01.22.07
Posted in General at 4:19 pm by Soabirw
Finally got sick of bringing in my personal laptop to use as a workstation at work, so I threw myself together a box from various parts we had around, mostly from the MythTV box. I started off trying Linux since I used to run that exclusively for work for a few years and was very happy. Not so much the case anymore. Took me a few evenings just to get it to the point where I could take it into work to replace the laptop. And even then, I spent nearly a month fighting with it. Some of the fights was me being silly and wanting OS X features. But some of the fights were me just wanting to run and use a common application, like Thunderbird. Or playing sound… I have a big list of frustrations. I have been spoiled by the “Just Works” mentality. As opposed to the, “Will work eventually, with enough trouble shooting, RTFM, and cursing. But when it does work, it *should* stay working.” I used to not mind that mentality since I had enough free time and it was still more stable then Windows.
But I have become increasingly weary of all the time I have to sink into an OS just to get mildly comfortable. With as open as Linux is and as popular as OS X has gotten, I figured it wouldn’t be too bad to incorporate some features. I was horribly, horribly mistaken though. It is possible, but it’s not easy nor is it remotely stable. I have spent weeks trying to get various Docks working, for example. Not a single one behaved like the OS X dock, although they did look similar enough. Even without my failure to make Linux look like OS X, I was frustrated almost daily with some other issue. Things that I can even easily get setup in Windows seemed like a chore in Linux. Yum/Yast/Apt, etc help a lot, but they don’t cover everything and often add their own complications. Like not having the right repos or have two that are really good, so Yum wants to install from both of them. Making your packages a jumbled and instable mess.
So I finally threw in the towel with Linux and decided to go back to Windows so I can have that “Just Works” back. Even if it is and unstable pile now and then. At least a re-install only takes me an hour or two and then I’m back up and running. And at work, I doubt my XP install will crumble as fast as it does at home. While I was at it, I looked into making it look and feel like OS X. I actually found some pretty slick stuff. Here is a screen shot of my current setup.
And here is the breakdown of software I used, took me less then an hour to get this all setup.
- FlyakiteOSX - That is one impressive site. He also made a pack that runs a wide range of tweaks to Windows to get it setup like OS X. Includes a Dock, Splash screen, Windows OS X Theme, various app skins like Trillian, WinDVD, OS X like programs (RKLauncher for the Dock, WinRoll, etc.), etc. Made this very easy.
- StudioTwentyEight - This guys just has a lot of really well done themes for Windows. He even had an OS X one for Vista, but MS made him take it down. Guess there have been enough comparisons between the two that they didn’t want to add anymore fuel to that fire.
- Launchy - This is very much like QuickSilver in OS X. Great way to launch your apps without dealing with horribly inefficient menus. You can even add directories for it to index if you install your programs outside of the default.
- Expose - Normally I would link to some software bundles that I was trying out, but then I updated my mouse software to the latest IntelliPoint and it turns out MS did this already. It was normally just for Vista, but now works in XP too. So far I’ve only seen a way to assign it to a mouse button, which doesn’t really work for me. I like to use the scroll button as a middle click. So I just set it up so in explorer.exe the scroll button does their expose, but in everything else it is middle click. Just have to middle click on the desktop for expose to kick in.
Might have been a few other things I’m forgetting, but it was all easy to find and I hardly spent any time at all tweaking. And I do realize how silly it sounds for me to profess my love of OS X, but then move to Linux/Windows only to try and make them look and feel like OS X. But the big flaw for OS X for me is the hardware. Right now I don’t really want to buy yet another Mac for work. Especially when I have perfectly good hardware laying around the house. My goal is to be back in OS X relatively soon though. Even with all these great tweaks to Windows, I still prefer to be in native OS X.
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12.14.06
Posted in General at 2:18 pm by Soabirw
Been so insanely busy at the new job (funny how it still seems so very “new” even though I’ve been here 7 months). So I haven’t been able to touch No-Homers. Even had this Rails version mostly functional 3 months ago. Then never had time to do anything with it. Now I’m working on a Ruby on Rails + Flex version that will be delicious.
Everytime I use Expose at work I get warm fuzzies. I behave very differently in OS X then I do in Windows. In Windows, if I wasn’t going to use an app for a while I would close it to free up resources and make my task bar more manageable. In Linux I would just do a lot of virtual desktops. But in OS X, your app management via the Dock and Expose, makes it so damn easy to just load up on apps and always feel like they are at your finger tips. It’s memory management is so much better then Windows too, so I can actually have all sorts of apps running in the baground without taxing the machine too much. Here is a screen shot of my average Expose at work. That’s running on my MacBook with a measely 1GB of RAM. And on top of that I only reboot once a week when I take my laptop home for the weekend. What really kills me is this is nothing compared to our designer running on a Mac Pro. He probably has 3 times as many apps running. When he does Expose, my head almost explodes.
