Off-Hook

Les Paul

Les Paul was an inventor and innovator.  He made one of the first solid-body electric guitars ever at home in the mid 1930′s.  He’s also responsible for such recording innovations as overdubbing and multitrack recording.  That first guitar, known as “the log,” was made of a literal log and the pieces of an Epiphone guitar for looks.  His work with Gibson made the company an icon in modern music.  His name is on the guitars of some of the greatest musicians who have ever lived.  His legacy will last many generations beyond ours and his impact is felt worldwide.  Les Paul, in the years following his association with Gibson, changed what we all think of as music forever.

What kind of world do we live in where moments after Michael Jackson dies, you simply can’t get away from him in the media.  For over a month, he’s been in the news, the tabloids, on the radio.  You’d think he defined a generation or something, when in fact, the “king of pop” will go down in history as having introduced a new weirdness to celebrity, new lows in publicity stunts, provacative gestures in front of millions in public arenas, and strong suspicion of having a penchant for young boys.  Still, he produced music that had mass appeal and influenced many after him.  How many of you knew Les Paul died yesterday?

My first and only electric guitar, which I never learned to play very well, was an Epiphone Les Paul Special II.  It was a simple, yet beautiful black electric guitar, and it “just felt right” to everyone who put hands on it.  If I ever get another electric guitar, it will be a Les Paul.

Les Paul had a direct and permanent impact on the music we all listen to today.  His name is synonymous with the electric guitar and rock ‘n roll.  His innovations are heard in almost everything you hear on your radio.  He influenced musicians from B.B. King to Smashing Pumpkins and everyone in between.  Even though Fender and Rickenbacker each came up with independent versions of his invention, Paul is widely regarded as the inventor of what we know as the electric guitar.  He died yesterday as he lived–  in front of the music.

Rock on, Les!

6/9/15 – 8/13/09

If you’ve installed or updated to the latest version of Ubuntu, “Jaunty Jackelope,” and you own an ATI graphics card, you’ve probably had a fairly frustrating experience so far.

Apparently, development on ATI graphics support has been minimal at best on the latest releases of Ubuntu, but fear not–  There is an EXCELLENT ATI driver installation guide out there.

However, I had errors after installing the latest ATI driver files–  And not because I didn’t have a new enough card.  I did check compatibility at ATI’s own support site first.

It seems there is a step missing from the process on the guide.  That’s why I’ve just published this little post.  If you are getting error messages after installing the latest driver, you could have overlooked the same thing I did.

I should have known that when I upgraded to the latest kernel, that the ATI driver I had installed would no longer work because it was compiled specifically for the kernel I was using when I made the install files.  Now one might think that the kernel source files that are required for compiling new install files would be upgraded along with the kernel, but this is not the case.  You must upgrade these source files to match your current kernel before running ATI’s script to build the install files.

In my case, this one simple install solved all my problems:

sudo apt-get install linux-headers-2.6.28-14-generic

Afterwards, I simply followed the installation guide’s step-by-step process and I was back in gnome in no time.  I can verify it works for KDE, too, as this process has nothing to do with which gui you use.

It took me quite some time to figure out what I had overlooked.  If you’ve had this experience as well, I hope this saves you some time.