Wordpress 2.6 is now officially released
Wordpress 2.6 was officially released today. There are a ton of new additions, bug fixes and other coolnesses within this release so you might want to get a hold of the newest version and update your Wordpress.
I already updated in case you were wondering. 
EDIT | Apparently there have been some folks having issues with the upgrade. Chris Brogran, famed Twitterer and blogger, reported that his upgrade didn't take and he had to roll back his installation. Sounds like the Wordpress team needs to spend a little time looking into this, huh?
I hate you Microsoft and your registry hive files
Sometimes I wish that Microsoft were something tangible that I could grab hold of and slap 32 different ways from sideways as I watched it writhe in anguish begging for mercy. Why? Because it does that to me almost daily. And I am sure I am not alone.
Tonight my wife showed me that she had installed Opera 9.5 on her computer. I was very impressed with her technical savvy that she showed in doing this. So much so that I told her that Firefox has just come out with a new version and, since Firefox the previous has all but killed my wife's computer, updating may be the order of the day so that she could use Firefox instead of Opera.
So I had her load up Firefox and attempt to update from within the application. And you know what? Two words: Epic. Fail.
Frick.
Firefox froze and took the entire system with it. Not wanting to watch Firefox think about dying on the spot, I decided to power down the computer and start afresh. Yes ladies and gentlemen, I killed the windows.
Apparently the registry was being written to/read from when Firefox decided to crap all over itself. And as such, shutting the computer down in the middle of that process freeze basically wiped out the registry. Thanks Microsoft for the awesome idea of the registry. I so love that.
So I got a blue screen of death (BSOD) on the boot. I tried logging in to the last known good configuration. Nothing. Safe mode? No dice. Safe mode with networking? Nada. Safe mode in any capacity? Pukage.
I was crapola.
So I hit up the Microsoft Support site and did a search for a corrupt registry hive file and found article #307545 - How to recover from a corrupted registry that prevents Windows XP from starting. Remarkably, this article saved my hide.
Now I will be the first to admit that Microsoft is the bane of all even semi-smart people's existence. I hate them with a passion that is unrivaled in normal circumstances. But tonight... well, tonight I actually applaud them.
There knowledge base article actually worked almost to the letter the way they said it would. I had to guess a couple of times, but the guesses were logical and easy to make based on what I was seeing. In about an hour and half's time I was able to get my wife's computer back on its feet and ready to be (ab)used once again.
So tonight, for the briefest of moments, I thank you Microsoft for putting out a halfway decent article on getting a Windows XP machine back up and running after your stupid registry hive files go belly up at a time when they shouldn't have. You actually earned your $32,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 USD tonight, in my book.
Connecting to an HP Photosmart 2610 on Ubuntu 8.04
Click here to go to the instructions and bypass all of my wonderful writing.
Today I fell in love all over again. With Linux. Specifically Ubuntu 8.04.
I have been playing around with Ubuntu 8.04 for the last week and a half or so and I have totally fallen in love with software, operating systems and geekery again. Not only does Ubuntu just flat out work straight out of the box, it has made using my computer fun again. And productive.
Take installing my printer driver on my machine. A few years ago I bought a new HP Photosmart 2610 printer for an outrageously discounted price at a black Friday after Thanksgiving sale at Circuit City. I had gotten it home and installed the software for it on my computer (a Winblows 2000 computer at the time). It took about 30 minutes and two reboots (that's right, you heard me) to get the software installed.
Once it was loaded it worked very well. It allowed me to print, fax, scan... the works. Right from my computer. Awesome.
When I got my new laptop about 2 years ago I installed the software for the printer on it. Once again, about 30 minutes and two reboots later I was able to use my printer. I followed this same process a few months later for my wife's laptop.
Did I mention all of these computers I did this too were Winblows? The last two were XP machines, one XP Pro the other XP home. Thanks Microsoft.
Today I decided to "trudge" through getting my printer connected to my machine. I say "trudge" because I have always heard that installing printers on Linux is a lesson in futility and that, seeing as I am losing hair already, if I wanted to keep what little hair I had I would just not bother.
Was I ever stupid for listening to that mumbo jumbo.
Installing the HP Photosmart 2610 driver on Ubuntu 8.04
A quick Google search for HP Photosmart 2600 on Linux returned a link to the Linux Printing web site for my printer. After reading over the driver information I decided to visit the home page for HPIJS/HPLIP.
Once there I looked around and found that there is an unusual amount of support for many Linux distros form HP's printer division. Since I quickly found my distro on the list I decided to use Add/Remove ... from the Application menu to see if I could install my printer that way.
Did I mention I love Ubuntu? In 8.04 go to Applications -> Add/Remove ... and in the search box enter HPLIP. You should get one result. Install the "HPLIP Toolbox" and once it is done, go to System -> Preferences -> HPLIP Toolbox.
If your system is like mine (vanilla to the core) you will have no printers installed to manage. I was asked by the Toolbox if I wanted to add a printer and I said I did by clicking the "Add device" button.
I was asked how my device was connected to my machine and I chose "Network" since that is how my printer is connected.
About 1 second later I was told my printer had been found and did I want to install that printer. I said yes and within about 1 second I was asked which driver I wanted to install. Since there was only one I chose it.
Within about 1 second my driver was installed.I was asked to set up some information for the printer (like the name, location and such as well as the fax number and fax name). I chose the defaults (because they were what I would have entered anyway) and let the setup work.
About five seconds later I was able to test print. No reboot. No 30 minute installs. Just printing. Fast.
Did I mention I love Ubuntu?
Anyhow, I hope this can help someone else who may have believed that setting up printers on Ubuntu was hard. This was painfully easy and now I am printing away like a printing machine.
Well, not really. My printer is doing that. But I am telling it to. And it is all because of Ubuntu.
