Previously in the ‘Technology’ Category…
I love Ubuntu 10.4
- May
- 1st
- 2010
The latest version of Ubuntu is out. It is a long term service version, which is great for people who don’t like their OS upgrading on its own every 6 months.
Speaking of which, this is one of the reasons I love Ubuntu – when I sat down at the computer it simply asked me “There is a new version out called 10.4 – Would you like to upgrade?” Why, yes, sure, go for it.
The setup was a little iffy on my desktop, because I have a lot installed on there, and I fucked up because of my lack of knowledge of Grub. It took a long time and in the end it failed, so I had to re-install Ubuntu. Fortunately through I keep my /home directories on a seperate partition. For all Windows users out there: That means that all my files and settings and all program settings are kept seperate from the OS – and also encrypted 
So it was all safe and I lost none of my documents/photos. I still had to reinstall some programs after the installation (which took approx 30 minutes), but my settings for those programs were still there. Brilliant.
On my laptop the upgrade actually worked without a hitch – mainly because I have no funky stuff installed. No missing drivers, it logged back in on the wireless network when it finished.
Best of all Start up time from when I press the on button is now less than 40 seconds. Some people can even get half of that depending on hardware setup.
So what are my impressions of this version – well – all drivers worked straight out of the box. Wireless card, printer, screens, etc. A lot smoother if compared to only a year ago. The new look is good as well since it is a lot less brown and orange and more tasteful purple and black. Of course easily changeable in the appearance settings.
One thing I did not like was the move of the window buttons from the right to the left (like on a Mac) so I changed that back to the way I liked it. I found a simple guide by just googling. Short version is
Click Applications, then Accessories and then Terminal.
Type gconf-editor and then press Enter. This will open the Configuration Editor application.
In the left pane click apps, then metacity and then general.
In the right pane right-click the button_layout key and in the context menu click Edit Key. Change the Value to
menu:minimize,maximize,close
and then click OK:
Simple as that. Of course a lot of tweaks can be done and the looks can change a lot. Compiz still looks great so I got my wobbly windows and 3D cube desktop area that I have grown accustomed to.
Anyway, one of the more great news is the social interactions with Facebook, Twitter, etc
Gwibber is a good desktop app to keep track of tweets, status updates, and more. Updating your status or tweet is just as easy too. I like it. Spotify got the same thing now where there is more social interactions.
All in all I find Ubuntu as great as always. For a normal desktop user, only using their machine for webbrowsing, using office, webb applications and entertainment it is hard to beat. It actually makes Windows 7 seem klunky!
For designers it might take a little more tweaking to get our favourite apps working. One being Photoshop, and more.
As I said before there is always Virtualbox from Sun – which is brilliant. But it takes a lot of resources. I do wish Adobe would get their act together and sell their software for linux – I sure as hell would pay for it, but even one of their simpler Photoshop alternatives would be a good start.
GIMP sucks. It really is like working in Microsoft Paint. It is not a viable alternative.
Xara Xtreme on the other hand is open source and brilliant for vector graphics once you get used to it. Perfectly viable alternative to Illustrator – and available on many platforms.
So for you people out there who are still on Windows – give it a try. Any problems you come across generally are solved with a simple Google search.
Why are ebooks expensive?
- February
- 4th
- 2010
Seriously! What the fugg?. OK, I got an ebook reader. I love it. I go to bed with it and even take baths with it.
Have I got books? Sure. Shedloads. Downloaded in various formats over the years and converted by myself to a readable format.
Once in a while though I like to buy new books. Pay my way as it were.
So I go to online retailers thinking “hmmm, for sure this ought to be cheaper as an e-book than a hard copy?”
Why? because
- only one copy is ever produced – ever ever
- no paper
- no binding
- no printing costs
- no storage costs (more than a few Kb on a server)
- no postage
- I use my own bandwidth to download
- no handling by any people once the book is done
- not ever out of order
Appearantly, to publishers, these factors have no impact on the price of books.
The books cost the same as physical copies, if not more expensive, and they are also constructed so that no one but ME can read them.
All of you in the publishing industry, let me let you in on a dirty little secret:
It won’t work.
Seriously, trying to make me reading this on my ebook reader more unattractive than actually buying the physical book is silly.
Reminds me of the early MP3 services which over charged (here is looking at you iTunes) their users. If people feel ripped off, they will not buy things.
I know how much it costs to make a copy of something digital. If I drag a file to an email message and send that to a friend I have made a copy. Cost to me: absolutely none. Let me up this stake, I send the same file to 100 of my closest friends. Cost is still the same.
Considering the state of the forests around the world, you should really encouraging new ways to enjoy your products. Branch out so to speak (pun intended).
Of course I understand that you want a return on your investment in some authors.
You won’t get that by ripping off customers who want to be legal. You know why? We do not think that it is priced right. I want to support my authors. I really do. I also know that you publishers constantly rip them off, and they don’t generally see any of the profits you make from the books.
