Final IT Blog

Well I've now finished IT for the year. I just handed in my final piece of work, my wireless project report form. It was a good year, I just wish I had done IT over my first 2 years at college :D Oh well, better late than never. I don't really know what else to write so I shall bid you farewell.

Ubuntu Desktop Task

Today I was bestowed a task by Roger to setup a computer running Ubuntu for the Info Systems classed to be assessed on. All the computer needed was Ubuntu, a few apps and a DVD drive, so Roger gave me a computer that had a CD drive and a DVD drive to put into it. Jack offered to chuck in the DVD drive because he was going back to music to finish up his recording stuff. I got Ubuntu off Roger and attempted to install it.. the PC wouldn't give me a picture and made a series of horrible beeping noises. So I opened it up, took a punt and removed a stick of RAM, that didn't work. Put the one I removed back and took the other one out, this worked. So now I had picture and managed to boot into the Ubuntu installation screen. Now the problem was Ubuntu ran so bad it was mournful. I figured it could have been the DVD drive Jack had put it or the Ubuntu disc itself, so I went to get another optical drive just for the installation when I realised Jack had put in another CD drive, it was simply in a DVD box. So, now I had to get a new optical drive and figure out why Ubuntu was running so poorly. I tried a few different drives and just figured that the computer Roger gave me was a complete pile of shit because the disc worked fine on the HP's in the IT lab.

Roger got me another computer, a Dell that was worthy of my presence and I began to work again.. this Dell wouldn't boot either, no picture and another series of strange beeps. One stick of RAM out and it worked. I then finally could install Ubuntu. Got that installed then Dirk came along and we had an epic conversation about sudo, debian packages, package managers, Dia, GIMP, Blender, MySQL and a few Linux orientated topics.

Now to install said packages.. should have been easy enough but the package manager wouldn't work. It was more than likely being blocked by the proxy and security shit the school has in place so we don't haxx0r the shit out of their network and download bad things such as themes for Opera. I Tried to install it through sudo and the command line, this was more than likely blocked as well, as it failed. Then I downloaded the debian packages and they gave me a "dependency could not be satisfied" error. Ubuntu's dependency is insatiable... I looked around on a few forums and most people suggested using sudo to install the programs. So I spoke to Dirk and we came to the conclusion for me to take it down to computer services and use the connection down there that they use to update machines.

I will finish this off during help desk tomorrow.

MASSIVE BLOG. Resistance 2 got a 9.5 at IGN Woo!

I took the comp' down to computer services and kept getting the same errors. I then realised I would have to set proxy settings for the package manger so I did that and it all worked fine from there on in. I got all the programs Dirk wanted installed. It was a good project, I've worked with Ubuntu before and I enjoy it. I learnt a few new things as well which was good.

Diagnostic Tools

I'm not really a fan of diagnostic tools and the like, a lot of what they do can be done with a simple restart, by a firewall and much simpler and better programs like CCleaner.



Advanced System Optimizer - ASO contains a load of features, some great, some completely pointless such as the wallpaper changer.. I really don't think you need a program to do this. While some features of it such as the system and disk cleaner and registry cleaner and fixer, these tasks can be done by the much simpler, smaller and better (in my opinion) CCleaner.

WinXP Manager - Essentially the same program as ASO with a few more features tacked on, such as an icon manager. I would consider downloading this program for the icon manager so I don't have to have a 3rd party application running constantly in the background.

FreshDiagnose - FD has a terrible interface when in comparison to the other I have wrote about so far. It has a set of benchmark tools for various things such as CPU, memory and network. FD has a lot of detailed system information for you to view also.

PC Doc Pro - Worst splash screen ever. Worst interface ever. Worst reminder system ever. I do not want to buy this program.


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CCleaner - CCleaner is the best diagnostics program ever. Download it now. It is an essential piece of software, even more so than an operating system.

Super PI - Super PI can be used to check system stability, especially when overclocking.

Firefox Myths

I found this to be a rather interesting read, while it is outdated, some of the myths on there still hold solid ground.

The Greatest ISP Ever, Just Got Better.

I've been with Exetel for three or so months now and within that period my on-peak downloads have gone from 6GB to 12GB. Now, 6GB may not seem like much, but when you have 48GB at your disposal during off-peak, which I might add falls in the rather generous time frame of 12am till 12pm, it was still worth it in my opinion. $45 a month, 1.5Mb connection and a now 60GB total bandwith limit, not to mention the host of other features Exetel provide, you'd be silly to be with anyone else.

Exit Reality.. Enter.. 3D!

Exit Reality is a plug-in type application for Internet Explorer and Firefox that renders your webpages in 3D. One you have chosen the website you want 3D you can walk around in it with an avatar you can modify. I didn't bother creating one as I got over Exit Reality after I walked around Google for a minute or so. There is a complete social networking side to this as well, if you want to check it out further go HERE

Vice City MP and Science Network Computers

Last week in IT, Jack, Aidan and I started to set up some computers for a science class that wants to do networking with them. We had a bit of trouble with room and the layout of how we were going to have them, but eventually we got there. The computers we are using have removable optical drives (much like laptop optical drives) and out of all the computers we are setting up only two have optical drives, so we had to set up 2 at a time. This doesn't take too long as we only have to install Windows 2000 with no extra drivers or anything. We still have a few left to set up, we will be doing the remaining computers through this week.

Early on in the project for DIM I am doing with Phil and Jack, I had the idea of trying to get the mod Multi-Theft Auto (MTA) working to make some of our scenes a lot easier. During the above IT project when we got a little bored we started playing around on Vice City. After that Aidan and I had the idea of setting up a dedicated server for MTA. When we discovered MTA has no LAN support Aidan found another mod called Vice City MP which did have LAN support. We proceeded to set up the server for this using the switch already in the SIM lab. This wasn't working for us, we came to the conclusion that the switch we were using was blocking the port we needed to have open for VC MP. That could have been an easy fixed problem but the switch had been password protected and no one knew why, as no one had set it. So Roger got as a new one and it all works fine with the new one. We currently have 3 computers on the VC MP network.