MobileScrobbler and Apple's stupidity

This is copy pasted from a journal entry I posted on Last.fm :

I use an iPod touch, and I am currently still using firmware 1.1.1 which is just fine with me; I don't need Apple's craptacular innovations on my hardware. I also use MobileScrobbler to scrobble my iPod tracks, which is something everyone should be able to do. As of a couple days ago, my iPod randomly stopped scrobbling. It's not a problem with MobileScrobbler, since it's doing everything it's supposed to do, but a problem with Last.fm, as it is not accepting the tracks from MobileScrobbler. I have been looking around online, and apparently I am not nearly the only one having this problem. Apparently everyone with firmware 1.1.1 had this problem. It has been concluded that Last.fm is in cahoots with Apple, and are collectively trying to force people to use that bull shit "App Store" thing that Apple is pushing. This is one very small and annoying step in that attempt. Why should we be forced to update our firmware? I was perfectly happy with 1.1.1... but I should be able to answer my own question: it's because Apple wants us to spend money in the fucking "App Store". Fuck Apple. I'm not giving them one cent to scrobble my iPod, which better be free.

So, I figure I will try and update to 2.0.2 or whatever the most recent version is, and see how that goes. I'll then try and download this "official Last.fm app" shit, and see where that takes me. It looks like I'm going to have to go into Windows to do it too... If everything was open source and accessible, I would not have half the computer related problems that I do.

All moved in

As of last Sunday, I am all moved in to my new place. I ended up rooming with a friend of my girlfriend's. It has proven to be rewarding. I am closer to everyone and everything that is important to me (not including family though unfortunately). One of the major advantages is now I have a permanent wired connection and can therefore use Ubuntu almost exclusively. I had to go get a new wired keyboard, and still can't use my Bluetooth mouse, but I'm thinking of selling them anyway. They've been nothing but trouble, and I can always invest in wireless that is not Bluetooth. I find Bluetooth, for something simple like peripherals, is quite pointless. No data is exchanged and therefore, Bluetooth is overkill. The only problem is that I want to keep the dongle for my computer (to keep it's Bluetooth compatibility) but might have a hard time selling the keyboard and mouse without it. But we'll see. I will check eBay next.

Another problem is that the internet connection is kind of shaky for the Xbox. I got dropped from a Halo 3 game lastnight. I have never dropped before. I've also been having some major connectivity problems with Lost Planet Colonies. I go to search for games, and most of the time it has told me "no matches found". This has happened to me once at home. That was a result of server problems on the end of the game server. I seriously hope my NAT is closed or something so I can fix it and be on my merry way again. I am going to be severely depressed if I can't play Lost Planet.

Another thing that's odd for me is that I have to turn off my technology when I go to bed. I am used to just leaving it on all the time. But since I will actually be paying for power, I have to be conscious of this. But I can still leave it on the majority of the days on the weekends. Just when I know I won't be using it.

I've also been stressed more. Since everything around me has changed, and I have been presented with a whole new set of expectations, I have kind of been slow on the upkeep. I will continue to be stressed until I can really establish a regular and beneficial routine. But even then it might be a long, long time before I am comfortable, due to some interpersonal problems. I've even been stressed since before school even started. Getting in wasn't a pretty picture, and neither was the whole last minute change. I thought I was going to one school up until a week before classes start. The place I wanted to go (where I am now) accepted me extremely last minute, and my stress level increased exponentially. I had to do in a week what most people had months to do, in order to prepare for classes and such. After that, of course, was trying to find a place to live. Most of the places I saw were complete shitholes. The one place I wanted got snatched out from under me a couple hours before I was going to potentially take the place. It was kind of chaotic. And now school begins, as does a whole new set of problems. Yippe skippie.

The craptacular new Facebook layout

I'm going to cut straight to the chase: who the fuck designed the new Facebook layout? It clearly has to be someone with the design skills and intelligence of a chimpanzee with a lobotomy. It's the most counterintuitive piece of shit I have used in a long time, and I hated Last.fm's recent redesign.
The wall is now all clustered together. Kind of like what would happen if you took your shoes, cutlery, pencils, pens, markers, dishes, bathroom items, other assorted household items, and threw them all into one big huge pile with all of your neighbourhood's items as well. Now find one of your spoons, and you have the annoyance I experience when using the new Facebook.
I can't look at all of my information on one page, no no, that would be too simple. I have to have minimum three fucking pages on my profile. None of the apps are on the main pages either; those are completely separate. So if, for example, you wished for someone to see one of your apps (which is generally why people install apps in the first place), they will not see it unless they make a point of visiting your "Boxes" page. What a fucking stupid name...it took me like ten minutes to figure out where the fuck all of my apps went because this title is completely irrelevant to the actual purpose of the page. How about calling it something like, oh, "Apps"?
The wall comments (even though this fits in with the first point of contention, it still deserves it's own mention) are lumped in with all other events. I don't know when the fuck people have commented on my page, because it's squished right in there between the other crap. The only way I really know is if the comment is at the top, or I happen to check my email. How is that a fucking Wall? The Wall is a place for comments only goddammit.