OK, so selling a book online at a cheaper price means that you will not make as big a profit as producing one book and then selling it at full price to thousands of people.
Considering your massive save mentioned above, I think a price cut in electronic books should be in order.
So far I have only found one fairly decently priced online shop at Mobipocket.com. Still they are expensive, and they have some books only available in certain countries, but at least they have bargains too.
So tell you what – lower the price, or I will continue visiting the library – OK?
Update! Appearantly I am not the only one aware of this stupidity
Idiotic web solutions
- December
- 10th
- 2009
I have noticed a trend, of putting printed documents on the web.
Some marketing genius have started selling in the concept of publishing printed documents straight on the web.
This is a bad idea.
Why? To put it as simply as possible: your screen is not made of paper.
To quote IQ Pager, who seem to be a major player in this:
“1. Readability.
The user feels more at home in a traditionally printed format.
First off – that is a lie! A printed A4 does not equal the height of most monitors. As the matter of fact, with the increasing use of widescreen monitors this becomes even more appearant.
2. Faster and easier with no download
You must always download a PDF and open it in Acrobat. It takes time and you save the file on your machine whether you want to or not
Once again – lies. PDF files can open inside the browser, and does not need to be downloaded as a whole for that to happen. But PDF besides the point: A good web based version using the screen medium, whether it be through Flash, HTML, etc will always be way more user friendly – and no downloads. For printing a good CSS file can format the printed document no matter if the user has A4, A3 or letter format paper.
3. Weighs nothing
If you send out a newsletter, a PDF is very heavy…
Wait a minute Shirley! Are you fucking nuts, dude? If you send out a PDF as your newsletter then you are doing it completely wrong. People want to read their emails, then discard them. Getting people to click a link in an email is HARD. They must really want to read the content. Emails are not supposed to be printed in the first place. E-L-E-C-T-R-O-N-I-C communication, people! IQ Pager uses a flash solution to read PDFs, nothing more. It is overkill.
The sales pitch continues, and it is clear that besides outright lying, they really have no business selling a shitty solution in the first place.
I have worked in the web business for over 11 years, and I come from a background in print design before then. You cannot mix your mediums like this. It is the equivalent of broadcasting an image on the radio – cumbersome and stupid.
For good marketing to work, you need to work with the medium you have chosen. You can not have a film playing in a newspaper (yet), and people accept this. You can not change the size of the paper once printed, nor can you change the size of peoples screens to fit a portrait A4,A3 or billboard in readable size.
Is this point clear? Jeesus F. Christ in a tutu on a pogostick! I can’t believe I have to get pissed off at this crap.
Here is my open letter to all web companies with similar solutions to this:
“Dear flash based PDF reading companies.
Stop. Just please stop. Do not encourage our clients to embrace stupidity. If you have a crappy product, then do not sell it. Just because you could sell the idea it doesn’t mean that you should. Sure, you sell the point of that they don’t have to put the extra effort of making a good presentation on the web of their printed information. That only cheapens what they are trying to communicate. Learn the basics: Print and Web are two different mediums. They should be separate. The key value is always communication. One way, two way, three way communication, it doesn’t matter. Ask yourself: If this solution is so fantastic, then why isn’t it used all over the web instead of HTML? It would save time! “
Harry Potter Theme park
- November
- 19th
- 2009
Sneaky behind the scenes of the new theme park at io9.
Yes, I am a big child. I love theme parks. I went on the Rocking Roller-coaster at MGM 5 times in a row. I have never backed down from downright scary rides, neither have I backed out from downright silly or childish antics either.
Clearly I have more in common with my nephews than my peers, but I would love to go to this themepark.
What also interests me is how they are going to bring a magical world to life technologically without breaking the fourth wall. Moving portraits can be done using LED screens for sure, moving stair cases for sure, the candy (which I have tried) is a done deal. What about wands and magic duels – it could be a very very cool computer game that is live action.
Yes, I am looking forward to this.
Gotta love the spam
- October
- 21st
- 2009
I love the variations of the standard Nigerian spam letters. You know the kind. Where a long lost princess need someone help her get a Scrooge McDuck amount of money out of their war torn country.
I have decided to publish all that I receive here, because I find them amusing and would probably make a good book.
Here is my first entry in this category. I shall call this “The russian library doesn’t burn books”. I received it from two addresses, which in my book indicate that the spammer found my email address in two seperate address books.
elenaga@zymail.ru
elenaga@lapost.ru
”
Hi,
My name is Elena, I have 32 years and I write you from Russian province. I work in library and I can use computer after my work when possible. I finded your address in internet while visited some sites and decided to write you this desperate letter.
I have daughter Angelina, she is 8 years, her father abandoned us and we live with my mother.
Due to financial crisis my mother recently lost job and our situation became very difficult.
The prices for gas and electricity is very high in our region and we cannot use it to heating our home anymore.
