Posts filed under "software"
Google Reader Theme by Jon Hicks. Awesome doesn’t even begin to describe this. I wish someone would do something similar for Gmail, because there is just soo much cruft and rubbish in gmail. The code is great and the functionality is great but google couldn’t design themselves out of a paper bag in most cases. Their forte is making applications usable and fun but not pretty look at.
20 must have firefox extensions. The usual suspects are all involved, however I didn’t know about the showcase plugin which I think is pretty slick.
Great little interview with Jakub Steiner and Andreas Nilsson over at Gnome Journal. The most interesting part of the interview was this little side project, Art Libre Iconset. An integration of Gimp, Inkscape and Scribbus would be great, not that I use Gimp (but that’s another post for another time).
http://www.brokenkode.com/open-source-graphical-applications
Blender 2.43 was released today. To my mind (and I’ve said this many times before) is the most professional open source project EVER. This is how open source should be. Every release is golden, and this one is a keeper. From the new website, the excellent release log, feature videos and the list honestly goes on. Download it NOW!
Honestly, I’m amazed by the quality of the Zotero plugin for Firefox. Zotero is a little plugin that enables you to collect and store information, tag it and a whole lot more for all your research needs. Easily one of the best plugins for Firefox I’ve stumbled on in a long time (I’ve seen it before but this is the first time I’m actually using it so that makes it different in my eyes).
It’s been a truly exciting time for Habari on the design front (not that it’s not been exciting on the code front, but I can only really properly comment on all things design to be honest). Since the last time we talked, Michael has been a busy boy with absolutely everything under the sun. All these ideas have been filtering through the designs as we build towards a unified look for the administration panel.
Remember these mockups are just that mockups, we’re still meandering trying to sort things out, this is an open design process so things are going to change. Don’t think that what you see here is gospel and how it’s going to be, don’t be quoting me fekking Jakob in my face about usability and whatnot. These are the formation months, trust me we’re going through MANY MANY loops and discussions. So with that in mind let’s begin shall we.
The Installer
The installer now is broken down in several sections, and Owen came up with the idea whereby this area might be further customised by developers to make it easier to do things and incorporate elements so that it’s easier to administer new installations (or something like that, best talk to him about that). The design follows through the idea to keep things simple and as modular as possible.
Stage One:
Final Stage:
We’re still playing around with loads of things here. The header and footer are still up for discussion but the main ideas are there. We’re definitely going for the easiest installer award with this release.
Create Page
The main page has gone back a step. Originally all the Habari mockups were done in blacks and shades of grey however as the design ‘progressed’ colour started being added. We’ve taken a step back to confirm how everything fits together before we move later on down the line for the full branding of the application.
Michael’s been pretty busy and he’s got his ideas regarding the media browser on ‘paper’. Once we’ve ironed out all the kinks and how it’s going to work I think it’ll be the most special media browser on any blogging platform.
We did have a great deal of interation of ideas between us on the logo. Work is still ongoing in this area and probably will be for a little while longer as we try and find ourselves the best fit for what the logo means to the community and how people will view us effectively.
Remember nothing is set, everything’s up for discussion. As always Spread the news!
This is the first (hopefully) weekly instalment of the comings and goings on in the Habari Design Community. As this was our first week ‘out’ it was obviously a pretty wild and exciting ride with an immense amount of interest from all people around the world. What’s fascinating to me is that the people at the table currently trying to shape the design aspect of Habari. We’ve got Michael and myself working on all things admin at the moment, with comments from the entire community. Bryan Veloso has joined the team and he’s going to be handling all the website related stuff (from main site to wiki design to whatever the hell else we can keep him busy with) and we have the truly talented Yoram who’s kindly offered to do the icons, so as far as I’m concerned we’re in pretty good shape regarding the graphical direction the project is going to have.
Logo
A great deal of work has been done in the logo department. However we’re still not really decided on the direction we want to take as the current options on the table haven’t been a unanimous ‘HELL YES’. There are merits to all of them but I think with respect to the logo it’s better to just wait for that one idea that jumps out at us and really makes us all smile rather than settling for a right here and right now solution. Here’s a few examples of what are on the table:
Installer
A lot of work has gone into the installer as well. I’m not going to comment on the design of the installers, because that’s out in the wild going through the motions.
We’re still hammering through these back and forth, but the idea is there, one click install, degradable JS that makes parts of the install appear as and when the previous section has been completed and verified.
Administration Panel
Very minor tweaks going on here, except of course the colours. The pink is displayed for when you hover over the log out button.
Publish
More work going on this part. We’ve been having a lot of discussions regarding the number of buttons we should have. The subtle addition to these mockups is the slider for the tags (think increasing/decreasing the tags on display).
Remember nothing is set, everything’s up for discussion. As always Spread the news!
It’s been one hell of a couple of days since we first talked about the Habari project. There’s been a slew of reaction to the news all over the internet (go to the pingback section of that post) and to be honest it’s far exceeded all expectations I could have had because I honestly don’t have any. See I wasn’t completely sure how everyone would react over the news and therefore I was preparing myself for a little bit of a fight, in so much that we would have to prove the meritts of the software before we got people actually wanting to join and help build the community.
This in turn got me thinking to what all this meant and so I’m writing this post for several reasons. A couple of them is to dispell any rumours, a few others is to point everyone in the right direction should they want any more information, while others is to address concerns I’ve heard from people over the last couple of days.
On Community
There’s been a lot of speculation as to why we’re doing this. I’m not going to speak for the others (because they’re doing a pretty good job of it themselves to be honest) but I’ll tell you why I’m doing this. I’ve been talking to (read: boring) many of my offline friends with just how cool this is going to be. The first thing that they ask me is “Why the hell are you doing this to yourself? Why are you working for free again? Why are you spending your free time doing this?” I can only answer by saying that it’s incredible fun to be part of an online community of like minded people who are trying to make one of my favourite pastimes (ie blogging and tinkering with my website) a more enjoyable experience. I love being involved in open source projects and this is without a doubt one of the biggest things I’ve ever been involved with.
