Jesus has an iPhone.

So does Lars. Dork sent me this (well, a full-size version) from the beach on Friday, the beginning of a two week holiday, which began the day he got the iPhone, which came two weeks after his three week holiday. I replied with “i h8 u & u suk 2,” because I do have to hate anyone who lives a five minute drive from the coast and gets five weeks off work, plus the odd day here and there, but also because he hates txt tlk. 🙂

I’m so awesome that I can’t even stand it! Hee! I told L. yesterday that I’d love to have a MBP like he does, and I suppose on some level, I would, but I think I’d still keep using Linux because it’s almost as awesome as I am. If you’re willing to sort through the junk and ugly themes (I am), you can make it look (and behave) almost any way you want. The default Ubuntu theme is plainly a non-starter. It’s inoffensive if you don’t hate brownish/orange-ish, but I just don’t like it very much. Sometimes, I use a glossy blue theme with the white bits dimmed down to grey (I named the custom theme “Easy On My Eyes”), but I usually choose something in a brushed metal, Mac-ish looking theme, though I like the “metal” a bit darker than Mac’s. If I spend a lot of time on the computer (read: if I’m home and awake, and not working/doing water changes), light themes and white page backgrounds kind of get to me, and will eventually give me a headache. After a 5-6h MSN marathon, my head is usually aching so horribly that I can only just gush over the Wee Pea’s incredible cute factor. If I’m just reading a page or two on a white background, it won’t bother me, but if it’s hours and several pages, I’ll get a horrible headache. It’s even worse at night; looking at the screen feels like I’m staring into the sun. My solution was to install a few dark themes, but I had a hard time finding one that wasn’t too dark (i.e. all black), and that had attractive coloured accents. I read something in the UF about how nice the default Ubuntu Studio theme was, so I took a look at it, and be damned if it isn’t just what I wanted! Installing it was simple–just a matter of firing up Synaptic and searching “ubuntustudio-look”. It says it’s going to uninstall “ubuntu-desktop” and “ubuntu-sounds”, which sounds frighteningly like you’re not going to have a desktop, but that is not the case; I think it’s actually just replacing the defaults (or at least I still see the original Ubuntu theme available). I love the Ubuntu Studio theme (considering replacing the menu button thingie, though), and it’s much easier on my eyes, especially after I darkened the input box to medium grey. On both the desktop and the laptop, I installed the “Dark Matter” skin for aMSN so it won’t bother my eyes, and the Flickr Shades Greasemonkey script so I can be on Flickr for more than an hour without going blind. I couldn’t find an easy way to put the Ubuntu Studio theme on the laptop running openSUSE, so I just started with Clearlooks Compact Dark, then customised a few things to get it to my liking. I also installed on the laptop some useful Nautilus scripts that I’ve had on the desktop, but never got around to copying on the laptop. Didn’t bother with autostarting Screenlets on the laptop this time because I use the whole screen for the browser (how did I ever use a desktop for so many years with a single screen?!) but still, they both look (IMHO) very slick, and work the way I want. I ♥ Linux! I even got the Hyperwords add-on customised to do exactly what I want, when I want, and nothing that I don’t. Hee!

Desktop:

Laptop with theme and custom Flickr visible:

Laptop with snazzy “openSUSE dragon” wallpaper:

I haven’t got desktop effects turned on for either the desktop or the laptop (had for a while, got bored and switched back), and I still might customise a few icons on the laptop’s panel, but nonetheless, I am almost overwhelmed at my own nerdy awesomeness! 😆

