For those who don’t know, Linus Torvalds is the creator of Linux, the open-source operating system that changed the world.

So I was at a conference in San Jose with my buddy Jake, close to time to leave to catch our plane. Jake and I were playing some pool to pass the time, and Linus Torvalds just happens to be walking by. In our excitement, Jake and I asked if he wanted to play some pool with us. It was very cool!

Anyway, I was able to get a picture with him, even though I beat him at pool

He was a wonderful grandpa and he had a profound influence on my life.  I have many fond memories of him that I will always treasure, such as his dressing up as Santa Claus on Christmas when I was four, him letting me ride in his truck, his crooked smile and great sense of humor, his enthusiasm when leading songs at church.  Many, many memories come to mind… to many to list.

I love you, Grandpa, and I will miss you greatly.  May you rest in peace.

His memorial page can be found at http://www.lestervanbruntmemorial.com

Normally, I don’t like anything new put out by bands from the 80’s because it usually sounds like a bunch of old guys trying to recapture their former glory.  But, I gotta say that Gabriel is at least as good, if not better, than Believer’s earlier recordings, all of which are nothing short of amazing!

In my opinion, this is the best thrash album of 2009 – no contest.

The album cover is really cool:

And, for your listening pleasure here is a song from the album called Stoned.

I have one rant about them…

I recently bought a Blackberry and am paying them for voice and data service. This Blackberry has an internal GPS that *should* be accessible to any application that I install on my device. I recently installed Google Maps and the location service is less than accurate because it’s only using cell tower triangulation to approximate a location. Apparently, Verizon disables the internal GPS on almost all Blackberry devices on their network!

What gives them the right to disable functionality on a device that I own, just because I pay them for voice and data service??

What’s interesting is that Verizon just happens to offer a service called VZW Navigator that will use the internal GPS for location services… and they want me to pay $9.99 a month to use a GPS that I already own!!!

That’s total bullcrap!! You know it, I know it and I’m sure that Verizon knows it too!

I love Verizon’s voice and data service, but I think that the FTC needs to step in and take care of this!

ID 093a:2468 Pixart Imaging, Inc. Easy Snap Snake Eye WebCam

Ubuntu 7.10 includes the gspca driver which is supposed to handle this webcam, but doesn’t. A minor change needs to be made to the driver source to make it work.

First, open up a terminal.

Next, unplug your webcam and make sure the gspca module is not loaded with this command:
sudo rmmod gspca

Now download the gspca source code and the tools to build it with these commands:
sudo apt-get install gspca-source
sudo apt-get install build-essential

This will place the source code into the /usr/src directory.

Next, we go to that directory and expand the source with these commands:
cd /usr/src
sudo tar xvjf gspca-source.tar

Now we will download a patch and apply it to the source:
cd modules/gspca/Pixart
sudo wget http://www.vanbrunt.com/pac207.patch
sudo patch -p0 < pac207.patch

Finally, we will build and install the modified driver:
cd ..
sudo ./gspca_build

And that, my friend, should do the trick! I recommend trying it with Camorama:
sudo apt-get install camorama

Enjoy!!

It’s nothing special, but if you enjoy reading it, then great!