Archives for the month of: September, 2008

Codeweavers Chromium is not THE Linux version of Chrome… Right?

September 29, 2008 //

Please someone set things straight on the Linux port of Google Chrome.

Maybe I’m completely out to lunch on this, but my impression was that Codeweaver’s port of Google Chrome (using the Chromium project) is really just a demo of what they can do, and not THE Linux version of Chrome.

I have used the Codeweavers port (and pointed others to it for interest sake) but it looks significantly unfinished and feels completely hacked together. I don’t know much about Codeweavers except that they develop solutions using CrossOver which is somehow related to Wine and that this in effect lets Windows programs run in Linux by providing compatible libraries - not by emulation. (Of course the content of this paragraph could be complete hooey and I encourage you to set me straight if it is).

This leads me to the impression that Codeweavers’ Chromium browser on Linux is just a quickly hacked together showcase for what they can do. I had read that there were Linux and Mac developers working on proper ports of Google Chrome for their respective platforms. I would hope that Linux developers would come out with a much more stable and polished product for Linux - wouldn’t that be in Google’s interest anyway?

It seems like there are more and more articles that give the impression that Codeweavers port of Chromium is THE Linux port of Google’s browser. Please, someone tell me this is not the case.

Categories linux, technology, web

Friday Afternoon Accident

September 27, 2008 //

Myself and a couple of other guys were getting ready to leave work yesterday at about 5:20pm. I had heard some passing firetruck sirens, but like just about everyone else, you just ignore them. But when I went out to my car, I saw the air ambulance circling overhead. It turns out a Ford Escort met up with a Volvo transport truck in the intersection right next to our office. Not a good situation.

Anyway, the air ambulance had to land on the street beside our office - something that doesn’t happen every day. So I decided to take a few phone pics. (My DSLR was in the car, but I was just too lazy to get it. Sorry for the crappy pic quality). Click on the photos to see the larger versions.

The Accident As I Was Leaving

The Air Ambulance Just After Landing

Categories life

Someone’s getting their crap together…

September 25, 2008 //

Ever since this post on September 1st, it seems Merlin Mann and his 43Folders have really decided to get their shit together. It’s pretty inspiring stuff which is distinctly different than something like Lifehacker which, to my mind, seems to be heavily diluted lately in the interest of growth and at the expense of value.

Anyway, I’ve got nothing nearly as inspiring as what Merlin is posting lately, but I wanted to point you there for a great read, some inspiration and motivation to create something meaningful if nothing else. Think of it as a no-nonsense meal: extremely few frilly bits but extremely filling.

Thanks Merlin.

Categories blogging, life

Shameless Self Promotion (or a couple of logos I’ve done)

September 25, 2008 //

I’ve actually had some good fortune as of late. I’ve been able to contribute a little in the way of graphic design to a couple of things I’m into.

Very recently (ie. two days ago), the very awesome Dave Yates (of Lottalinuxlinks podcast fame) floated the idea of a ‘planet’ site to aggregate linux podcasters’ blogs and feeds. For those of you who might not know, planet sites are basically places where the content from various rss feeds (normally blog post feeds) are brought together into one single feed. The idea being that you then have more of a one-stop-shop for getting the posts of people with a common interest. It’s a good idea.

As a slight aside, the Screencasters feed started appearing on http://graphicsplanet.org just a couple of days ago as well! We’re clearly hitting the big time now. The keys to the limo should arrive anytime, or so I’m told by heathenx.

Anyway, linc (one of the hosts of The Linux Link Tech Show) put his money where his mouth is and http://linuxplanet.org/casts and http://linuxplanet.org/blogs were born. He also kindly added our episode feed to the /casts site and our blog feed to the /blogs site. Nice! Thanks linc and Dave!

So Dave asked me yesterday if I’d be interested in doing a graphic for the site and I obliged. This is the graphic I came up with:

As if all this shameless self promotion wasn’t enough, several weeks back, Dave Yates asked me (and a few other people) to come up with a logo for the SouthEast LinuxFest conference which Dave and a whole slew of other great people are putting together. I spent quite a bit of time coming up with relevant ideas for this and they ended up picking one of mine! The logo (and a flyer graphic I subsequently made them) are shown below. You can check out their site, which just went public yesterday I think, at http://southeastlinuxfest.org. It should be a great event so if you’re at all near the area, and you’re already into Linux or just want to discover what it’s all about, make sure you check it out.

