GRG's Miscellany

Recently, my Ubuntu install felt the need to corrupt its own package install database and refuse to start up. Having good backups and little patience, I decided to go for a clean install. I thought I'd try Debian for a change. Ubuntu is Debian-based so I figured they'd be similar, and I use Debian for my server so I thought I'd be able to handle any differences easily. The first warning signs were when I wanted to install the video drivers. Ubuntu makes that so very easy. Debian makes you take a few steps through. Not ideal, but not arduous either. Installing compiz-fusion was more of a pain, but still manageable. Again, this is a piece of cake on Ubuntu. More similar niggles followed, but I figured I was just being soft. Then I tried installing wine and Sketchup and I quickly became enraged. I had managed this task on Ubuntu with only a little hacking, and no undue fuss. Here's the breakdown of the process under Debian: 1: Install wine ...

A while back, I set up a minecraft server. Having had previous internet-visible machines hacked, I decided to have the server sitting behind a dedicated router (actually an old P3 machine). The router has teh smrts, which gives me more confidence of the server's security. The real reason I'm mentioning it is the case I made for it. 'Case' is really a misnomer, as you can see, but it has allowed me to have two PCs in a small space, and taking up only one plug socket between them. It's made of many smallish pieces of corrugated cardboard, stuck together in three layers (with the corrugations at right angles from one layer to the next). This allowed me to use up some old packaging, while also providing a fairly rigid and strong sheet material to mount the components on. The motherboards are fixed to a vertical sheet, which is mounted on a horizontal base sheet. The end sheets are pretty much just to keep the vertical sheet upright, but one end also helps ...