I’m in a humorous mood. There was recently a contest for the best Firefox extensions. Well, here are the 11 worst.
Archive for March, 2006
Top Eleven Worst Firefox Extensions
Tuesday, March 7th, 2006How to avoid shaking hands with ‘chicks’
Tuesday, March 7th, 2006The Beatnik Sufis have offered some much-needed advice on this perplexing topic. 
Diary of a Mad XGL Addict
Monday, March 6th, 2006I tried to leave it…I really did. Since my last post, I’ve struggled with the realization that, in less than an hour, I became addicted to Xgl. I can’t live without it. My MotherBrain computer is now permanently occupied by a foreign power (Gnome). OK, not permanently, just until KDE adds support for it.
It’s not so bad, though. Gnome is, after all, free software in every sense of the word. Also, I can still run any of the programs that I run with KDE.
Regarding the whole Direct Rendering thing, it is supposed to work with the current Nvidia driver on my GeForce FX 6200, but it does not. Anyway, I have to start another regular X server on another screen to play games. Surprisingly, this works well. After all, running games in Window-Maker or some other light window manager is much faster anyway. In the past, I’ve often run intense games in failsafe X.
Gawsh, I sound like a total addict. What did I expect though? It’s like eating steak for the first time. You just can’t go back to your old hamburgers. I’m an Xgl-fiend. As I’m writing this, I’m contemplating how to get it working on this iBook. I’m sick…
Xgl Success
Sunday, March 5th, 2006Alhamdulillah, I finally managed to get Xgl working on SuSE 10.0. The Novell people updated their OpenSuSE wiki, and that information was enough for me to get it to work.
It is everything I imagined and more. It’s extremely pleasing to the eyes, smooth, fast, and useful (not just cute).
Nevertheless, I can’t use it all the time, for a number of reasons:
1. I can’t get it to work right in KDE. The compiz window manager is for Gnome. Although I was able to replace KWin with compiz, the taskbar ignores new windows. That’s simply unacceptable. Also, the pager and other kicker features simply do not work.
2. I won’t use Gnome. It is just not my preference, and I think KDE is superior for numerous reasons, which, mentioning all of them would make this post unduly long. Although Xgl is tempting, my preference for KDE greatly outweighs it.
3. Most importantly, Direct Rendering is apparently inoperable with Xgl. (someone can correct me if I’m wrong). That means no 3D games or anything else that requires OpenGL.
I am hopeful that, when KDE 4 comes out, Xgl will be ready for prime time.
hmph!
Saturday, March 4th, 2006UmmZahra just fell asleep in my chair. Now where am I supposed to fall asleep? Bed? hmph!
OneUmmah.net over the years
Saturday, March 4th, 2006I’ve decided to take a trip down memory lane. Over the years, OneUmmah.net has undergone numerous design changes. You can also take a look at how my style of designing has changed. I’ve always preferred more simplistic, accessible web site designs, but I’ve also tried to make them look reasonably good.
OneUmmah.net in 1999:
OneUmmah.net in 2001:
OneUmmah.net in 2002 or 2003:
OneUmmah.net in 2006:
28 Days
Friday, March 3rd, 2006As quickly as it arrived, “Black History Month” is over. The shortest month of the year commemorates the achievements of people of African descent, but perhaps not enough is mentioned of their plight. While most non-blacks have now turned their attention to remembering the Jewish Holocaust, I think it is more than appropriate that we take a moment and remember a much more devastating and lasting injustice, the slave trade.
According to the BBC:
The exact numbers of Africans shipped overseas during the slave trade are hotly debated – estimates range between 10 and 28 million.
What is undisputed is the degree of savage cruelty endured by men, women and children. Up to 20% of those chained in the holds of the slave ships died before they even reached their destination.
How is this more devastating than the Holocaust? The answer is something you’ll find in the survivors, not the casualties. The Jewish survivors were freed. They were allowed to keep their heritage, their language, their culture, their religion, and their names. In any other tragedy or oppression, those who have been oppressed survived with some aspect of their culture and heritage.
From enslaved Africans, particularly in the United States, everything from their motherland was stripped from them. Their language, religion, culture, history, and even their names, were erased from history. Only fragments of what it means to be truly African are left among Blackamericans. The Atlantic ocean is littered with the human remains of our heritage. That which survived was beaten out of our ancestors on plantations.
So, today I remember one of the greatest sustained acts of injustice that the world has known.
Every night brings a new day. Allah alleviates all pain. Everything has its end. Allah is enough for me.
Seeing New Things
Friday, March 3rd, 2006This morning, after waking up, I decided to devote all of my superhuman strength to physically lifting up the entire United States.
You’ll never believe what I saw written on the bottom:
Made In China
What A Day!
Thursday, March 2nd, 2006SubhanAllah! I had students in the Library non-stop today. It is amazing what a little pep talk will do to convince teachers that students need to research. Even when I was eating lunch, there were still students in here. This is the first time today when I’ve been alone.
To top it all off, I received more chairs. I now have four chairs per table like, as the children would say, “a real library.”
Well, anyway, I’m going home, inshaAllah.
Airport Extreme Lives in Linux
Thursday, March 2nd, 2006I have successfully configured (and am currently using) the Broadcom Airport Extreme wireless card inside of the iBook G4. There are many theories about why Apple was not able to release the specs on their wireless card to the free software community (even to their own open source OS, Darwin), but the truth of the matter is that Apple just doesn’t care. If there was some financial benefit to doing it, they would have spared no effort to make it happen.
Anyway, the drivers were reversed engineered by some software geniuses, and, after months of trial and error, Linux (the Kernel) now has a driver for the Broadcom chipset, which is also on many PC network cards and a LinkSys router.
I did not compile the drivers from source, so I cannot predict if you will be successful in doing so. The latest Kernel that I’m using, 2.6.15, comes with the driver installed and enabled. Getting the card to connect to a wireless network and retrieve an IP address was an entirely different beast.
For that I went to a Gentoo forum and found the solution to my problem.
The following formula worked for me on the iBook G4:
1. First I had to steal the firmware code from Apple (it sounds more scandalous that it was). I went into Mac OS X and, I uploaded the file /System/Library/Extensions/AppleAirPort2.kext/Contents/MacOS/AppleAirPort2 to a remote location on lanterntorch.net
2. I then downloaded that firmware package to Linux and used fwcutter to cut out the firmware. I then installed it into /lib/firmware (please follow the directions that come with it).
3. Interestingly, my particular computer kept assigning the broadcom card a network ID of “eth0_clashed.” This was unacceptable. So, I went into “/etc/modprobe.d/aliases” and added an alias “eth1 bcm43xx”.
4. Next, I needed to get the card to connect to a wireless network and receive an IP address from DHCP. The normal methods were not working. It had to be done in a certain order.
To accomplish this, I made the following script:
#!/bin/sh
ifconfig eth1 down
ifconfig eth1 up
iwconfig eth1 channel #
iwconfig eth1 rate #M
iwconfig eth1 essid “AP_ESSID”
Of course, generic “#” and “AP_ESSID” were filled with real values. I then made a menu entry in the Kmenu so that I could run the script easily. I also mapped it to a shortcut key-combo. I have two shortcuts, “Command/Apple + H” gives me a wireless connection at home. “Command/Apple + W” gives me a wireless connection at work.
