More Ubuntu progress

With regard to my previous post, I have recently upgraded to 9.04. I was finally getting too fed up with sound and display issues on 8.04 so upgraded to 8.10 (Intrepid), but found no improvements with the NVidia integration and sound on Skype. I took the plunge and went for the 9.04 release candidate. I have to say it is a massive improvement for me with instant out of the box dual monitor support and the sound stuff all works without having to install pulseaudio.

I need Windows less and less now and I feel the writing really is on the wall for Microsoft. This seems to be confirmed by the increasing amount of laptops for sale with Linux rather than Windows.

Happy days.

Printing from Windows XP to a CUPS shared printer on Ubuntu

On the face of it, this task would seem to be very simple and there are various pages with instructions on how to set this up. Basically you configure CUPS to allow the local USB printer to be shared and then set up a new network printer on windows that has the address http://<hostname>:631/printers/<printername>. The problem is that, whilst this all seems to work OK, when you print, nothing seems to actually hit the printer. Nothing meaningful in the CUPS logs.

Lots of Googling brought me to this page.

The really critical part which makes things work is :

"Now, once you have that information, you can open a command prompt on
Windows, and type in the following command (all on one line, it is
wrapped here):

rundll32 printui.dll,PrintUIEntry /b "Printer on Ubuntu" /x /n
"blah" /if /f %windir%\inf\ntprint.inf /r
"http://<hostname>:631/printers/<printername>" /m "MS Publisher Imagesetter"

That command will install the MS Publisher Imagesetter printer driver
(which is a printer driver that uses PostScript, which is what CUPS
takes as input), and setup the printer spool on Windows. You can then
open the Printers control panel and set the printer as the default
printer, and you will be able to print to it."

Igloo in Milton Keynes

The most snow I've seen at home in my lifetime!

Prince Caspian

My son Dylan got a Corn Snake for his 7th birthday. I made it's vivarium, but there is still quite a bit of kit to buy like a heat mat and thermostat.

Feeding time is once a week and is pretty amazing!

Day 14 - going home

Pack up for the drive to Miami airport via Naples and the Delnor-Wiggins state park, basically a car park for the stunning beach where we stopped for lunch in the 85 degree sun. Luck enough to see a wild Dolphin cruising by.

Highway 41 takes us through the everglades where, unfortunately, we do not have enough time to stop and go on an air boat.

Day 13 - Chill out last full day

Our last real holiday day was spent mainly on the very local beach, apart from a short drive around to get some present shopping and a meal in Clearwater Beach at Clear Sky Cafe, highly recommended, followed by a walk up Pier 60 to look at all the local jewellry stalls.

Day 12 - Clearwater Aquarium

Today we head to the Clearwater Aquarium for a great day out including a boat trip around the Clearwater Harbour and talks about Winter, the Dolphin without a tail.