Archive for November, 2006
Happy Thanksgiving!
I hope everyone has an enjoyable day today, visiting with friends and family, and stuffing your faces with food. Personally, my plans include a) working until 6pm — you can’t beat “triple time” pay, and 2) enjoying a fine microwave TV dinner afterwards.
Holidays can be a very stressful time for many people. I understand how the pressure of acting normal around your equally screwed up family can be pretty rough. Those of you brave enough to cook your own Thanksgiving meal have even more to fuss about; following recipes and trying to make everything just perfect, praying to god no one realizes that you have no idea what you’re doing, contemplating walking out the door and never looking back. If you happen to be one of these people that’s working themselves into a frenzy, do yourself a favor and take a break. Have a cigarette (even if you don’t smoke), crack open a beer (even if you don’t drink), and watch the following instructional video. It’s sure to take your mind off things.
I wonder — what octane gasoline do you think their recipe calls for?
Happy holidays!
Flash 9 on Linux
Most Linux geeks would probably agree with me if I were to comment how poorly Flash runs in Linux. To be more specific, Flash 7 for Linux is crap. For some reason, the audio and video in Flash 7 have always been noticeably out of sync (among other bugs). While this isn’t a big issue when watching Pornotube (who really pays attention to the audio there anyway?), it can become a big annoyance when watching Youtube clips and trying to view some newer graphically rich websites.
The only answer to these issues that I’ve come across is Flash 9 (there is no Flash 8 for Linux), which has been in the works for what seems like forever. I’ve been patiently awaiting news of its release (it’s still under development). The last mention I came across online said something about a mid-2007 release. Eight or more months of either putting up with out-of-sync clips or …gasp… using Windows instead (SCREW that).
Not cool.
I consider myself a fairly patient guy, but that’s just too long to wait. I decided to bite the bullet and try out the new Flash 9 beta for Linux, and I’m disappointed that I didn’t do so sooner. Now I can visit any sites that I previously received a “You need to update your version of Flash” message on, and I can also watch Flash videos without feeling like I’m watching old Kung Fu movies. Much to my enjoyment, there don’t seem to be any noticeable bugs in the latest beta.
So, if you’re a Linux user and you’re tired of not being able to visit really snazzy sites or watch well-sync’ed video, consider updating. Doing so couldn’t be easier!
Here’s what I did (your mileage may vary):
- Download Flash 9 from Adobe.
- Extract the two files, libflashplayer.so and a Readme, to a temporary directory.
- Copy libflashplayer.so to /usr/lib/browser-plugins/ (do it as root — you’ll have to overwrite the old version of this file if you had Flash 7 installed already).
- Restart your browser (you’d better be using Firefox, fool!)
You’re ready to test it out! I recommend checking out this site, which has some really nice Flash content. After you’re done playing around there, head over to YouTube (not Utube!) and gorge yourself on sync’ed up clips!
FYI, I installed this on a Suse 10.1 box, but other than changing some directory names this should work for you. If not, stick your hand in a blender. That’ll take your mind off of your crappy Flash 7 plugin for a while!