Ubuntu 13.04

I upgraded to Ubuntu 13.04 last month on the day it came out.  I’ve been running it since then, and I figured I should do a little write-up here because I usually do when the new one comes out.

Anyway, when I upgraded, I found that everything… worked.  This, literally, was the easiest Ubuntu upgrade I’ve done.  I usually do a reinstall when I change versions, but I didn’t this time.  I just ran my updater and let it go.  It took very little time to download the packages, and before I knew it, my computer was running 13.04.

I looked around and noticed some of the polish that Canonical has added to Ubuntu.  I also noticed that the upgrade didn’t muck with my already installed apps like Banshee; it didn’t install Rhythmbox and then force me to remove it later.  Same with Pidgin!  Kudos!  The OS has been improved speed-wise, the dash is much more responsive, and I find that apps load a little quicker than they did in 12.10.

Gwibber was replaced by Friends.  I had to install Friends, and I must say that it’s working pretty well.  I also installed Turpial, Polly, and Birdie, just so I could play with different Twitter clients.  Friends is good but has a ways to go yet; I would recommend adding a “@-replies” tab so I can see who’s replied to my messages on my social networks.  Oh, and the messaging menu works better with Thunderbird and it works with Pidgin now (again!).  Another thing I noticed was better support for my Razor DeathAdder mouse.  In 12.10, I noticed that I couldn’t change the speed and it would zoom all over the place if I looked at it wrong.  Now I can change the speed in the mouse settings and it seems to work a lot better now.  I’d just gotten used to the super-fast mouse acceleration, but being able to turn it down is a great thing.  Now, if my new iPod Nano would work…

This release seems to be polishing up the OS.  It’s not a huge mega update, but it seems to “just work” and with the announcements of Ubuntu phone and tablet and the work that’s been done to reduce resting RAM usage, I see it only getting better.

I’m not sure if I’ll run an Ubuntu tablet or phone in the near future (I love Android) but having a unified system is a grand idea; one which Apple and Microsoft are trying and I’m not sure if they’re going to be successful.

I’m still digging Unity.  It’s still got some niggles (I have to change its size as soon as I update) but I like the keyboard shortcuts and how elegant it looks.

All-in-all, this is a great update.  Polish, speed, and simplicity.  Also, the whole upgrade process had no issues for me and my hardware.

Android App Series: My Data Manager

I installed My Data Manager on my old phone so that I could monitor how much data my Spotify/Pandora streaming was using.  I’ve since installed it on my new phone, and I love it.

I love the “Ongoing” section of my pull down bar on Ice Cream Sandwich.  I can swipe down from the top of my phone and see what is going on.

Anyway, this little beauty of an app monitors how much data you’re downloading.  You can set it up to track for your billing period and see how much data you’re actually using.  This is useful if you know you have a cap or a threshold where your carrier will start throttling your speed (mine does; 2.5 gb).  I’ve never gotten anywhere near the cap, and I think I could lower my “unlimited” data to 1.5 gb and I’d be fine.  This is with doing updates, streaming, gaming, and anything else I’d do (reading news too).  I tend to do as much as I can on my home wifi so I don’t use up my phone data.  Which makes sense.

Oh, this app also shows how much “data” you’ve used on wifi.  This is handy too.  I like to know how much my phone is pulling down, but I don’t really care when it’s on my home wifi.  Go to town, phone!  When I tell it to throttle back is when I’m on 3g.  I have plenty of data, but I don’t want to get to the end of my billing cycle and find out that I’m throttled to unusable speeds.

Anyway, this is a great tracking app to see what is using data and when.  It’s also great to track how much data you are using; this potentially could save some people some money as they could reduce the amount of data they’re paying for and use their home wifi network to do all updates and file transfers.

I really like it and I would totally recommend it to anyone who has a carrier who has a cap or throttles their speed when they get to the soft cap.

