Graceful Exits

Now that Gutsy Gibbon is fairly mature, I’ve managed to upgrade my machine to it and am now running the 2.6.22-14-386 kernel. More importantly, with a minimum of fuss I now have video, wireless and sound!
Long-term readers of Graceful Exits might remember that the too-new hardware in my Dell Precision M4300 needed some rather nasty [...]

There’s currently no plan to switch off FM stations. In fact, many radio bosses have said oh, for heaven’s sake to the very idea. There is, astonishingly, less of a plan for radio switchover than there is desire among the general public for TV switchover. So that must be some sort of record for nothingness.
Seriously: [...]

The inevitable keyboard accident happened at Barcamp, although not as badly as I think Tristan Roddis suffered. A few teaspoons of a particularly sugary branded drink ended up under my arrow keys, which meant that pressing up became an unpleasant feedback experience. I should’ve asked people for advice at the time, to be honest: I [...]

On both my work and home Dell laptops, the computer beeps at full volume when you change the sound settings. This has come close to shattering my eardrums on several occasions these past few days.
Bizarrely, if you open “Control Panel > System > Hardware > Device Manager”, and click on “View > Show hidden devices,” [...]

The Ubuntu Live CD worked straight away for the laptop: I was able to boot into a temporary copy of Linux using the VESA display drivers, and test sound, CD and other peripherals (obviously) and wired networking. However, optimising the system wasn’t so easy, and as I say Nick practically installed Ubuntu for me, fixing [...]

I have a new laptop: a Dell Precision M4300. Thanks to everyone who gave feedback to my request for recommendations about laptops. I really did take your suggestions to heart: but when I realised that (a) I’d run any laptop I bought into the ground, and so didn’t need to go refurbished to obtain maximum [...]

I’d like your thoughts on a replacement for my laptop.
It’s been dying for a long time now. I originally bought it to write my thesis on back in 2002, spending most of an inheritance from my grandmother on the last of the 1.2GHz machines in the now defunct Dixons. A few months ago the [...]

I’ve found myself learning a number of interesting facts about iPods this past day or two that perhaps I’d rather not have ever known:

An iPod can be connected safely, via the Y-shaped cable that comes with a dock, to two generic power supplies at once. For instance, the Firewire cable can be plugged into a [...]

I’m not one for passing on memes and crazy petitions, but Sean McGrath has pointed out that Dell are requesting advice on expanding their pre-installed Linux range.
I think they currently provide, oh, some old version of Ubuntu on two of their billion computer models only in the US, and then only in states whose names [...]

Seen the “sad iPod icon” recently on your iPod? I was greeted by it yesterday on my 4th generation podlet:

The sad iPod icon (SII). Usually accompanied by a generic, unhelpful apple.com URL, which just makes it all the more sad.

Unlike most people who see this, I didn’t seem to have the symptoms of [...]