The Phantom Planet (1961) - a short review

The Phantom Planet (1961)

Yesterday, I have found an old classical movie on YouTube : The Phantom Planet and I really enjoyed watching it. Let's admit that old films are not always very attractive. "Old" doesn't necessarily mean "goldie". But this one really deserves attention. I think I'll explore more this old Sci-Fi universe.

Anyway, bellow is the review I wrote for this movie on IMDB.com

I must admit that I did not watched an old Sci-Fi movie since long time, so, maybe I'm not what they call an expert in classical movies. I am the child of my times, so I'm used with the new wave of Sci-Fi movies, full of action and special effects.

Still I enjoyed this classic film and I think is worth viewing. You can find a bit of everything in this movie.

The dream of nuclear power as fuel for rockets. Some kind of Gulliver among the people of Liliput. The highly advanced civilization who gives up to the comfort of technology (and all the dangers that comes with it) to live a simple "primitive" life. A touch of Ancient Greek fashion style in the dress models of the main feminine characters. An echo of Feminism: female juries wearing short dresses. And at the end, the somehow blurred line between what is real and what is not.

The "special effects" and the general style reminds me of Star Trek TOS. And just like in Star Trek, the monster aliens look unconvincing. But we should admit that the creators of this movie did their best for that time. I could point out some goofs, but I some understanding and just enjoy this classic!

How to connect Zorin OS to a "cable" Internet?

Fine, I admit that this is not the most inspired title, but I simply couldn't find any other to be more concise and non-geeky in the same time. The proper title would probably sound like this: "How to connect your Linux (Zorin OS) PC to the internet using a DSL connection, etc, etc". Does DSL sounds more interesting and misterious? Yes, it does. Does it illuminate you? Nope! Me neither. LOL So, I think we will drop the geeky language, OK? OK!

About two weeks ago, after a long and agonizing lack of internet connection and other technological miracles of our century, and after an unexpected and blessed help, I could set up again my home Internet connection. Well, only in theory. Because, practically, I had to make the Internet connection by myself without much help from my Internet provider. (Today I still don't have Wi-Fi connection, by the way).

But let's stop rambling. So, here I was, having one notebook with Zorin OS installed on it, one internet cable and one ZTE modem. And the internet provider: RDS-RCS.

If you have the same provider like me, and you are in my situation, I hope that my article will spare you of the long numerous and annoying conversations with the one-neuron-ed girl from their help desk who always tells - in a polite way, of course - that everything is fine with your connection but you are stupid enough not to see that; and in order to get some help to make the proper settings for your connection you'll have to pay (something that you already paid for!).

So, here is how I did and I tell you to do if you desperately need an internet connection and your only option for the moment is the good old cable way.

First of all, you have to know that in Zorin OS your connection status is shown in the down-right part of the screen, near the sound, clock, and other stuff, like in Windows, and if you are not connected you will see a little white "x" on a red dot.

Connection, sound, clock and date in Zorin OS

That is the Network Connections app. You can open it by right-clicking on the icon or by following the path:

Start - All Applications - System Tools - Preferences - Network Connections 

See bellow on my screen.

How to open the Network Connection app in Zorin OS

Once opened, you'll see a window like the one bellow. If you see any "Auto Ethernet" connection, ignore it, you don't have anything to do with it. On the other hand, I know that you might be tempted to connect by using the "Wired" connection. This is how I did at first, assuming that this is the correct choice (after all, I was dealing with a cable, wasn't I?). But I was wrong, so don't repeat my mistake. Just go to the tab labelled "DSL" and click on it.

Open Network Connections and click DSL tab

After you open the DSL tab click the "Add" button in order to create the new connection which will be automatically named "DSL connection 1".
Note: in the image bellow there is already a connection because I took a picture from my own system, but for the sake of pedagogy, let's pretend that there isn't any connection. So, as I told you, click on "Add"...

In the DSL tab click on Add button to create a new connection

After that, a new window will open with four tabs. In the first one, called DSL, write your username and your password given to you by your Internet provider (this data are in your contract). Don't write anything near "Space" and also keep untouched the other tabs. After that, make sure that you click on the "Save..." button.
Note: In my example here, I clicked cancel because it was a bogus connection - see the DSL connection 2 label. But you click on "Save...".

Write the username and password given by the provider and click Save

And then click "Close".

YOu've created the connection. Now Close!

Now, you have created the connection but you have to enable it and connect to the Internet, in order to actually start using it. So, as I have already told you at the beginning of this post, go to the connection icon and right click on it and then click on "Enable Networking", like in the screen-shot below.

Right-click on connection icon and click on "Enable Networking"

The icon will change its shape, showing you that the computer is trying to connect automatically. Don't rely on that as it is mostly useless. Once again, right-click on the icon and choose "DSL connection 1".