When I first started looking for an alternative to Movable Type I had two options. The first was WordPress the other was Textpattern. I chose WordPress for the community. That community however has changed. It’s core has shifted into something different. The thing is though I can’t really say that this is the community’s fault. This shift actually can be attributed to something else. The fact of the matter is that WordPress developement has stagnated as far as the .org user is concerned.
The only explanation I can give is that this is because the WordPress development shifted it’s attention. Shifted from the .org section to the .com section. I’m not going to condem the guys for doing this, in fact in most cases I understand them doing this. However this move and shift hasn’t gone unnoticed and obviously a lot of energy flying about the WordPress community has either gone into the ether, ignored or shrugged aside. All these thousands of people out there that have contributed in the past feel as though they have been forsaken. That could be part of the reason why a great number of people genuinely got excited about the prospect of a new system, written from the ground up that might address questions. It’s all about the community. It’s all about the people that you interact with and that help you along your way.
What you think the latest release of ‘features’ on WordPress.org is a coincidence. It’s obvious (to me at least and this feature could have been in development for months, in which case I apologise) that this is a knee-jerk reaction to a situation that obviously has made them sit up and think about the situation. It’s not every day that several prominent developers (Robert, Owen, Michael), at the very least in the past otherwise they would not be in the credit box on wordpress.org, decide to leave and start something on their own; it’s a sign that something isn’t exactly right in the community. My absolute favourite one however is this one (I only saw this because it was lying in my referrer log), so yeah go and hammer that link and lets get it up there at the top :) lol.
So you’re aiming to kill WordPress?
Don’t be silly. Nobody is trying to kill WP. We’re not aiming to make software that is better than WordPress, we’re trying to make software that is better than ALL blogging software out there. Lets be clear about this there are quite a large number of open source projects that allow you to do essentially the same thing. Their degree of complication obviously varies, however the fact remains that there are many alternatives. As it stands it’s considered that WordPress is the best alternative that’s available on the market. So it’s obvious that people would think that we are in fact trying to create something that out does WP. Also many of us have come from a WordPress user base, however that doesn’t mean other people from other backgrounds cannot join the fun. But would we really be getting involved and doing something if we didn’t feel like there was a void to be filled? Room for one more solution that offered an alternative way of doing things? We’re ultimately here because we feel that we can contribute back and put our efforts into something that can aid people and can provide a fun platform to share their thoughts, photos and media.
We don’t even have a developer’s pre-release. The reason it was announced in any fashion was because one of the core developers moved his site over and was the first person to actively use the code for his site. That’s a MAJOR success, one that deserved to be celebrated. In a weird twist of fate, outing slightly earlier than anticipated was actually an incredible great thing. Why? Because people that were on the fringes, thinking that this was just all wishful thinking might actually hold some legs. As such this little buzz has gotten several people wanting to contribute, and here’s one reason why:
Habari is a fresh start. We’re all in the unique position that we’ve been blogging for several years now. We’ve all had our share of experiences with open source and we’ve all seen several different packages in our time. We’re at the stage now that if we had a fresh start we’d do things slightly differently and hopefully better. And that’s what we’re aiming to do.
Habari Contribution Model
I guess that might be the greatest draw to the Habari project. We’re pretty open for people who want to contribute to the project, in fact the way that this project has been set up, it’s ideal for people wanting to contribute as it’s got a completely different structure in it’s development, in that it’s a meritocracy. It’s a great way to make sure that the software comes first and that there is no one person who veto’s everything or has final say in everything.
So were do we go from here? Well one of the things that I shall be doing as I’m coordinating the designers on this team is to give a recap every Sunday of this week’s activities on the design front. What we finished off and what we’ve got to look forward towards. I’ll be including pics and so everyone is always welcome to chime in and add their two cents to the design either here or in the dev mailing list.
It’s unreal just how much faster doing this tweak actually makes Firefox load websites. Seriously best Firefox tweak I’ve done in a good long while.
Well Chris broke the news about, Habari, a new open source blogging CMS platform. While he didn’t want feel it correct to mention in the post who was involved, I’m going to step forward and put my hand up as the designated pixel pushing monkey of this motley crew.
What I find amusing is that as this news was released by Chris, I read this post about how any new blogging software would not stand a chance because of WordPress. Man I love a fucking challenge. I mean reading that post you’d think we’d be fools to even consider making a WordPress alternative. I guess all I can say to that is: Colour us DAMN foolish.
History Lesson
Back in November Chris approached a few of us to see who would be up for helping design for the new project he was working on. His timing couldn’t have been better to be honest with you. See I had a MASSIVE itch that just needed to be scratched. I had definitely not said everything that needed to be said about blogging administration panels, especially since the last one I was actively involved with didn’t exactly go exactly the way it should have.
I felt pretty burnt the last time round to be honest, so much so that I really thought it was best for me to steer well clear of any open source involvement in the future. However like I said in that post the most important thing that I got out of the online experience was the collaboration with the guys. If it was anyone else asking me to do something apart from Michael, Joen and Chris I’d have probably declined there and then. I didn’t join the team because I didn’t have anything better to do (as it will become clear in the coming months), but alas because I really want to create something that I can be proud to have been involved with and that I will find a joy to use. Something that I can contribute towards and that others can contribute towards as well in an open fashion.
So when Chris came forward I was all too happy to say yes. Considering that I had actually contacted another developer (I’m not going to mention him by name but needless to say he was also having a similar itch which says a lot about how things stand in the current open source blogging world) about starting our own blogging CMS, it was interesting that others around me felt the need for an alternative as well.
