Giving way on highway, in a safe way

Yesterday another deadly car accident happened again on the north-south highway near Slim River leading to 5 deaths. And according to the news report, right before the accident occurred, the driver was giving way to a rear coming car that flashing beam light to him and as soon as he changed his car to the left lane, they banged on the punctured lorry on the left lane.

If you have been driving on the north-south highway, you will get to be flashed with beam light or be approached closely from a car on your back from time to time especially when you are taking the right lane, even though your speed is already at the maximum allowed speed limit of 110km/h. I have seen few cases where the car being flashed react near-panicly by immediately changing to the left lane to give way to the flashing car. Giving way is something gentleman on the foot, but on highway in such scenario, is it something wise to do?

Everyone has the right to use the highway safely, not to say you have paid for it. And when you are already driving at maximum legal speed (even on the right lane) and being urged by some hasty car behind you, be it a super luxury wagon or sporty car, I think it is not your obligation to give way to it, of course unless it's any emergency response vehicle like ambulance etc. Just take your time as long as you are comfortable with, and definitely until you have found a safe spot to give way to the hasty fellow. But if you are driving a turtle, please do not occupy the right lane unless you are overtaking, ya, the right lane is supposed for overtaking.

Nobody like to be rushed, so if you are someone who used to be the hasty fellow, be polite and gentle even you are on hurry (by the way, why so hurry?). Do not simply flash your beam light to the front car. Just follow it at a safe distance (not too close of course) so as not to give any pressure to the front guy. After a while, he will be aware of you and give you the way you wanted at his comfort. Everyone has equal right. Respect every drivers and the precious lives of every living creature on the road.

May there be no more unwanted casualties on the road...

If you are using Ubuntu and not used to the Unity user interface, the better choice will be gnome-shell. Gnome-shell comes with many extensions that can be added easily. Below are some of the must-have and nice-to-have extensions:

Must-Have:
- AlternateTab
- Alternative Status Menu
- BackSlide
- Bolt
-Disable Window Animations
- No Topleft Hot Corner
- Panel Settings
- Places Status Indicator
- Settings Center
- Status Icon Fixer
- TaskBar
- Weather Indicator

Nice-to-Have:
- Coverflow Alt-Tab
- Dock
- Journal (if you are using the original Gnome Activites instead of Bolt)
- SystemMonitor

You can also remove the maximized windows title bar to give you more working space. Install "Maximus" from Ubuntu Software Center, then run gconf-editor (install this also if you don't have it), and go to apps -> maximus and enable "no_maximize". You will need to logout and login back to get it in effect.

Hibernate on Ubuntu 12.04

Hibernation in Ubuntu has been always a sky-high difficult thing to achieve successfully without some struggle. It's been a while I have been looking for a solution to hibernate my Sony Vaio laptop with hybrid ATI graphic card. All the while it can only hibernate but always freezes on resume flash screen, until I find 2 solutions:

1. Disable the uswsusp (more recommended)

You might want to upgrade to the latest kernel first. Also, if there is any error caused by any driver, such as psmouse-alps-dkms, remove it first.

It seems that uswsusp is not working properly on Ubuntu 12.04. The possible way to get your hibernation works like charm is to remove this package:
sudo apt-get purge uswsusp

After removal, try to do a hibernation by issueing:
sudo pm-hibernate

2. Tux On Ice

Kindly be noted that as the Tux On Ice is using non-PAE (Physical Address Extension) kernel, hence after installing Tux On Ice on 32-bit Ubuntu, you will find that your physical memory is capped at 2.4GB only even if your RAM is more than that, say 4GB or above. It might slow down your laptop performance if memory consumption is high.

To install Tux On Ice:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:tuxonice/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install tuxonice-userui linux-generic-tuxonice linux-headers-generic-tuxonice


Then try to hibernate with:
sudo pm-hibernate


Take note that Tux On Ice might not always support the latest linux kernel. If during installation it complaint about not supporting latest kernel, try to revert to the previous one.

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If you would like to hibernate on power button press, in dconf-editor, ensure the following:
apps.indicator-session.suppress-logout-restart-shutdown = unchecked
org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.power.button-power = hibernate

Thanks to this reference:
http://www.pauljoyceuk.com/codex/2012/howto-make-ubuntu-12-04-hibernate-successfully/