Categories design, graphics, inkscape

Microsoft Reborn – Phase Two Commencing

September 19, 2008 //

So out of all the swirling rumours about how the Jerry Seinfeld/Bill Gates commercials failed miserably and the subsequent denials (I thought the first two ads were both very funny, maybe not supremely clever, but interest-generating to be sure), we now see the second wave. This time a rather poignant claim that “I’m a PC and I have been made into a stereotype” starts the ad and then a series of people fill us all in on how pc’s are a variety of things to a variety of real life people.

I like the ad - don’t love it. I suspect I could get tired of it pretty quickly too. Interestingly, still no mention of ‘Vista’ anywhere. That ship sailed long ago I guess.

But to a guy like me, the various comments to the posts about it made me smile. It sure is nice that Apple created a Mac vs PC ad and not an OSX vs Vista ad. Otherwise we poor Linux people would be completely cut out of the loop.

Among the various comments, here’s a couple that caught my eye:

I’m a PC and I’m running Ubuntu Linux

I’ve been running Ubuntu for 2 years and have even gone through 3 major upgrades without needing to format my hard drive or completely reinstall my entire OS. I come with lots of games (more than just Solitaire and Minefield) and have more available online for free without pesky adware or spyware. I also come with all the instant messaging, email, internet, video, music, and document software you’ll ever need.

What about us laptops?

Hi I’m a really old laptop that Windows left behind in a dumpster to be tossed into a landfill for all eternity. But one day, someone was nice enough to install a linux based operating system on me - I work better than ever, and now that I’m running on gOS, I look better that pc’s half my age. Even though you can still make out the little sticker that says built for windows 98, I know better.

As an aside, a couple of months ago, my father-in-law inherited a 3 or 4 year old laptop running XP - A Compaq R4000 I believe. He wanted me to clean it off and get it ready for him. I told him I was setting it up with Linux for him. He just gave me a blank look and said ‘Okay’. His command of computers is almost zilch. He surfs the web, checks email and plays solitaire.

I installed Hardy on it (completely trouble free except for a dialup modem driver issue - which I solved shortly after) and made sure I had all the regular stuff on there (Solitaire included). I showed him how to connect via dialup, showed him the launch icons for Firefox and Thunderbird (which I set up for him), and briefly showed him the Gnome menu and where the other games were. Compiz worked great on it and easily felt as fast as my P4 desktop.

I haven’t had a call or question from him since. I’ve asked him if he likes it and he says yes. And the fact that he won’t be mucking around with viruses and spyware (for the time being anyway) is just gravy for me (the family IT guy).

Kudos to Stallman, Torvalds, Shuttleworth and the whole of the FOSS community. Good on you!

Categories family, linux, technology, web

The Screencasters Flickr Group

September 17, 2008 //

About a week ago, one of our faithful screencast viewers zombiebrainz had a great idea and created a Flickr group as a place for people to post their inkscape work. This was done so that people could show off what they were working on with or without the help of our screencasts.

It’s turning out to be a nice place for getting feedback and discussing things like future screencast ideas. After 7 days we’ve already got just under 40 group members and over 50 images. Even if it doesn’t get any bigger, I’m already happy with the little (okay, tiny) community resource that’s been built.

If your interested in checking it out (heck, even if you don’t have any Inkscape chops you want to share), you can find it at: http://flickr.com/groups/screencasters

Categories blogging, design, drawing, graphics, inkscape, screencast, web

The Spore Conundrum

September 15, 2008 //

Back on May 12, 2006 I posted about Spore, and how much I wanted it. Now that it’s finally out I’m a little unsure about what I’m going to do.

I no longer run a dual boot Ubuntu/XP system. I do have an XP image inside of VMWare, but running a modern game inside of VMWare on a 5 year old P4 machine doesn’t fill me with optimism. What to do, what to do.

I could make a dual boot system out of my current one. But I really don’t want to do that. I love having my machine running Xfce on Ubuntu. It’s fast, very stable and secure. I’m no Microsoft fan - even though Senfield and Gates Part Two did indeed leave my ribs hurting. But then I heard something which offered me a way out…

Spore is going to be made available on the Nintendo DS. And while I won’t buy a DS just for playing Spore, I did buy a DS (yes, a pink one) for my daughter a while ago (she’s only playing Nintendogs on it up to this point). I think I might be able to lower my ethical standards enough to co-opt the girlie-pink entertainment device for my own purposes in the name of Spore.