I was always very productive in Linux as well, especially in Enlightenment (or any other non-Windows-like manager). But I think some of the polish and features of OS X makes me even more productive, even without virtual desktops (which you can have, I just don’t see the need in OS X).
In conclusion. I <3 OS X.
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10.14.06
Posted in General at 2:39 pm by Soabirw
Did our “Developer’s Retreat” last night. For some reason my company is really into group bonding and such. So since we have a fresh new development team, they figured we would speed up this bonding by going camping. Not sure why they thought a bunch of computer geeks would love the thought of roughing it in nature without any technology.
Now, I’m an Eagle Scout and all that, so I’ve done all sorts of hiking, camping, etc. Even to the extreme of sleeping in an igloo I made myself. But all that was neary 8 years ago and I’ve turned into quite the sissy since then. The first thing that I found very odd was we had to go buy our firewood at the local grocery store. Then we drove up a highway to our camp ground, which had fully paved roads, street lights, etc. I wonder if southern Utah is like this too. I remember camping being a lot more rough then this. I imagine it is because there are just too many people up here. Most of these camp grounds you have to reserve 2 or 3 months in advance. Sometimes a full year in advance.
The gang threw around some questionable items while I sat in the shade, growing tired by just watching them. They tried throwing things at me once or twice, probably because they hate me, and it usually ended up smashed into my face. Despite my flailing limbs attempting some sort of monkey style defense. Then they decided to up the stakes and throw them over a river and even back and forth from the bridge. That’s when we took heavy losses to the raging river.
The rest of the afternoon was spent talking about our favorite Sci-Fi shows and strumming the guitar to Tenacious D. Once it got a little closer to dinner time we prepared our “hobo dinners”. You basically wrap raw things, like meat, hash browns, carrots, onions, etc in tin-foil, as you would a Christmas present. Then you throw it in the hot coals for 20 or so minutes. While we waited we taught the n00bs how to play poker with my 180 lb poker set.
That was a really fun part of the trip and I hope to do more poker with this group. Unfortunately we didn’t get to play much, by the time we were done eating the son was going down and it started to get cold very fast. By 8:00 p.m. we were ready to call it a night. Luckily, because it was so very cold, we just went home to sleep in our warm, comfy beds instead of miserable sleeping bags and tents.
All in all, it was pretty enjoyable and I wouldn’t mind spending another afternoon with this Nature. Although, I fully support the Uber Industrial Complex and it’s goal to eliminate as much nature as possible, all in the name of progress.
P.S. I also have a picture of a mountain.
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09.25.06
Posted in General at 1:17 pm by Melfyk
I think I’m pretty funny. 
[12:54] Fellow Employee: why am I not able to send mail? do I need to reset something?
[13:00] Me: you might have a unicorn in your cd drive.. try ejecting it and you email should start working
[13:00] Fellow Employee: what is unicorn
[13:00] Fellow Employee: I have Kenny in there
[13:00] Me: a tiny mythilogical creature with one horn
[13:01] Fellow Employee: he is not tiny
[13:01] Fellow Employee: I have heard he is pretty bigh
[13:01] Me: if he fits in your cd drive then he is pretty tiny
[13:01] Fellow Employee: whats going on
[13:01] Me: why are you keeping unicorns in your computer anyway? shouldn’t you leave them at home?
[13:02] Fellow Employee: no…I need some company
[13:03] Me: email work yet?
[13:03] Fellow Employee: yes…you fixed
[13:03] Fellow Employee: it
[13:03] Me: dang unicorns anyway
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07.25.06
Posted in Development, General at 11:26 am by Soabirw
Been a while since I posted anything, to the relief of many I’m sure. Life went insane with all this moving stuff. Helped my folks do some moving the week after we moved into our new pad. Still a few rooms to finish putting together, but we had a productive three day weekend and got a good chunk knocked out. We even got all of our black-out drapes up. So worth the $300. Projector looks great now, even at high noon. Our computer room had French doors (or whatever), so they let in a ton of light and got that place pretty toasty. Not to mention the glare. So we have black-out drapes on that too. Doors are still usable, which is good because we have some BBQ potential in the backyard.
Other then that, the weekend was full of fun server and Rails stuff. Finally finishing off this last SoaTech client, so we can really focus on converting the entire biz to Rails. After our discoveries over the weekend, we are very excited about that.
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07.12.06
Posted in General at 9:42 am by Soabirw
Only way I really keep up on movies is with the trailers at Apple. Used to manually nab them with either mplayer dumps or opening the stream files in an editor to find the real URL. A real hassle. Firefox now has an extension that will nab all those trailer files along with Google Video, YouTube, etc. I’ve used it a few times now and am very happy with it. I have no interest in streaming 80mb video files every time I want to see it. And with as expensive as bandwidth is, it’s surprising the companies think that is such a grand idea. I know it means people are having to come to your site all the time, but I think there are better ways to get yourself attention with your videos.
