Battlestar Galactica Season 1, at last, in Lithuania.

Saturday night, the lithuanian channel TV3 broadcasted for the first time ever in Lithuania the episode "pilote" of Battlestar Galactica season 1. It was awfully dubbed in Lithuanian but I watched it around 1 am (why so late?) with real pleasure.

2 Striking images printed in my memory:

- A full squad of vipers being anihilated without a fight by two Cylons ships: they used a disabling beam which neutralized all the onboard electronics and propulsion of the human interceptors, followed by a salvo of auto guided missiles. There was no chances of survival to the 20 or so interceptors which became a cloud of metal coffins derivating helplessly in the void. Actually, one ship escaped and landed on Caprica.

- The bombing of Caprica by the Cylons with nuclear weapons. A group of human found a small military ship landcrashed on a grassy land (the ship I am talking about above). The 2 men crew managed to fix it. At the horizon, nuclear blasts and atomic mushrooms, the group of human decides who can board the small ship and who will stay on the doomed planet.

Pure moment of science fiction. It really reminded me my saturdays afternoon, decades ago, when I was watching avidly those sci fi series: Galactica, Buck Rogers, Star Trek, Planet of apes...
I think I will really like this first season of Galactica, the episode are broadcasted the saturday, very late.
One other thing I wanted to say: "Lost": Get lost! This serie sucks so much. Even my wife gave up watching it. Why can't they move it to saturday late at night and put Galactica on tuesday evening at 10 pm instead?
Ha, and forget the awfull lithuanian dubbing, keep the original version and put subtitles if you want. That would be my two 5 cents advices.
I do hope they also bought season 2 & 3...

If you wanted to know how a Cylon looks like in this new serie, here it is:


Scary, isn't it?

Switching to Linux: Ubuntu

I nearly forgot I had a blog running. Life is going so fast.
Last week, my desktop died and the box is currently undergoing some repairs. It might take a week before I get it back. A few hours before my pc died, I decided to kick Windows XP out of my laptop, and to switch to Linux. I remember the first time I attempted to install this OS, a few years ago, it was a total disaster. I could not get anything to work, the screen resolution was screwed up and could not even access the menu. After a few hours of struggle, I gave up and came back to windows.
But with Ubuntu, a "flavor" of Linux, this old story is definitely forgotten now. Not only, everything work as it should, but everything is logical, safe, and self explained. I like the interface which is completely customizable.

For those who are still skeptical about Linux, here is how it happened.
I spent one week reading about Linux Ubuntu. They have a super website, with all the informations you want about this OS. Here it is: http://www.ubuntu.com/
Of course, you may think what is written there is only advertisement, there is a catch, it cannot be that easy to install it, to run it...that they dont ship the cd-rom of the full version free of charge...well, apparently they do, if you want to wait a few weeks and not get the most recent version. If you do not want to wait, you can also download the current version legally for free: Linux is open source.

This is what I did, I copied the 700 meg iso on a cd rom, and inserted it on my windows own laptop. I did not have to reboot. I just ran the cd. A simple interface appeared on my screen, offering me to try Ubuntu, to install Ubuntu, to check the cd integrity. I did the last operation, you do not want to have a corrupted file on the cd or it will screw up the install in the middle. It took a few minutes to check the cd, and everything was ok, no error. Then, I selected: try Ubuntu. Wait...how can you try without installing? You can! The OS can be run from the cd. You can not save the changes you make, but it allows you to play with the interface and see how it looks like. I liked it, although everything was different from Windows XP: the interface displays exotic names like Gnome or synaptic packet manager... however, everything was explained simply.
Then I decided to install and ...to kill XP. Ubuntu offered me to partitioned my hard drive: One side for windows, the other for Linux. I selected: no partition. Scary, huh ?

The installation took 20 minutes during while my laptop seemed not to oppose any resistance, i did not have to do anything. After a while, a message announced me that Ubuntu was now installed, to reboot and to remove the disk. For a few seconds during the reboot, I doubted a bit, but not so long. After the splash screen, the system asked me my name, my password, and the computer name. I entered the info in the boxes, and pressed "enter". The system announced me that I was the administrator, and displayed a plain screen, coffee latte color, at the correct resolution, with a top and a bottom menu barre. I saw immediately the Firefox logo. Kind of re assuring to see it here, something familiar. I clicked on it. Firefox booted and showed me the Ubuntu help page. I typed www.google.com, and my favorite search engine appeared on the screen. Hey wait, the laptop is connected already? I expected to struggle a bit at least to access the Internet.

Nope, no struggle, or very little. I followed a bit the instruction on the ubuntu website, to make sure that I have everything updated. It took an other 5-10 minutes to update everything via this famous synaptyc packet manager who is here to download and tidy nicely all the upgrades/updates you do. With the add/remove application, i also installed some software and even a game Battle for Westnoth. Everything work as it should, a few days later, I customized a bit my desktop to make it look good, practical, with some little gadgets.

I have not finished to customize it yet but just now my Ubuntu is exactly how I need it. I am glad to have switched to Linux, without looking back. I miss a bit photoshop, thats all. Gimp, the image editing equivalent is not as good as I want, but i expected it. I could have ran it if I had kept my Windows partition. All the other applications are up to the tasks, it even opens me new horizons as I can now do some video editing, vectorial drawing and other cool stuffs like 3D, I need to go through the long list of applications available.
Until now, the only thing that resists to me is printing. I have connected the printer to the back of my laptop, I have the recommended driver, but it does not print.
I was hoping a Linux more orientated with web design & web development. I am not sure this is the case yet. Linux has however many server potentialities but for that, go on the website to read about it.

Overall, after less than two weeks using Linux: Ubuntu, I am totally satisfied. I am thinking about doing a Linux partition on my desktop too when it will comes back from repair. Only Daiva is moaning a bit, cos everything is different and she misses her "Windows". Should I conclude by saying that Linux is more for "Ze boys"?

Here is 5 interesting links you may want to check to know more about Ubuntu.
The official website: http://www.ubuntu.com/
A presentation of Ubuntu with screenshots: http://www.ubuntu.com/desktop
The community forum: http://www.ubuntu.com/community/forums
A manual: https://help.ubuntu.com/6.10/ubuntu/desktopguide/C/index.html
Mark Shuttleworth, the founder of the Ubuntu project: http://www.markshuttleworth.com/biography/