After initially upgrading my K machine’s “Edgy” to “Feisty” but not getting the “Gutsy” version upgrade option offered in Adept Manager, eventually I found good  instructions that had all key pieces of information (especially enabling the “‘Pre-released updates” repository),

After that the upgrade process seemed simple to me. The “Edgy” to “Feisty” upgrade installed the correct NVIDIA driver for the K machine’s older graphics card. “Gutsy” continued that. Some Amarok visualizers now work reasonably well. That has added to total effect of Gray Ponytail Radio. I like that internet radio station quite a bit, even though I don’t wear a ponytail.

With the Linux upgrade and switching from Excel to Open Office’s Calc for data collection on several different projects: both Ender’s Review (ERev) and This Weekend (TWE), I am progressing steadily towards my goal of eliminating proprietary software from my essential tool set.

I realize instead of spreadsheets I should use databases of some sort (either MySQL or SQLite used with Rails come to mind) for collecting data. However, I am moving one step at a time towards what will be a much better set of tools and systems for my projects. I’ll write a short history of both the ERev and TWE projects eventually.

Steady progress as I build experience with new tool sets seems the way to proceed. In that vein I’ll be converting some Perl programs I wrote to produce HTML from spreadsheets (for both ERev and TWE) over to Ruby soon. I’ll also be switching my XP e-mail over to Thunderbird hoping to free it from imprisonment in PST files.

I like the progress I’m making, which seems to accelerate lately.