Shuttle vs Habari
The great thing about the Habari project is the fact that it’s a clean slate. Imagine starting on the ground floor. There were no presidencies, no set stringent codebase that couldn’t be altered, no existing userbase that might be confused and the list goes on. This is a decidedly different beast than Shuttle.
Those who don’t learn from the past end up repeating the mistakes again and again. So my approach to the graphical development of Habari is slightly different. Simply put, I’m going to be as transparent about the design process as you can imagine. I’ve seen several times in the past couple of months on the project, that through being open about the design I’ve been able to seriously move it forward in ways that I very well might not have considered. Ideas are what will make things move forward. At the same time it’s important that one person takes the bull by the horns and really goes to town on the design. Others should jump in with as many suggestions as possible, all the time because that’s how the innovation will continue and the project will not stagnate.
The Design
I will be going into a lot more detail in future posts regarding all the design decisions and what everything does and how it all fits together, so be patient, it’ll all pay off in the long run I promise. As we’ve only recently kind of decided about colours (although knowing me I will probably tweak them, but I’m trying to be very good about this and sticking with this colour scheme), posting this will give people a feel of the quality of final product we’re going for (and I’m not going to even talk about the code, the others are more than capable of that).
The following jpg is but a mockup, however Chris has implemented a fair chunk of this believe it or not (with probably like a 2 week old mock up), I’m telling you the man is a machine that will not be stopped. His dedication has forced me to make sure that I bring my very best to the table. It’s a bit of pressure that I’m actually relishing. Keeps me honest about things.
Final Thoughts
If you’ve got ideas you think the ultimate BLOGGING CMS should have drop a comment, I’d love to hear what ideas everyone has and what’s important to them as a user. What is it about your current blogging software that you wish could be simplified/improved, I’m all ears.
Easily one of the coolest gadgets I got this year was the Blackberry Pearl (or 8100 model). I’ve been playing with it for like a day now and I know it’s going to be something really special to use for a good long while. Although it’s a nice site, the images really don’t do it much justice. It’s honestly a thing of beauty in design if you have it infront of you. It’s only slightly larger than my previous Ericsson and packs a serious punch with respect to the number of features it’s got in it.
The only annoying thing I found was the flap you put the SIM card in doesn’t stay set, but opens until you put the battery in there. Minor annoyance but it’s a real shame as this could have scored some more points of rock solid construction. Another thing that is really starting to PISS me off, is the fact that none of these phone manufacturers have clocked onto the fact that it would be nice to have a normal earphone jack as opposed to some piece of shit they’ve concocted for you to plug in your earphones.
The Future was Orange
I’ve been with Orange for the last year and a half. The best part of being with Orange wasn’t the coverage (which is shit where I live) or the price package (which was shit once again but I’ll get to that in a minute) but rather the one little perk of having 2 for 1 cinema tickets on a Wednesday. Of course, based on my previous post, I’ve not been doing that very often either, which means that this little perk, wasn’t all that much of a perk as far as I’m concerned, so I didn’t need much convincing to drop them as my network of choice.
What’s interesting is that I was able to get the phone and a whole new package that suits me down to a T while paying less. The issue with a lot of these packages that many operators provide is that they’re honestly not tailored very well for the average user. They either give you an immense amount of time in “off-peak” hours that are not always useful, so you end up not using all of them, or they give you too little minutes during normal times. The good thing however is that after a year and a bit of using my phone regularly I’ve got enough bills to know exactly how much a use and of what. No need to guess these things (as I’ve had to in the past).
Enter the T
hmm got to check how much that costs on the internet to see if it’s cheaper.In the end T-mobile based on their Flext system which effectively gives you a pot of money every month that you can use for either calls or texts all from the same pot. Obviously I’ve opted for the unlimited internet service on there which is brilliant to be surfing the web while waiting on the train platform or even walking to and from places. You know when you’re in any store and you think to yourself:
Well now it’s just a few clicks to check the net there and then.
Opera Mini
So I’ll be talking about things/software/tips and tricks/links that I find out for the Pearl as I go along. Hopefully other people can benefit from my experiences. The first software tip I’ll throw everyone’s way is the Opera Mini browser.
Seems that Opera is definitely the little browser that could. Seems that this little browser is a hit on the Nintendo market. I’ve got to say that Opera Mini (opera for mobile devices) is MILES better than the standard BlackBerry browser. For a start they’ve cut away a lot of the clutter that the BB browser has when the menu is pressed. People on that size of screen don’t want to scroll FOREVER. We want something quick and to the point. Sure the browser is being updated pretty regularly as far as I can tell. It’s got RSS integration which is essential for all mobile devices as far as I’m concerned.
The Home page is EXACTLY what you want to see when you first log into the browser. Oh sure I’m as self obsessed as the next guy, but having BK as my home page on my BB seems a bit of a waste of space, although it’s definitely interesting to see how the site renders on a mobile phone (I’ll be sorting out a seperate mobile spreadsheet in the not too distant future).
The Application Opera Mini has attempted to access the network. Would you like to allow this?The only annoying thing for me at the moment (which I’m not sure if it’s got something to do with the actual browser or t-mobile’s settings) but effectively every time you use Opera it asks you:
If anyone’s got a way of stopping this fekking annoying message coming up everytime Opera is used please, pretty please with a cherry on top drop something in the comments and I’ll update this post accordingly.
For those in the T-mobile camp wondering how to sort this out onto your Pearl, here’s the steps I took:
From your Pearl go to http://mini.opera.com and follow the instructions.
