I decided to try out an online MMO called Vendetta Online. It’s a space type of MMO and it’s pretty decent. I’m just starting out so I am getting used to the controls and everything but it’s all in all a pretty smooth game.

I have been using Songbird for my music player of choice lately. I use Rhythmbox for ripping CD’s only and VLC for watching movies. Things are pretty smooth right now. However the Add/Remove programs thing is not showing anything. WTF! I’m going to research that later.

I also installed Sauerbraten which is a FPS game. Runs pretty smooth as well. However I am not used to FPS with the track pad. *sigh* I should hook up a mouse but I don’t have room to use one at the moment.

I installed a TON of fonts using the following method:

Created a directory to put my fonts into from my home directory:

sudo mkdir -p /usr/share/fonts/truetype/font-install

Now the script I used is this:

#!/bin/bash
#
# This script helps to install fonts
#
# Set your default font storage directory here
##DEFAULT_DIR="$HOME/fonts"
DEFAULT_DIR=`pwd`
# Set the default font installation directory here
DEFAULT_DEST="/usr/share/fonts/truetype/font-install"

# Don't edit anything below unless you know what you're doing.

echo "In which directory are the fonts?"
echo -n "[$DEFAULT_DIR] "
read DIR

echo
echo "What is the extention (without the dot) of the fonts?"
echo -n "[ttf] "
read EXT

echo
echo "Where should the fonts be installed?"
echo "DO NOT CHANGE THIS UNLESS YOU KNOW WHAT YOU'RE DOING!"
echo -n "[$DEFAULT_DEST] "
read DEST

if [ -z "$DIR" ]; then
    DIR="$DEFAULT_DIR"
fi

if [ -z "$EXT" ]; then
    EXT="ttf"
fi

if [ -z "$DEST" ]; then
    DEST="$DEFAULT_DEST"
fi

sudo -v
if [ $? != 0 ]; then
    echo "Unable to obtain the necessary privileges. Exiting..."
    echo -n "Press <enter> to continue. "
    read WER
    exit $?
fi

echo
echo

if [ ! -d "$DIR" ]; then
    echo "Directory $DIR does not exist. Exiting..."
    echo -n "Press <enter> to continue. "
    read SDF
    exit 2
fi

if [ ! -d "$DEST" ]; then
    echo "Directory $DEST does not exist. Exiting..."
    echo -n "Press <enter> to continue. "
    read DFG
    exit 1
fi

echo "Copying fonts..."
cd "$DIR"

for i in *."$EXT"; do
    sudo cp -iv "$i" "$DEST"
done

echo
echo
echo "Updating the font cache..."
sudo fc-cache -fv

if [ $? != 0 ]; then
    echo "Error updating the font cache. Your fonts haven't been completely installed. Try running sudo fc-cache -fv manually. Exiting..."
    echo -n "Press <enter> to continue."
    read FSF
    exit $?
fi

echo
echo
echo "Finished."
echo
echo "You will probably need to restart running programs to use the new fonts."
echo -n "Press <enter> to exit. "
read WERT
exit 0

Which I named just installfonts and saved it in my home dir. You can download the script: here.

My fonts were in ~/fonts (a folder called fonts in my home directory) so when I ran the script it prompted for the following:

1. location of the fonts I am installing
2. extension. Remember this is linux so I ran it 2 times. Once with .ttf and the other with .TTF

Now I have over 300 fonts installed. YAY!

One thing I didn’t mention is that in order to get the updates for the wireless, I actually had to create a network connection in the system settings area to get it going, but it  a real simple thing to get going.

This is a run down of what I did today and a little explanation of some things as well.

After installing Kubuntu I was really impressed with how far it has come since I last used it (but that was over a decade ago so a big duh on my part). The one thing I noticed off the bat is the way it handles the extra appearance stuff. It’s all native. Gnome needs Compiz installed to set up the extra things (like the cubes) and Screenlets installed for the Widgets.

KDE has all that stuff built in with Qt4 it seems. As you saw in the little gallery I had the cube going on. In case you missed it in that last post, I put it here on the left.

One thing I found is that it’s real easy to set up. Make your desktop have 4 desktops and check the cube. Yeah not much different. But you can name the desktops something other than Desktop 1, Desktop 2, etc.

I left them the default because I couldn’t think of anything to put in for now. But the fluidity of this is a lot smoother than it was under Gnome.

