so, this blog has officially been abandoned. partly because my hoster is using Microsoft’s IIS which makes everything sorta difficult, party because I’m too lazy to keep this blog up-to-date version-wise and partly because the wonderful ping.fm can only access wordpress.com blogs, you will find me here in future.

After spending two days in frustraion I finally managed to get the Debian Netinstall working from a USB pendrive. I actually wasted a lot of time with my corrupted MBR, so the crucial part that helped me was issuing the comand “lilo -M /dev/sda” on the machine I was preparing the pendrive on.

Other than that I fairlsy stuck to the instructions at the Debian Installation Guide, with the exception, that I used the testing netinstall image (from the Debian installer page) and as a result from that the boot.img.gz file from the testing branch, as otherwise the kernel images wouldn’t fit.

So far it seems like everything’s working. Network and harddisk were found and the installer is just preparing it for an encrypted LVM, so I’m pretty confident everything will work out alright.

Oh, by the way - in case anyone needs assitance with the installation from pendrive, or even a little help on PXE installations, I have aquired quite a bit of knowledge in that area in the last two days, so feel free to contact me..

So, once again I’m well aware that I haven’t posted in ages, but I’ve been really busy with university and stuff and apart from that my life hasn’t been that exciting..

Anyway I got rid of Ubuntu Edgy Eft last night on my R51 to replace it by Debian Sid, which I like far better and after solving a few issues with x.org (installing xserver-xorg-inupt-mouse, -synaptics, and several fonts packages proved to do the trick) I tryed to get my wireless network up and running.

So I installed the amazing NetworkManager. As I was used to it detecting all availible networks I expected it to do the same with me, but to no avail. So I checked dmesg for all messages regarding ipw2200 (my network cards driver) and found the following:

ipw2200: Intel(R) PRO/Wireless 2200/2915 Network Driver, 1.2.2kmprq
ipw2200: Copyright(c) 2003-2006 Intel Corporation
ipw2200: Detected Intel PRO/Wireless 2200BG Network Connection
ipw2200: ipw2200-bss.fw request_firmware failed: Reason -2
ipw2200: Unable to load firmware: -2
ipw2200: failed to register network device
ipw2200: probe of 0000:02:02.0 failed with error -5

I’m not quite sure what causes this with me as I couldn’t find anything on the net about similar experiences by other users, but I checked with ThinkWiki  and found instructions to install the ipw2200 firmware manually. With this everything worked alright, checking out other stuff right now, might post more later..

I have really got to stop to start learning for exams at the last possible moment.

It’s 5:30 AM and I’m about half way through with sumarizing the stuff I have to know at noon. Coffee is my best friend atm.

On another note: Gmail has IMAP!! Apparently my account was one of the last ones to adapt (or I just noticed today cause I don’t visit the settings-menu that often.. ), but I’m still very excited about that. I’ve already tried to copy my old sent mail from my former account, but so far I’ve had problems authenticating. I think it’s got something to do with either the folders themselves or the email I’m trying to copy, cause it worked flawlessly with other email I copied. Or maybe I’m just too tired to do that.. in which case I should be in bed resting so that I can finish learning tomor.. eh.. after sleeping for two hours or something..

Another website I’d recommend you to visit and sign up to. (And yeah, I do notice that I’m not so much posting here anymore than using it to promote special causes I found.. I’ll improve - promise!)

Find out more at unsubscribe-me.org.

• Work at an NGO is both wonderful and nerve-wrecking. Appart from that it can make you cross the Atlantic a grand total of 4 times in two months.  (Just to spend six weeks in North America! I know! Crazy!)
• Almost all Canadians have been to Austria. (empirical fact)
• An 80GB iPod in Canada costs about as much as a 30GB iPod in Austria. (Both my brother and I got one (using the magnificent Rockbox, of course) - guess who’s with the 30 gig version.)
• There is ALWAYS something interesting and/or entertaining on Canadian/American TV. (empirical fact)
• There is a lake in Gataineau Park in Quebec, which is called “Pink Lake”.

  And it’s green. (honest)

This is a work-in-progress and I guess I’ll complete it. (Yeah, just like that other post further down in the archives.. )

And this one isn’t one of them.

 So now that we have established that I have serious problems finishing stuff that I started, (You might have had the idea about 4 months after I stopped posting due to lack of time.) we can move on to more.. eh.. other stuff.

Well, I do actually have a good excuse for not posting in July: I was sleeping in a car (aka “without internet access”) for three weeks touring the westcost of the USA with two friends of mine. That was quite amazing. I met them in San Francisco (They had started out in Seattle where Vicky was an au-pair for a year) where we stayed at a family whom my parents knew quite well for a few days which was absolutely wonderful. We toured San Francisco during the day and stayed at their place on the evenings talking and eating - really great. They put us up at their relatives place who were extremely nice as well and so we had a great time there. After that we went on to Los Angeles, staying at the place of a friend of my dad’s, who drive us around LA the following days. We saw Santa Monica, Venice Beach, Hollywood, Beverly Hills, Bel Air and a lot of other stuff I can’t remember just now. Oh! Universial Studios - amazing!

Then we went on to San Diego (which I would have liked to explore more thoroughly) for a day which we spent at SeaWorld (great, but I still think I would’ve prfered the city itself). We left San Diego in the evening to head on to Las Vegas (hot, extremely hot. really.) and then went on to Salt Lake City (not as hot as Las Vegas, but quite boring actually).

The following two days were not that exciting cause we spent them reading in a park at the Columbia River and then we went on to Ephrata, WA where we became (locally) famous. But this is a story for another time..

After Ephrata, we left for Seattle where we spent the last 5 days of our trip. I got to know a few really nice people there, saw Seattle at night from the SpaceNeedle and from an awesome view point and bought around a billion CDs.

Yeah, I’m planning another trip already.

Apart from that I have managed to do a lot of catching up since I returned:

I cought up on all my web-comics, TV (which I normally do not watch, so it was all the more interesting to “catch up” on that), a lot of newspapers, magazins and books and friends, family and stuff. A very productive two weeks I guess. (That is if you forget that I feel that I ought to do a bit of catching up on physics, but we will forget that for the moment.. )

And the best thing is: I’ll be flying to Canada on Friday!

Or something like it.

 blobb.org is giving away free email forwarding addresses, which is probably cool for the hippsters out there who don’t want to seem to be wanting to be cool, but want to be cool all the same. nothing does this better for you than a domain not a soul knows in your email-address.

 ah.. yes. in any case: get one now, before all the cool kids have one.

now!!!!oneone1eleven

Woha, so this is my first new post in the new year. Interesting, I must have been really busy.. uhm.. yeah.

Anyway, I don’t have much to write actually, but wanted to make any potential austrian readers aware of the following petition by the austrian greens. You don’t have to sign it, but I would ask you to at least read and consider it.

If anyone is wondering why this is filed under work aswell: Obviously it might have something to do with the fact that I work in a refugee home and feel that I have some insight into the matter through this.

Google Answers has closed down! I mean.. not that I could call myself a fan or anything (just using about 75% of their stuff.. ), but this is just so sad..