One thing I forgot to mention is that about 6 months ago I made the leap to Linux from Windows XP... in particular Ubuntu Hardy Heron. It's been an interesting few months, and while I've made an effort to try and find suitable replacements for all my windows apps, I still have a few that I can't seem to ween myself off of just yet. However, I have my machine configured to dualboot, and Thunderbird is great as I share the same storage directory between windows and linux, meaning I'm always up to date with my emails regardless of which OS I'm using! Now for those periods when I don't have to do something for an extended period in windows I've setup an XP virtual machine in Virtualbox OSE. It does the job rather well, and I can just save the machine state and restart it in about 15sec whenever I need it. On the upside(or is it downside?) I can't play most of my games without rebooting into Windows... which for the most part means I don't play them at all. Some do work under Linux using Wine. I'm really thinking about doing a clean start next month when the new Ubuntu hits the streets... I definitely have a better idea of what apps and things I will use, and what ones not to bother with... Perhaps the clean install will also go along with a hardware upgrade... something I've been sitting on the fence for about the last 6 months as well... I do recommend you try it out, grab yourself a copy of the live cd, and test it right off the CD... or if you'd prefer to customize it a bit, install it inside windows just like you would any other application... I can say I'm a point and click junkie thanks to Microsoft... but Linux has come a long way, and while there are times when you have to do something in a terminal window, there's a ton of useful advice out there from people who have had the same issues or needs... http://www.ubuntu.com

Please bare with me as I upgrade the site engine... no content should be lost, but functionality may be reduced for a while! UPDATE: All should be updated... I don't think anything actually broke (except for the theme) so this look will stick for a while as I'm working on a total revamp of www.sexto9.com and a few other projects...

Well today I finally got some more MP3's online the Entrafis site... so you can head over and check them out there... still got to setup a proper site for it, but in the meantime it's available as a subsection of this site: http://www.themetal.net/entrafis/index.htm

the latest test: Unfortunately our connection now seems to reset like a yo yo... but when it is up the speeds are actually what they should be!

Well the whole upstream problem started on the 25th April... here we are on the 21st of May, and no further forward. Speeds seem to go up and down depending on the time of day (both up and down). The technician came, did his tests, checked everything and left, saying it's a problem at the central, and that he has the same problem. They had promised that he would bring us a new wireless router, which didn't happen. A technician called the other day and tried to pass off the incident as fixed since we had 6gb of download traffic, and 200mb upload. Most of that was updates to my new Ubuntu installation (that's right, I'm finally using Linux on a regular basis!), a Virtualbox XP installation and some software installed there, as well as some offline update package updates. most of the upload was a Sex to 9 archive show for Totalrock. it took me about 8h to upload what should have taken me 30min prior to all this mess. Here's a current test:

Well I have to say, this is by far the worst "service" I've ever had from an ISP. I've tried to be patient, I've given more than fair time each time they've had issues. It takes FOREVER for them to react, and even when they do it seems to be a case of the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing. The call centers are useless. They run you through a useless list of items (which I told them I had already tried several times before we called) then they claim your PC must be infected with trojans. (fair enough, ran the scans just in case, came up clean, as did antivirus and several other security sweeps) I even went as far as switching off all the computers in the house, and firing up the new Ubuntu Linux. Basically they told us they see no problem, aside from the fact we have extreme upstream problems, with micro glitches that cause failure regardless of the filesize, and bigger files, more chances to go wrong! I think it's even worse that each time we call they say they're working on the incident (if there's no problem, what are you working on?) a bit of digging around on google and you'll find several forums full of threads with people having the same issues all over Spain. All saying the same thing... Here's one of the speedtests I did: I have a more pathetic speedtest than this one, but don't have the bandwidth to upload it (yet) Keep in mind we supposedly have the "up to 20MB" which is 20Mb/1Mb (our router is actually connected at 16518 / 852 kbps)... we all know in the real world 20mb is not gonna happen, I'd be happy if we got half of what we supposedly should have... but as it is, our upstream connection would be faster on dialup! Some pages will not even load at the moment (even with 8mb speedtests) posting in forums can be painful, if possible, 9/10 times you end up with a blank page because the connection has reset rather than success. trying to upload some files to an FTP has been nearly impossible regardless of how big or small the files are, the connection is dropped repeatedly. Ironically I got 1000k/s+ when downloading the new Trackmania (Nations Forever) torrent. I can't wait to try it online. It's virtually the only thing keeping my sanity. I highly recommend it... (it is a FREE game after all!) http://www.trackmania.com I think they weren't too far off when they when with a citrus fruit for a name, but perhaps they were confused... because apparently it's more like one that begins with an L.

I've now added the Elcon Models website to my portfolio, as well as the new look Atheist website (it's gone GREEN!) I'm quite busy with some more projects, hopefully will have an update to post soon!