Android App Series: Swiftkey

Swiftkey is an app that I found that was touted by Lifehacker as the bee’s knees, so I had to try it.  I watched Lifehacker and pretty soon, it was on sale for something like $2 or $4; I cant remember.  So I picked it up.  I started using it on my old phone (an LG) and found that it was better in most ways from the stock keyboard as well as Swype.  So, I started using it more and more.

Cue my new phone.  This app was the first thing I installed, since I had gotten used to it.  It’s updated to v. 4, so now I have “flow” which allows you to slide your thumb around the board and spell out a word.  Swype has this, but it doesn’t seem to be as predictive as Swiftkey is, so I use the title app.

I’ve also installed it to my Nexus 7.  It works fine, although they want you to buy a special tablet version; if that version goes down in price, I would totally get it, but for now, the standard version works fine.

I find that the prediction is awesome and it can seem to figure out what I want to say before I say it.  Other than being a bit creepy (though all these apps and services might be considered creepy), I really like it.  I especially like it when I use the phone in one hand; like when I’m trying to carry my bag and reply to a text.

The following video seems to give a better show of what I’m trying to say.  I’m using a cool black and blue theme; I think it’s called holo.  Anyway, watch the video.

 

This is a great app and should be on everyone’s phone or tablet.  It’s turned into a “must have” for me, and I’m glad that Lifehacker featured it awhile ago.

Android App Series: Feedly

I love RSS.

And because of that love of RSS I was extremely sad when I saw the announcement that Google Reader was shutting down, but that’s neither here nor there as I don’t control Google and have no say in what they keep or get rid of in regards to webapps.

Anyway, I was using Feedly to sync my RSS feeds from Google Reader to my tablet and phone.  Now I’m pretty much using Feedly as my go-to app on all of my operating systems (Win7, Ubuntu, Mac, Android) to keep my RSS feeds in sync.

I really like this app.  It’s got an intuitive interface and is easy to navigate around in.  I imported all of my RSS feeds from Google, allowed it to sync over my home wifi for both my phone and my tablet, and ta-da, I had more stuff to read!

How about a screenshot of the web/browser interface?

Pretty clean and easy to figure out.  This is my start page which is the magazine “all” view.

Tablet:

This is my “funneh” category (hee, category!) that has all my LOLcats and whatnot in it.  Again, very clean and easy to figure out.  I like this because there’s a quick menu in the story view and I can easily share to twitter or pocket or facebook immediately with no hassle.

The phone interface is pretty much exactly the same except smaller.

Anyway, this is a great app if you want to read news on your smartphone or tablet.  One note, however: it doesn’t download the articles from the web for reading later; you will have to have a connection via wifi or 3g/4g in order to read articles.  If you want something that downloads your articles, look into Currents.

Great app, easy to use, and pretty fast; I’ve never had Feedly crash on me.

Unfortunately, if The Old Reader comes out with an android app soon, I will probably be switching over to it because the web interface is easier than Feedly for browser-based reading.

WebAPP: HabitRPG

I’m no stranger to task apps and todo apps and tracking apps.  I’ve tried a bunch.

And I’m trying another one: HabitRPG.

This takes all the crap you have to do in a day and turns it into a game.  It allows you to define Habits, Dailies, ToDos, and Rewards.

Let’s take a look at my HabitRPG screen:

My “Habits” section contains the things I want to improve upon.  I have five:

• Take the stairs
• Park further out at work.
• Eat veggies and fruit (I try, dangit but I still need to improve.)
• Write new receipts in checkbook ledger.
• Floss (Again, I try so hard but this is something I want to do better at.)

From what I can gather, “Habits” is the section where you can define things you want to do better at and then track how you’re doing, sort of like the “don’t break the chain” method of productivity or whatever.

Next we have the “Dailies” section.  If you’re familiar with WoW, “dailies” are something you can do every day to get a reward (experience, rep with a faction, etc) and you kind of want to do them as much as possible so you can increase your skills or reputation with a certain faction.  I’ve added the following to mine:

• Make bed (I usually do this but sometimes I need a reminder; whoops.)
• Read anything non-web for 30 minutes (again, I read a lot but most of it is on the web.  I hope to get through my magazines and books on my tablet this way.)
• 15 minute Band workout (I’m trying to get more exercise.  Also, 15 minutes is a good span of time.)
• Call Mom (a reminder for Wednesdays so I don’t actually forget.)

