I can sometimes be rather picky (some would say 'anal') when I write, for example, an e-mail. I get annoyed if I have to resort to typing three periods for an ellipsis rather than achieving it with just the one character. Doing something with one character instead of three is also a skill that has carved itself a niche in this age of Twitter. So how would one go about it?

So I've had a graphics issue with my Kubuntu box which relies on an Intel motherboard. While I was hoping to put off the fix until the next version of Kubuntu (out in April), the display bug was getting to be really annoying. I therefore decided to upgrade to the latest kernel immediately.

So I upgraded my Kubuntu box's kernel to 3.19 and while that fixed my graphics issues, I ran into a new and peculiar issue where hovering over links in Google Chrome failed to display the linked addresses in the bottom of the screen (the status bar). This is apparently a known (Chromium) bug which has still not been resolved. The current recommended workaround is to disable and re-enable hardware acceleration as follows:

While using Google Chrome on Kubuntu 14.10, the display hung for about 5 seconds before unfreezing with the following notification:

Desktop effects were restarted due to a graphics reset

Once this began occurring with an increasing frequency, I began to do a little digging. Looking through /var/log/kern.log brought the following up:

After installing the shiny new version of Eclipse entitled 'Luna' on a Kubuntu 14.10 box, I found that it crashed/hung when trying to import/clone a Git repository. Starting the application from the command-line triggered the following notice before the crash:

java: /build/buildd/gtk2-engines-oxygen-1.4.5/src/animations/oxygencomboboxdata.cpp:87: void Oxygen::ComboBoxData::setButton(GtkWidget*): Assertion `!_button._widget' failed.

The title sounds like the name of a fantasy novel ... but I'm of course talking (or, as you, stranger of the Internet, will find out, ranting) about the KDE audio player. Amarok is the default audio player for KDE which makes it the default audio player of Kubuntu, my Linux distro of choice. Now, some history before I begin spitting all over you. I usually use Windows as my primary desktop.

So, I have this old Samsung monitor that has served me very well. It's 21" in size and I don't really need anything larger. Only problem is that it is a VGA monitor and uses a VGA cable. My new PC however deems VGA to be of the same archaicity as Morse code and has therefore not deigned to support it. There then I was, stuck with a wonderful monitor that could not be used due to a compatibility issue. Rather wasteful.

New Windows 7 system: When I plugged in my headphones into the front audio jack, I immediately started hearing a buzzing and whistling noise in the earpiece. When I switched to the rear audio port, this noise went away. MP3s played clearly on both ports albeit with the buzzing noise in the background when using the front port.

There appear to be a number of theories as to why the slang for the vagina (or perhaps more precisely, the vulva) is pussy. The most common derivation that I see in dictionaries and other resources is that it can be traced back to the Old Norse puss meaning "pouch" or "pocket". In that sense, it is not unlike the etymology of vagina which itself comes from the Latin vagina meaning "sheath" or "scabbard".

So I wanted to upgrade my Sony Xperia Ray from its now old (and official) Gingerbread version of Android to the relatively more modern Jellybean. The most reliable alternative out there is Cyanogenmod.

While the Cyanogenmod wiki was generally useful, here's what I think is a cleaner guide. I performed the upgrade via a Kubuntu Trusty (14.04) laptop.