I reinstalled all the applications and within a few hours I had everything back to “normal” However, there has been some bugs that have been bothering me as of late. Mainly with Gwibber. It seems facebook accounts are not able to be added any more to the application. As well as a few other things I noticed.

I wish there was a native app that handled more social networks. Although Gwibber has some great features, I have been finding apps handling all different options. I have been adding more social networks into my profile of networks but it seems not one app handles them all. And it would be great to have them all in one bundle. The networks I am on now are:

• MySpace
• Facebook
• Twitter
• Identica
• Tumblr
• Flickr
• FriendFeed
• Plurk
• LinkedIn

I have my IM’s all in Empathy at the moment, but in order for me to post to certain networks it’s like I have to go through Ping.FM or some other service to post to them all. That’s not too much of an issue, it’s more or less getting the updates of the people and groups I follow on these service to show in one place.

I have tiredly searched for solutions for this. I just hope that someday soon someone will come up with something.

Aside from that things are pretty stable. I just need to play more with some things to get back into the swing of things.  I need to bone up on GIMP, Inkscape and Audacity some more so that I can begin working on graphics again and also post a new episode of VooDooRadio.

I am looking into getting a Vidcast put up using Openshot but in order for me to do it I need to get the HD with the VooDooRadio logo on it and work on title sequences.

Seeing this is a new era for me, I am considering on changing the theme music for the show, however I have been using the current music for over 2 years now and it’s been branded into peoples ears. Maybe some minor changes on the intro.. I dunno I just want to get something shorter than the 1.5 minute intro.

Alright I think I bitched enough. If anyone has any solutions to a native client or AIR app that handles all the aforementioned social networks, please comment here or contact me through twitter, AIM, Identica. All are named voodoostevie.

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 still have the ability to transfer stuff to my iPod with no issue, but I can’t listen to MP3′s on the laptop or even watch videos for that matter. What did I do wrong? I know I must have killed something, but I cannot find out where. BACKUP TIME!

So I moved the new pictures, music, and videos I ripped and transcoded onto the handy dandy external hard drive… And now the big decision. Do I attempt a reinstall over this installation and hope it fixes the issue that way or do I try out another flavor of Linux.

I chose that I would stay with the Ubuntu family. But I will try Kubuntu unstead. For those who do not know what this is. It’s Ubuntu with KDE as it desktop instead of Gnome. Now I have used KDE a LONG time ago with Mandrake Linux. When Linux was still kind of a clunky and not so userfriendly Operating system. Although there is some things you still should install via terminal there are a lot of things you can use the GUI to install things onto the system. But you always have the terminal (aka command line) to help in doing things quicker.

So I basically began downloading Kubuntu from it’s main site and burned the CD under Gnome. Did a completely clean install of Kubuntu and did the updates.  Tommorrow I begin reinstalling some applications or poking to find what I can use that I used under Gnome.

It gives you an idea of how breaking boundaries of the Windows OS can be. Read on…

Computers started making their way into homes, en masse, 15 years ago. After 15 years, computer users should not be afraid of using their computer.

This case study tells the story about a customer of mine, Wanda, who happens to be in her 70s. Like most computer users she used a Windows based computer. In her case, it was a system put together by her grandson in 2002 or 2003 and has a 1.8ghz processor, 256mb of RAM and the XP Home version of Windows.

When I first met Wanda a few years ago, she had typical Windows user problems; slow computer, slow Internet, couldn’t open some attachments, virus and spyware problems. She used dialup Juno for Internet and Norton Antivirus on her system. I couldn’t talk her into getting a DSL or cable connection, but I did change her security from Norton to AVG and optimized the startup and running of the system. However, with dialup and Juno, she continued to have problems that cropped up every 3-4 months.

In April of 2008, I talked with her in detail about computer usage. She stated that she really only needed to do three or four things with her computer:

1. Email
2. Word Processing
3. Solitaire
4. Very light Internet browsing

We talked about the cost of a new computer and a high speed connection. And then we talked about taking Windows off her system, installing a different system (Ubuntu and Linux didn’t mean anything to her) that would be virtually trouble free and no cost to acquire besides my install and configuration time. She liked the sound of that, but I informed her that I could not install Ubuntu unless she was agreeable to getting a DSL connection for the Internet. She agreed.

I installed Ubuntu for her and configured her desktop with shortcuts to her email, the web, solitaire, and her word processor. Again, that was April of 2008. Prior to that I received at least one call from her every month, and visited her for cleanup and troubleshooting appointments at least 3-5 times per year.

