thinkninja's Journal: sound

I've written this entry once but I guess I forgot to save it :/

Anyway, following the FUD on Linux soundcard support earlier this week, I'm pleased to report that my onboard audio is now pushing out glorious 5.1 sound. Huzzah! Thanks to the alsa-project and kernel 2.6.5.

If you have an Abit AN7 board, you might find my post helpful.

Unfortunately, upgrading to the new kernel didn't go completely smoothly. My modem driver (Linuxant) wouldn't compile until I changed version.h, and then it locked twice over the weekend. Chat and ppp could also be culperable. I've switched to p(on|off).wvdial and added time/date based conditions to ip-down to make it redial only at certain times. I had to do that because it doesn't seem to respect 'persist' in /etc/ppp/peers/wvdial. And I have to do this because my ISP frowns on users being connected for more than 20hrs a day. Roll on ADSL...

When it's available here (97 days from now) I am sure it's going to be utterly disappointing. 1 or 2 mbps down/256kbps up. How utterly pathetic. I really didn't know how good I had it when I was at an Internet2 college. I think the best speeds I managed were 8mbps down/2.4mbps up. Broadband Britain indeed.

The cost is quite outrageous too. ~£90 pounds per month for 2mbps down or ~£40 pounds for 1mbps. Upload is 256kbps with both packages. There are some ISPs that offer 2mbps for close to £30 but how long they'll be around is something to consider. They might be cheap but if they go bankrupt that's no good to me. Also, I've heard reports that their service/speeds aren't great either. It's looking like I'm going to opt for a 1mbps line from reliable ISP like zen.co.uk. It's probably the least hassle. If I find I need more bandwidth then I'll have to suck it up and put down the extra money, I guess.

Gnome2.6 is okay, not really worth the upgrade, imo. Nautilus is faster. Acme/Keyboard Shortcuts no longer works (known bug) for me. The Arstechnia people were dead on about the OO metaphor not going far enough. That's something for 2.8 to improve upon :)

I have The Confusion sitting on my desk, impaled with a makeshift bookmark 1/10th of the way through. I don't know, I just don't find the Baroque Cycle particularly engrossing :/

I'm hankering for a wardriving rig, just a secondhand laptop, but even used it's just an obscene amount of money for a low spec machine. It would be cheaper to build a carputer but then I lose a certain amount of freedom. Plus having an lcd and keyboard in the car looks bizarre and attracts theives.

firefox's uptime is 56:15 with over 40 tabs open...