My New Diet

Many things change as we age. One thing I have noticed is my interests changing. Previously I was uninterested in cooking. Eating, yes but cooking, no. But lately I have been doing more cooking, not because I have found some new curiosity in culinary but because I am hungry. You see I now live amongst a band of Gluten Nazis. It is the new trend in alternative health and the target of foodies everywhere. Gluten – the cause of all adverse health issues.

I’m not saying that these people are not on the right track. Many are adversely affected by gluten I am sure. And I am positive the medical community will never be up to speed on this because there is no money in it, no real money as in other health care. But I believe the gluten Nazis are guilty of over extending the gluten impact. By how much is anyone’s guess.

But still, a guy’s gotta eat. So I have taken matters into my own hands and have started cooking. I have contemplated a gluten refugee cookbook, sort of a Guantanamo guide to food survival. But I may be getting ahead of myself.

For starters I have learned how to make the Ramen Noodle delicacy. (See Ramen hacks)

This is really a staple in my diet these days and I have found my own personal formula for spicing it up. Thanks Tony.

I know it is unhealthy to have such a limited diet so, to mix things up and add a healthy twist to my daily eating, I have learned to make two dishes.

So, when the family turn against you and you find yourself in a foreign land of gluten Nazis, learn to cook or die.

Ubuntu 10.10 is a dream to install

Ubuntu keeps getting easier, better and bigger. If you put Ubuntu 10.10 on an 8 GB flash drive don't try to update, there is not enough room. That said, it doesn't need to update to work and be a handy repair platform for Windows disasters. I chose the 32 bit version even though I have 4GB of RAM. I wonder if Ubuntu 64 bit might have more driver issues. Anywho, I didn't want the frustration.

I used PendriveLinux's Universal USB Installer after downloading the Ubuntu ISO. I could have used Pendrive's MultibootISO but I wanted to install Ubuntu updates, which ended up too large anyway. But after you have Ubuntu installed on the flash drive, boot it and on the Ubuntu desktop is an install button. Use it to install to a machine hard drive.

Make sure to have a free partition. I set aside 100GB, overkill I know and 20-30GB would have been plenty.When Ubuntu formats the space I chose to mount root "/" but don't know if that is good or bad but it made sense to me. But be sure to reduce the size of the space and leave room for a swap partition. I left two and one half the amount of my ram. I did not change the default file system.

Be sure somewhere during the install to check the box for 3rd party mp3 support to avoid looking for it later. But if you forget, just open Rythembox with an mp3 and you will be directed to the necessary files. I chose to update during the install and Youtube played without a problem so Adobe Flash was covered.

Numlock not employing at startup has always bugged me. The fix is in keyboard options and explained in this post.

The Brothers printer driver was found and installed easily.

Network interface installed automatically.

Video card drivers installed without my input.

What are the chances I will get my Fujitsu ScanSnap to work? I haven't tried yet.

Another Linux mystery has been accessing a Windows network. At first I thought, here we go again, when I clicked Networks and got nowhere. I went to the Home folder and made a new folder. Then I right clicked the folder and shared it. I followed the prompts and the share to Windows network was all done for me. Linux likes Windows networks to be named "Workgroup" so if you have another fancy nomenclature it will not work without alterations.

There is simply no reason for the average person not to use Ubuntu, unless you consider they probably are using the "free" Windows residing on the Dell they purchased.

I am writing this with a Linux blogging module delightfully named "Drivel". (Which is apparently oblivious to paragraphing so I had to add them by editing the post.)

This was meant for BigHugeThingComputing but I didn't check were Drivel was sending it ...