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!