Mike Wilks' Blog

I’ve been messing about with the new Ubuntu this weekend, so much so I now have:

• The Netbook Remix running on my Acer Aspire One replacing the standard Linpus.

• My Macbook Vmware Fusion Ubuntu upgraded from 8.10.

• An old thinkpad running Ubuntu which was previously dual-booting XP and an old Slackware.

All in all Ubuntu 9.04 is pretty good. I only use Windows in my work machine now and this just vindicates the decision to ditch Windows even more.

I am, however, having an issue getting my VPN to work with the the GUI in both the Ubuntu desktop and Netbook Remix versions. It works fine if I issue the openvpn command and use the same config file which works elsewhere (OSX) but the GUI refuses to work. The build in Network Manager (after I installed the openvpn plugin) accepts the config file import but claims there are “no valid” VPN credentials. KVPNC on the other hand also accepts the config file but hangs on connect. More investigation needed methinks.

Being a Baseball fan who lives in the UK MLB.TV is where I watch most of my games. In the UK we also have ESPN America but they show a minority of Mets games so MLB.TV is important.

In the past I’ve had very little issue with MLB.TV and happily pay the subscription. For live games it seems ok this year but for archived games it is completely broken. The archived games either don’t appear or don’t seem to wotk when they do. I was looking forwards to watching the Mets Reds game from Thursday 9th (despite the Mets loss) but I cannot get it to work. In fact I can only get one game from Thursday to play. There doesn’t seem to be much wrong with my setup as games on Wednesday seem ok.

I really hope they fix this. I watch the majority of Mets games on archive because of the time difference so this is important to me. (Admittedly I missed the day game yesterday because I was at the Cinema!).

It’s the first Mets’ game of the season later today, I thought Spring Training would never end. Really looking forwards to seeing games at Citi Field but we have the Reds and Marlin’s away first.
Today’s is a day game which is great for those of us on the other side of the Atlantic. The game is also televised on ESPN America here in the UK. There are pros and cons to ESPN America, on the one hand you get to see a game on the TV not the laptop but on the downside it will be ESPN not SNY coverage.

Anyway, Let’s go Mets!