<li><p>Chance are after you've tried to connect it'll fail on your ass (it did on mine). Thankfully Opera have already forseen this problem and posted <a href="http://www.operamini.com/help/connect/?provider=T-Mobile®ion=UK">this page</a>. Note that this is for the UK market, although as you can see they've sorted everyone out for the rest of the world as well.</p></li>
<li><p>Go to Options > Advanced Options > TCP and then put the information you got from that page.
Turn off, remove battery, turn on and it should all work.
I started writing a best of 2006 about a week ago, however I’ve had to break that down into several posts because it got far too large and I didn’t feel that I would be doing each topic justice, if I bulked all of them into one post. So for the first topic of conversation I’ll talk about the best of the Net for 2006. This is mainly about design on the net, internet applications, websites that caught my attention on the net for one reason or another. So without further adieu here’s the Squeaky Kode Trophies for the year of 2006.
Addictive Site of the Year
Advertising/Design Goodness. This is the one of those sites that even though I might have 500 unread items in my feed reader, I’ll most definitely jump to this site and have a look and see what’s new. The reason is pretty simple really, it provides me with inspiration every single time. Although I hate adverts, I absolutely LOVE good ads. A good ad will go a long way with me to be honest, and this site brings the very best of the advertising world right to your feed reader, generally speaking every day.
Best Advert of 2006
Sony Bravia Paint. On a similar note to the topic above, I couldn’t really not mention the new Sony Bravia advert. How do you top the supreme bouncy balls advert of last year? I’ll tell you how, using a hell of a lot of paint. You’d think this was probably the only advert I’d seen that was special, and I’ve got to say that it definitely had some stiff competition from the Citroen Mutations advert.
Best Designed Site of the Year
UXmag came out of nowhere as far as I’m concerned. Very very slick sight, it combined that attention to detail that Subtraction has and ran it all of a Textpattern install. What I love about it is the attention to detail, the fact that it resizes according to the size of the browser without really loosing any of it’s design intent. I think that’s an absolutely fabulous design for a news portal. I also really enjoyed seeing what Phu’s been doing with his site as well. Honourable mentions include Dave Shea’s new redesign, although his previous design was pretty timeless, the orange and blues really worked very well. Of course Shaun Inman also did a bit of a redesign job which I thought was an interesting concept . Watching Michael sort out his site for several months was fun, so the ‘new’ trend of a live redesign seems to be making a bit of a come back (Mike was ahead of that trend it would seem).
Best Internet Application
Up until last year, I’ve got to say that I only every used personally hosted services, however this year I’ve expanded to several other services that I’ve found to be crucial in how I enjoy the internet. The first on the list was Ma.gnolia. You’re probably using another social bookmarking service out there, I decided on this one because it was well designed. I know sounds fickle, but I’m a fickle designer that likes to be surrounded by nice things.
It’s taken me a long while but I finally bit the Flickr bug as well and got myself an pro account as well. I’ve got to say that I don’t use it as much as I should do but that will be changing in the not to distant future.
For my feed reading I’ve jumped on the Newsgator bandwagon. I’ve got a lot to write about with respect to FOFRedux and will hopefully go to using that application in the not too distant future sometime next year, but in the meanwhile I’ve found the Newsgator service to be exactly what I was looking for.
So I guess it’s not so much that I had a specific internet application, but rather the fact that I actually decided to use several of the plethora of applications out there for use in the first place.
Best Internet Related Software
Firefox 2. Yeah, what did you expect? If you haven’t tried this little browser yet, make your peace with the other browser you’re using and head on over to take back the internet your way. My favourite feature of the new ‘version’ (sorry it should have been 1.6, but I can understand it for marketing purposes) is the dictionary in the text fields, restore session and automatically restart after an update. The icons are also pretty cool I thought as well.
Best Firefox Plugin
Firebug. Yeah well, I created this particular category because FIrebug really blew my mind as I honestly thought that there was no way you could top the Web Developer Plugin which I can’t do anything without, and then comes this exceptional plugin that serious makes my life a lot more easy and lays everything in front of me in a clear manner that was otherwise obscured.
Blogging Networks Politics
While I know it wasn’t fun for any of the 9rulers out there to see our network’s name dragged into the mud, it made for interesting reading to be included in the internet gossip pages. One thing I will comment on however was the fact that Blogging Networks in general felt as though they were soo much less important this year than in previous years. Yeah I’m including the venture capital funding that b5media received. I might be feeling that way due to the fact that networks and the interaction I was having with the people in the network was less this year than in previous years.
If you think I’ve missed something pretty fundamental just drop a comment and I’ll be sure to add it into the list or create a whole new category for it.
Linux equivalent project is just a list of links for programmes that do the same thing. Good one to have handy, although it didn’t really give me anything new, hopefully in time it’ll expand though as a resource.
Over a month ago I was on the hunt for a laptop. In my quest for a small laptop I actually looked at the Fujitsu-Seimens model and the Sony Vaio, and hell I even looked into getting myself an ibook or whatever it is they call themselves nowadays (the cheaper kind not the medal ones). Alas none of them really floated my boat, because they were either too thick, or too heavy. I wanted something far more portable than any of those models could provide me with.
In the end I settled on a Toshiba R100. I got this particular model for a couple of reasons. The first was because I’d actually seen the model in question as all the directors in the company got these things as standard issue earlier this year. The beauty of these particular laptops are that due to the fact that they don’t have a CD player makes them incredible light and super small.
As you can imagine, the standards Windows install lasted a total of like 5 hours on my machine as I quickly found a way to install dapper drake straight away. Once I’d done that I decided that it would be a good idea to try installing beryl on there, bad idea. For all those thinking that you can get all the funky 3D effects on this machine, you can’t. The computer has a Trident graphics card, and as such this extra layer it would seem is not possible. You could try but what happened with me is that it basically screwed up Sudo for me and things were not installing and a whole slew of other rubbish came of it. So word to the wise just avoid it on this machine.