I’m actually glad I decided to install openSUSE 11.0 because….YaST is usable! If it’s significantly slower than Synaptic, I can’t tell, and since I enabled Packman and a couple of other community repos in addition to the official ones, I was able to install Skype and aMSN without having to install dependencies package-by-package. All I’ve installed besides those so far is Epiphany, and I think that was on the DVD anyway, but it should at least be easier. Oh! I did install the “neutral” cursor theme, and this time, the package install didn’t crash. Even Samba was no trouble to get working, though I did decide this time to use SSH to communicate between the Linux systems and will use Samba only for stuff I want to share with XP. SSH is much faster, takes a matter of 30 seconds to log in, and gives access to the whole /home (if I want it to), not just the directories I have shared with Samba (XP doesn’t need access to everything). Someday, I will build a proper file server, but for now, at least I can get to my stuff no matter where it is or which OS I’m using on which computer. I guess I really do like openSUSE, and now that YaST isn’t such a pig, and I remembered that I could enable community repos, it’s much better. I still like Ubuntu better, but that’s probably because I’m more used to it and therefore more proficient with it. I guess it’s probably a good idea to use a couple of different distros so I don’t get stuck in a rut and forget that “new and different” doesn’t mean “OMG!!!111” That’s Windows user mentality. 😉

Oh, yeah…and for all the bitching I’ve read about Ubuntu’s using PulseAudio, this version of openSUSE does, too, and it works just as well as it does on my Ubuntu system. I don’t give a rat’s arse what they say about how wonderful OSS is; I never could get that to work properly, and didn’t have reliable sound until ALSA. I don’t yet quite understand how PulseAudio works with ALSA (acts as a sound server to allow volume-by-application?), but it works well enough to suit me. 😀

I had openSUSE 10.3 on the laptop, but I hate YaST so much that I vowed to put Ubuntu 8.04 on there this time. Then, I thought I’d “just check” the current version of openSUSE. It turned out to be 11.0, and being something of a nerd, I couldn’t resist “just getting the torrent”, then “just downloading the image”. Last night, I looked at the image, kind of sitting there on my HDD, doing nothing, and thought, “Well, I’ll put it on a DVD, just in case.” Currently, there are 56.56 MB remaining before openSUSE 11.0 is installed. I must be a sucker for punishment because it’s still going to use YaST, and I’m still going to hate YaST. I almost gave the new KDE 4.0 a shot because it was an option offered for the installation, but I decided to stick with Gnome because even though KDE 4.0 has some cool stuff, when I test-drove the live CD on my desktop after its initial release, it was still as cluttered as KDE 3.5.

Hee! When the install dropped out of X into a terminal for a few seconds, it showed a little message that said, “Do not panic…” and said X had to do that to detect the video card and install the correct drivers. It’s been so long since I panicked at the sight of a terminal that I wouldn’t have thought a thing about it, but I guess for someone coming straight from a Windows environment, that would be a reassuring message to see.

Anyway, here we go…let’s see whether I like it any better than 10.3, or whether Hardy will end up on there after all! 🙂

Can I help it if I’m constructed of 110% pure nerd-awesome? Of course not; I must simply accept my fate. 😀

After WebcamXP crapped out on me for no reason (I didn’t do anything, it just didn’t work after I’d shut down one day, then booted the next), I tried to figure out what was wrong. For reasons known only to XP, the webcam server also killed my sound. I fixed the sound by just uninstalling and reinstalling the sound card (with the fourteen accompanying fucking reboots involved in doing anything useful in Windows), but couldn’t figure out WTF was wrong with the webcam server. It said the http server was running, but when I’d try to go to the URL, it would say the page was unavailable. Finally, I said, “Fuck it,” since I hate Windows anyway, and decided to try using VLC as a server under Linux. I don’t need (or want) sound anyway, and if I could get that to work, then I could have the webcam on my laptop, which does not have Windows at all, instead of on my dual-boot desktop. VLC can transcode feed from a v4l device to an mms stream, so as long as the client computer has the capability to view the stream, it can see the webcam feed. I had tried it before, but could never get it to work properly, and never bothered to figure out why. I tried it again today, connecting the camera to the laptop, and starting the stream. Everything looked okay there; it was using around 11% of CPU0, which is no big deal, so I tried to connect with VLC on the desktop, under Ubuntu. No joy. Ooooo-kay, since it’s a WM stream, let’s see whether it works with WMP; if it does, then the problem is with VLC, not the stream or the port forwarding. I booted into XP, fired up WMP, and after it worked using the internal IP, I forwarded requests on port 12345 to the laptop and tried my public IP. Yay…worked just fine. Back into Ubuntu, tried VLC again, and even installed the w32codec package, but again, no joy. Finally, it occurred to me that even though the GUI sucks balls, and I hate the Gnome frontend, I don’t think I’ve ever encountered anything that Mplayer couldn’t handle from a command line. I am now sitting at my desk, watching myself from across the room with less than one second latency. Since the camera is on my laptop, not my desktop, it can be Fish Cam, Manti-Cam, Crab Cam, or any other “cam” that I want, depending upon how long I’ll need the battery, or whether there is an outlet nearby. What I’m going to do with it, I have no idea, since a webcam server isn’t exactly “mission critical” to anything, but goddamn it, it works and I’m made of pure awesome. Now, I just have to figure out a way to upload the live stream to my webhost so that I won’t reveal my IP to anyone with sense enough to know where to look. Maybe I’ll set up MiniMo Cam or something; he’s an active little guy, his tank is in a reasonably well-lit spot, and he’s very dance-y. No time for that now, though; I’m still not dressed and haven’t started the laundry, and I’ve got about 4000 email messages still unread. Oops. 😀

