It’s Baaack!

CHOICE! I have been running Linux Mint 5 for about a year now on my laptop and it has been doing it’s job brilliantly. It’s fast, super stable and Pretty. But i have been reading a lot of great things about the new Ubuntu version. Especially the very fast boot-time, better PulseAudio integration and the new notification system sound great! Reading and seeing all those things awakened a little voice in my head. “Maybe you should install it”. Well maybe i should, but i’ll wait for Ubuntu’s “Mint Edition” aka Linux Mint which is due for release soon. Or should i install Debian Squeeze? I have been running a rolling release distro on my (and on my girlfriend’s) desktop, namely Arch Linux, for a long time now and i love it. And Squeeze, being Debian’s Testing release, would be a perfect balance between stability, up to date packages and not having to reinstall your Operating System every (half a) year. So what an i going to do? What am I going to do?

Alex Has Left Dvorakland

I didn’t stay long, mainly because my brain couldn’t unplug from Azerty. I did change my keyboard to Qwerty and i have to say that i like it. And i am still using that today.

Alex in Dvorakland, First Week

-day 1-

Bought myself a Qwerty keyboard and rearranged the keys.  That went well except for the j and the f holes, i had to file a tiny piece of plastic away.  But after the surgery all the keys on it worked smoothly!

-day 2-

Set up Gnome to use Dvorak.  It was easy, i just had to go to the keyboard settings and select “US – Dvorak”.  Then i used this guide to set up my pc for when i’m not using an X-Server. (like less than 1% of the time)

Now i was finally ready to start my classes!  I installed and started gtypist.  “ao ae au aa ss sn st sh … di du de do da dh dt … iu ie io ia ii …”

Typing Speed: Like an average Granny

-day 3-

Setting up my laptop to use Dvorak as well.  Ow and some more “tn ts th td te to ta …”

Typing Speed: Like an average 60 year old

-day 4-

“the tha thu … the mad hatter has a hat on his head …”

Typing Speed: Like an average 50 year old

-day 5,6 and 7-

I know most of the keys and my typing speed is going up, but it still is miles away from where i was with Azerty.

Don’t know if i’m going to stick with it.  This is a 3 weeks test and if i don’t feel more comfortable by then i’m going to switch to Qwerty.

Podcasts, Rubies and The Answer!

This week KDE4.2, codename “The Answer”, was released!  I was surprised to already see it in the Arch Linux repos that same day.  Great work from the Arch devs!  My gf’s uses KDE on “her” desktop, cause she likes all the shiny and pretty plasma stuff, so i upgraded that pc.  But that did mean the upgrade had to be problem-free or i would definitely have slept on the floor for a couple of nights.  Luckely the upgrade worked without any flaws and the 4.2 edition does looks very very good.  I love what they did to the taskbar!  And more good news from the KDE front: someone is working on a Remember the Milk plasmoid! (source: http://blog.chatonka.com/2009/01/more-on-rtm-plasmoid/)  That meant i was happy, my gf was happy cause everything still worked (and looked extra pretty) AND i didn’t have to sleep on the floor!

On to part 2 of this blog!  I always liked watching Aaron Seigo’s  “aseigo on KDE” videocast, but he seems to have suddenly stopped doing that.  So i was in need of a replacement!  People on twitter, identi.ca and plurk were talking about tech (and other) podcasts for quite some time now and that woke up a little voice in my head, telling me to broaden my horizon. (eat that people who think microblogging is useless!)  After some googling i found a cool little program called gpodder (http://gpodder.berlios.de/).  Seconds later it was installed and a cute little green alien icon popped up.  I added 2 podcasts, namely Linux Outlaws and Linux Basement and The Linux Outlaws one really grew on me after hearing a couple of episodes.  It’s just 2 guys, one with a cool English accent and the other one with a goofy German one, talking about Linux and other tech stuff.  And the best thing about the show is that they don’t take themselves too seriously!  If anyone knows other good podcasts, preferably about tech and/or Linux, please tell me!

Now on to the last part of this blog! *loud cheering in the background*  In a previous blogpost i wrote about ripping all my cd’s to ogg and flac files and the program i used for that job was RubyRipper.  It really is a brilliant application!  Where most programs just read the cd and rip the songs, RubyRipper rips each song a couple of times and than checks if both files are the same.  The result is an error-free ripping experience!  RubyRipper is, like you can tell from it’s name, written in the Ruby programming language.  Something i looked into a couple of times before.  But me being a C/C++ and Python guy, Ruby never really seemed like my cup of tea.  Until a cool Mexican dude gave me a link to a great guide. (http://poignantguide.net/ruby/index.html)  “Why’s (poignant) Guide to Ruby” is a fun way of learning the language and just a nice blend of humor and great examples.  I’m starting to “get” Ruby thanks to it!  And even if i don’t know if i’m going to swap in my beloved Python for that “red gemstone” language, at least now i can (try to) fix bugs if i encounter any.  Thanks Israel, you rock!

