If you read this regularly, you may recall that I’ve adopted my daughters orphan net-book. Windows Vista was dead slow on it (go figure), so I installed Ubuntu Linux as a dual boot. After some tweaking and poking, I convinced it to do most of what I wanted. Mind you, part of that success depends on understanding that it’s not going to do everything my daughters new quad core notebook does (again, go figure). Among other things, it’s never going to transcode video. Trust me on this.

Short version: It worked like a charm, until it didn’t. That is a phrase that can be applied to so many things, isn’t it. In this case, I knew exactly what had happened, I just had no idea how to fix it.

The problem, as is so often the case, was of my own invention. I was at my trailer and decided to install an application across their very erratic wi-fi. Signal drops, install crashes, I’m left with some partially rewritten config files and a pile of error messages. Ubuntu is not Windows. Thank the Geek Gods for that. Despite this colossal blunder, Ubuntu still works. I can do anything I want to except install things.

That’s not so bad. How often do I really need to install things anyway? Turns out, the answer is: More often than you think. Especially if you plan better after your mistakes. Let me explain how that works for me.

Because I was becoming unemployed, Lynn and I decided to spend some time at the trailer before the season ends. Since my net-book doesn’t have a dvd drive, I decided to rip Battlestar Galactica to digital format to take with me. I spent all that time getting the thing to play video, I may as well enjoy it right? I rip the first disc, test it out and decide it looks terrible. But it plays, so I know I’ve got the right format, codec, etc. I increase the quality and rip the next three discs before we leave.

Now I’m at my trailer unemployed and planning to enjoy some BSG. They won’t play. The increased quality and resulting filesize is apparently more than my little net-book can handle. This is the better planning part: test the new settings before ripping three more discs. Hindsight as they say is always 20/20.

No problem I think, I’ll just go online and download a transcoder and fix that. Except of course, I can’t install any new software because of the previous issue. That’s just inconvenient. So I grab Lynn’s laptop, download DivX and start transcoding things. Turns out, it’s not going to finish anytime this week. She might want to use her laptop before then so I cancel the job. But I still want to watch BSG.

That leaves me with two problems. The same ones I had before. Ubuntu won’t play my huge video files, and I can’t download any kind of fix for it. So I do what I always do and ask Google. I copy and paste the error message and run my search. Then I do it again and then I start to get grumpy. Turns out none of the answers I found covered my particular problems. So I opened up my braincase, rummaged around in the dus ty, unused part labeled “Figure It Out Yourself”, and set to work.

Four and a half hours, two cups of tea, one diet coke and some truly creative profanity later: Success! I am now able to install software again. That allowed me to install the xfce window manager. It is very simple, and so less resource hungry. I also installed the Kaffeine video player which is again smaller footprint. Between them, I am now able to watch BSG without having to wait until I get home to redo them all. YAY!

And that folks, is how you go from Netbook Blues To Happy News.

Cheers, Winston