Oh yeah…and when I forget the command to use VLC as a server (since it never seemed to work configuring from the GUI)….

vlc v4l:/dev/video0:size=320×240 –sout “#transcode{vcodec=WMV1,vb=180,scale=1}:duplicate{dst=display, dst=std{access=mmsh,mux=asfh,dst=:12345}}” -v –noaudio

I wanted a video from PBS because it had Alex the African Grey parrot in it. I didn’t want the rest, so my plan was to let it load in Mplayer within Firefox, then save a copy and edit out everything except the bit with Alex. PBS, however, doesn’t allow their videos to be saved, so I had to kind of “go around” that by using Mplayer from the terminal and dumping the stream. BTW, when I forget again what the command is to grab a streaming Windows Media file…

mplayer mms://url -dumpstream -dumpfile foo.wmv

Anyway, it downloaded, and I had to smile because Linux is so much fun that even the terminal has a somewhat sarcastic sense of humour. Maybe that’s why I like it–real, live people wrote this code, and real, live people have a sense of humour (most of ’em, anyway).

I hadn’t checked Scout in a while, so I did on Monday. The reason that B. makes such a big deal out of it is because he is in some sort of competition with S.. Why? It’s a guy thing, I guess, though I don’t think S. is aware that there’s a competition. Anyway, there is one, so I check once in a while to see who’s winning (B. is–39 to 52). Frankly, I’m a little surprised that I’m also at 52 now; if you choose a popular subject, submit to a bunch of groups to get different “awards” (not comment whore groups) from different people, and don’t totally fuck up the technical aspect, it’s not all that difficult to get in somewhere below 300. I’m not surprised to see that some of my butterflies and flowers have made it in–pretty much everyone likes butterflies and flowers–and not too surprised at dragonflies, either, or even the cat, I guess. Critters…well, it’s kind of hard not to like a nearly newborn fawn, curled up in a little ball, thinking no one sees him. Toad…okay, he does look pretty cool. I’m happiest, though, when one of the “less popular” subjects makes it in, like a spider, or a bug, or something like that, specifically because they aren’t popular subjects, and indeed, are subjects that make some people’s skin crawl. If it’s something most people like, it’ll be easier to get people to look at it. If it’s something most people don’t like, then it must be interesting…or they wouldn’t look. L. is busy, and since I had nothing better to do while sitting here, drinking coffee and ignoring what I’m supposed to be doing, I broke down the percentages for my Explore photo subjects.

28.8% butterflies/moths
19.2% dragonflies/damselflies
17.3% other insects
15.3% non-insect/spider critters
9.6% flowers
7.6% spiders

(adds up to only 97.8% because I rounded percentages off to tenths.)

I’m pretty pleased with that, especially the 7.6% spiders. Not a lot of non-arachnologists like spiders, and some people just plain have an irrational fear of them, but enough people thought three little jumpers and one pretty orb weaver were interesting. Cool.