I’m writing my findings down here in the hopes of a couple of things. I can’t be the only person to have Ubuntu installed on this machine, or even the only one that wants to have Ubuntu installed on this machine, so I’ll going to chronicle my findings here and fill it up as a resource for other helpless souls that are tearing their hair out as well, and hopefully I might get some answers to some of the bugs that can be found on this machine.
Installing Dapper Drake
This was actually the easiest thing in the world. Download an exe file, run it and it’ll reboot and start the installation process automatically from the net. It’ll download all the packages and install the thing right there and then, taking roughly about 1 hour in total (depending of course on your internet installation). The great thing is that everything worked out of the box. No problems whatsoever. I’m not sure if my keyboard was having a little bit of trouble there as I currently do in Edgy.
Installing Edgy Eft
Unfortunately things don’t go according to plan with this particular install. The reason as I’ve come to understand is really down to the shoddy and buggy Xorg. It’s a definitely step backwards as far as I’m concerned. If this was my only machine, I’d be fucked. Luckily the great guys over on the irc channel #ubuntuforums were a great help and got me up and running.
The problem is that Vesa doesn’t work, and the trident driver is just not good enough. There’s a bit of a bug involved here that I don’t know what the deal is. When you log in you’ll only see a quarter of the desktop. You’ve got to CTRL-ALT-F1 to restart xorg quickly, log back in and it’s all working nicely. Fekking annoying bug if you ask me. So I reported the bug on Launchpad, and someone got back to me less than 24hours later. Still hoping for a resolution to this, but it’s great to have someone get back to me directly and so quickly to try and solve my issue.
The next problem I had was in the keyboard (in fact I still have this problem, which is a real pain in the ass to be honest. Basically, when I log in, the keyboard letters are recognised, however the rest of the keyboard, and I’m talking about the symbols buttons, come up with some utter giberish. Selecting another generic keyboard solves the problem. If anyone has got a solution to this stupid bug I’d really be grateful (once again I’ve logged a report in as well about this).
So is Edgy worth it. It’s a more polished graphically at least distribution to Dapper. The login screen isn’t as scary as Dapper. The icons have been polished and look a lot more professional to be honest. Things like he new help icon and the new login screen are all great little additions that basically make the package look more professional. The new chocolate background is also pretty cool. I am glad that they didn’t go for the community created screenshots that we previewed. I’m with Mark Shuttleworth on this particular subject. It just wasn’t right.
One thing I have noticed (and maybe that’s because the harddisc is smaller and less complicated than on my desktop machine,) but Nautalis is actually faster on this install. It’s changed ever so slightly with the latest addition of gnome.
Applications
As I’m using this machine for a completely different set of reasons and because I’ve got less power than my desktop machine I’ve gone on a bit of a hunt for a different set of applications.
XFCE I thought I’d try another windows manager instead of gnome. XFCE was the obvious one. I’ve got to say that while it does seem lighter, it’s definitely not as polished as gnome. There are certain things in it that really do need some work. Some pretty fundamental things. I’ll definitely have a look at it in a few months/years to come, but for the moment I think it’s got a way before it’s as solid as gnome.
Thunar One of the great additions however is Thunar, which I think is a fantastic little application, very light and gets me to where I want to be straight away. I’m using a completely different icon to be honest, mainly because I love the screen with the stars, after all I am attracted to the stars.
Abiword Another great little find is Abiword. It’s got a pretty rubbish splash screen, but it is supremely lightweight Word replacement. It looks exactly like word, only slightly more slimmed down. For the type of documentation I require however it’s absolutely brilliant. So much so that I’m thinking about making it my default word processing tool of choice on my desktop machine as well. Hopefully the same developers can have a look at making an Excel alternative as well using the same ideologies, it just works really well and has got a very clean user interface.
Wifi
Not sure how to get this enabled or to test it’s all working to be honest. I’ve not had the chance really as we don’t have a wireless network at home (although we are definitely starting to think about this much more seriously). If anyone’s got any good tutorials or applications that can allow me to roam and see what’s around in my area or so that when I’m in a Starfucks I actually have that option available to me that would be most excellent.
I’m currently in Greece for a full 2 weeks. I’ve been looking forward to this break for well over a month now, hell I’ve been looking forward to this break for at least 3 months. I didn’t go anywhere during the summer period, which was probably the worst thing to do for my psyche to be honest. The summer was a very dark time for me with very little bright spots which was clearly reflected in my mood and how I dealt with those around me. Being a traditionally pretty patient person, I noticed myself getting more irate with things and situations that I would normally brush off, or at least see the funny side. Hasn’t been the case for at least 3 months now.
I guess I can attribute this to the situation in Lebanon which seriously hit me very hard. I can probably attribute it to work which has been very far from enjoyable these last few months, or I can attribute it to unfinished business from several areas that kept me down (my list of unfinished projects is pretty extensive). Needless to say, I need a break and a break I shall have. However I’m never happy until I’ve got things off my plate and I’ve been very good at not putting anything new on my plate but actually finishing those projects that I had opened/started/committed to first, after all I’m a finisher, not just an instigator.
Since it’s good to have a list I think I’ll make this list to remind myself what I have to look forward to in getting these monkeys off my back:
Finish the Splash Panel Redesign.
The site is nearly a year old now, and I’m still using Fauna, which has done the site proud but I’ve got a lot more in store for this site. The break in Greece is going to do wonders to the amount of writing I get done for the site. This time round however I’m going to be sure to stock up on the reviews and release them at a slower but regular pace. Expect a lot of European comics and some more indie revies (as that’s the majority of comics I have in Greece).
Stathi’s and Priya’s Websites.
