So I’ve switched to Ubuntu Linux on my laptop since I last posted, making my self-appointed duty/task at best a little more interesting, and at worst insanely complicated and colvoluted. I’m still going to post about thing happening on the web that intrest me, but it’s going to be Linux, Ubuntu in perticular, that I’m going to be posting about.

The first subject i’m going to write on is dock programs. for the uninitiated, docks are the little things that sit on your desktop that you can put stuff in. no, not the taskbar, but much cooler.

The first dock i’m going to talk about is also my favorite, the sleek Avant Windows Navigator. this nifty little dock program is still in development, but has made a relatively stable release. it comes with a large range of applets, and it’s by far the best dock i’ve used.

The the competition, on the other hand, is considerably more difficult for the beginner to use. Ciaro dock is a powerful program, but a lot of the power is wasted because the program implememts the controls so poorly. the learning curve is so steep when you switch to the advanced controls that it’s like getting slammed in the face with a dictionary and told to explain the meaning of the word “superflous” when one has just learned to read. now this isn’t to say that i’m just getting into the world of technology, i know how to use the google on the internet machine, but the controls aren’t really about letting the user concentrate on what he or she wants, it concentrates more on how “customizeable” the dock is.

another plus to AWN that has Ciaro beat hollow is the applets, as i mentioned earlier. applets are little widgets, written in python, that add functionality to the dock. so, for instance, there is a show desktop applet on my dock, as well as a calendar/clock. AWN was built, it seems, to be more of an applet kind of dock, while ciaro concentrates on the launching of applications.

That’s now i see it anyway. If you’re the micro-managing sort, wanting to concentrate on every little feature of your dock, then Ciaro dock is for you. But if all you want your dock to do is launch applications and replace your bottom bar, the I strongly sugjest AWN.

I got google docs offline access!

It enables you to edit and view your documents offline, but you can’t create new docs at this time. oh well.

And this is why…

so here I am in a hospital, vegging out waiting for a tech to come cement more electrodes to my forehead. I’m busy playing a emulated pokemon game while I’m waiting, instead of doing more important things like blogging. Or taking pictures. Or going to CAP. Dang, I hope they didn’t miss me at CAP. Andrew was finally going to start cracking down on all of the slacking in the squadron.

So at volleyball competition, we apparently had a series of crises that finally came to a head. First off, caleb wouldn’t leave Andrew alone, giving him jumper cables and everything. Second, feth had NO customs and courtesies, making Andrew even more annoyed. And third, Crystal Jarve was there, which is a whole post in and of itself. But anyway, before all this too, the seniors were badgering andrew specifically to do something on the “acroicious” position the squadron’s in. which is kind of funny, because we get no help from the seniors whatsoever. Actually, no. that’s a lie. Captian Wallace helps us, but that’s when she’s there, which is even more infrequent than her husband. And he’s gone a lot.

But anyway, the seniors have been wanting to fix the cadet program for a while now, from what I’ve heard. We can fix some of it, like the cadet discipline problem, and other little things, but the thing is that we have almost no interaction with the seniors in the regular course of the cadet meeting. It’s extremly frustrating when we try to do Physical Training, and we end up having to go to the YMCA, we have to foot the bill, we have to get there under our own power, and the seniors are sitting back at squadron building arguing who’s turn it is to fly the plane! Augh.

Anyway, the sleep study. It’s morning now, I just slept the night between this paragraph and the last. Basically, the sleep study is to determine if I have any real medical reason for falling asleep in the middle of church other than I find it boring or some such reason. So what they do is they hook you up to sensors to determine your heart rate, your breath temperature, your chest expansion when you breathe, wether your legs move or not during the night (ressless leg syndrome), and of course the standard head electrode thingys. I’ll put some pictures with this, but forgive the quality, as it’s taken with my cell phone. Anyway, they hook you up to these things, and then you go to sleep. I just woke up around six forty, where I had most of the sensors taken off, less the head ones, and was told that nothing of note happened during the night. That means that I have to wait and do the daytime tests, which I was told should take me from the early to mid afternoon.

So right now I’m sitting on the bed, waiting for breakfast and the daytime tests.

So depending on when this test ends, I think I’m going to take the bus to Mcdonalds, where I (if I’m lucky) will get to see a “favorite person.”

Just got my breadfast and found out that the test’s going to start at 0800. It’s 0728 right now.

Why should this even be an issue?!?!

An artist, finding his music on iTunes without his consent, starts offering his latest album for free download on The Pirate Bay.

This makes me never want to buy music from  iTunes ever again.

http://torrentfreak.com/pirated-by-itunes-artist-turns-to-bittorrent-080206/ 

Well, this is delightful. I get up for all of that, and it turns out to be president’s day on me. Frickin’ delightful. So dad has to turn around and come back, and drop me off at Jitters. Which is all right, in and of itself, but still. Embarassing. I have to have something to remind me when there’s no school. I need to get home.

Dangit!

It worked! With some last-minute editing with vim editor, and a reboot, I can now hear sounds on my Ubuntu installation!

So I recently install ubuntu 7.10 on my computer. This inandof itself isn’t too bad, but the thing is that my sound card isn’t natively supported in linux. This seems to be a normal sort of problem though, so no real worries. I found a bash script that will do all of the downloading and compiling automatically, and…. it’s done. I have to reboot, and I’ll write a follow-up post, and flesh out my day in a little more detail. Oh, and I saw Jumper.

More after the reboot.

Slowly but surely, I’m splicing myself. Here are the results of my first splicing:

Once again, suggestions are welcome, and I do intend to do more of this kind of thing.

All right folks, now that I’ve finally got my hands on Photoshop again, this thing can really get off the ground. I’m working on a wallpaper/website graphic for CAP, and it’s turned out like this:

Here’s the link to the deviantART site, where you can download it do your heart’s content.

http://thegreekgeek.deviantart.com/art/Duluth-Composite-Squadron-Wall-76317222

Anyway, what do you think? Give me some feedback.