Mobile internet disappeared on my phone. The cause, as always in such cases — “I didn’t do anything, it just broke on its own.” For 5 days I tried now and then — no luck. Today I double-checked the settings (which I hadn’t changed) — everything looked fine, ordered new settings — they never arrived, so I called the carrier.

Endured 15 minutes on hold and 3 minutes of conversation on the theme of “maybe the SIM card broke, try it in another phone, and if it works — the problem is with your handset.” (The SIM CARD! Which hadn’t been removed from the phone! BROKE! And it still makes calls, just won’t carry data traffic! Oh, I didn’t bother arguing with the operator about how SIM cards actually work.)

V. Sosyurchenko Africa Is Already Winning Its Freedom

Africa is already winning its freedom, The backward tribes are becoming people now. But you do not want liberty, my nation. Or do you dream it will fall from the sky somehow?

No, it will not fall from the sky. Freedom is won In relentless, stubborn struggle and strife — Arabs and Blacks are breaking their chains, My people, is it not your time?

Dear readers and friends! Wishing you a Happy New Year! May you welcome it IRL surrounded by your nearest and dearest, enjoy the holiday season to the fullest, and gather strength and positivity during these days for new achievements in the year ahead!

crunchbang broke something in their latest release — it only installs in text mode and crashes at the bootloader installation stage. and this after copying files for half an hour! you dog :(

Linux Mint 9 LXDE with the kuki kernel plays YouTube videos at 360p smoothly in full-screen mode even with Google Reader and Gmail tabs open.

dear friends, how do you carry your mobile phone? in a holster on your belt or what?

and what if you have two? :(

Despite the fact that most of my real and online acquaintances are involved in IT to one degree or another, I very often notice a certain unawareness among my friends when it comes to geeky tools and such. For example, in a team of seven young IT folks (4 developers + 2 sysadmins + support), none of them over 35, not a single person uses Jabber! Everyone is stuck on the cursed ICQ. Well, that can still be chalked up to personal taste, to the fact that moms, wives, and girlfriends are on ICQ — fine. But when people don’t use Dropbox, I’m genuinely surprised. Or rather, regular folks can be forgiven for it, but for an IT person it’s practically a sin not to use tools that make life significantly easier and cost nothing.

http://www.wuala.com/referral/G5F34AA5GN6G673GJABM

When you listen to several podcasts on related topics, the news starts to repeat itself. Both RadioT, and Internet Stuff, and Krasnoglaziki are all talking about Firefox’s sixth anniversary.

Added some work for myself. Did you know that when Windows 7 installs, it creates an extra 100 MB partition before its own? I thought: fair enough, unix-style — put the NTLoader and its config files there. However, that bastard also writes additional data there, like a partition table. I decided to nuke that Windows 7 and install a normal Windows in its place. Obviously I planned to format only the system disk and leave the rest untouched. The installer refused to format it, so I used Acronis — and in the process wiped that 100 MB appendix as well. After booting into the freshly installed Windows, my largest logical drive showed up as unformatted and the wrong size (there were many partitions in total — 7 [yes, I’m a maniac] — only the last one disappeared, which also happened to be the largest). And that’s where the working databases were (because they’re big). Thank you to the authors of GetDataBack — it correctly identified both the partition and the data on it, whereas Acronis had stopped launching and couldn’t see anything, and R-Studio took four times as long to scan and found nothing. Slowly recovering, swearing profusely, and recalling the epic text “Real Men Work on Windows.”