The syslog is a text file (as are nearly all linux log files). You can
use tail to view the last several times (usually the most pertinant), or
less to view everything...

Log files are located in /var/log

For instance, to view the last segment of your syslog you'd type:
tail /var/log/syslog

To pull up the whole syslog paginated, you'd type:
less /var/log/syslog

Other troubleshooting methods...

Myself I find a lot of help on google, I type in the error message and
tag "Ubuntu" to the end of it, this usually gives me good results. If
it is a known bug, this should pull it up.

Feel free to post segments of your log file here (don't post the whole
thing, way too long).

You can also use the xorg log, which is:
/var/log/Xorg.0.log

(use tail and/or less like before, though tail won't be very helpful
here as most errors for X come early in the log file in my experience)

You can also use dmesg sometimes, this is a command which displays
another log file, I'm not sure exactly how the system decides what to
put there but for issues connecting hardware to the system it is very
useful.