Liberation Fonts

Over the past couple of Slackware releases, Pat and co. have been setting up the fonts to automatically use the Liberation fonts as replacements for the Microsoft Times New Roman, Arial, and Courier New. In the past I reversed those changes and installed the MS fonts. However, I've really wanted to get rid of anything like that. Since the Liberation fonts are metric-compatible with the MS ones, I decided to give them a go. So far, I've been pretty happy with them. I see no reason to go back now.

IMD Final Lick Pt 2

Even though I haven't posted about this in a couple of weeks, it doesn't mean I haven't been practicing. I've really been working at that fast descending lick. I think I finally have the notes under my fingers properly. Unfortunately, it's a struggle to even play it at half speed right now. I used Audacity to drop the speed by 75% just so I could figure out the timing better. It sounds ugly slowed down that much, but I could figure it out. My birthday, aka my goal date, is less than a month away . . .

Palm TX Reset Fix

I was having a problem with my Palm TX resetting every time I tried to sync the Datebook/Calendar information. I ended up downloading Pimlico Software's DateBk6 and installing a file called dbscan.prc which is in the AdvancedStuff.zip file. I ran the program and followed these steps:

1. Choose "Other" from the opening screen
2. Pull down the menu and choose "Remove All Deleted Records"
3. Push the "PalmOne" button

Apparently there were three deleted records in the Datebook/Calendar database. Now that those are gone, I can sync my PDA via pilot-link and JPilot once again.

I Hate It When That Happens

It's a bad idea to run rm -rf on your /media directory when you've got your USB drive mounted there. You'd think I'd know better than that. You'd be wrong. Thankfully there was nothing of massive importance on there.

Slackware and KDE's Font Installer

I don't know why this never gets fixed, but for the past several Slackware releases, fonts that you install via KDE's font installer won't show up anywhere. The trick is to add this directory to your /etc/fonts/fonts.conf file under the section marked Font directory list:

/usr/local/share/fonts

I may have to talk with the powers-what-is about that.

Slackware 12.2

Pat and the guys released Slackware 12.2 on the 10th. I downloaded the DVD iso. Unfortunately my other computer won't read DVDs burned by this one, so I have to get the three install CDs too. Thank heavens for broadband. For kicks I decided to upgrade my kids' computer yesterday. Everything went so smoothly that I decided to go ahead and do it on my main box too. I'm just tying up some loose ends right now. So far it seems very slick. Unlike 12.1, the kernel that comes with 12.2 doesn't barf on my DVD drive.

IMD Final Lick

I began work on the final lick to the "In My Dreams" solo tonight. It's a hyper-fast descending lick. Right now I can't even play the notes in the right order, to say nothing of playing them quickly. That time will come, but I can already tell that this will be the hardest part of the solo by far. OK, maybe when I try to learn to do the tapping part with only one hand, that will be harder but there's a way around that. There's no way around the last lick other than serious woodshedding.