Right-click and then click on "DSL connection 1"

After the connection will be established, you will be announced in the nicest visual way on the right-top of the screen.

You are announced that now you are connected

And that's it! Now you can surf on the internet! If, in the future you want to edit the connection or, for some reason, you want to see the connection settings, you can see them either by following the path showed at the beinning of this post, or by right-clicking on the connection icon and choosing "Edit Connections...". See below.

It's easy to see the connection setting.

That should be all! These are the steps you have to take if you wont to connect, if your Internet is provided by RDS-RCS company and your laptop / netbook / notebook runs Zorin OS.

The information provided here is not meant to be applicable in all the situations. If you have a different provider or a different modem, things could be different. I am explaining here only what it did worked for me in my particular case.

My first impresion on my Netbook ASUS 1015BX-BLK084W

I have one good news. Due to the nature of my new job, I was in an urgent need of a laptop. So, 11 days ago, after a lucky happening, I got the necessary money to buy one. Is not exactly a laptop, but a netbook. More exactly, is netbook ASUS 1015BX-BLK084W.

Till today I got the time to explore it, so I wont to give a feedback, now, while things are still fresh in my mind.

Speaking of fresh things, I still can't believe that I  have this mini-laptop. :)
For me, having this mini-laptop is really a big dream came true!

The laptop ASUS Eee PC Seachell series, came with FreeDOS installed on it as OS. The type of FreeDOS installed on the laptop was called something like Asus and Cloud something, and it was pretty spectacular despite its grey colour theme.

But, as I came to see easily, this FreeDOS is not really an operating system, but it gave me the sensation of a "ghost" OS. Out of curiosity, I have explored it for a short while before installing a Linux distro. I wonted to know if I can offer the basic. Unfortunately, I have no photo of that "OS", but I suppose that is it somewhere on the internet.

First thing that I have observed was that I could not find anywhere on the desktop something similar to the familiar "my computer". I simply could not access the partitions! More than that, when I have tried to download a small file from the internet, I have being prompted with a message telling me that the device is read-only. I could not find the logic behind this, but, it did not matter much, but, as I have already told, my intention was from the very beginning to install Linux.

This Cloud something OS (I did not memorized the name) comes with an image viewer, a player (but I could not hear anything on testing), browser (a very primitive version of Chrome) and, surprisingly enough, a pretty advanced word processor, similar to the common Microsoft Word.

When started, the word processor showed me an advertisement which I did not paid much attention. Apparently, the word processor, is part of an office suite, and is a shareware. Frankly, I don't know who would pay to buy an office suite just to use it on FreeDOS.

Well, after seeing all these, I have considered that I saw everything. I could chat, tweet or even see my FB account but I wasn't curious to try it. Anyway, it is pretty odd to see that Facebook received so much attention from the developers of the ASUS Cloud-bla-bla. It seems to me that Zuckenberg's "child" wants to et everywhere, even if it is useless, because FreeDOS is destined to be abandoned.

After this shallow exploration of FreeDOS, I have restarted the laptop with the intention to install Zorin from an USB stick. But I have soon discovered that making the laptop to boot from stick is the hardest and almost discouraging thing "thanks" to the new UEFI that "parasites" and alters BIOS of the newly build computers.

After about ten attempts and interventions in BIOS, I could finally, convince the laptop to boot from the stick. The installer initialised and, thus I could find out that the hard drive was already partitioned in 4 partitions! But, as I have already told before, I could not see any partition from the "ghost-OS"!

I have let Zorin OS to install automatically, and erase all the partitions in order to make just a big one. I know this is not a good idea to use just one big partition on a 360G hard drive, but, it is in my intention to partitionate it someday in the future to install other operating systems. For now, I'll let it be as it is because I have other priorities and, for my current job, Zorin Linux distro is just what I need.

I am convinced that the best way to use this laptop is to add an external cooler and and a mouse. This is what I did in my case. This way, the laptop will work better and with less problems. Unfortunately, I have a long experience with old slow second-hand or borrowed computers and I am tired of having to wait for a PC to execute a small command. As for the mouse, I think that its importance is too evident.

I was also informed that a way to prolong the life of the battery is to format it 5-6 times. This means to keep the laptop shut down and connected to the power for more than 8 hours. The battery should be used only if there is no electrical power. When I intend to use the laptop I am cautious to disconnect the battery before-wards.

That should be all for now. I write here the information from the label as a reference. Maybe it is useful for someone looking to buy a laptop.

- Next Generation Computing: AMD Brazos APU Fusion of Power and Visuals.
- Radeon 6290 Dual Core CPU Excellent Graphics Performance.
- HDMI Enjoy Full HD 1080p Movie playback
- Ergonomic Chiclet Keyboard