So after all my troubles trying to get Fedora 11 x86_64 kit installed and failing, I tried Kubuntu.
I prefer KDE desktop to Gnome, so went with the KDE Ubuntu 9.04 "Jaunty" version, Kubuntu. Ubuntu itself is Debian-based.
Took two tries, but the second try was the real thing, and within an hour the the 64-bit kit was installed, and fully working - including the DVD playback as well as audio.
First try:
The documentation on the Ubuntu pages is somewhat unclear. I knew I wanted LVM, and expected that the DVD iso image for desktop install would offer it. No mention is made of this on the Get Ubuntu pages. It does refer to something call "alternate" kit which is text-mode install for systems with small amounts of memory. So, went with the desktop kit. It is also not very clear that the "amd64" kit is for Core 2 Duo Intel processors also, in fact, some of the language might indicate that it is only for AMD CPUs, but that would be an incorrect reading. So, for Core 2 Duo, use amd64.
But overall, using the desktop kit was the wrong thing to do. Took an hour to install, discovered the problem with no LVM, so went back to web searches, and discovered (in not-so-easy to find places) that the alternate kit is the more powerful kit, and has much better control and many more options for the install.
Second try:
Now using the kubuntu-9.04-alternate-amd64.iso kit, started the install. Things to note: if you let the installer "Guide the partitioning", it will end up not what you want - it seemed to have installed the boot partition at the end of the disk, when it is far better to have this in the lower numbered cylinders (though that may not matter for the newer BIOSes). So, best option here is to select the "Manual" partitioning method. For my purposes, the following works fine:
Primary Partition#1 sda1 /boot ext3 100M
Primary Partition#2 sda2 /lvm logical volume group, which has
/ ext4 25G, swap 2.5G, /home ext4
So, here are the all the issues I ran into when installing Fedora 11 on a new-ish computer.
Computer: Gigabyte GA-73PVM-S2, with SATA hard-drive, and IDE CD/DVD drive, and 4G of RAM.
2009-06-20:
Given that the i386 Fedora cannot see all of 4G, I first tried the x86_64 install. The Fedora install notes also say that for Core 2 Duo processors, the 64-bit install is recommended.
Right at the outset, it failed. Booted off a DVD install kit, and got stuck where the install said "install media driver not found", and asked me to select a driver, I selected pata_amd (for IDE CD/DVD), and forcedeth (for ethernet), but no luck, it kept repeating - no driver, then select driver, with no way to break the loop. It also failed to recognize the VGA card, and performed the install in text mode.
Retried the install over the network. Now the install proceeded to completion, but when the system started, there was no X driver for the video card. Having spent 2+ hours on this, decided to shelve this approach.
2009-06-21:
Using the i386 DVD install, everything went smoothly. It had no trouble finding all drivers, did the install, and Fedora was up. It even selected the PAE kernel, so can see all 4G of RAM (most of it anyway).
This probably indicates that there is some packaging problem with the x86_64 version?
Current problem:
Cannot play DVDs, even locally created, no encryption DVDs. Have installed libdvdcss and other modules mentioned at the unofficial fedora faq. Xine reports no mpeg codec, and keeps popping up the error window, ad nauseum.
2009-06-23:
Gave up on Fedora, was taking too long to get basic stuff running, and 64-bit not working was a big problem, and discovered that it was not Linux, or the Gigabyte GA-73PVM-S2 motherboard issues - Kubuntu installed with incredible ease.
Cost and Conundrum in New Yorker is hopefully pointing out factors that should be studied further if we really want to fix the health care system in the US.
The focus right is now is the large number of uninsured. But the problem is much deeper - the whole system is a mess.
A system is healthy if there are counter-balancing forces that prevent any tilt towards excess. As the article above points out, we have lost that. Doctors have a financial stake in pharmaceuticals, in medical labs, in hospitals, and their income is tied to the number of high-cost procedures performed. So naturally, these will tend to go up and up, which should not be a mystery at all.
Nowadays with the economic slump the GDP number and its percent decrease is getting a lot of attention. The perverse thing about this is that if a primary care doctor helps patients so that they don't need high cost operations later on, the GDP goes down. While ignoring preventive care, and focusing on expensive care for patients results in a higher GDP. And when the country is worrying about decreasing GDP numbers, one has to wonder whether that in itself indicates bigger problems and no hope for ever fixing this issue.
Another article claims that ... discouraging demand for such coverage ... is the answer. Those ideas are quite common on the conservative political wing, and they are completely unrealistic, regurgitating the same old ideas of applying free-market economics to medicine. It proves that when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
(click here for the entire post)"... A first step toward completing the Quartier des spectacles, Place du Quartier des spectacles is a public space that covers an area of 7,500 square metres dedicated to festivals. It is bounded by Rue Jeanne-Mance to the east, Rue Balmoral to the west, Rue Sainte-Catherine to the south and Boulevard de Maisonneuve to the north."
This picture is of Rue Jeanne-Mance in May 2009, in the midst of all the construction. This is great - the city is spending $120 million over four years to make it even better for tourists who visit Montreal during the festivals - Jazz Fest being the biggest, and in some years, they even have things going on in the dreaded cold of Winter around New Year!
Discover a variety of Chinese (and Korean, etc) food on Main St, Flushing - last stop on the #7 Subway line.