Today, Wanda called me for the first time since I installed Ubuntu on her system 14 months ago. She asked two questions:

1. Why can’t I get email from my daughter?
2. My printer stopped printing, do I need a new one?

Knowing that it would be a quick visit, I stopped by her house in between two other appointments. To my delight, the computer desktop looked exactly the same as I left it the prior year except for a few saved PowerPoint slideshows she saved from email to it.

Since she was using Hotmail, I could almost guarantee that she had blocked her daughter’s email address (Microsoft places the spam / junk mail button dangerously close to the delete button). Sure enough, a trip to the blocked senders settings revealed what I suspected. Her daughter’s email address and a dear friend were blocked. I rectified that in a few clicks.

Next, her printer problem turned out to be a paper jam. After clearing it, the computer was happily printing again. I left her home in under 15 minutes after correcting the problems that had nothing to do with Ubuntu, and she was beaming like a kid in a candy shop.

MORAL OF THE STORY

Properly setup and customized for an individual’s computing needs, Ubuntu Linux can be used successfully and easily by anyone of any age and computing ability. AND, the problems associated with computing under the Windows environment disappear.

My only regret is that I did not start looking into and learning about Linux prior to 2006.

I got this setup from the Ubuntu Blog website which it was very helpful, but seeing how I am wireless more I needed more variables to add to my setup. And this information was easily obtainable from Conky’s Sourceforge site more specifically the variable section.

The one thing I have been finding out about conky is that is is very tedious to really set it up. There is no “user friendly” GUI to configure it like the Screenlets so you have to do a lot of text editing to get it to work right. And you have to really ignore word wrap.

Another little thing about conky is when you make changes you can kill the process (I use top in the terminal to kill it) and restart it, reboot the machine, or log out of your Gnome session. I have used all three and logging out seems to be a little quicker than the other two. Go fig.

Also I learned that gPodder has an option to skip podcasts when syncing them to your iPod. So the Ubuntu Podcast has been set to that because of the file format issue with the iPod.  You can also set up an autodelte ever 30 days or whatever you want. I prefer to manually do it, but that’s just me. Also you can save the files somewhere else if you please. This is  a nice option because some shows I like to archive or edit to get bits for my show (ala “This is Why we’re Fat” from Nobody Likes Onions being inserted into my show).

I have been shutting down the machine lately so I don’t log in from work too much. But I still think I got some things done in the short time I did them.

I am now trying to think of what I should remove or tweak next. I find it funny that with all the programs and files I have on the system now it’s only 20GB used and a large portion of that is the documents and files I have in my home folder Can we say Bloatware?

I am looking back on the things I have been doing through this experiment and it pleases me to see I am able to do a lot of things I was able to do under Windows just fine.

Netflix REALLY needs to get on the ball with the instant streaming stuff because this is a pain in the nuts having it be Silverlight 2.0 only. That is primarily one of the only things I miss so far.

Speaking of streaming I need to think about finding info about how to get my DirecTV DVR and this machine to talk so I can stream movies or pictures. I got it going under windows before. I also will have to hard-wire the laptop so I can get a decent connection for that as well.

It would be awesome to be able to stream videos off of the lappy because I have a ton of AVI’s I backed up onto DVD-R’s that I could easily copy onto the hard drive to play better. Maybe I will do this later today.. Or start that.

“Ubuntu is the essence of being human. I am human because I belong, and my humanity is bound to yours.” – Archbishop Desmond Tutu

However, the name apparently has appeared not only for the software. I introduce you to Ubuntu Cola!

The company is a fair trade company that donates 15% of their proceeds to African sugar farmers. There aren’t any distributors locacal to me so if I were to purchase this, I would have to resort to online sales. Check out their website.

They have a section called Where to Buy where they use Google’s maps to display where you can get it. As far as the U.S. it appears that people in Milwaukee and San Francisco can get it locally.

I wonder if they use the Open Cola recipe for this?

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.

Basically aside from some more installations, I have begun organizing things. Read on for the recap of the past couple of days!

Day 16

I installed WinFF (which is a Video convertor). WinFF is a cross platform batch GUI for FFMPEG. It will convert most any video file that FFmpeg will convert. WinFF does multiple files in multiple formats at one time. You can for example convert mpeg’s, flv’s, and mov’s, all into avi’s all at once.

I removed Warzone 2100, mandvd, and kraft.

Warzone, albeit a great looking game it would not play right on my machine for some reason. I was getting black screen for the main look (the troops and terrain) so it’s not worth the hassle in trying to figure it out right now.

I installed ManDVD because there is an updated replacement for it that seems a little more intuitive called… 2ManDVD. I launched it to look at it and it’s much better visually than the previous program. I will play with this more later.

