It was my understanding that Google Adsense will place text or picture ads on your site in accordance with the content on your sight.  I'm finding out that this is not necesarily true.

Case in point: I stopped by this blog a couple times this evening and couldn't help but notice one ad in particular.  It stated, "Meet Gay Men".  What the hell?!?  I have nothing on this blog that would prompt such an ad!

Guess I need to look more into the settings and see if something can be figured out…

I have started a new blog that I will use to focus on Ubuntu and other Linux topics.  It is still very much new, so not everything is set properly yet.  You can find this new blog at Ubuntu Rocks!

I had a problem with flash causing Firefox to randomly and frequently shut down on me.  It was annoying to say the least.

I followed this guide from Ubuntu Forums on installing most of my multimedia needs.  It is a great guide for getting most, if not all, the requirements for multimedia purposes.  The command for getting flash support listed there goes like this:

sudo apt-get install flashplugin-nonfree libflashsupport

This did indeed get flash working in Firefox, but my browser was shutting down a lot on me when flash objects were running.  I tried reinstalling, and that didn't do anything.  The guide says that libflashsupport is needed in Hardy as it is related to the default PulseAudio sound server, but I tried removing it to see what would be affected.  After

sudo apt-get purge libflashsupport

I noticed a remarkable improvement.  Flash wasn't crashing my browser.  I'll still test this out to see if the kinks are worked out, but for now it appears like it's working ok.

Let me just come right out and say it….. I do like Microsoft Vista.  I do.

Now that that is out of the way, let me tell you about the flip side of the above statement.  As much as I do like Vista, it does have it's flaws.  And for that reason, I can't see myself settling down permanently with this system.  My main problem with Vista right now is the internet connection it gives me.  Up until a few days ago, everything was fine with my internet speed, but for some unknown reason Vista determined that life was too good for me, so she relegated me to dial-up speeds.  And I don't do dial-up; it's just not how I roll.

I checked and rechecked my internet connection settings, even changed my DNS to OpenDNS but that didn't help anything.  Made sure all the drivers on my system were update, and that didn't change anything either.  Switched my ethernet cable.  Nothing.

Since I was planning on reinstalling Vista over again anyway, I took the plunge and wiped the hard drive and did a fresh install.  Even on a fresh install my internet speed was pathetic.  Did a thorough virus and spyware scan to see if there were any residual ickies on my system, but that came up blank.  So for now, I'm just frigging stumped on what the problem is.

I know this problem is isolated to my Windows system, for if I boot into my Ubuntu system I get a great connection speed.  I don't think Bill Gates wants me to experience the internet the way I'm supposed to.

So now I will focus more on customizing the Ubuntu side to do what I need for it to do, and that is a heavier focus on multimedia operations.  I can live without iTunes, but I don't want to lose what I've gotten so far from them.  I still need to figure out if converting DMA protected videos to a non-protected format is possible, and if so, would my conscience let me (they say that's illegal, but I'm no lawyer).  And I do enjoy being able to use my computer as a DVR, so I will need Ubuntu to come through for me on this as well.  And I don't want to lose the ability to use a remote when watching TV or movies, so there is another project.  If I am magically capable of getting this all done in Ubuntu, then I will backup the entire Ubuntu system, either with remastersys or simply tar it, and then wipe out the drive and just use Linux.

That's my plan at least.  Time will tell if I can bring this to fruition.

I recently installed Ubuntu Hardy Heron on my computer.  This was after a two month hiatus using Windows Vista instead of my normal OS.  It's nice having a familiar setup again, but….

Like Neufeld Computer Services stated, I have a few issues of contention with this latest release.  I'm sure there are workarounds to them, but I feel that I must state them.

First, why include beta software in an LTS version?  That doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me.  Firefox 3 is coming along, and coming along nicely I might add, but it's not there yet.  It operates nicely, but many users will experience what users of Microsoft Vista did.  With Vista, many users had compatability issues with older versions of their software, in effect rendering them worthless.  In Firefox 3, most of the available themes and extensions will not work in this version, so there is a limited amount of plugins available for this beloved browser.

Secondly, pulseaudio was touted as a great thing to be used for the default sound system in Ubuntu, but I'm not sold on that yet.  So far, my sound has been much quieter on my system.  I know little about sound and sound configurations, so this may just be a minor annoyance until everything is set correctly, but I don't know that for certain yet.

Overall, though, I am enjoying my return to Ubuntu.  I still have more customization ahead of me, but for now I am generally happy with what Ubuntu has become.