eSys Intel Celeron PC Base Unit
Wow. I really didn’t expect Tesco to be the next ones to jump on the Ubuntu bandwagon. Its great to see someone else start selling them though. These look like great low-budget PCs for people that just want to surf the web and check their email. I’m not sure how well they’ll sell (Dell can at least target businesses and techies), but I hope this is the start of a trend and we see other companies starting to stock the odd Linux PC as well.
Ok, just some quick gut reactions to this issue before I read the Superman Prime special.
I’m routing for Superman/boy Prime in the fight against Ion.
Seriously, I knew it was coming. I even quite liked Yat in the last issue. But here he just really annoyed me. If they want to play him as an impetuous young lantern, then fine, but he’s being bigged up as a natural leader and “the bestest thing ever” at the same time. His rash decision to charge the Anti-Monitor cost GLs their lives, and he’s rewarded with even more power to mess up with.
Lets be honest, he’d be toast if he didn’t have Superman’s powers. All I saw was someone who was cocky and lucky. Not good. If that’s his character, then fine, but I’m not buying him as the new greatest GL ever. I can’t help but feel all the stuff with him and Ion is being crowbarred in at the last minute. If they really wanted to play up Sodam Yat, and build up to him becoming the new Ion, I can’t help but feel it should’ve been started a lot further back in this title.
Other than that, a good issue. I really enjoyed Kilowog vs Arkillo round 2. The several different artists was jarring however.
I’ll probably re-read it again tonight, and see how I feel about it on a second reading. It’ll be interesting as well to read it, and the previous issues of GLC back-to-back.
Well, its been mentioned in the comments, but following a look at the Elive LiveCD, I thought I’d check out the Enlightenment 0.17 Window Manager on my Ubuntu setup. I’d already installed Enlightenment 0.16 fairly quick off of the bat, but having seen the latest version on the live CD, I was really impressed by the reworking of everything.
Sadly, Enlightenment 0.17 is still in development, and the Ubuntu repositories only contain the latest stable version. Fortunately, help was at hand.
This thread on UbuntuForums contains a guide to getting and using a script which downloads and installs the latest development version from CVS. Its a really nice Window Manager, and from my brief play around, is also very stable, despite its development status. There are also different themes available should you fancy a change from the default.
All in all, definitely a window manager I’ll probably use, and well worth a look.
Now if they can only get Compiz integration 
Peter Davison is “my” Doctor, so this is great news. Its been hotly rumoured for a while, but its great to see them both standing together. And written by Stephen Moffat as well. Brilliant.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/doctorwho/news/cult/news/drwho/2007/10/21/50016.shtml
Below I mentioned that I was having issues with sound under Ubuntu’s new release, Gutsy Gibbon. After some digging, it turns out that the module I need for my soundcard (snd_hda_intel) was moved to another package, which wasn’t installed during the upgrade process.
If anyone else has the same issue, then after doing:
sudo apt-get install linux-ubuntu-modules-2.6.22-14-386
and rebooting, everything seems to be working again.
Well, it looks like an expensive comics week for me again this week. I only bought the first couple of issues of Blue Beetle, but dropped it as it wasn’t grabbing me and (more importantly at the time) my comics budget had gone through the roof post-IC. However, I’ve heard nothing but good things about the title, and its nice to see another title showing some impact of the Corps War. Its nice tie-in to last week’s issue of GL as well.
I’d have thought that the ring would want to recruit from Sector 2, but I guess in an emergency it’ll take whoever’s closest (actually, now I think about it its probably similar to Tomar Re’s ring recruiting John back in Crisis on Infinite Earths).
GLC should be good fun as always. Looks like its going to be focused on the GLs trying to defend Earth and the Kilowog/Arkillo rematch should be good fun. Looks like the Guardians hinting towards Sodam getting Ion as well, especially with Arisia’s comment that he’s already as good as any veteran (guess it helps when you’ve got the powers of Superman to back you up )
The big issue everyone’s eye will be on though, will be the Superman Prime special.
Ever since he was freed by the Sinestro Corps, and it was revealed that the Anti-Monitor was behind the whole thing, everyone’s been wondering why he’d team up with the being that destroyed his home. Hopefully this will give us some answers. Is he just that far gone? At the end of the day he’s still Clark Kent, so you would hope that alone gives hope that he can be redeemed.
The previews are up at Newsarama as always.
Its not been a great week with the tech stuff in my household. Inspired by my tales of podcasts (since getting my new Nano), my other half decided to install the Zencast software to use with her old Creative Zen Touch.
However, this in turn needed a firmware upgrade which nuked the contents of her player.
And then it wasn’t detected in the version of mediasource we had, necessitating an update of that.
Which still didn’t recognise the player, and I then realised it needed the appropriate plugin for her player to work.
So the software’s now setup, but she’s got the unenviable task of trying to re-setup over 20Gb of music on her player. Not helpped by the fact the software doesn’t seem to list what’s on the player in a way as easy as the older version. Plus it has a tendancy to lock the player up if you try and delete too much at once.
Meanwhile I noticed Ubuntu’s new release was out “Gutsy Gibbon”. And much like when I upgraded to Fiesty Fawn, my sound was automatically rendered dead. Fortunately it seems booting off of the generic kernel, as opposed to the i386 one makes all the difference. My Audacious audio player remains unable to play though.
Compiz is as neat as ever 
I love that desktop cube.
I’ve spent many a night surfing through YouTube watching the various fan music videos for things like Doctor Who. Some of them I’ve really enjoyed, and so I eventually thought that instead of just sitting here critiquing other people’s work (in my own head mostly), I should really have a go at making one myself.
So here’s my first attempt. Editing obviously isn’t my strongpoint, and there’s bits I thought came together really well, and bits that I don’t think really worked, but none-the-less I thought I’d open it up for comments here before I decide whether or not I’ll bother putting it up on YouTube.
Its about 10Mb for the Flash version. I’ll make a higher res Divx available for anyone that wants it later on.
Be gentle
(Disclaimer: all clips, music etc belong to the respective copyright holders. This is a non-profit fan video. Please don’t sue me.)
Ron Marz had mentioned online that the cover we’d seen for the Ion one-shot wasn’t going to be the final cover, but I don’t think anyone was expecting it to be done by Ed Benes. I guess that’s what happens when you’re the comics event of the summer 
I really love this new cover. Interestingly both Kyle and Sodam are wearing rings, although the glowing chest emblem on Sodam’s new suit does suggest he might still be the new Ion host? Possibly Kyle’s starheart powers are what allowed him to be ringless, and just being the host for the symbiote isn’t enough?
Possibly more likely though, while hosting the symbiote, the Guardians are tapping its power for the Alpha Lanterns.
Benes has really done a great job on Kyle’s new costume though. I love the raised texture he’s given to the chest logo. I must admit, I’ve found a lot of artists impressions of it lately had been putting me off it a bit, but it goes to show what a difference the artist can make. This is possibly my favourite version of it so far.
