I’m a reader of Digg.com. What can I say? I like to hear the quirky stories sometimes and when I come across something intelligent, it makes me feel more like I’m learning. So when the new Digg was dropped into Beta testing, you bet that I was all over that. See some screen-shots after the jump.

Logging In

Connecting

Apparently not a single friend of mine is currently using Digg V4, no surprise there!

Usage

Bugs

– Update –
Another bug was discovered. When clicking to add a link to your account (like adding my website to mine), if you press after typing in your web address, the form does not submit. Instead the page refreshes and you lose your previous entry you typed in. The only way to submit the form it to actually click the button.

The linux desktop over the years has been a large struggle for many users. I hear many complaints from people that have ‘tried’ linux out and they seem to all come to the conclusion that it is difficult or even impossible to use. The unfortunate part about most of these complaints, is that they are reiterating something they read 10 years ago, or something their friend who knows computers becaues he is a ‘gamer’ told him so.

You can also jump right to the gallery to just view the images.
Personally, I prefer Linux. In the past few years I have travelled through many different distributions. Lately (past year or so), I have solely worked with the fastly becoming forerunner, Ubuntu. Power linux users can complain all that they want about how Ubuntu is fancying the wrong crowd, but the simple fact is that if Ubuntu wasn’t doing the things they are doing, we wouldn’t have the incredible developements that Linux distributions now offer. To put some fuel for the fire about how Linux is not usable, or that it is simply not capable of being the powerhouse that real users know it can be, I wanted to walk through my setup.

When nothing is brought up or running

This is my Desktop when I have nothing open. I have 6 virtual desktops… meaning I can have up to 6 `windows` with stuff in them. I can switch between them by either dragging something to another page, or by using ctrl+alt+ left|right|up|down. So how is this usable, where’s the menu? Well, for one, it’s a touch screen (yes it works quite well) laptop (x61t) that has a 1024*768 resolution. So I need realestate, so that is what is the deciding factor in my choices. The menu is on the left, just moving the mouse to the left side of the screen shows it.

The Ubuntu menu

As you can see it’s all there. But I rarely ever use it. Usually , I just hit command+space which brings up my GnomeDo options.

Gnome Do 's native functionality; searching.

So as I type, it highlight in blue… and it has some amazing plugins! Sometimes I need a quick mouse menu… like when I’m browsing… for that moving my mouse to the bottom of the page solves this with GnomeDo’s Docky feature.

This is the settings menu for Docky.

So Docky is good… and looks good, but sometimes I just need some space for things that I generally need from time to time…. for this I have my screenlets. A quick press of f9 will bring them up… sending everything to monochrome behind.

A good view of the Screenlets overlay

Notice… Pidgin, Terminal, another Funky clock, Date, the Current moon, Uptime, Battery, and Places. Over time I’m sure I will add more… Still looking for a killer calculator. So now that I have my machine on and running, I need some music.

Excellent Linux media player with a great skin.

Bring in Songbird. yes this is an actual screenshot of my current playlist. It’s very slick, and easy to use and understand. Now that I have my music up, lets fire up some programming tool.

Excellent Ubuntu programming program; Geany

I love Geany. It’s very easy to use, and it’s completly packed with autocompletion, etc. Notice how it handles all the language, and allows me to set a dark theme. Once again, pay attention to the realestate usage… I use the entire screen.

Sometimes I have small windows open. Ubuntu handles this well.. take a look at what happens when I have more than one open, notice how the previous clicked windows fade out for better attention getting.

Making sure that the other windows fade so that the one you are on gains best focus

Sometimes though… I have things on other virtual displays that I need… and a simple alt+tab won’t get to them. For those I do ctrl+command+space… and wha-laa

Easy window grabbing by putting them all up together.

So what about this Vista I keep seeing… you mean this vista?

The start menu when running Vista in seamless mode.

That can run all these `Windows` *ick* programs on my desktop?

Vista programs running on the Ubuntu desktop; via Virtualbox

There is a lot to offer in such a free package of software eh. It seems that it handles quite alot of ‘usable’ features. Things people never imaged they could have for just a download.

Things like pen recognition and pressure recognition…

Pen input, pressure sensitivity, shape recognizer

And it’s amazing what firefox can look like…

Saving real estate by going full screen with firefox

I think I’ve shown my point, that linux doesn’t have to be all drab, it can be pretty slick too.

and I will leave you with my idle screen… Rain

Neat desktop effects, this is the raining effect.

Image Gallery

As I start to push more bloggin on my end (Yes, 8 hours of work a day and 3 hours of school at night, two dogs and a lovely wife are just not enough for me to handle),  I am branching out to a site I have had for a while that I haven’t really done much on.

The goal of the site is to host all of the ideas that I have in my head and that will in the end help motivate me to get them done and worked on… if individuals decide to comment on them   I will attempt, at my best, to keep the projects code clean and easy to follow, along with good documentation.

A few may be very helpful to some (jCritic, jSave, jSuite) so as I get them done, I will defitely get them on there with working demos etc.

In the end, enjoy!

