Caffeinated Gonzo!

Apple cautions Windows iTunes and iPod users to wait a few weeks to upgrade to Windows Vista.  It seems that the current version of iTunes is not compatible with Vista and will cause data corruption or worse with purchased iTunes or on the iPod itself.

Just in time for the New Year, debianadmin.com has posted a handy guide to installing the latest Debian release, complete with pictures. Now only if it came with a comic book…

See: Debian Etch Beta3 Graphical-mode installation With screenshots

Geeks have been carrying around USB flash drives with versions of Windows, Linux, and apps like Firefox, Thunderbird, OpenOffice and many more for quite a while now. Nostalgic Mac users now have a USB portable environment of their own. The Mac on a Stick Project allows users to install a ‘portable’ Mac system that emulates older Mac systems such as the Mac Plus. Ah the memories, now I can show my son what a Mac used to look and act like “back in the day.”

In a similar same vein as my recent posting of notes on Open Source Graphics Editors for Windows here is a short list of Open Source Sound Editing Apps (just a smattering really.):

Audacity

“Audacity is a free, easy-to-use audio editor and recorder for Windows, Mac OS X, GNU/Linux, and other operating systems.” [ source: Audacity project web site. ]

CDex

“CDex is a CD-Ripper, extracting digital audio data from an Audio CD. The application supports many Audio encoders, like MPEG (MP2,MP3), VQF, AAC encoders.” [ source: CDex project web page on SourceForge. ]

Podcast Generator

“Podcast Generator is a free web based podcast publishing script written in PHP: upload media files (audio-video) via a web form along with episode information and automatically create podcast w3c-compliant feed including iTunes specific tags. It also features a comprehensive web administration.” [ source: Podcast Generator project web page on SourceForge. ]

CodePlex is Microsoft’s open source project hosting web site. Coders can use CodePlex to create new projects to share with the world, communicated with and join others who have already started their own projects, or download and applications on this site. Feedback is encouraged.

A few continuing notes on Open Source Graphics Editors for Windows [and more]

Inkscape

Inkscape is an Open Source vector graphics editor, with capabilities similar to Illustrator, Freehand, CorelDraw, or Xara X using the W3C standard Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) file format. Supported SVG features include shapes, paths, text, markers, clones, alpha blending, transforms, gradients, patterns, and grouping. Inkscape also supports Creative Commons meta-data, node editing, layers, complex path operations, bitmap tracing, text-on-path, flowed text, direct XML editing, and more. It imports formats such as JPEG, PNG, TIFF, and others and exports PNG as well as multiple vector-based formats. [ source: Inkscape project web site. ]

Dia

Dia is an Open Source app designed for drawing diagrams. Consult this web site to learn about the Dia for Windows version. The Dia Project Page provides all other information.

GIMP

Arguably the most widely known Open Source graphics app out there, the GNU Image Manipulation Program, or GIMP, is a raster graphics editor application with some support for vector graphics.

GIMPshop is a “hacked” version of the original GIMP, designed to mimic  closely the look, feel and features Photoshop users are familiar with.

CinePaint is a fork of GIMP (formerly known as Film Gimp), is a modification of earlier GIMP versions and later developed as a separate app. Added features include 16-bit per color channel (48-bit per pixel) color depth and other improvements and is used within the film industry.

Blender

Released under GPL licensing, Blender is used for modeling, rendering three-dimensional graphics and animations, Non Linear Editing, Compositing, and interactive 3D applications. Blender is available for several operating systems, including FreeBSD, IRIX, GNU/Linux, Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, Solaris, SkyOS, and MorphOS. Blender has a robust feature set similar in scope and depth to other high-end 3D software such as XSI, 3D Studio Max and Maya. These features include advanced simulation tools such as rigid body dynamics, fluid dynamics, and soft body dynamics, modifier based modeling tools, powerful character animation tools, and node based materials system and an embeded scripting and programming language using Python scripting. [ notes adapted from an article on Wikipedia. ]

I am curious how easy it would be to use the Mozilla Project’s Calendar apps Sunbird or Lightning with Google’s Calendar.  I would like to hear from anyone who uses this type of functionality on a daily basis.  I currently use various forms of Microsoft’s Outlook and Outlook Web Access calendar to take care of most of my critical scheduling. I prefer however, Firefox and Thunderbird for my browsing and email apps at home. 

Comments, thoughts and tips on using Sunbird or Lightning would be most welcome. 

No this is not a post about exploiting lab animals for oily fun and profit on the Internet.  Instead, this is a simple “Post-it” note to myself to remind me where to find Greasemonkey.

Greasemonkey is a Firefox extension which lets you to add “user scripts” (mostly DHTML) to any web page to change its behavior.  The “parent” extension can be found here.  A large repository of user scripts is located here.  Some of these scripts are very useful, some are just geek-fodder.  Use at your own risk.

Mark Pilgrim’s excellent print resource on programming Greasemonkey hacks can be found here.

If we want the world to embrace free software, we have to make it beautiful. I’m not talking about inner beauty, not elegance, not ideological purity… pure, unadulterated, raw, visceral, lustful, shallow, skin deep beauty.

~ Mark Shuttleworth

Far from the cold days of computers locked up in dungeons with white lab-coat suited scientists, our relationship with computers have evolved into something more personal and akin to our relationship with our automobiles.  Whether we love computers, or hate them, the biggest influence on how we relate to a computer has more to do with Aesthetics than numbers.  Design is  is an important part of any computing experience. 

Personalization is another important feature. As much as IT Support people hate the idea, very few people use a computer long without at least attempting to personalize their desktop environment in some fashion.

Creative people love the Mac because it is beautiful. Geek’s love Linux because it is tweekable.  Back in the early 1990’s many PC users became Windows users because of two innovations.  Reluctant as they might have been to give up the familiar look and feel of Lotus 1,2,3 and WordPerfect 5.1, secretaries adopted Windows because it had the ability to have a cute desktop and they could play Solitaire when the boss wasn’t looking.

Whether the average home / home office user adopts Windows Vista early will have more to do with aesthetics and available bells and whistles than any perceived gain in productivity or security over Windows XP.

Linux is cool.  If you are a geek that is.  It can even be beautiful at times, but Mr. Shuttleworth is correct when he says that it could use some improvement. 

Aesthetically, I would love it if my PC could look, act and feel more like OS-X. If I could afford to replace all of my Windows software for their OS-X counterparts cheaply, I would switch in a minute. 

Linux when done right is like a cheap vacation from the day to day business world that is my PC experience.  The more beautiful it could be, the happier more fulfilling my little byte-sized vacations could be.

This is the first post I have written using the beta version of Windows Live Writer. It will be interesting to see how well this new effort by Microsoft works with my WordPress.com blog.

So far it is evident that Windows Live Writer can work with WordPress categories and upload pictures. I am curious about how it will handle post formatting. I will know as soon as I hit publish. Here goes nothing…