The other two websites that I have promised and have actually done most of the work on (ie all the artwork is complete) it’s just a matter of coding the damn things. These will be done once I get back from Greece, although I might get the urge and sort them out while I’m in Greece, who knows I’ve got two weeks to fill in.
Broken Kode Season One
Book’s been done, edited by hand and just needs those tweaks to be put into the file and thrown out to lulu. This is probably 1 day’s work or something like that so I think I might be doing something about this in the not too distant future. Just get another thing that I said I’d do off my plate.
Broken Kode Prints
This is an interesting one. For a while now I’ve been asked if people can buy prints with my artwork. It’s been in the back of my mind and I did it once, but to be honest it was a great deal of hassle and not enough benefit. So I might go away from the DIY route and use a service like Zazzle or something similar. If any one’s got any recommendations that can cater for Europe at reasonable prices I’m all ears.
Chameleon Theme
I talked about this ages ago. Obviously life got in my way and I wasn’t really able to go forward with this one. It’s a very simple idea, which I’m going to elaborate on in a massive post in the coming days. Once I’ve done the design I’ll contact the souls that answered my call the last time. Don’t want to be wasting anyones time. Needless to say that the current Broken Kode redesign and believe it or not Crazyegg have both enabled me to have a clearer view as to what works and what doesn’t in the design of a site (once again more on this at a later stage down the road).
Also on a completely different note, I really need to get myself a laptop (any recommendations for small dinky laptops, like the Fujitsu Lifebook or a Vaio would be welcome) as I’m currently using my dad’s windowz install using an ADSL connection that might be a little difficult to sort out on Ubuntu and it’s seriously painful to get anything done (which isn’t helped by the fact that it’s a shitty CRT screen that’s got a tinge of purple going through,…nice), the ‘Kode has never looked this bad.
Democrcy Internet TV Platform - in all it’s open sourcy goodness. Just in time for the new Battlestar Galactica series (how the hell did so many months go by since season 2 ended, it really does seem like an eternity), the new My Name is Earl series and the new Lost series (still need to finish watching the rest of Season 2).
Following on from Part 1 of this series of posts on Ubuntu, I’m going to talk about Ubuntu and Linux’s most POWERFUL concept. Installing software through repositories. The way I understand it is that these are databases of all the latest stable software that has been tried and tested to work with Ubuntu. The software goes through several checks and something called REVU, comments are passed back and forth regarding how to make the package better before it’s committed to the repository. This means several things to the end user, however I’m going to concentrate on two:
<li>You get notified of any updates to any software that is running on your machine that is part of these repositories, so you're always up to date with the latest software (that's all software, from graphical applications to files you don't really care about or know what they actually do). It's a cute little orange and white star icon that pops out at you informing you to update your system.</li>
<li>You have a massive database to search for applications that will allow you to get the tasks you want to get done at your finger tips, with the click of a button.</li></ol><!--more-->
Synaptic Package Manager
In the past when I would want to do something with my computer, I’d search the Internet for some software that would allow me to do something. Traditionally there were the proprietary applications and then there was the less capable but free applications available. Every once in a while you’d stumble on some open source software that would really excel itself. Needless to say I used to spend a lot of time searching the net for applications that might fit the bill of what it was I was looking for. Ubuntu takes care of the searching for me, through the Synaptic Package Manager (pictured below). (For those newbies looking for this, just go to System > administration > Synaptic Package Manager)
You can search for applications either by category, or if you know what it’s called by name. So if you want some software that burns DVDs, or a bit torrent client then search through key words. You’d be surprised just how many applications are out there that can do all sorts of things you’d be finding if not difficult, at the very least expensive and worse frustrating on a windows machine. This little application and thought process IMHO should be the impetus of all Linux discussions. We’re dealing with THOUSANDS of developers all over the world contributing to thousands of programmes to help make YOUR (and my) computing experience easier and more enjoyable to undertake.
The issue of course is that you might need to add more repositories in order to get the very latest software which might not be verified from the Ubuntu team. This is the beauty of open source. It’s not like traditional proprietary software. There really is no need for open source to make massive leaps and bounds in one go (the traditional method employed by software houses to make you buy the upgrade), things are enhanced and augmented with time, step by step. You can even build your own repository list.
Easyubuntu
Easyubuntu should be a link on the Ubuntu desktop once you’ve installed the full thing. Why? Because it’s got all the software that isn’t covered by the GPL license that Ubuntu can’t ship with or whatever the legalities of the whole thing actually is (they could go down the Novell route and offer it as an option in the install stage, which would save a lot of people a lot of time, agro and hassle). Here’s a list of all the software that can be installed from running this little collection of applications. So all your drivers, Flash 7 (Adobe hasn’t released 8 for Linux, however they’re committed to 9 apparently), Java and the list goes on.
Automatix
I’ve only used Automatix for a couple of things, however the list of software that it will install is very impressive. It’s not as polished an interface as Synaptic to be honest as it does all sorts of ugly things (to someone who’s used to the standard Ubuntu dialogue boxes) but that shouldn’t stop you from using the application itself. I’ve heard rumblings within the Ubuntu Community where some people have expressed not liking using this system. I’m not sure why not to be honest (as in I genuinely don’t have a clue so any thoughts would be appreciated).
Resources for starting out on Ubuntu and Installing Ubuntu
Generally speaking, due in part to the architecture, and the other being that it is the most used Distro, most software runs on Ubuntu, it’s just sometimes a hassle, if in case it’s not found in the above methods. In that case then you’ve got a couple of options. .deb files (since Ubuntu is a Debian fork) has got these packages which act effectively like .exe files. Double click and install away. There are also others who have done autopackagers as well. Again these act like .exe files, so you double click and install. I’m going to admit I’ve tried to actually install software from the source code, however EVERY time I’ve tried, I’ve failed, and I’ve gone back and tried to find an alternative solution from the above. However if you are thinking about doing this here’s a couple of good links to refer to:
So there you have it, methods of how to install applications on Ubuntu, there’s more one way to skin a cat and in many ways a lot simpler and more open than windows in that there is generally an open source application for everything. Some are more mature than others and that’s what I’ll be talking about in the next posts on the subject. The next topic I tackle will be about applications that provide Sound.
http://www.brokenkode.com/ubuntu-advocate-part-2-installing-software
Ubuntu 6.06 ‘Drapper Drake’ is a vastly superior operating system to Windows XP.