The winter is coming and weather becoming colder each day. We very afraid and we don’t know what to do.
The only accessible way for us to heat our home is to use portable oven which work with burning wood. We have enough wood in our region and this oven will heat our home all winter for minimal charges.
Unfortunately, we cannot buy such oven in our city because it price equivalent of 191 Euro and very expensive for us.
If you have any old portable oven and in case you don’t use it anymore, we will be very grateful to you if you can donate it to us and organize transport of this oven to our address (200km from Moscow). This ovens are different, usually they made from cast iron.
I will be waiting your answer.
Elena and my family. ”
Russia.
Now doesn’t that bring a tear to your eyes? Don’t you want to immediately send this poor family a cast iron stove that is portable? Because clearly, the ground is too bloody good for these people to burn wood on. I think that we really should pinpoint where this email came from and then dive bomb the place with cast iron stoves.
IETester – the end of Internet Explorer woes?
- September
- 18th
- 2009
In the wake of RIP IE6 I got a tip about IETester from My Debugbar.
It is in early alpha but can appearantly mimic the rendering of IE from 5.5 all the way through 8.
So far so good, we will see if this will grow to be a useful tool.
STOP! Thought Police!
- September
- 16th
- 2009
I Washington är nästa övervakningsteknik under utveckling.
Skrämmande när man tänker på hur sånt här kan påverka våra liv framöver.
För att citera Jeff Goldblum i Jurassic Park: “Bara för att man kan göra något betyder inte att man bör göra det.”
iTunes for comics?
- June
- 22nd
- 2009
io9 just wrote about the Longbox digital comics player. I can get on board with that. After all – comics are worth a lot.
I have been a comic book fan since 1978, when I got a copy of Hulk, Spider-man ,Donald Duck or Superman as a gift. My taste has changed since, and I am almost whole heartedly a Marvel fan. I still read the odd copy of D.C., Disney, and Spirou mags.
After my move to England though, I had to put the comics in big boxes in a leaky hut… I still have a full collection of every Spider-man magazine in Sweden between 1978 and 1999 though.
Later I discovered online comics, and I currently read the dailies of Penny Arcade, Ctrl-alt-del, Real Life, Least I could do, Sinfest and xkcd.
But still I missed my old super-hero comics of old – especially when I discovered Marvels Ultimate line of comics. They are my absolute favorites right now.
That is when I discovered that other people with storage issues simply scanned their old comics, and new comics as well. Finally I could read stories that were never published in Sweden, and even storylines from the 60′s without having to scour obscure book dealers, dealing with torn out pages, etc.
It took next to no time to get used to reading the comics like that. Marvel also experimented with online comics, and they do have a deal for a subscription service these days. And for a full back catalog of EVERYTHING I think that is a good deal.
That is why I am hyped about this new service… buy the comics and download a copy – I can live with that… but dammit, I would like to have access to a spotify for comics. Read it online but have access to the whole back catalog.
I think it is a great chance I will go completely legit on the comic side without having to give up more of my bookshelves.
With a Nokia 5320
- June
- 2nd
- 2009
Well, now I have a new mobile. In the end my phones were impossible to repair, so I bit the bullet and signed up for a 2 year contract, just to get a new phone. Camera is not as good as on the N95, and one thing I miss is WiFi accessibility. It is a 3G phone though, so with the unlimited dataplan, that is not such a large drawback. I have still not had time to sit and play with it, but at first glance I like it.
I just hope it can make phone calls.
Sans mobile again
- May
- 29th
- 2009
Now I have killed two phones with dead screen. I wonder if the SIM card is at fault, and if I can have my mobile provider pay for the repair.
OK, I am in a bit of a clinch at the moment. About a month and a half ago, my trusty Nokia N95 from Orange decided to give up the ghost. The screen was black after inputting the PIN, and while it was still possible to receive and make calls (thanks to voice recognition) it was impossible to read any text messages. Around the same time, I unfortunately lost my job, so investing in a repair of this hardware problem was out of the question.
As an intermediate solution I borrowed a phone off my nephew, a rather ungainly looking Sony Ericsson z520. It is a clam shell, and even though it felt kinda cool while watching Star Trek, it has not become my favourite. It was trustworthy because my nephew at 9 years old have not managed to kill it off through rough play during the last year.
Yesterday I noticed the first signs again. The screen would roll from left to right, and the screen would turn white. A quick tech solution (slapping it against the leg) seemed to fix the problem – until the next time I would use it.
Today the phone went completely dead, and the only thing I can see is a white screen. To tell you the truth, on the N95 the screen first turned white, and then “glowed” with a black screen. So it might not be even slightly related.
I just find it really weird that I would have two consecutive phones that would have similar display issues.
I guess I will have to bite the bullet and head in to town for the Phonehouse or Telenor shop. I have to find out if my SIM could cause this, and if not either to send off my N95 to be repaired or buy a new phone. I need to be contactable as I am looking for new jobs.
