as Batman, and I would very much like the idea of Dick Grayson taking up the mantle, however reluctant he may be. In my opinion, he really has no choice but to become Batman, even though he failed in his first outing and let Azrael become Bats. And Tim is just too young and too inexperienced to replace Bruce Wayne.

As for Hal Jordan wielding two power rings of different colors, it really is intriguing to see how it plays out as the writers have added politics into the mix, with the Guardians becoming control freaks more than they were already. I became quite confused, though, on how Agent Orange functions and its corps. It’s not quite clear, but it will be soon enough, just in time for Blackest Night #1.

I’m still eagerly awaiting the conclusion to Neil Gaiman’s Whatever Happened to The Caped Crusader story arc. It will definitely give closure to the question on everyone’s mind, or at least mine. Would it bring Bruce Wayne back to DC continuity, only one can speculate. Okay, I can only speculate. I know other fans have more information about this, but I wouldn’t want to spoil the intrigue that’s been brewing since Final Crisis #6 and the last page of #7.

Miscellany
A friend lost a relative, to whom my condolences go to. Another friend finally took a path that hopefully leads to a better tomorrow. All I can do for him is hope. All he needs to do is get over it and focus and what he thinks is important. Both friends can be assured that this observer is here if ever they need someone to listen.

Back to Reality
It has been a week that I was away from work, and never, not even once, did I think about it. Now that I’m back at work, it’s been quite a challenge for me to get back into the groove I was in before my week-long sabbatical, but I’m slowly, reluctantly, getting there.

Hope everyone had a great Easter weekend, or whatever atheists call it. Oh right, they call it a weekend.

Just in case you were wondering when it all began and how long the unfilmable film was in development hell, the below was last modified June of 2005.

Who watches the Watchmen?

It was all a joke. The Comedian was right all along. April Fools.