One of my new (financial) year resolutions was to increase the readership of my blog. As part of this plan I have been trying to get my blog syndicated on relevant planets. The latest on my list has been Planet Ubuntu Users and the associated Ubuntu Universe. About 24 hours ago my blog was added to both aggregators. Thanks Tiago!

I run Ubuntu on my Dell D830 laptop (my primary machine). I run various flavours and versions of Ubuntu on desktops, servers and VMs both for my business and clients.

In 2009 I converted the local community run internet cafe to Ubuntu. When they were running XP there were problems almost weekly, since the switch, the only real issue they have had was a failed automatic update for firefox last week.

As for off the clock Linux time, my kids associate tux with computers, while my partner is more than happy running LTS releases on her laptop. The only desktop OS my mother in law has used is Ubuntu Linux.

I have been active in the Australian Ubuntu LoCo for quite a few years.

My Ubuntu related posts are generally technical howtos. Most of the stuff is system administration related with a few Ubuntu home brew packaging and webapp development tips.

The non tagged feed of this blog contains a good mix of geeky stuff about whatever we are working on at DHC, rants about annoying things and the occasional thing from real life. I hope there is something there that you find useful. Happy reading.

Jono Bacon announced the winners of the 1st Annual Ubuntu Women World Play Day competition via his UStreamTV cast on Friday, May 28th 2008.

The Community Pick, and winner of the ZaReason Terra A20 Ubuntu Netbook is Photo #25 Orla O’Donohue Community winner!

Canonical CEO, Jane Silber’s pick and winner of the Dell Netbook is Photo #20 Jordan McCarthy!

The random drawing winner is Photo #18 Erikia Hamilton she will receive the Canonical sponsored Ubuntu SWAG package as well as the ZaReason sponsored Gold USB Necklace.

All winners listed above will also receive a complementary subscription to their choice of either Linux Pro or Ubuntu User magazines.

If you haven’t had a chance to look at all the photos submitted please do.

Many thanks to all those who submitted Photos, voted, and promoted the competition through blogs, tweets, dents and more. The participation from the Ubuntu Women Project Team members and the community as a whole was amazing.

I also have to thank ZaReason, Canonical, Linux Pro and Ubuntu User Magazines, for their sponsorships as well as The Technical Underground, and members of the Ubuntu Women Project who donated the funds to purchase the Dell Netbook.

Special thanks to Melissa Draper for coming up with adapting World Play Day to the Ubuntu Women Project as well as hosting the pictures and coming up a way for everyone to vote. – Thank you so much Melissa for all your had work and effort to ensure this competition was a success.

CONGRATULATIONS to Orla O’Donohue, Jordan McCarthy, Erika Hamilton!

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Some time ago I bought a Dell Inspiron XPS Gen 2 laptop. At the time it was the fastest thing I could buy. It was also the heaviest! With a 17″ 1920×1200 screen and all the toys, it’s a bit of a dead weight. It was always intended to be a desktop replacement, so it mostly sat on my desk all of its life so the weight wasn’t an issue. Having nice big screen was lovely for desktop use and playing the odd game.

It has a 1.8GHz Pentium CPU and an nVidia 6800Go video card. Not long after I bought it, the video card failed. I blogged about the issue and the rubbish Dell Support.

Well, it happened again just after the warranty ran out. Convenient, huh? Exactly the same problem as previously happened – corruption on the screen indicating hardware failure. I contacted Dell and they basically said they couldn’t help, but if I wanted they would sell me a new video card for £200. I was torn and frustrated. I could get a cheap entire laptop for not much more than that, but not one with a decent 3D card and 17″ 1920×1200 display. I was irritated that they couldn’t see that this was a recurrent issue with the machine which made me less inclined to pay more money to them.

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Whilst on the phone the guy asked me at the end if I was ’satisfied’ with the support. I said ‘no’ of course which he was surprised at and after trying to argue that I should change my mind, he forwarded me on to his manager. The manager then proceeded to argue that I should change my answer to ‘yes’ because the agent had provided me with the correct answer – which was that he couldn’t help me. I was pretty peeved by this point that someone asked for my opinion of whether the transaction was a success and when I voiced displeasure, was badgered for a further 20 minutes to change my mind. I didn’t.

So since then (October last year) my dell laptop has sat in a drawer, unused, wasted. I have jumped on ebay now and then to try and get hold of a 2nd hand video card – it’s a modular MXM 6800Go – but never bought one. They’re quite rare, command similar prices to what Dell quoted me.

A few weeks ago I was chatting with a co-worker about his broken Playstation 3. He’d read threads online about how the fault he has may be a common one, where many online suggest slamming the motherboard in the oven for a bit to ‘reflow’ the solder. Many reports online say this works.

I was in one of those moods yesterday, and dug out the laptop and managed to figure out how to take the thing apart and get the video card out. I wound the oven up to 200 degrees C and put the card in for 9 minutes. I figured I had nothing else to lose. If all those posts online were a massive conspiracy to get thick people such as me to put delicate electronics into a hot oven then they succeeded!

30 minutes later the card was cool enough for me to put it back in the machine. I carefully put it all back together and booted it up. It worked! The video corruption had gone. Well, almost. I was left with one vertical purple line about 3 pixels in from the left, which I can totally live with. In the drive was an old Crunchbang CD which booted up just fine.

So now, have I joined the ranks of the internet crazies who say putting electronics in the oven might cure it? Yup. Don’t do it though, because it might all go horribly wrong and I wouldn’t want you to blame me would I?

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