You gotta love it when a plan comes together.

Categories life, linux, technology, web

Houston.. I thought we had a problem.

September 9, 2008 //

I would like to give some well-thought out excuse as to why I hadn’t yet upgraded this blog from WordPress 2.5 - “waiting for confirmation of stability” comes to mind.. But er.. no. I was just lazy.

So today I finally upgraded to 2.6.2. Again I mistakenly forgot to copy one folder over (the wp-includes) folder and immediately thought I had hosed the whole thing. Luckily, I’m so used to forgetting things and screwing things up in my approaching old age that the second thing to come to mind was that I had made a simple and stupid mistake. Clearly I’m smart about my stupidity.

Anyway, the usual thing holds true. If you spot anything odd or buggy with the blog, please let me know. Or alternatively, tease me about it, and then let me know.

Cheers.

Categories blogging, design, technology, web

The New Microsoft Ad – Humanize the Machine

September 6, 2008 //

So it seems quite a few people don’t like the new Microsoft commercial starring Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Gates. I guess I’m in the minority on this one.

Now I’m no Microsoft fan. I don’t really think too much of Vista mostly because I feel strongly that Linux is the way forward. Technically, there is something wrong with an OS that carries such high technical requirements when it has been clearly shown that you can do more with less. Efficiency is an important concept in technology and it seems to have been completely lost on Microsoft (and much of the commercial software world too).

Anyway, I watched the ad, and it made me laugh. I don’t know if it’s going to start to accomplish what they wanted - I don’t really know exactly what it is they want to accomplish anyway. If the aim is to humanize Microsoft, then I think it’s successful. And maybe humanizing Microsoft is the tact they should take. After all, the Mac vs. PC ads do the exact opposite in a way. Would the general public feel so comfortable watching a company get repeatedly humiliated in the Mac ad if they had a more friendly humanized view of Microsoft? I don’t know.

And let’s not forget that people have always enjoyed Microsoft’s internal videos, their keen sense of wit and penchant for self-deprecation. If all those things are their popular strengths, then why not parlay them into real ads.

Bottom line, It made me laugh and it was smart and odd in a Seinfeld-ian sort of way. It wasn’t for everyone. But I liked it.

And don’t forget. They run tight.

Categories design, humour, life, linux, technology

Google Chrome – Low Bling, High Speed – Initial Impressions

September 2, 2008 //

I find the naming of Google’s new open source “Chrome” web browser to be ill-fitting to say the least. I dunno about you, but I associate “chrome” with shiny parts that do little to make things go faster or better - bling for bling’s sake and little more.

Thankfully, and perhaps unsurprisingly, Google have gone the other way with this browser. I have found it to be low-bling. Not terribly shiny and without any fuzzy dice or spinner rims to weigh it down. At first I thought having the tabs on top of the whole thing was a little too unconventional, but after spending some time with it, it kind of feels more logical that way. There’s no bottom status bar although a semi-transparent one makes itself visible to let you know if a page is loading, but then tucks itself away minimizing wasted space. Nice. I haven’t played around too much with the settings, but the settings dialog seem oddly simple and straightforward at first glance. Whether that’s a function of limited feature or not, I’m not sure.

And from the various mini-screenshots I had seen, I was expecting something typically Google-Ugly.. But y’know, this isn’t. It’s pared down to be sure. It’s not shiny. But it’s still attractive. Kind of in a subdued, purposeful way. Hard to explain really, but I like it.

Now I may be imagining this, but across just about all sites I’ve tried so far (and that’s probably 95% of the sites I use day to day), this thing is F A S T. I had assumed they would get their own sites optimized (Gmail, GCal, GReader etc.) but even other sites I’ve tried feel significantly snappier than in FF3. Pages load faster, and images seem to render faster. Again, maybe that’s part of the limited feature set. But I assume it’s a function of Webkit, which Google Chrome uses.

There are also major differences in the way Chrome handles multiple tabs (as separate processes actually) which is supposed to enhance security and stability

While a single afternoon doesn’t guarantee the browser’s success, I have to say that if the Mozilla folks are ‘not worried’ about Google Chrome, they should be.

Google Chrome can be had at: http://gears.google.com/chrome

Right now, it’s only available for Windows, but there are instructions at http://bit.ly/19mvDV for those who want to build it on Linux. This browser has impressed me enough that I just might give that a go.

Categories design, linux, podcasts, technology, web