Usually people give their conclusions once they’ve established the question first and then gone through the process of explaining and proving why. I’m going to make my conclusions and therefore raise your expectations (or utter disbelief or even contempt and arrogance) and try and win you back.
To discard some initial thoughts, first off, do I think Ubuntu is perfect? Hardly. In fact a lot of it is out of my comfort zone to be honest, however I am COMPLETELY willing to jump in with both feet to try and swim. The real reason is because it’s seriously opened up the sheer amount of possibilities to me and I honestly do feel completely free with my operating system. Free as in freedom. I’m no longer constrained in so many ways that I was before and I have no doubt many other users will feel the exact same way as well. Part of that reason is the library of open source software and ideas that are constantly being moved forward by people around the world. It’s an incredibly powerful concept that won’t become completely normal practice and accepted around the world for a few more years to come. The mainstream still fears open source. Still has doubts as to it’s power, it’s reasoning, after all we all live in a Capitalist world, where nothing is done for free, right? Wrong. Hopefully in the list of programmes that I will cover throughout this series of posts it’ll become clear that there is more ways to skin a cat. There is not one but several programmes that will enable you to do your job. The greatest part of it all, is that they are constantly being updated. I honestly can’t count how many times I’ve updated my system since I installed Ubuntu. I’ve set my timer for once a week for it to check on new updates to keep all my system fresh and up to date.
So before I made the jump to Ubuntu, I speculated as to which programmes I would be using the most to get on with the business of design and development. Some of those options have actually panned out while others haven’t really been as predicted. Within this series of posts I am intending on dispelling a lot of these thoughts that are predominant in the world at large today. In addition to that I will be reviewing and talking about software applications that I am using at the moment. Hopefully it’ll be useful to others around there to learn about software applications that are readily available for download and use. I’ll start with the nice and simple applications, that being the Internet and email client.
Firefox
Well I wouldn’t have moved anywhere if I couldn’t take the little browser that could. I’m too attached to it and it’s far too cool an application to not have on your system. In fact it should be the standard browser on the system. Good thing it kind of is on Ubuntu. It doesn’t have the Firefox logo (and getting them is a bit of a pain in the ass) but it does seem as though Mozilla are going to get their way one way or another.
Evolution
Never tried this little programme while on Windowz. It’s pretty cool as it looks SHAMELESSLY like Outlook, in just about every way. It’s got a couple of weird things going on in it, and it doesn’t seem to have the same flexibility in terms of plugins that Thunderbird seems to have which is a shame, but still it’s a pretty solid little email application. The nice thing is that it imports all of my contacts from Gaim, so all my online contacts are there for me to use for emails as well. THe contacts area does need some help, however it’s nice to see that this particular application is getting some more love come the latest Ubuntu release.
Come back next time as I review some graphical applications, music, video and cataloguing applications.
I’ve been trying to find ways to increase my productivity and effectively take my life back by the horns, which for the past couple of months has spiralled out of control.
Gmail is a staple in my life. I use it and don’t think about it. I’ve not gotten to the stage where I really use the folders as I can, however that might be about to change. So I’ve been looking into other online solutions that might be able to reach that status. Traditionally I’ve tried my very best to shy away from online services except those that are backed by one of the major players, mainly because they’re not going to be charging me cash to provide a task that while isn’t necessary to have online is nice to have. You could say it’s a bit of an antithesis to Web 2.0, and in a way it actually is. You’d also expect someone like me to jump for this sort of thing, however I don’t move into this arena without a little bit of caution, simply because I don’t like to be dependant on others that can pull the plug on me at any time or worse, decide to change the terms and conditions.
NewsGator
For all those in the dark earlier this year I help redesign the excellent open source RSS aggregator Feed On Feeds Redux. I’m still completely commited to the project, however I’ve been extremely busy of late to be able to do anything else apart from work (I will be posting the fruits of that labour in the not too distant future), so the CSS is still in a bit of a mess at the moment, which is my fault to solve. In the meantime back to news aggregators, FOFR is not really ready yet. It’s a bit on the slow side; the team is working on it but I need to take my life back now (once it’s ready I’ll probably move everything over to FOFR). I don’t know why not many people have been talking about this particular service because I seriously rate it a great deal. It’s completely free, clean interface, and actually believe it or not operate in the same way (more or less) as FOFR. You can import and export your feeds, you can move feeds into folders (and read all the feeds individually or within that particular folder), it’s fast, the subscribe to bookmarklet works a charm, the favicons pop up (and can be turned off if you don’t want them). Elements can be saved (or flagged depending on how you would like to term it). The only option that is missing as far as I’m concerned to be honest is the addition of tagging. I dunno if I could be bothered to tag things to be honest since I’ve only really gotten into tagging on my blog. Ben has recently mentioned Newshutch, which I’ll definitely check out, although I have the feeling that Newgator is still far better. If only they could sort something out for linux, that would be well appreciated.
Ma.gnolia
I’ve been using this for a little while. I love the colours, I love the design of the site, I love the bookmarklet. Again I’ve not been using it for all that long, however I am getting into the habit of using it whenever I come to a website that I really like however I don’t want to clutter up my firefox bookmarks, because it’s get far too much. I haven’t used de.lic.ious (or where ever the bloody i’s go to be honest), because it looked far too basic for me. Too much text not enough form and structure to it all. Then again I’ve not visited the site in a good long while. Yup still a bit sparse for my liking.