Anyway, S. is cheating. Of the 39 shots he’s had in Explore, 43.6% (17) are of…his cat. She’s a pretty cat, but nearly half? No cat is that interesting. Come on…find a new subject and quit taking advantage of the fact that cat people are batshit insane! 😉

Well, I look like something the cat dragged in, but time to set up a backdrop, don a tiara and see whether Miss Valerie is going to co-operate or fly up and land on the ceiling!

If you grew up in Canada anywhere near 1979 and watched more than three minutes of TV, you saw this often. I hadn’t for a very long time, though, and it’s just so…National Film Board of Canada.

The lovely voices are Kate and Anna McGarrigle, sisters from Québec (but of obviously Scots descent). Is it scary that I not only know they aren’t singing “whirling down white water”, but actually know what “birling” means? 😀

No, no, NO! You pompous idiots; putting “Photography” after your name on Flickr does not somehow magically make you a photographer. Watch…

Mean and Pinchy Photography

See? I even made the text bold and it didn’t do a goddamned thing; I’m still the same fool stomping through the woods and slogging through pond muck, chasing bugs with a two year-old P&S Canon and an adapter or two. Even if I coughed up a couple of thousand bucks for a fancy DSLR and some nice lenses, I’d still be some fool stomping through the woods and slogging through pond muck, chasing bugs. Oh, so you’re going to earn back the money you spent on that ridiculously expensive Canon or Nikon by selling your photos, are you? Do you have any idea how many other people had that very same idea, some of whom even have actual talent? Yeah…one or two. You just go ahead and try; submit that 5000th photo of your cat or yet-another-butterfly, or the pink roses in your back yard to a stock photography site and sit back while the cash rolls in. The more generous places will give you as much as a quarter for each download…that new camera will pay for itself in no time! Well, it will if they accept your shots in the first place; stock photo sites get so many submissions that they can afford to be really picky. So…no, “J&J Photography”, taking your first initial and that of your fat wife and sticking “photography” after it doesn’t mean your shots are any good (they aren’t), and it for goddamned sure doesn’t make you a photographer. You, sir, are a weekend snapshooter, just like the other “Whatever Photography” people, and just like I am, so spare us all the pretentious bullshit, please.

I can’t bear local radio, but there are times when I want to listen to new music that I don’t already have in my collection. I hate browser-based players (don’t know why), and I want fast access to my favourite stations without having to scroll through a list. My simple solution was to create a file for each station with the connection information, save it in /home, then create a launcher for each on the panel. I made little custom icons with the stations’ logos so I wouldn’t have to even look at the mouseover text. That worked very well, and I was satisfied with the result even though I don’t know why they open with Totem instead of VLC, which is the default application for the file types. Anyway, I don’t mind Totem, so I was content…until I got sick of the stupid Totem logo in the screen. Totem is a media player, not just a music player, so you can’t make the whole screen go away. There are visualisations that you can use when you’re playing a file that doesn’t have video, but I find visualisations distracting and annoying. I keep Totem on my second screen; over with my Screenlets stuff, so it’s not in the way, but I can see it when I’m doing something at the computer. It doesn’t minimise to a panel icon, but if I want it to completely get out of my sight, I can put it on another workspace. That’s a little less convenient if I have to shut it off to talk on the phone or something, but if it bugs me, it’s an option. Most of the time, though, I just leave it over there and try not to look at the boring Totem logo…until this morning. It occurred to me that the logo was most likely just an image file of some kind that displayed when Totem wasn’t told to display anything else. The directory most apps use for stuff like that is /usr/share/(name of program), so I checked there and in the totem directory, there was a file called “totem_logo.png” with a size of 1280×1024. Ah–it just sizes it down when I have the player size set small. I went to my wallpaper directory and found an image that I like, opened it in GIMP, resized appropriately and saved as PNG called “totem_logo”. As root, I renamed the old logo (just in case it didn’t work and I needed it again), and copied the new logo into /usr/share/totem. Fired up Rix FM…and there was my little penguin. If this were a Windows app, the logo would be hard-coded in, or some weird-ass proprietary file type that would crash the program if it wasn’t exactly the right file size. This isn’t Windows, though; it’s Linux, and that means I get to change stuff and tinker until it’s the way I want it. When I get tired of the penguin, I’ll make a different logo and use that instead. 😀