Tuesday, July 27, 2010

One upgrade too many

My life naturally consists of lots of upgrading and testing software on computers. Not least my own where I often want to test something out.

Well, you can go too far... a couple of weeks ago I decided to test a "release candidate" of the linux desktop environment KDE, version 4.5 RC2 to be more specfic.

One thing that I suspect caused headaches later was that the upgrade was disrupted at least 2 times due to our sometimes ver slow internet.

When all was supposedly done I rebooted and stared at a black screen. No graphics, only terminal commandline login. Oooops. Big time.

I can not even remember how I finally managed to get back to a working graphical interface but I found x number of half or nonworking applications. Had to give up and reinstall an older version. A working one! Luckily I have since looong made sure that all user data is on its own partition and will normally not be messed up by experiments like this.

This once more proves the old truth: do not mess with your working/production computer. Test new stuff on another one - but how many have an extra computer lying around? Not me, at least not one that is not being used.

Lesson learnt: do wait until final release...

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Monday, July 05, 2010

Decisively wrong...

Football, soccer, call it what you want. Unless you live on another planet you can not have missed that the World Cup is taking place "nextdoors" to Zimbabwe.

I have in several comments stated that this is the cup of SouthAmerica, that Brasil or Argenting was going to win. Well, boy was I wrong.... Holland did what I did not believe them capable of and won against a Brazil that used tactics I never thought I would see a team from that country use. Honestly, did coach Dunga give them wrestling lessons in advance? Elbows were used as much as the feet.

Then Germany simply walked all over Argentina and finally Spain defeated Paraguay (that I think deserved to win but that is another story). Ghana should have won over Uruguay and then I would have looked really stupid. But that is football, all predictions can go belly up.

Others that have been wrong are the refs and Fifa. How on Earth in 2010 can you refuse to use technology to avoid human error?? We have seen handgoals, clear goals disallowed, unnecessary penalties and unjustified sendoffs. I understand how difficult it must be but why the heck not allow the refs the same technology the audience has access to?

Well, Sepp Blatter will eventually go even if he seems as unwilling as a certain president in a certain southern African country.

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