Google Calander
I’ve only started using this today and I think it’s great. It’s got one single KILLER feature as far as I’m concerned. That is the fact that Google will text message me with the latest element on my calander of things to do. I can choose how far before it text messages me, however I seriously think that this is one of those features that is a complete godsend to someone like me. I’ve got far too much on my brain to be honest to worry about a number of things and will forget appointments, or worse (as is becoming a bit of a problem) double book things, or in the case of a couple of weeks back, triple books something. Yeah it got a bit ridiculous. This is part of the reason I’m chopping at the bits to get a PDA or the new Sony M600i.
I think I’m becoming a life hacker, hopefully the next couple of weeks will see a bit of this hectic lifestyle that I’ve been living cool down a little bit and I can actually get back to finishing off some of these projects that have been on my plate for months, some even a year.
Seems like the pay for model didn’t work? Can’t really say why the guys over at 21 Degrees have gone the route of giving Symphony away, but having done this blogging thing for a while, I can’t help but remember distinctly the outrage the blogosphere went through when Six Apart went and made the free Moveable Type into a pay for model. This is interesting in that it’s really going in the completely opposite direction. First come out with a pay for model, then give it away. The cynical side of me thinks that this means they’re trying to get people to jump on the Symphony bandwagon and then slap the price tag back on it once people have developed and spread the word about it, and therefore made a connection with it and invested their time into the product because it’s ‘free’.
Don’t get me wrong I think it’s great to give it away (because it really is a beautiful system), however I couldn’t find anywhere on their site the license information about the terms and conditions to downloading and using Symphony 21, and more importantly why and where they think they’re going with this free model. What can I say, the guys are fighting a hard battle and if they want to win the blogger market, they’ve got to be transparent themselves, they’ve got to blog about their system themselves. They’ve got to keep their users informed.
You have to download an installer which is directly linked to your Symphony account (is this a legacy thing from when it wasn’t free?) and then have to go through the motions. I’m quietly wary about where this is all going to be honest with you, simply because we’ve kind of been down this road before and I decided that I wasn’t going to be putting my eggs in one basket that wasn’t open source so I wouldn’t be rammed again.
Gnome Files. Part of the problem with open source is the fact that there are so many applications out there that can help you do all sorts of things, so much so you probably don’t even know that they exist. To help you along the way we’ve got the excellent Gnome Files website, which is basically a software information repository. Anyone have any other similar sites?
20 Years of Linux panel at LinuxWorld from August. Yeah, it’s only been 15 years, however the guys at the panel look to the future and come up with some very interesting ideas, thoughts and suggestions.
When it comes to doing things in WordPress, any idea I come up with has usually been implemented several times over, however I think (and I really hope someone has actually done this and I simply can’t find it) but the idea for this plugin came about after talking with several of my friends who ‘read’ the site. A number of them have actually complained that whenever they come to my site, they don’t understand what the hell it is I’m talking about. For example I’d say half of them are completely lost by mentioning WordPress.
Basically it’s a very simple idea, which makes me wonder that I can’t possibly be the first to voice my thoughts about it, and to be honest I can’t see the reason why it can’t be implemented by persons more talented at this than I am. Basically the idea is that you let the user take control of what he views or subscribes from your site. So the person comes to your site goes to a “user preference section” where they choose which categories they would like to subscribe to and then the front page shows posts only from those particular categories (latest being shown on top of course).
That way the user takes control of what they want to read.
Customise the RSS Feeds
In a similar fashion I know that WordPress allows you to subscribe to specific categories, but honestly I’m definitely not going to sit there and subscribe to the same site 15 times. It’s stupid. I’ve got like over 200 feeds I’ve subscribed to, that is most definitely not an option. The problem of course is that I don’t get the read all those 200 feeds as regularly as I would like to. In fact I don’t get to read them that often lately, which is why I’ve been so behind the times lately. The other problem is the fact that there is a lot of noise in them feeds that I have subscribed to. The issue is most definitely not in the actual feeds themselves, but if I could subscribe to 200 feeds and specify which topics actually interest me from this particular site then I think it would definitely make my reading experience much more concentrated and less noisey.
It’s all about making sure the type of information you are interested in gets delivered to you in the correct way. It’s an extension of the RSS feed. It’s no longer acceptable to just provide me with an RSS feed. I want to choose the categories I’d like to hear from you, or allow you to choose what you view when you visit my site. That way you’re guaranteed to read things that actually are of some interest to you.
Anyone up for writing a plugin for me? I’ll send you white chocolate.
Quick thoughts on the new online service provided by Crazy Egg. I’ve been using it for about a week now. It’s another way of looking at how users interact with your site. I use Mint for my stats package; Crazyegg provides three levels of visualisation of where the majority of visitors click on your site. It’s got a great ‘killer’ feature in the heatmaps, however it definitely falls in the nice to have category, and at $19/month, it’s definitely not that nice to have. See I would actually pay money for Akismet, because it provides me with what I see as an essential service, one that would drive me insane if I didn’t have it implemented, Crazyegg doesn’t.
Why can’t people who have a killer idea and have done their jobs correctly, pay some more attention to the pricing. I do believe that it’s got some great features and it looks great, but ultimately I feel it might suffer the same problems as Feedlounge did, overestimating what the majority userbase will fork cash for.
I definitely noticed spamming coming through, which left me scratching my head (50 in like a few hours). I guess those spammers are seriously getting their ass kicked by Akismet, easily the only ESSENTIAL plugin you want to have as a blogger of any description. Damn, was it really that bad before this plugin? The answer I guess, it was worse, because there was no solution.