I've been looking at computers again.

This is a bad idea, as I find all kinds of stuff that's awesome.

So yeah.

Lenovo is having a sale on their Thinkpads right now, and I've seen Thinkpads and I'm enamoured with them right now.  They look functional and simple and can hide a bunch of power inside.  The only bad thing?  I have to buy it with a bloody Windows license.

System 76 has a great desktop machine that I'm looking at, but their smallest laptop is 14" and that's a little big for a secondary couch-surfing system.  I just want something about 12" that will run Ubuntu and is (preferably) under $600.  It has to be portable and it has to fit in a bag and be easy to carry around to coffee shops and easy to take home for a weekend.  Also, battery life.  Please be more than 4 hours on a charge...

I think I've got a pipe dream here.  ZaReason has an awesome laptop that's 13" and has a lot of the things I want, but it's closer to $800.

I don't know exactly what to do, but I'll figure something out.  I'm not planning on pulling the trigger on any of these systems til well after the new year... closer to March maybe.  

You might be asking what I'm looking for in a desktop...  Well, here we go:

• At least an i5 processor.
• 6-8 gb of RAM.
• 500+ gb hard drive.
• nVidia card... 1 gb thing that's on S76.  I don't know what it's called.
• Decent cooling.
• Low power usage.

Same with a laptop:

• Battery life; at least 4-8 hours worth.
• 12" screen is optimal; I'll go to 13" or 11" if I have to.
• Decent keyboard.
• 2-4 gb of RAM.
• 100+ GB hard drive.
• i3 processor (or equilivent).
• 3 USB ports.

Both of the machines MUST be able to run Ubuntu with MINIMUM of fuss.  If I have to fight with it, I don't want any part of dealing with it.  The desktop must run Windows 7 as a secondary OS with minimum of fuss.

I just want my stuff to work without a problem.  An OS shouldn't get in my way of what I want to do, and both Ubuntu and Windows 7 are at those points.

Maybe I'm picky.  Who knows.

I subscribe to the IndieGameMagazine RSS feed, and the other day, an offer came through for a free copy of Wytches Brew.  It looked pretty cool, so I gave it a download.

I was on Ubuntu at the time and it’s a Windows game.  I saved it to my Windows partition, and just got around to installing it.  Imagine my surprise when the game gave me an error about a .dll being missing!  The .dll in question was MSVCR71.dll.  It’s related to the fact that I’m on Windows 7 64-bit and the company doesn’t test on my configuration. 

They’re small, and that’s cool, especially since I got an email back from them a half hour after I sent my email with the issue.  They said that they were really sorry that the game didn’t work.  They suggested I put the .dll I downloaded into the game folder (C:/Program Files (x86)/Notsoft/WytchesBrew) and see if that worked.  It did!

I did a google search and found the .dll here at dll-files.com.  There are plenty of warnings associated with this, but the good news is that you don’t need to go and mess with your C:/Windows folder.

Grab the .dll, extract it, and then copy it over to your game folder.  Start the game, and the error is gone!

Amazing.  I’m really glad it worked.

I’m planning on doing a review of this game when I’ve had a chance to play it, but I wanted to get this little hack out there for others who are on Windows 7.

Enjoy it!

Trillian has a new beta version that’s come out and I’m using it.

Trillian 5

Trillian 5 is slick, fast, and looks like it belongs in Windows 7.

One of the best things is that you can dock it to either side of your desktop; since I have two screens, I can dock it along the left side of the second monitor with tweetdeck running next to it.

Trillian has improved significantly since version 2.0, when I was using it regularly in school.  The speed has improved, the look has improved (I’m a fan of the way it looks like it belongs in Windows), and just everything about it is better in some way.

It’s almost as good as Pidgin.  The only way it’d be better would be if it was open-source.  Also, I sprung for the Pro version; since I’ve paid for the Pro version before, upgrades are only $10.  Granted, the price has gone down from $25, which is what I paid originally, and I thought it was a decent deal because I used it every day.

I don’t use it every day any more, but I do use it when I’m in Windows (twice a week or so).

Get the free version and try it out.  There aren’t as many plugins for the free version, but all the basics are there (AIM, ICQ, IRC, Yahoo, jabber).

I ordered a new battery for my Starling netbook. I'm happy to report that it's installed correctly and it's charged perfectly. This is awesome, as I'm going to Battle Creek tomorrow and I can have some sweet mobile computing action! Whoohoo!

I ordered a new hard drive from Newegg. This hard drive is to replace my 320 gb drive that died as written up here. I'm planning on partitioning it as thus: 100 gb for Win7, 50 gb for /, 4-8 gb for swap, and the rest for /home.

That'll probably take a whole day to get set... Install drive, install OSes, grab files, install software. Ugh. This is why I hate having to redo my systems; I have to remember what I have on there and what I need so I can replicate what I have.

The new drive should arrive Thursday or so.

I listen to a bunch of podcasts; thirty-two to be exact.

You can find them here if you want to see a whole list.

Some update more frequently than others, and you'll see my notes on status.net related to what I'm listening to through the !Listening group on identi.ca.

You'll notice if you go to the gpodder.org link above, that I listen to a lot of tech podcasts (GeekSpeak, LinuxOutlaws, Ubuntu Podcast, Diggnation, Linux Journal, LoCoCast), music podcasts (Canada Live, Liverpool Acoustic Spotlight, All Songs Considered, World Cafe Words and Music, World Cafe Next, The Clockwork Caberet, Rathole Radio, Triple J TV, TheCerebralRift, All Songs Considered Live Concerts, Hype Machine), humor (Car Talk, Wait Wait Don't Tell Me, Vinyl Cafe, Life as a Comic, Dilbert, The Gloomers), science (Discovery Channel, TedTalks), gaming (Good Game, Good Game SP), and a general TV show (East of Everything).

I love podcasts because I can listen to shows when I want and how I want (on the computer or on my mobile device/mp3 player) and I can listen to shows from other countries (like the Canadian shows, the Australian shows, and shows from the UK). It's a great way to get information that regular radio doesn't cover. I listen to NPR a lot, but my local station doesn't play GeekSpeak or have much in the way of computer shows. I get my "fix" through these podcasts.

Now on to software...

• iTunes: Available for Mac and Windows, but seems to be a memory hog on Windows. I don't use this software, as I prefer different podcast catchers, and I run Ubuntu.
• Rhythmbox: Gnome's kitchen-sink media player. I've used it for podcasts, but things get all mixed up in my regular music. I just use it for my music.
• Amarok: I don't use this personally. It's KDE's kitchen-sink medial player. I know there are peole who use Amarok for podcasting, but I'm not sure how well it works.
• Mirro: I used Miro for a very long time, and loved it. It's like a podcast catcher/listener/watcher and browser, as it has the ability to find podcasts you're interested in, especially if you have a Miro account. You can rate podcasts, and you can also use Miro as a bittorrent catcher. It's almost like an all-in-one computer-based TV solution. Great project.
• gPodder: A great podcast catcher. This program works with the my.gpodder.org website and allows you to share what podcasts you're listening to.

I use gPodder now as my main podcast catcher. I still have Miro, but I really like gPodder and how it stays out of my way.

Do check out what I'm listening to and post what you listen to in the comments. Podcast sharing is the best way to discover new ones.