Ok enough talk about the extra effects, I am here to state what I had installed on the machine. Of course there is the necessities:

1. Firefox 3.0 (For now. I am going to see about installing the latest one from scratch later) but I also needed the following extensions for my personal browsing right away:
   • StumbleUpon
   • DownThemAll
   • Gmail Manager
2. gPodder – Runs perfect after install. Downloaded my subscriptions flawlessly from gPodder.com I love that little feature and it’s great when you have to reinstall or going to a new machine. You can also do the OPML file method, but this is off site which means if you don’t have your external media (CD, HD, whatever) you can access it over the internet.
3. All the dependencies for gPodder (Python libraries, ID3 libraries, OGG Tools, and Mplayer all needed to be installed for gPodder addons to work).
4. dvd::rip – yes I needed this back for sure. Which of course knowing what I needed for this to work right:
   • Kubuntu restricted extras
   • Kaffeine,
   • DVD libraries for reading encrypted DVD’s.
5. Weather widget for my desktop
6. Adobe Air
7. Tweetdeck

I also poked around and decided that I would like a few more things for software installed:

1. Second Life – installed from GetDEB then updated from Second Life’s website.
2. Super Maryo Chronicles – Installed from SMC repository
3. Extra Screen savers – This is odd that KDE came with Blank screen only. So I added the extras through good ol’ apt-get.

Seeing I want to use Firefox as the default instead of Konqueror I had to make a few changes so that could happen. In the System Settings area there is a place you can set Default Applications and that seems to work perfect. But there is also a command that you should run in terminal that will make it completely the default:

sudo update-alternatives --config x-www-browser

After putting in the root password you get the choice. And voila!

The one thing I like is how you can put the icons on the desktop and I am contemplating removing the desktop folder widget. Also how things appear in the bottom bar. I will customize this more soon I am sure, but the default layout is good enough.

I am not going to put Conky on here. It’s not really needed. I just need to adjust to how KDE handles things and the Software administration is kind of clunky in the regards to if you need things installed as dependencies it doesn’t prompt you to install them. So most of my administration of programs has been handled by command line. Go me.

I found that Kubuntu uses a lot of the same apps I was using before, Open Office is still there.. Oh wait, no it doesn’t no FireFox. It uses Konqueror as it’s web browser by default. But check this out, all those nifty things I was doing under Gnome that required extras, it’s all native here under KDE 4. Here’s some of the screen shots. I will report more about what I had installed and stuff tomorrow. Read on for the little gallery of pics.

I am still sorting out music. I said I had a large collection, didn’t I? Well now we are up to the T’s now. Hopefully I will be able to finish this up real soon. :O

Aside from sorting out the music files I decided to try out a little monitor program called Conky. The screenshot may be tough to view as a thumbnail so boost it up. Awww, Emma’s still playing with Daddy’s iPod… Oh wait this is about Conky, not Emma. Sorry was distracted.

Conky is a free, light-weight system monitor for X, that displays any information on your desktop. You can find more about it on their website.

Configuring this thing is a little tedious, but there is a lot of things you can do with it. I am considering a different layout than what I put here. This is basically a single line bar that shows info about my system, the Wifi connection (yeah the laptop is in my bedroom so the signal strength is kind of low there), My internal IP, and the Mail thing is a python script that checks one of my Gmail accounts.

I have a weather script that works but I can’t use it here on the single line. So I am going to need to figure out how to use multiple configs, or use a different layout. Here’s my current .conkyrc file:

#avoid flicker
double_buffer yes

TEXT
${voffset -1} CPU: ${color e0e0e0}${font}$cpu% ${cpubar 8,8}${color} | Mem: ${color e0e0e0}${font}${mem} ${color} | Battery: ${color e0e0e0}${font}${battery}:${battery_time}${color} | ${color} Up: ${color e0e0e0}${font}${uptime_short}${color} | ${color} Wifi: ${color e0e0e0}${font}${wireless_essid wlan0}: ${wireless_link_qual wlan0}%${color} IP: ${color e0e0e0}${font}${addr wlan0}${color} | ${color}Free: ${color e0e0e0}${font}${fs_free /} ${color} | Email: ${color e0e0e0}${execi 300 python ~/scripts/gmail.py}${color}


As you see it’s still a work in progress, but this originally was supposed to use a different weather script, but I couldn’t get that to work right at all.

Oh well, back to playing with it some more and sorting the music. Tomorrow. Possibly working with Audacity to get a podcast out this month.

So to fix this I subscribed to 1 feed inside of Rhythmbox (the default audio player in Ubuntu 9.04). I plugged in my iPod and after it noticed it was connected, I dragged and dropped the latest episode onto the iPod.

I loaded up gPodder and had it do it’s sync and  all the episodes that were not marked as played went right onto the iPod. However it kept the 1 episode from Rhythm box, which is no big deal.

I unplugged my iPod and head off to work with all my new podcasts ready to play. The ONLY downside to gPodder is that when the podcast uses cover art for their shows it doesn’t show on the iPod.  For example, VooDooRadio’s Last show had a special cover art that I made for the episode. When I was using iTunes under Windows the episodes would have that picture I made, but under gPodder. Nothing. Nada. BAH!

Maybe I missed something. I dunno.

So basically nothing new installed. Just conquered a small little issue that I found as important for my work day. Listening to shows as I work makes me feel more productive.