So I thought I'd fire up Virtual PC 2007 and try out Ubuntu Studio in a virtual environment before I go ahead and pollute a partition I have allocated for linux at some point with it. Not the easiest OS I've installed, but it seems the Virtual PC environment has a lot to do with it. I started by downloading Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 (it's free!) here: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/virtualpc/default.mspx After installing it and setting up a new virtual system as "other" since it only seems to have pre configurations for windows products (not really a surprise there) I upped the default memory to 512Mb from 128Mb (I've got 2Gb to play with on this machine...) I downloaded the Ubuntu Studio ISO (710) from http://ubuntustudio.org/ Started up the Virtual PC, "captured" the ISO image, and followed the install process. It took quite some time... but eventually it finished. Upon reboot, this brought me to a rather garbled screen, which after some searching about I discovered that Virtual PC doesn't like the color depth set to 24 bit, to function properly, it needs to be set to 16. A decent walk through is here: http://arcanecode.wordpress.com/2007/02/26/installing-ubuntu-610-on-virtual-pc-2007-step-by-step/ I basically followed the guide there with the exception of blindly working through the login screen to get a terminal window, I hit "ESC" when the grub screen appeared at boot, selected the "recovery mode" option, and got straight to a ROOT command prompt. Typed in: nano /etc/X11/xorg.conf Press CTRL+W (Where is) and when prompted key in DefaultDepth and press enter. You should now be landed on DefaultDepth. Cursor over to the 24… And hit delete twice, then type in 16. Now hit CTRL+O (WriteOut) to save the file, and press enter to take the default xorg.conf file name. Then hit CTRL+X to exit. Another issue I had was the mouse was not being captured, so once I closed the xorg.conf, I followed this: http://arcanecode.wordpress.com/2007/10/18/installing-ubuntu-710-under-virtual-pc-2007/ Again, I started from the "recovery mode" prompt (I just stayed there, and did the fix before rebooting... this involved editing the menu.lst of grub, so I typed: nano /boot/grub/menu.lst Scrolled down past a lot of default config crap, added the " -- i8042.noloop" to the kernel line, saved and exited. (same as before) Now, I rebooted, and this gets me into the GUI. However, I encountered the following error upon logging in: "Did not receive a reply. Possible causes include: the remote application did not send a reply, the message bus security policy blocked the reply, the reply timeout expired, or the network connection was broken. GNOME will still try to restart the Settings Daemon next time you log in." useful info here: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-control-center/+bug/146946 Solution I used here: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-control-center/+bug/146946/comments/28 Basically, run synaptic package manager, search for dbus, and install dbus-X11 (apply), close, logout of the GUI, and log back in... I now had the fancy Ubuntu Studio styled desktop that was in the screenshots rather than the default ubuntu/gnome desktop (menus etc) That's it... now when I reboot the virtual PC, I get my new Ubuntu Studio OS to play around with!

Well, just got back from a few days in Barcelona, (the weather was fantastic!) trying to catch up on what I missed... I've been told that one of the projects I've been working on for a while is finally just about to be launched to the public! (replacing the older outdated website) As soon as it is definitely live I'll be adding a pic to my portfolio and the link! Before the Christmas holidays phpBB 3 finally went gold! I upgraded with virtually no effort from the 2.x that the Sexto9 Forum was running, and had to find a decent theme to go with the new backend... I settled on NWO_Orange which you can find here: http://demo.phpbb3styles.net/NWO_Orange of course I had to add some of my own flavoring and graphics which you can see on the forums: http://forum.sexto9.com It seems Roople has been busy and is nearly about to launch another new template for Drupal, you can see a preview on the homepage (http://www.roopletheme.com) I've been working occasionally on a variant for the last release of Bealestreet in my dev area... Nearly got it the way I want, might even use it here! Time will tell. More soon!

Ok, so I completely changed my mind as to what I wanted for this website, now switched to a customized version of whitejazz from Roopletheme! (http://www.roopletheme.com) Seems whatever bugs there were before don't exist with this theme... the site will gradually change as I implement customizations... be sure and let me know if you find something broken ;)

Ok, I realize it seems some things aren't working 100%, I've just upgraded and got minimal functionality back... I'll look at why lightbox doesn't seem to align correctly at some other time. On the other hand, I haven't been slack with updates, just busy with piles of projects and working my other job... Hopefully things will calm down soon and I can get things sorted! in the meantime there is part of the gallery of my photos from BLOODSTOCK online over in the Sex to 9 gallery over [ here ] Also looking forward to building a new website for local band "Dead Means Nothing" who have just recorded and released their debut full length album "Seeds of Hate"... the new website will feature a lot more content/info about the band, and of course be both Spanish and English! Temporary overhaul of the original site (in spanish only!) is [ here ]

Well as usual I'm doing too many things at once... quite a few projects on the go, none finished lol... of note:

• To help make the choice between Drupal and Joomla more difficult, I discovered http://www.roopletheme.com Their themes for Drupal have way more configuration, mainly the regions like Joomla... I've been working on some variations of litejazz which once I get a little more polished perhaps I'll release as an addon pack or something... time will tell... in any case head over to the forums there and check out the support!
• phpBB 3 is closer than ever to complete, and there's a great "black" theme project over here http://www.olympus-mods.divinereapers.org I'll definitely use that as a base for the updated sexto9 forum when they release the final phpBB 3.0 (currently rc4!)

And, if all that weren't enough, I'm getting ready for Bloodstock Open Air (http://www.bloodstock.uk.com), I'll definitely take a pile of photos and we'll be over in the UK for about a week in total.

Well I've been busy! I have a new part-time job in an office, during week mornings which means I get out and practice my Spanish a bit! It's great since it allows me to have a steady income, and continue with my other hobbies & projects... Lately (or not so lately now lol) I implemented another two of Carel's themes into ICT Center related websites... worked on a conversion of the Biltrivsel site for another Swedish company, and have been playing with a new design concept for Sexto9.com I've also been playing with the new PHPBB (3.x) beta... man it looks slick, can't wait for it to go final... As well as that, I've been testing out the new Drupal (5.x) and contemplating which I'll use for the new sexto9 site... Drupal or Joomla... it's a tough choice!

I've setup a tribute site for the mighty Halifax Nova Scotia Canada band Entrafis, you can check it out here for now: visit the site Eventually I plan on setting it up properly on a subdomain (http://entrafis.themetal.net)

Well I finally decided this place needed some work so I'm trying out some new stuff... lets see how it works out!