I also installed  LiVES (Linux Video Editting System). To quote it’s website:

LiVES mixes realtime video performance and non-linear editing in one professional quality application. It will let you start editing and making video right away, without having to worry about formats, frame sizes, or framerates. It is a very flexible tool which is used by both professional VJ’s and video editors – mix and switch clips from the keyboard, use dozens of realtime effects, trim and edit your clips in the clip editor, and bring them together using the multitrack timeline. You can even record your performance in real time, and then edit it further or render it straight away.

For the more technically minded, the application is frame and sample accurate, and it can be controlled remotely or scripted for use as a video server. And it supports all of the latest free standards.

I removed kraft because it’s geared more for KDE and I am using Gnome as my default GUI. Maybe someday I will through in KDE, but Gnome to me seems more stable. I dunno maybe because I am used to Gnome on many levels. But who knows maybe after this experiment I will load Kubuntu which is the KDE fork of Ubuntu

I also removed mixero from the system. It’s a great new AIR application for twitter, but it is REALLY a resource hog. Tweetdeck isn’t that heavy so I went back to using it as my primary again.

Over the years I have amassed many MP3′s so I thought it was time to sort them out a bit. I moved all the Audio Books I have into a separate area. I am trying to focus on the music I possess. So I copied those beginning with a symbol (i.e. !!!) to those beginning with the letter K to my Music folder on the laptop and opened up SongBird to edit the tags. Hmmm. I got a message regarding the files were unable to modify so I hopped into the terminal screen and changed the permissions on the files to Read and Write to all (777) and tried importing the files then editted them again. Perfect. They were sorted perfectly. So I moved them back onto the External hard drive.

After I moved the files that have already been sorted I moved the next batch of files over. This time The letter K to the letter Q

Day 17

Still working on sorting.  There was a little bit of mistaken ID Tags and worst of all I have some that were tossed into the Unknown area for the artists. I got most done before I had to hit the sack. But the unknown one’s I will work on tomorrow.

The nice thing is I am finding duplicates of music for some reason. I don’t know if it’s from the renaming structure or what, but there seems to be a few doubles here and there. But all in all They’re easy to remove from the directory. I think so far I have had at least 250 doubles from !!! to artists with Q in the name. Not too shabby seeing there was 15,000 tracks so far sorted.

So far this experience has been really good. I feel my music collection is really sorted better than under iTunes allowed me. I still have some things I need to sort that are not really music related per se. But there is also some WAV files I need to convert to MP3 for sorting.

I have a huge collection of Sound Effects and Movie Quotes I have to sort. Some I had in the music collection originally but I think through this I can sort and move them away from that.

So basically Linux is making me feel more organized. Let’s see if I can get more things set right from the years of digital clutter.

I began installing the LAMP server stuff. LAMP is Linux Apache Mysql and PHP as one package. Once I got it all installed I tested out the web server. Worked. Installed PHPMyAdmin. Works. I will play more with that later. I need to read up on configuring Apache some more.

So while updating my podcasts from listening to a bunch of them at work, I installed some Applets for Avant Window Navigator as well as some themes for it and for Gnome. I  also added some more Screenlets and downloaded some desktops from Gnome-Look to make everything stand out. You can see the screenshot by clicking the thumbnail at the top of the page.

So I am still itching to get the mixer hooked up and work on getting the podcast recorded so I can really play with Audacity to re-learn it. It has been too long since I used it.

I ran across another Air application called AirTalkr. It is supposedly an IM client and Social media client combined (like Digsby) but it was REALLY buggy so I uninstalled it.

Uninstalling Air applications is kind of easy. You have to actually download the .air file onto your machine and double click it as if you were installing the application and the installer brings up the Uninstall option. See cake!

Ok That is all for today. I will have more on the 7th day.

I played with gPodder some more to understand it’s workings. I figured it out I think. Some folks say this is one of the best apps for syncing your iPod. So far it seems that way.

I removed all the old shows on the iPod and loaded up all the newly downloaded episodes. Synced the iPod an voila!

I installed Ubuntu-Tweak, Compiz Manager,  Screenlets, and Avant Window Navigator (AWN). Now with AWN it makes the system look a little “Macintosh-ish” but I like the way it handles running applications and some of the other features are real nice. Very similar to Object Dock for windows as well. If you look at the screen capture I put up as a tumbnail for this post you will see the way the desktop looks now.

Ok, I now installed Skype. I downloaded .deb file from website. Double clicked and installed. Ran the program, logged into my Skype account. So far so good. Hey Webcam works under Skype awesome! I hope it works for other things as well. We’ll see.

Installed Avast antivirus – Initial download instructions I found were not right so I downloaded it directly from site and manually installed. Downloaded updates and setup for a scan. I ran scan (took a while because I did a FULL scan and had my external HD hooked up. Might as well, I was on a windows system, heh).