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07.10.06
Posted in General at 1:27 pm by Soabirw
Just read a great review of Suse Enterprise Desktop 10 (Yes, it is very different from Suse Linux). It looks just fantastic. I agree with the article in saying it’s now at a point you could mass market it. Still not a Windows replacement for me until it fully supports 3D hardware and DirectX. But for workstations and basic home PCs, I think it would work grand. Ultimately I would like Mac OS X to be put on PCs legitimately. Still no gaming love there though. I really hope that changes soon. I don’t like have only one choice for PC gaming.
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07.05.06
Posted in General at 12:10 am by Soabirw
My sister didn’t want to pay for a re-print of the picture we had taken at Lagoon, so I just scanned it in and printed it out for her on fancy paper. Figured, since I scanned it in, might as well let everybody see what a stud I am and just how creepy Mike is.
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07.04.06
Posted in General at 5:59 pm by Melfyk
A while back Installed Suse 10.1 because of it’s new Xgl features it comes with. With Xgl you can change the transparency of windows, switch between desktops with a nice 3d animation, alt-tab has a pretty new look (like windows vista), and moving your mouse to the top right hand side of the screen will sort your windows all pretty like on the desktop so you can select which one you want. There are also a few effects that are pointless like making it rain on your desktop and mouse rippling effects.
Here are just a few Xgl screens:
xgl01.gif
xgl02.gif
xgl03.gif
Xgl is fun to play with but the big thing that pissed me off was it’s inability to play nice with other 3d apps. I can’t imagine using Xgl permently until they get it work work well with other applications that require opengl. I will also be switching back to fedora soon. I’m not very pleased with suse. They load it up with too much useless software on install (which is why I dumped ubuntu), also it doesn’t come preinstalled with a program like yum or apt. Yeah, there is YaST but it is not my favorite tool to use.
I do not know how long ago google put out a linux version of GoogleEarth but when I found out I installed it immediately. I have been waiting a while for google to port it. For months i have been trying to get the windows version to work in wineX but nothing but constant failure. So since this linux release of Google Earth I have been wasting my life away in it. The biggest difference between the linux version and the windows version is the navigation controls. The last win version of Earth that I played with the controls were inside of its own widget on the bottom part of the window. In this linux version the controls are hidden away in the top right hand corner, which seems more efficient. You get to have a bigger viewing window this way. Below are a few screens of Google Earth in Linux:
Google Earth screen 1
Google Earth screen 2
Google Earth screen 3
Google Earth screen 4
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07.03.06
Posted in General at 2:42 pm by Soabirw
My sister and her hubby came to visit for about a week. They decided they wanted to go to Lagoon Saturday since it’s been nearly a decade since we’ve been. Figured the younger siblings would really enjoy it. That morning I have a massive allergy attack thanks to the storm the night before. Not even Claritin D could phase it. But I figured I’d suck it up and try it anyway. I only did three rides and a family picture before I couldn’t take it anymore. Two out of three of those rides were fun at least.
Got home and rested a bit, then tried to hang out with Mike. But all of a sudden my voice cuts out completely. I don’t really raise my voice, even on roller coasters, so I’ve never “lost” it before. So I went upstairs to rest some more. Noticed the temperature was 76 on the way to my room. Crawled under some pretty hefty blankets and started shivering and convulsing like crazy. Starting thinking, “Shit, I have a fever”. But before I could think or do much else I became completely delirious for several hours. When I came to I tried getting in the tub to try and keep it under control, but that wasn’t helping much. After about 7 hours I finally had to text message my mom. “Bad fever. Delirious. Lost voice. Bad pain. Help” was the message. That’s actually I was was talking too. Could use one or two words at a time. Not that my lack of a voice was allowing any of that to come out. My back was in incredible pain as well.
Between extra strenght Tylenol, some funky health drinks of my dads, and lots of very cold baths we were able to keep my temperature from going over 103 and eventually got it down to 100. I could walk around a bit and even watch some T.V. to help with the boredom. Then I laid down for a nap and it spiked again. Even in the bath it wasn’t going down. Was eating ice to lower my internal body temp until I lost all feeling to my arms and legs. Couldn’t move my fingers at all and my arms and legs felt like a million needles jabbing them.
But my temperature eventually calmed down again and last night it didn’t spike again. Still hovering at 100 though. At least I can keep down solid foods now and walk around the house. But I missed the chance to get the paperwork in for our new place and they guy just left for the holidays. Not that I’ll be up for moving stuff anytime soon. I did talk to him though and he will still hold it for us until he gets back. He’s getting offers like crazy, so glad we jumped on it.
Worst weekend evar!
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