I could go on and on about how I fucking hate new Facebook (e.g. why does the status have to be so big in "The Wall", why does it show all comments for posted items in the news feed, why the hell did they change the right hand navigation, etc.) But I think I've made my point. I am far from the only one. I've looked around and seen that at least 75% of people whose comments I've seen have said they hate the new layout as well. How hard is it to give us a fucking option to pick which layout we want to use? Why is that such a huge deal? But apparently Mark Zuckerberg has his head so far up his ass that he doesn't realize that what he did to Facebook is absolutely retarded. The best part is, they ask for feedback on the new layout, but completely ignore when people say they don't like it. Everything short of saying "too fucking bad".

So, someone please tell me, why the fuck are they forcing this change when there's no reason to do so? Does it not matter anymore what users think? What was wrong with the original Facebook layout? I found it to be perfectly usable and pleasant.

My browser speed

That is how fast my browser is. Note the right hand column, and how the different browsers compare to each other. Not surprisingly, Internet Exploder is like a special Olympics athlete running against non-special Olympians (oh, I'm horrible, I know). It looks like I'll be downloading Google Chrome soon, well, when I feel like going back to Windows.

Want to know what your browser speed is? Click here and it will tell you (you have to take a screen shot if you want to record it).

Ubuntu after a long time

My brother has gone back to school for the fall, and that means I get my wire back. Since I cannot get Ubuntu to work on wireless, I can only use it when I have the wire. I decided five months was too long and that I had to use Ubuntu again. But with that comes having to update everything, and possibly taking another crack at the wireless and Bluetooth problems. It took about 45 minutes to install all of the updates available. It's been almost an hour and my music collection still isn't updated. I'm pretty sure more problems will come. Considering I still cannot print. Unfortunately getting rid of Windows is not an option yet. But we knew that five months ago.

So, as I said in my previous post, kick back, relax and wait for the stress to set in. If my cortisol levels aren't through the roof, I don't want to know how it feels when they are.

Moving sometime soon, Win XP SP 3

I have concluded as to where I am going for school this year, and therefore am moving sometime in the near future (hopefully next week, when I decide on a place). So, if I seem more frustrated, jaded and pessimistic than usual, you know why it probably is. And with the beginning of school goes my free time, and therefore less updates. Not that I update very often as it is; most people update every day. But the less I update, the longer my entries tend to be. So, it's up to you whether that is a good thing.
Anyway, I am looking at a couple places, one of them I saw yesterday. It was a basement room with nice new hardwood floors and new walls. It's a townhouse I would be sharing with another girl, and it's definitely reasonably sized, although my room wouldn't be huge. I could fit a TV and a bed in there, and I'm almost sure my gargantuous desk would fit in there as well. The only problem would be fitting a couch. I am not playing videogames on my bed. The place is definitely a possibilty. I would be paying like $400.
Another place I am looking at is the basement of a bungalow made into a separate unit. It definitely sounds nice, and the guy who owns the place sounds nice too. I would also absolutely love to not have to share a space, considering how much of a picky person I am. But I also wish for my significant other to move in sometime at a later date.
I got an email from someone today about a 1 bedroom and a 2 bedroom he/she has available, and the possibility of subletting the 2 bedroom, possibly to my significant other. I emailed them back pressing for some details, but haven't received a reply quite yet. I hope whoever it is didn't go away for holidays or anything. That would be annoying, since I want to get this crap done.
There were one or two other places I emailed people about, but I haven't received a response yet, which kind of indicates to me that these people don't really want to sell it. Besides, they aren't the most appealing sounding anyway. One of them, I'm not even sure why I considered it, it's like 5 people in one little house. Fuck that shit.

On another note, why the fuck did Microshaft design the update system the way they did? You cannot dismiss the restart notification if you are opting not to restart, which absolutely infuriates me. I can't type a fucking blog post without getting interrupted by this fucking notification that I need to restart. I am fucking aware that I have to restart! I do not want to restart since I just restarted ten minutes before this update was installed because of another fucking update! Seriously, get your shit together and co-ordinate this crap! I don't want to have to restart every goddamn half hour because Microshaft is too goddamn stupid to do something sensible like maybe sending all the updates at once, or just plain forgoing the useless crap they send.

Service Pack 3 was the second update involved in the above rant. I look online for details of this thing, and cannot find a detailed breakdown of what I am inflicting on my computer by installing this Microshaft update. That seriously pisses me off, why can't I have a changelog? Am I not allowed to know what new bullshit Microshaft is raping my computer with? It's a very common problem with everything but the most l33t software, that I can't find out what's being changed. How am I supposed to enjoy (or possibly hate) the new features if I don't know what they are? Unless it's a security update.

Anyway, I have been interrupted twice in about ten minutes from the window that tells me to restart my computer. I am getting quite sick of it so I am going to stop before I kill something.

Zoo photo inclusion

So, two summers ago, I went to the Toronto Zoo with a couple friends, and took some pictures. I submitted them to my Flickr, and they were just sitting there. I randomly get an email from someone involved in the production of Schmap Guides saying they want to use one of my pictures in one of their guides. So, I let them and now it's been published. This is the picture: