The insanely boring life…

The copious amount of readers that I have (that was a joke) must all know by now that I was in 2007’s one act play (the puppets).

Well, I went through 2 rounds of auditions and came out the other side a better person. I have never learnt lines so fast in my entire life. Anyway, I got a part in ONE OF the plays that our school is doing this year to compete in the many competitions.

Yes, “one of”.

You see, our directors thought it might be nice to do not one, not two, not three, but FOUR plays this year. That means that, as one of the top schools concerning drama at teenage level, we essentially have to compete against not only other schools, but against ourselves.

I am in the piece called, “This is just to say”. It is written by Hennie van Greunen and translated to Afrikaans by one of our directors. Anyway, during the translating, it changed names. I suppose that the direct translation of the current title would be, “Between you and me…”

Regardless of the title, I am in it. The other cast members are probably some of the best actors one could wish for. They are really a superb ensemble of players. I could not have wished for a better group of people.

Anyway, all of those plays are excellent. We have strict competition next year (and I won’t even mention the other schools).We will all do our best, and I really hope that every one act for 2008 gets as much praise and attention as it deserves. Good luck, everyone.

Yes, this is going to another one of those “I converted to Ubuntu” posts, but rest assured - it will not be a “Microsoft is evil” post, though.

A few weeks ago I decided that I wanted to try Ubuntu Linux out. See what comes of it. My knowledge of computers  is by no means insignificant - I know my way around the block. I have tried Ubuntu before, and indeed many other distributions. Mandriva, PCLinuxOS and even OpenSuse. Every time though, I found myself going back to Windows for whatever reason.

Let me set the record straight, though: I don’t HATE Microsoft or Windows. I have mutual feelings regarding them: On the one hand, they did make computers very user friendly and popular to use in daily life. On the other hand, they are a bunch of deceiving lunatics. But I digress.

So, I installed Ubuntu again just when Gusty came out. I wanted to see what happened in the time I was locked into Windows. And was I surprised!

Bar for the colour scheme (which looks like steaming poo, to be honest), it has evolved tremendously.Previously, these were the things I could not do and how they were corrected:

• I could not print.
  • Not only can I print now, but I can print double sided, different paper sizes, print many pages on a single page and change the paper feed. In fact, I can do more with my printer now than I can on Windows. My Windows machine refuses to print because it insists that I have no black ink. However, Linux told me once that I don’t have ink, and after I told it to go ahead anyway, it printed without hassle. In fact, I have printed many, many documents from my alleged empty inktank.
• I could not change the screen resolution.
  • Also a thing of the past. I can now change it to anything my heart desires, instead of the default value.
• I could not play midi files and edit music notation.
  • This is something that is very important to me. I can do it with Rosegarden (and it works, albeit not completely to my liking) but I can also do it with Sibelius. Not only can Linux read my musical keyboard that Windows refuses the recognize, but I can edit notation much more productively than I could in Windows. Why? Because Sibelius used to run like a snail on Windows but in Linux it’s a dream.
• My router and Linux didn’t seem to like each other
  • I got a new router in the meantime, and now in Linux my internet connection seems to be snappier than it was in Windows. Someone told me that it was because Linux has no background applications stealing your bandwidth like Microsoft’s patented “Secret Update” and so forth. I don’t really know what to make of this, since it could be that there was just something wrong with my Windows machine.

It appears that many things have been fixed, but there are a few things that I still can’t seem to get over:

• I still can’t scan with my CanoScan LiDE 500F.
• I don’t have Office 2007, and that is one of my most important tools - OpenOffice just doesn’t cut it and I couldn’t bare to go back to Office 2003
• Its default colour scheme is still horrific.
• Audio on Linux is still sub-par and unprofessional. All this JACK and ALSA nonsense - I just want things to work.

As far as I understand, most of these things are being worked on. The audio situation is slated to be addressed in the next Ubuntu release, and the default theme will be modified to (let me puke) black and orange. Excuse me while I go melt my eyes - it will be less painful than looking at that colour scheme. A tip: Don’t make a colour scheme you wouldn’t walk around with in the mall without being embarrassed the default for an operating system. So, unless they are going for the Halloween look, I suggest they look into something else.

As far as the scanner is concerned, I know we should blame Canon. I also know that Microsoft is to blame for the Office situation, but this is getting a little ridiculous. Linux excels in many ways, but there are still many things that don’t work for me yet.

For now, Ubuntu will stay my default OS. I can actually run it for a long time without it slowing down noticeably. I can at least still dual boot into Windows for my other needs. For now, I think the Ubuntu team did a fine job. I can’t wait for their next release (I won’t even type the name of the release because I am sure that they will have to change it eventually - it’s horrible).

It is already old news that Harry Potter author, J. K. Rowling, has revealed that Dumbledore was gay and had a crush on Grindelwald.

Even after all this time, people are still making a fuss about it. People are saying things such as, “I can never look at Dumbledore the same way again.” Other people insist that Dumbledore is a paedophile because he spent so much time alone with Harry and that this revelation makes him less of a great wizard because their vision of him as a grandfather-type has been crushed.

I have one thing I would like to say to these pathetic individuals: It should not matter whether Dumbledore was gay, straight, bi or an apple. It doesn’t change a thing about what he did and how he helped Harry. He remains a great wizard because it is written black on white! You can’t argue with that.

There are still other people that refuse to believe this and they believe that this is a fabrication of J. K. Rowling’s imagination. News flash: Harry Potter is a figment of her imagination. Secondly, everyone knows that a good writer plans a book before she writes. She will plan out every single detail of a character, even if she does not write it all out specifically.

She would know if Dumbledore liked apples, oranges, how many purple robes he wore, what is favourite band was and what his Transfiguration teacher’s husband’s aunt’s grandmother (twice removed) cat’s kitten was called. To say that she pulled this information out of thin air is preposterous. There is many evidence in the book to support this: The fact that he had an extremely close relationship with Grindelwald AND the fact that he always wore flamboyant purple robes that inspired stares. Come on! That screams “Gay!”

But all of this is irrelevant. He is gay. JK’s word is law and nothing you think hope can change it. Perhaps in your own homophobic world you can choose to ignore it, but as someone on the HPB IMDB forum so eloquently said: “Gay is the new straight, after all.”

Get over it.