Good references: NYTimes Flushing Interactive graphic which also has a nice printout to take when visiting, and which links to the main article, which also has more tips from the reader's in the article's comments section.
The absolutely great things in this area: Sichuan food - spicy-hot with tongue-numbing Sichuan pepper experience, all sorts of dumplings, and the street stalls with $1 skewers of grilled spiced-meat ("Mongolian Barbecue?"). Finish off with bubble tea.
The only problem - most places have menus in Chinese only!
New tickets as of 2008.
It costs CAD$7 to buy the OPUS Card. It is a micro-chip based card, and is necessary to buy weekly or monthly passes. It can store multiple single tickets on it also.
The à la carte tickets are paper-based with a magnetic strip. These have no additional cost other than amount of fare.
There are some serious disadvantages with the OPUS card for tourists:
1) Unlike other cities (Boston for example), Montreal is charging a fee to buy the OPUS card.
2) The OPUS card seems to have an expiry date - which is four years. This means that every four years a new card has to be bought. Leaving aside the cost, it seems very wasteful since the card itself should be in good condition and usable for much longer than four years.
3) Unlike many other cities' cards, the OPUS card does not store cash, so it cannot be used for multiple passengers. It should not have been too hard to allow cash on the card too, and deduct the amount of a ticket with each swipe, thus allowing multiple passengers to use one card. New York (on paper ticket, not smart-card) stores cash on card and also provides a bonus when adding cash. A similar concept should have been supported by OPUS.
Unfortunately, for tourists visiting for multiple weeks, there is no choice but to get a OPUS card since the weekly pass (Mon-Sun validity) will not be available in paper-ticket form. Monthly pass is also only available on OPUS.
Main web sites:
OPUS Card
À la carte Tickets
This site uses Drupal. Drupal has turned into a nightmare. It was fine when there was a single 4.x version out there, but soon after 4.x, there was 5.x. Then 6.x. Upgrading from a older version is near impossible.
There always was the assumption that some amount of coding would be required by anyone running a Drupal site. But be prepared - you will be hacking modules left-and-right to get any thing running. At this time, one has to question whether the amount of hacking required to get things to run are worth it. Maybe all CMSes have this problem, but certainly Drupal is really a poster-child for impossible-to-ever-upgrade software.
The problem occurs because Drupal changes the API every release, adds new incompatible features, and modules and themes become unusable. And since modules and themes are merely someone's weekend project, it can be months or years before a module becomes compatible with the newer Drupal version.
Core drupal does not have image handling capabilities or spam fighting capability so even a basic site will need to use external modules. Add things like forums, automatic aliases, FAQs, it becomes a large collection of non-core modules.
The advantage of Drupal is that it is extensively customizable, and has a wide range of modules. This is exactly the same thing that makes a Drupal site near-impossible to upgrade. Once a site is up and starts to depend on a bunch of modules, rest assured that when a new Drupal version comes out quite a few required modules will not make it to that new version!
Drupal core does get upgraded without problems. But Drupal itself has become super-bloated. Web hosts that worked fine with Drupal 4.7 will not support Drupal 6.x because of heavily increased memory and CPU requirements.
(click here for the entire post)List of all my favorite restaurants and food markets in Montreal. Some of these are described in more detail in the links. Photos are available in the Montreal Photo Gallery.
A map showing locations of all these restaurants is in the Montreal Restaurants Map posting.
Schwartz's Deli 3895 St-Laurent Blvd, 514-842-4813.
Value: 
191 Jean-Talon East, 514-270-9361. Value: 
Value: 
Jean-Talon Market bustles with activity in summer certainly and winter too. It is truly a fantastic market - all fresh vegetables, fruits you need, as well as bakeries, food stalls (bison sausage anyone), maybe the best calamari you can have in a paper bag (at Aqua Mare). And cheese too - inside the market, as well as at La Fromagerie Hamel close by at 202 Jean-Talon St. East. On your first day at Montreal, get down here, get yourself a supply of fruits, continue to replenish every few days. And then to eat you have crepes, fish, pastries, cheeses, and so on. Just outside the market is Marché des saveurs du Québec selling local products, at 280 Place du marché du nord, on a side street.The most memorable experiences in my travels are invariably the local street food vendors. In Buenos Aires, there are two places that are great for this - Costanera Norte, and Costanera Sur.
In picking a street vendor in Buenos Aires, the key thing to look for is the range of condiments available! This is such a great advantage over restaurant eating where you get only one or two choices, out in the street they lay out all the options for you to see, and pick out. There can be multiple variations on the chimichurri sauce, the standard red one, one with ají picante (excellent, and quite spicy), one a la provenzal (green parsley and garlic, maybe spicy or not). There will be mustard, mayo, ketchup and salsa criolla (onions, tomatoes). Never in a restaurant will you get all this, even in street vendors, not all street vendors serve all of these options, but it is worth walking around to find one with the range you need.
As for meat, it is of course parilla style, grilled meat. Bondiola (pork), hamburger, and the best of all - choripan is available. The paty bread for hamburger was never very good, texture and quality is poor. The choripan or bondiola uses pan for the sandwich, somewhat similar to large french bread loaf and much better tasting, though can make for messy eating since it is a bit tough. Add the other oily condiments, and maybe the cheese which also is invariably oily in Buenos Aires, and this is really messy eating, but it is all worth it. The taste, the experience, is something that will be cherished for a long time.
Costanera Norte
(click here for the entire post)
