This blog is now running on the fancy-schmancy WordPress 2.7. The upgrade was joyously uneventful. And this new admin interface is clearly the bomb. 
Carry on.
If clever quips are my business, business is bad.
Archives for category: web
Friendfeed recently added IM to their growing list of features. And while I’m not a traditional Friendfeed user (I rarely post or comment directly there), it has changed how I manage my micromessaging stuff (Identi.ca, Twitter etc.) along with all the social network-ey stuff I run into. Here’s my current setup:
I have a Friendfeed account. I have personally hooked up my Twitter, Identi.ca, blog feed, and Delicious feeds in Friendfeed. This means that whenever I do something on any of these services, it get’s posted in my Friend Feed.
But what Friendfeed is doing for me lately is something I find much more useful. It provides a one-stop shop for receiving status updates that people make in a variety of services and most importantly provides this is in a very near-realtime way via IM.
So instead of having to monitor a Twitter IM Window (wait.. Twitter still doesn’t supply IM does it?), and an Identi.ca IM Window, everything flows into a single IM window.
Now this all works best if the person I’m following has an account on Friendfeed and has his services all hooked up there, but even if he doesn’t, I have Friendfeed’s “imaginary friend” feature as a workaround. It goes something like this:
Say JoeSchmo is not on Friendfeed.. or maybe JoeSchmo is on Friendfeed, but has failed to hook up his Identi.ca feed over there. Well, for him, I can create an imaginary Friendfeed friend (and call him “JoeSchmo” or whatever I want) and hook up his identi.ca feed myself - provided I know his identi.ca username. In fact, I can hook or unhook any of the services I want for Joe. So if Joe posts a lot of pictures of his pet snake on Flickr I can filter his feed not to show me those Flickr posts.
It’s all very customizable. The only aggravating part is when someone has a Friendfeed account but hasn’t hooked up his Identi.ca feed to it. In this case I have to make an imaginary friend entry for him just to get that identi.ca feed into the Friendfeed stream. No big whup, but aggravating.
The only thing I can’t figure out is why Identi.ca (and other services) are not listed in the FIRST PAGE of service choices on Friendfeed. I mean, there’s a link to ‘all 49 services’ but I think most people miss this and assume only those 3 or 4 status services are available.
Here’s a screenshot showing the first page of services shown to the user. And following this a second screenshot showing All Services available. There’s really not that much of a difference IMO. Why not show the user ALL services right from the get-go. There are so many people I’m finding who are technically saavy but have not hooked up their identi.ca feeds presumably because they think it’s not available to them.
Here’s the first page of offered services:
And here’s the “All 49 Services” listing:
And here’s what my Friendfeed chat window looks like on my work machine (using Google Chrome):
So there you have it. My current microblogging workaround solution. Do you have a better one? Why not post about it in the comments.
I have been using the Task application created by Paul Beckingham for about 5 months to keep track of my todo list. Before that I was a big fan of the Todotxt.com method. Then I found out about Paul’s app and got it to build on Cygwin (which I run at work on XP). Both Task and Todotxt use a no-nonsense command line interface to create, modify and keep track of tasks. I found Task to be very much like the Todotxt system on steroids - still dead nuts simple but very powerful. If you want to see a good demo of what the program can do, check out this screencast demo.
Just a day or two ago, I finally installed Dropbox on both my home and work machines mostly as a glorified file transfer system between home and work. But the next day a light bulb clicked on and I realized that by keeping my task list file in the Dropbox folder, I could have syncronized access to my task list from home or work. Awesome.
Task keeps your task data in a hidden directory called, unsurprisingly .task (nifty how simple and straightforward FOSS programs can be). And the .taskrc configuration file in your home directory contains the path to that folder. So I simply moved the .task folder into my Dropbox folder on my XP machine at work and modified the path in the .taskrc files on both machines and Voila! instant gratification.
Now I know all you Linux tech-heads will think this is much ado about nothing (which it is) but damn it, I’m quite proud of myself! 
I know I *should* set up a proper system and ssh into my system.. blah blah blah.. but this was dead simple and accomplishes exactly what I want. I’m willing to give up a couple of geek cred points for the sake of simplicity.
ps. A bit of a disclaimer here. I’ve also been creating .deb packaged versions for Paul ever since v1.1.0 (it’s now at 1.4.2). Task was good enough for me to want to learn Debian packaging, so that must say something!
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.
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 LinuxI’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!
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
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.
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.
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.
A very cool Firefox plugin called Ubiquity was released by Mozilla labs very recently. It’s hard to describe just how useful it can be, but think QuickSilver/Launchy/Gnome-Do within Firefox. What’s interesting though is that while it has quite a few very neat commands, anybody can add new ones.
I’m fairly active on Identi.ca these days, and when cgerrish asked about using Ubiquity to post to identi.ca, I did some quick investigation. Lo and behold it was *very* easy. First I went to this page which holds a list of commands that people have already created for Ubiquity. Then I did a quick text search for identica and found this script.
To make this a new command in Ubiquity, you just Ctrl+Space to bring up the Ubiquity command line and type “command-editor”. Then just paste in the javascript and Bam! you now have a command called identi.ca. So you just type “identi.ca Testing 123” and this will post a dent (“Testing 123”) right up there for you.
Wow. I’m impressed with the simplicity and the flexibility of this Ubiquity thang!
ps. Of course, you can find me at http://identi.ca/rfquerin