After reading up on the latest news with water vapor being found in on mars (NYTIMES), I began to see a future grow literally from the soils of the martian surface.  Interesting enough, if, and when asparagus begins to grow on the red planet, life will grow here on Earth in a much more dramatic way.  Think about the past, as all our secrets tends to point to the past.  Man’s achievement can be signified with simple advances in the time it takes to get from Point A to Point B.  At some point, we crawl. Then we Walk.  Then we Run.  Ride. Float. Drive. Fly. Orbit. Where does it end?  Well, an astute person would say that is impossible to know, but we can judge one thing.  The next step in this chain is sub-solar system traveling from one planet to the next.  All starting from one lonely planet in the deserts of the abyss.  

Imagine if you could, a plant growing some many million miles away.  Soon, it will be two plants. Four, 20, etc.  Soon there will be a forest.  Which will then provide oxygen, and air as we know it.  By now we would have started sending teams of scientists away for years to do their work.  Radio’s and Satellites will begin to appear on the surface.  Children of our Kids will watch the first families begin to leave Earth on SpaceShip101-’The Ark’.  After a few generations, the first child will be born on Mars.  Later, a School.  The children will be instant celebrities, yet human… and martian.  50 years later, there will be thousands living in the soils of our newest Planet.   A government will appear, whose will it be?  Peace on Earth?  Eventually, Martians will have their own governments, maybe they will revolt? But following our steps, in just a handful of generations, chances are we will see our next step in going from Point A to Point B to get much faster, and distance much smaller.  Those partaking in the journey more than once will begin to get a better understanding on distances, and they will adapt to think of the traveling as ‘nothing really’.  Putting platforms into orbit around the two planets will set up ‘OrbitWays’ for less expensive, more convenient, and possibly faster travel.  Eventually Point A to Point B will become fast, in relative terms, one Earth week?  All starting at one lonely robot, planting one lonely asparagus on one desolate place.  We live in exciting times, the future is upon us.

As a developer, I long for two things that rarely ever come together well. This Christmas, I have been able to do just that, and I love it! I am always on the lookout for something that will give me the power of a desktop, but the mobility and function of a tablet computer. Three years ago I had bought a Toshiba m205, which some may know, was one of the first tablet computers to really make a mark on the market. I really enjoyed it, as it was very nice, but it was quickly outdone by the market. It really couldn’t run Vista, and XP Tablet version has never been developed enough to get the full potential from a tablet computer.

IBM has outdone themselves with the x61. The x61 came out about a half a year ago, and this Christmas they had a one week deal that dropped the price down by nearly 50% of the overall Cost. I jumped at the prospect, even though I had decided to wait another 6 months to replace my aging Toshiba. Let me Introduce you to my new computer.

Lenovo X61

• Dual Core Centrino Pro 1.8Ghz with 4Mb Cache
• 3Gb 533Mhz DDRII Ram (Max 4Gb)
• 100Gb 7200rpm Hard Drive with 1Gb Cache for speed boost
• Multi-Touch Monitor (Touchscreen and Stylus)
• Multi-View Monitor (Indoor and Outdoor – full sunlight does not affect viewing enjoyment. ** Max resolution is only 1024 x 768)
• Tablet Mode (monitor swings around and lays flat)
• Vista Business
• Intel 965 Integrated Video with 128Mb dedicated memory
• 3 usb 2.0, Gigabit Lan, Wifi A/B/G/N, SD reader, PCMCIA slot, 1394 Firewire, VGA out, onboard Mic.
• 4-Cell Battery (8-Cell available) @ 2.5 hours of power

So as you can see, this thing flies! It’s a tablet computer that weighs a mere 3.77 lbs with the battery in.

Now to the good stuff, what this is intended to do.

First thing I did was install VMware Workstation 6. This is a virtualization software that will allow me to do what’s next in the list.

Next I downloaded Ubuntu Gutsy 7.10 in live cd Iso format. Then mounted the ISO as a virtual CD drive. Fired up VMware and created a new virtual computer, which was subsequently loaded with Ubuntu.

While in Ubuntu, I then installed Quanta+, Apache, PHP5.2, MySql5, RapidSVN.

Quanta has quickly become my chosen editor when it comes to developing. It’s fast, sublime, pretty and full of features, including auto finishing words you are typing based on a history of the words you have typed. The rest of the LAMP install is too long and also reproduced many times over (check out the forums on http://forums.ubuntu.com for more details if you are interested in this) to repeat here for the 10 Millionth time.

While VMWare is running the Ubuntu machine, that I dedicated 512Mb Ram to, I started network installing Microsoft Office. I really really enjoy using OneNote, which is one of the greatest Tablet Tools that is out there.

After that was all said an done, I know have a mobile computer that packs a serious punch. I am running Vista using OneNote to take notes, Internet Explorer 7, Firefox, Safari and Opera to test web pages, virtualized Ubuntu Gutsy running my editor and Webserver, so no matter where I happen to be, I can easily program and test via a single powerful machine.

Such an amazing combination, I am sure many of you also would consider the same.

I do not fear computers. I fear the lack of them

- Isaac Asimov

I’m a computer guy.  I grew up thinking they were cool, and now I have come to appreciate them more, because they are a source of income now.  I do web design, development, server stuff, troubleshooting things, etc.  Because of this, I run into a lot of problems that have to be solved.  But, more often then not, I find that I have to solve them on my own, without GOOG’s help.  So I have decided to turn to the internet, to pass on my information as I get it.  Hopefully it will help out more out there… and they can in turn help me with issues I may have.

Enjoy

Drew