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Try saying that 10 times fast.

So, I tried getting the XGL/Compiz thing working on Sunday. I downloaded the Kororaa Live CD with XGL preinstalled - and it failed upon trying to recognise my Macbook Pro’s graphics card. Fair enough, the documentation did state that ATI Mobility X1600’s weren’t supported. So I had to go down the manual route.
After a small amount of reading it was clear that the most widley favoured distribution for XGL was Ubuntu, so I went and grabbed myself a copy of the latest release. Setting it up was fairly easy, using rEFIt as the boot manager. I was able to create a partition using the Ubuntu Live CD and then install from the same CD.
I got everything up and running, wireless, graphics drivers, audio, etc. etc. and so it was time to start installing Compiz and XGL.
Using apt-get made most of the process simple, and in some cases, using Synaptic - which is just a graphical frontend for apt-get. I was able to get everything I needed to run Xorg with Compiz as the Window Manager - that was half the battle. But for some reason unknown to man kind, the package Compiz-Core was only available as version 0.0.13.38 when 0.0.13.54 was the latest. No matter which repositories I tried, none of them had 0.0.13.54. What made that worse was the fact that the Compiz-Plugins package wouldn’t even install becauase it depended on Compiz-Core-0.0.13.54 - which I couldn’t get - and as if to kick me in the balls - Compiz-Plugins was the package that did everything that makes XGL XGL.
So I decided that I was defeated, no-where on the entire webernet could I find the most recent Compiz-Core package. I thought that there was no point in keeping Ubuntu on my system if it didn’t do what I put it on there to do, so I attempted to remove it. Only problem being that because Boot Camp is beta software, it was unable to “Restore to Single Partition” as it would if you had installed Windows. I’m guessing this was down to the fact that the parition wasn’t formatted as HFS+, NTFS or FAT32, effectively rendering the partition completely invisible to Mac OS X.
Ok, so maybe I can use the Ubuntu Live CD to remove the partitions, since I used it to create them. That went all well and fine - I was able to remove the partitions, and remove rEFIt from my Mac. What I was not able to do, however, was re-allocate the unused space where the partitions used to be, to the OS X parition again.
So Now I had a dilemma. There’s 15gigs of unallocated hard drive space. I couldn’t do anything with it. Linux can’t read an HFS+ partition, Mac OS X can’t read an EXT3 partition. Whats more is that Mac OS X seems unable to re-allocate space to a parition using Disk Utility. I went searching for a 3rd party partition tool for Mac OS X, but there seems to be a gap in the space time continuum there.
So now my choice was to leave the 15gigs and carry on, or to reinstall OS X, erase the entire disk and claim everything back. I went for the latter. My iMac and Macbook Pro are essentially identical in terms of what data they contain, so everything was backed up already. A quick reinstall and everything was back to normal. Although I have several Kernel Panics after updating - but that was completely my fault for messing around with files and programs while Mac OS X is trying to install updates for the very program I’m messing with….. hehe….

As for the success, The Titans and I finally brought down Vaelstrasz The Corrupt with 36 players. It was an endeavour that I will probably remember for a long time. The Atmosphere on Ventrilo was incredibly tense, everyone must have been biting their nails. The hit points were dropping off slowly, 4%, 3%, 2%, by this time we were all shouting, getting a bit excited. 1%…. 1%……..1%………..1% - What’s going on?! KILL HIM! And then after the unimaginably long 1%, he finally fell and Vent went wild. It was was like nothing I’ve heard before. I had to remove my headphones, and I could still hear it. Hehe. We then moved on, but didn’t seem to make much progress - I think everyone was spent at that point. All effort gone.
Yesterday we went back and killed Broodloord Lashlayer first try. He was so easy - getting to him was harder than beating him. We then attempted Firemaw a couple of times, and decided that we needed to rethink our tactics and called it off for the night.
I’m having a rest from WoW today - been playing it too much.

Uni started back up for real today. I was up at 7:45am this morning - I’m telling you, after you’ve been able to have lie-ins until 3 - 4 pm, it comes as a huge culture shock. I was like “Wha..? There’s a 7:45am?” Anyway. It all seems much the same as last year - not a lot has changed. Peter Timothy, Ray Waldron and Dave Cousins all retired. Hmm. They were dinosaurs anyway. Peter with his “Widescreen monitors don’t exist - 64kbps is the fastest internet connection available to human kind” and Ray’s “Apple aren’t making computers anymore, they’re just concentrating on iPods” and finally Dave with his jokes that no-one finds funny and his gliders… thats right, fly something without a means of propulsion 10,000 feet in the air - clever.
But apart from that it seems like this year will be a lot better than last year. For a start our timetables are set so that we get Monday, Thursday, Wednesday afternoon and Friday off. Sorted. Absolutely awesome.
Looks like we’re going to be getting our hands dirty with Access, and Visual Basic for Applications (VBA). And when I mean dirty, I mean, Microsoft Dirty 2006/07.
The one thing I’m really looking forward to this semester is the fact that our Software Development lecturer is a Linux user and is teaching us Java. That means that I’m free to use my Macbook Pro to do any assignments, since anything I write in Java on this machine is going to work on any other machine that has the Java Virtual Machine installed. Sounds prospective - especially in terms of writing the Willish Translator to be cross platform compatible.
And on the downside, we have Angharad for Database Development Theory. At least it’s not maths this time.

Last, but not at all least, I leave for London on Friday, and I won’t be back until Sunday night. I’m going to visit Sof in her Uni Halls. It’s going to be mad… I have to travel from Newport to London on my own. This is the first time I’ve ever travelled alone, and I don’t know what to expect. I’m hoping it’s just going to be a case of getting on a train, and then getting off a train. But knowing sod’s law, it’s not going to be that easy. I’ll probably spend most of my time at the station trying to decipher what PDGTN125CXF:1731 on the terminal means… Not fun. But I get to see Sof either way, so I’m looking forward to it .
I’ve been instructed by one of Sof’s new friends to bring a guitar with me. Could end up being fun, I guess. I’m not a performing monkey though! And according to Sof, two of her female friends are apparantly really looking forward to meeting me. I hope I don’t dissapoint them too much when they realise that I am just a geek… nothing more, nothing less :S lol

But anyway, I think thats enough text for today.

Oh - I’m going to be attempting to install the SmackBook Pro mod tonight, so I’ll probably make a post on how that goes.