It’s taken me long enough to be utterly annoyed by this bug and got down to find a fix. The bug is this – when I want to play a YouTube video full-screen, it works perfectly fine if I click full-screen button for the first time. However, let’s say for example I pause the video, switch back to normal screen and make it full-screen again, the video wouldn’t play anymore. For sure, it’s the problem with the infamous Flash player which has taken a long time to be finally of acceptable standard on Linux.
The fix is surprisingly easy. Just go to your Chrome address bar, type chrome://plugins and hit enter; you’ll be led to the following page.
Click on “Details” button on the right side and you’ll see two versions of Flash currently available on your Chrome. Just make sure you disable the version number 11.3 and enable the version 11.2. Now reload the videos and enjoy! That did the trick for me.
When Ubuntu 12.04 was released, I decided to give Unity another shot. I skipped 11.04, 11.10 and stayed with 10.04 LTS because of various bugs first found in Unity. Ubuntu has actually become my main OS and daily driver since 2009, so stability and maintenance mean a lot to me. To my surprise, I actually like the way 12.04 works after just playing with it for a few hours.
There was one problem with 12.04, though, that I didn’t face when I was using 10.04 for close to a year. The OS actually became very laggy almost to the point of me doubting if one of my RAM sticks has stopped working. I came across a software called BleachBit after doing a bit of research regarding speeding up Ubuntu and freeing up some disk spaces. The best part? It’s free and open-source. You can install simply by calling up your Terminal (Ctrl + Alt + T) and type sudo apt-get install bleachbit.
Once it is done installing, open up your Dash and look for BleachBit and choose to run it as Root.
Now, check the options that you wish to clean on the left side of the screen. As you tick along the way, many warnings will pop up informing you what each option will clean. DO read them very carefully. It’s good to know which part of your system is being wiped.
After checking everything, just click clean and wait for the process to complete. The whole process takes about 45 minutes to 1 hour depending on how cluttered your system is. It is advisable to close all your programs and let it run in peace, so make sure you have ample time before you run BleachBit.
For me, the process helped me clear up to 60 GB of disk space and my Ubuntu 12.04 is running as snappy as a fresh install. Do give it a try to see the difference.
If you are unsatisfied with the boot time even after “bleaching” your system, open “Startup Applications” and disable any unwanted apps and services at startup.
Despite saying Ubuntu is my daily driver, I still have Windows 7 installed on my other partition, mainly for Microsoft Office and gaming purposes. Or when there’s a mainstream software I have to run on Windows, I would always have a safety net to fall back upon. If you’re looking to dual-boot Ubuntu 12.04 and Windows 7, I am afraid it’s not as straightforward as the previous versions, so you might want to check out this tutorial and follow every step closely.
Despite my attempt to keep this blog purely Android/geek-themed, I can’t help but wish to merge some other topics which I deem important into this blog.
I am inspired to write this post after watching this Ted Talk (literally a couple dozens times) by Shawn Achor, founder of Good Think Inc and a leading researcher in the area of positive psychology, who proposes adopting a reversed formula for happiness as completely opposed to conventional wisdom. This is easily the most engaging talk (non-tech-related) I’ve listened to so far. Check it out below:
A quick thought after watching this video for the first few times: how this man can speak about seemingly unrelated stuff for almost 10 minutes while making everything so relevant at the end is extremely impressive. Fundamentally he posits that we can train our brains to become positive, just like how we train our muscles. Sure enough it would take a lot of time, good habits, an unwavering commitment and a set of good work ethics to make it happen, but the good news is it isn’t all that difficult after all.
Conventional wisdom of happiness
Works harder –> Becomes More Successful –> Becomes Happier
The problem with this formula, according to Shawn, is that the definition of “success” changes every time we achieve a goal. When we get a good job, we want to get a better job. When we get a high salary, we want to get a higher salary. Sadly enough this is just how most of us human beings are wired to work; we hardly ever get contented with what life has to offer. The goal post for success changes all the time, which means if happiness is on the other side of success, we will never get there because it’ll keep drifting away as we move our goal posts further and further away as we achieve more things.
Success |————————————————————————-|Happiness
The new formula for happiness (Ripple Effect)
Train your brain to be positive (5 ways – details in the video) –> Improved positivity (Better Performance) + Improved Happiness (Higher Intelligence) –> More productive at work –> More successful
In short, your external world doesn’t determine your happiness. Happiness is a choice you can make, and it is not impossibly difficult to learn how to make that choice. Similar to training your body, train your brain; consistency and perseverance play a big role here. Of course, a paradigm shift is not easily achieved unless we openly acknowledge there’s a problem with our current thinking and embrace the new way of thinking. I am by no means close to achieving that goal, but this is something I am willing to work hard on, as I believe it’ll have a long-term important impact on my future in countless number of ways. This blog post shall serve as both an information for you who haven’t discovered this concept before and a reminder for me to keep working at it until I’ve confirmed the validity of this formula, in which I strongly believe.
@richxiong 