Time flies when you are having fun

December is in town and that means PRESENTSMONTH!  Christmas, New Years Eve and of course most importantly… *a moment of silence* …my birthday!  But don’t worry you still have 23 days left to save up and buy me something pretty!  About presents, this weekend my gf and i went to a beauty spa.  Sauna, steam room, jacuzzi, massage,… it was so relaxing!

Some geeky news now… the last pieces of my new (server)pc arrived this week.  I assembled it and while i was doing that it got me thinking.  Why didn’t i make this new quad-core 4 gig monster my own personal desktop pc and turn my old P4 2gig desktop into a server.  It’s more than powerful enough for our tiny home network, so that’s what i did. I took the gfx-card out of the “old” and into my new pc, installed Arch Linux (on the desktop) and Debian (on the server) and both are now up and running!  Now i “only” have to put all our files on the fileserver and organize it a bit.  All this stuff is just pure geek heaven! ^^

Eee PCs, Glas Shards, Lost Necklaces and Santiago

A couple of weeks ago i got a beautiful present from my gf.  A tiny eeepc from Asus! ^^  I installed Foresight Linux on it.  Foresight Mobile has a very very pretty interface and is working like a charm!  The keyboard needs a bit getting used to, but it’s not like we are using it for typing letters or huge documents.  I (we) are very happy with it! ^^

I’m still waiting for the last parts for my server to arrive, the waiting is getting quite annoying… In the meantime i’m working on a little pygtk program, that will be totally useless unless you are a Ferrarifreak.  At the moment it’s nothing more than a database of all the cars Ferrari ever made (and their specs) with a shiny interface around it.  But i only started and have lots of ideas!  PyGtk and Glade for the interface design really are a joy to work with.

Last week i was smart enough to trip a glass of water (or milk) from my desk and stepped into a broken glass shard while i was trying to clean up the mess i made.  Which resulted into a deep cut in my foot.  Something i forgot for a moment later that evening when i went for my evening run.  I had to stop after only a couple of meters and ended up with a gross looking sock and an annoying feeling in my foot.

More annoying news, i seem to have lost my necklass!   We searched (almost) everywhere in our apartment, but if it’s lock is broken it could have fallen off everywhere. *sniff*  My gf did make some delicious pancakes to cheer me up and her plan was a succes!   We got a great offer this week from a friend of ours.  He lives in Santiago (Chili) this and next year for his work and invited us to stay there for a week in februari.  Too bad both of us have to go to work/school then cause Santiago sounds incredible!

It’s almost time to start dinner, so have a nice day!

Choices Made

And the winner is… Arch Linux with KDE(mod)4.1 and i like it.  A lot!  After some fiddling with the art theme and the fonts it looks pretty and it flies!  It’s really a joy to work with!  Surprisingly i love plasma, surprisingly because i usually want a clean desktop with (almost) nothing on it.  All my Gnome desktops only have shortcuts on it to mounted disks or drives, nothing else.  But my new kde4.1 desktop has lots of plasmoids on it.  Hurray for plasma!  Although i do miss a “Remember The Milk” and a “Identi.ca” plasmoid.  But i am going to do some research on making plasmoids and then maybe try making one i need myself.  To be continued…

This week the last parts of my PC are going to arrive, so i can finally start building and installing it.  It is going to be used as a fileserver, something that will really come in handy.

This weekend has been so relaxing and fun!  Yesterday i was invited to dj at a party, had lots of fun and after the set i did we (some friends i work with and my gf) went to another party.  Possibly one of the best parties i have ever been to!  It was pure magic!  Nice people there, incredibly good music and the perfect company with me.  It got very late but that didn’t matter because today it’s sunday!  And sunday only has one purpose… staying in bed till the afternoon and relax after a *cough* tiring workweek.

The Joy of Choice

I have tried several GNU/Linux distro’s over the years, i “made friends” with some and “hated” others.  My top picks are Debian, Arch and Ubuntu/Mint. Each of them have their own strong and weak points.  Now i’m about to install one of them on my second desktop because the os installed on it now, Ubuntu 7.10 Gutsy, got a bit outdated since the new Ubuntu came out this years.  It’s very hard to find updates or totally new software for it because most developpers only support Ubuntu 8.04 or higher at the moment.  I’m leaning towards the rolling distro’s (Arch, Debian) so that i wouldn’t encounter that “outdated because a newer version is available”-problem anymore from now on.  That leaves me with the choice of Arch, bleeding edge but with a chance of a bad update when you are unlucky, or Debian Lenny or Testing, mostly up-to-date but very stable.  I really love both and that doesn’t make my choice easier.  And to make it even worse, am i going to use my beloved Gnome Desktop or switch to the new KDE4+?  I use Gnome since i started using Linux, i love it and for some reason i never really liked the old KDE3+, but the new KDE4+ can look very good and i do like a lot of the “thinking” behind it.  Freedom of choice is great!  But at the moment those choices are making my head explode!