For graphic manipulation I downloaded Pixel (website). Pixel is a RGB, CMYK and HDR image editing, photo retouching and manipulating program available for many operating systems formerly known as Pixel32. It is available for Windows, Linux, Linspire, MacOSX, BeOS, Zeta, QNX, MorphOS, FreeBSD, eComStation, OS/2, SkyOS and even old plain DOS, for both x86 and PowerPC architectures. It’s exactly like Photoshop!

I registered this software a long time ago when I initially was thinking of switching, so it is a bonafide copy. But you can check out the demo.

I noticed on a reboot I didn’t check start at login on a few items, now I have Skype, Pidgin and all my screenlets loading up when I get into the system. Pidgin somhow doesn’t have the option to load when the OS boots up so I had Gnome remember all applications running when I shut down. This should help that perfectly.

I can’t believe I forgot to install my add-ons for firefox. Namely the Gmail Manager to check my mail and Stumble Upon. I use the Gmail Manager to check all my email for both my domain hosted mail and my original Gmail account I had gotten a long time ago.

I have a Motorola Razor that I like to plug into the USB port primarily for charging. In order to do so I needed to install moto4lin for it to work. Very simple to get because its located in the repositories so apt-get worked like a charm.

I downloaded Gourmet Recipe Manager to keep my recipes. Downloaded version on Sourceforge rather than the one in the repositories for it’s more up to date. Gourmet Recipe Manager is a gtk-based recipe organizer and shopping list generator intended for GNOME (though it does not need all the GNOME libraries). Gourmet can import Mealmaster(tm) files and can export recipes in a number of formats, including text, RTF and web pages. Gourmet also can calculate nutritional information for recipes. I tested it by adding the recipe for the New Mexico Cow Patties I made last week.

I got some games today that were all in the repositories (I went into the Add/Remove Programs area and chose Games). The game I installed were the GFCE NES Emulator, Glest, LinCity-NG, Scorched 3D (a classic favorite of mine), Secret Maryo Chronicles, ZSNES Emulator (Super NES Emulator). I downloaded Alien Arena but it crashed whenever I played the darn thing.

Ok enough games, I need to get things for web design. I already have the graphic tools, now for the editors. I downloaded Kompozer (website) because NVU is no longer being made. I needed something that is an alternative to Dreamweaver and this was highly recommended. It’s the same folks that made NVU so let’s hope it works just as good.

Ok, it’s time for DVD ripping and making time! I installed dvd::rip, Dvd955 convertor and ManDVD. I will play with these more VERY soon.

While poking around the Add/Remove Programs app, I found a Pre-School Bundle in the Education section. So I grabbed it for teaching my daughter things. She needs to learn to use a mouse first.

Installed XChat for IRC, Art Manager for making the computer look pretty.  Now the Art Manager supposedly connects to Gnome-Look.org for its content. I tried installing a theme and it failed. Oh well try more later.

Graeme called me and was having issues with Nasusa Live’s chatroom so I attempted a login to uStream using Xchat. Either they are having IRC issues again or it was quasi-fail. Normally XChat works fine.

Well, sadly Amarok was not working properly, so I uninstalled it. I tried playing Distorted View and it just skimmed right through it. Where VLC and Rhythm Box worked perfectly fine.

That is Day 2. Day 3 will contain less installations (I hope) and more hankering down and reporting what I was able to accomplish with Linux based software over my old M$ Habit.

I have been a user of Windows since version 3.0 came out and in my opinion it’s become a crutch for my computer needs. It’s also been increasingly bloated and bothersome to say the least.

I have dabbled with Linux. But now I have decided to attempt a completely Windows Free system.

My flavor of choice for this experiment: Ubuntu Linux

I want to experience this operating system to the fullest. That means all the things I do under windows I will be doing it under Linux.

I have planned to do this for sometime, now I am actually going to take the dive. To get a hint of what I do on a computer here is a list of things that come to mind off the bat:

• Podcasting
• Web Design
• Gaming
• Web Browsing
• DVD Authoring
• Graphic Design
• Chat (IRC, Instant messaging  and Voice)
• Video Streaming
• iPod Listening (daily)

I have already found the alternatives to Windows programs so I feel I am on the way to a good experience.

I will post once a day of what I accomplished. And attempt screenshots to share as a photoblog experience. And when possible I will try a videoblog (aka vlog) of what I have done as well.

I think that anytime I NEED to use windows I will be on the other machine (the desktop that is shared with Sarah). But it will be far and few in between.

So tonight I am doing my last necessary things under Windows (aka backup) as I begin to install Ubuntu Jaunty Jackalope 9.04.