I installed Firefox 9 a few days ago and I’m loving it so far. In fact, it has replaced Chrome (which had replaced Firefox for me awhile back), which says a lot for the progress that Mozilla has made in the last couple of years.

Anyway, I was having this issue where resizing the Firefox window was really choppy and slow. Not a huge deal, but still annoying. The solution was to go into the Options, go to the Advanced tab, and uncheck “Use Hardware Acceleration”.

One of the problems I’ve had with Ubuntu on pretty much every machine that I’ve ever put it on is that Compiz (Desktop Effects) does not run smoothly.  It’s always slightly laggy and jittery, and it’s especially noticeable when you’re moving a window around.  Fortunately, there is a fix that I discovered awhile ago that has worked every time.  The short version is that you need to install compizconfig-settings-manager and turn off the setting to auto-detect your display’s refresh rate, bump up the frame rate manually, and disable vertical sync (optional, but seems to help to).

Here’s a quick how to:

1. Open a terminal and type this command: sudo apt-get install compizconfig-settings-manager
2. Once it’s installed, run it.  It should be in the System menu if you’re using Gnome 2, or you can type “compizconfig” in the search box in Unity.  You’ll get a window like this: 
3. Click the Composite button on the top.  You should see this screen: 
4. Uncheck “Detect Refresh Rate” and set the refresh rate to 60 (or whatever you’re screen’s refresh rate is, if you know it).  It should look like this:
5. Click Back.
6. Click the OpenGL button near the top.  You should see this screen:
7. Uncheck “Sync to VBlank”.  It should look like this: 
8. Close CompizConfig-Settings-Manager and reboot your computer.  You should notice that the performance is much smoother now.

The screen hinge on my Lenovo S10-3t netbook/tablet was getting loose to the point where the screen was wobbling back and forth whenever I moved with it sitting on my lap.  Also, the screen was falling forward a half inch or so when I was holding it in tablet mode.  I was worried that the hinge itself was wearing out, but last night I decided to see if I could fix it anyway.  It turned out to be pretty simple.

If you’re having this problem, all you need to do it tighten two screws located on the bottom of the screen.  They’re hidden beneath two rubber pads, which I’ve highlighted in this picture:

The pads are glued on, so you should be able to pry them off easily with your finger nails.  Once you’ve tightened the screws enough to eliminate the wobbling, you can cover them back up with the rubber pads.

If you’re having trouble installing Windows 7 SP 1, here’s something to check.  I have my computer set to dual-boot with Ubuntu, and apparently that changes some of the flags on the Windows partitions.  That said, this fix may not work for you if you aren’t dual-booting, but I’d give it a try anyway.

What you do is right click on Computer, click on Manage, and when the Computer Management screen comes up, click on Disk Management.  After a few moments you’ll see a list of drives and partitions.  You should see a 200 MB partition for Windows.  Right click on it and click Mark Partition as Active.  At this point you should be able to run the service pack installer.

All you have to do is hold the Shift key while moving them.  This is great for when you’re trying to line up your gadgets and they snapping/sticking to the side of the screen or to another gadget.

I was getting this error when trying to access a remote database from a website: “Lost connection to MySQL server at ‘reading initial communication packet’, system error: 111″

It turned out that for whatever reason, MySQL did not like using a different port forwarded to 3306.  I guess you need to change the port in my.cnf and on your firewall.

If you’re noticing that Google Reader seems to load or scroll slowly, try disabling your ad-blocker (like AdBlock or AdThwart).

I was having some issues with Firefox being terribly slow, particularly on Facebook and Google Reader. I started disabling extensions and it turns out that the Skype phone number highlighter was the culprit. So if you’re having the same problem, there’s one quick thing to check.

It was an interesting 3 years using Ubuntu.  Linux has come such a long way since the first time I tried it back in 1999.  It’s a usable, functional OS that has most of the features/programs that people need.  It looks good and works well.  However, it just has this unfinished feel.  It lacks polish and overall consistency.  Obviously, this is inherent when you have thousands of people working independently on different pieces of an OS…but it becomes a bit annoying when things don’t work how you expect, or a particular settings doesn’t affect everything that it should.  Also, the lack of documentation/tooltips that give you info about what a setting does is highly lacking.

For example, proxy settings in Ubuntu are not used by all applications.  It seems rather random as to which apps use those settings and which do not.  It’s so tedious to go and change the proxy settings on half a dozen different applications whenever you are using a network that needs a proxy.

The various interface themes have a bulky feel…buttons are too big, there’s too much padding between controls, etc.  The dialogue to open a file is simply enormous.  Someone with some UI experience needs to come and streamline the look and feel, and give it a modern, professional appearance.

That said…

I’ve been toying with the pre-release version of Windows 7 for about two weeks now, and it’s absolutely amazing.  It is what Vista should have been.  It’s fast, it’s stable, and it looks great.  It has features that increase productivity and usability.  The interface is clean and intuitive.  They removed UI elements that didn’t need to be there, which greatly reduces visual distraction and increases the intuitiveness of the system.

I’ve installed it on my desktop machine and my laptop (which is old and slow) and gotten excellent performance on both.  On both machines, installation was a snap.  I installed Windows 7, and once I had booted up, I ran Windows Update and it found all of my hardware drivers automatically.  This probably won’t hold true for all machines, but it worked perfectly for me.  Overall, I’m just very, very pleased with Windows 7…probably more pleased than I was when I switched from Vista to Ubuntu.  I think I’ll post a blog sometime soon about some of the things I like.  Check back!

When securing your wireless router, you are given basically two choices.  WEP and WPA.  WEP encryption does two things:  it encrypts your wireless internet with a hex (0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,A,B,C,D,E,F instead of 0-9) string like “5FE321A” and it sucks.  It’s a pain to remember the key and it’s easy for hackers to break.  WPA allows you to encrypt your wireless with an easy to remember passphrase like “omgthisismypassphrase” and is tough to break.

So just remember: WEP bad, WPA good.  Use WPA.