I didn’t want too many dailies because I’d end up just doing chores when I got home from work and things wouldn’t be flexible.  I need to make sure I actually DO this stuff and not let it languish.

Next is the “ToDo” section and holy cow is it long for me.  I’m not going to type everything out, but suffice it to say, it includes some of the stuff up on my board as well as blog posts I want to write.  I think these are things that have no time limit on them, and I think they give more EXP and coins when you complete them, especially if you bump them up to “hard”.  I’ve done this on a couple of the items since I’m not sure how much time they will take.  If it’s a complicated project, you may want to break it down into more steps so it will be easier.

Rewards, of course, is where you can go to spend your hard-earned gold.  Seriously, if you didn’t have something to reward yourself with, then what’s the point?  Anyway, I have some choice things on there.

~~~~~

As you can see, I didn’t put vague things on my lists.  You have to be concrete.  Also, I didn’t put things on there that I already do, like “Do Dishes” as a habit.  I am good with doing my dishes every day, so I don’t need to track that aspect of my life.  I do need to track things I want to get better at, so that’s why I added so few to the habits.  As soon as they become habits, I think I might move them to  the “Dailies” section so I can still track them but they won’t be under “habits” because they already ARE habits.

I think this is for someone who is already somewhat disciplined with their time but needs some more motivation.  I wish we had something like this for work.  I would love to “level up” by doing X AFP grinds or cleaning X codes out of character for model.

I hope a mobile app comes soon because I want to track my food thing and the stairs thing and the parking thing on the go.  I’ve a bad habit of forgetting to log things.

 

Ubuntu Desktop

Ubuntu Quantal Quetzal 12.10 with an old-timey Mario wallpaper.

So I did it.

I went back to Ubuntu after a two-month long foray into Linux Mint.  I did like Linux Mint, but there were some small niggles that I could not wrap my head around.  Anyway, I’d gotten used to Unity and the way things were handled in the shell.  I like many of the programs that are included by default in both Ubuntu and Mint, but I think that Ubuntu is a better fit for me at this time, although Mint has come a long way.

What bugged me about Mint partly was its release schedule.  They adhered to a “when it’s done, it’s done” model, and I tend to like a specific date of release so I can anticipate it and participate in the beta and release candidates.  Mint doesn’t seem to have this.

Anyway, I had to do some modifications, as usual, to get my desktop the way I wanted it.  Namely, it involved installing Gimp, Banshee, Spotify, Pithos, VLC, gpodder, Chromium, Dropbox, NixNote, Pidgin, and the restricted-extras packages.

There’s something about Ubuntu and Unity that keeps bringing me back, and I’m not sure what it is.  Simplicity?  Community?  Speed?  Good design?  I don’t know, but Ubuntu was my first distro and I tend to like it regardless of what it does.  I don’t particularly like the shopping lens, but I think with the outcry from the community, they will be scaling that back quite a bit in the next version, which is a great thing.

Anyway, if I want a more “Mint” experience, I can install Cinnamon, which I had installed before I went to Mint.  I think I’ll install it again; it was a good desktop.

Google Nexus 7 Review

I’ve acquired a Nexus 7 tablet recently and would like to do a write-up about it.

So.  A few weeks ago, I decided I was going to get a tablet.  I’d been looking at tablets for awhile now, and I wanted something that would be easy to use, light-weight, and good for reading.

I was looking at Apple’s iPad.  Brian has their iPad 2 and is very happy with it.  I would probably have gotten the New iPad if I was to get one, but was still undecided, so I was waiting.  I looked at the Asus Transformer and wasn’t impressed with the portability (I had a very portable computer in the Air).  I looked at all the tablets they had out at Best Buy and nothing really tickled my fancy.

I started seeing the new 7″ tablet from Google and Asus, and I was intrigued.  I decided to try it out at Office Max one weekend; sadly they didn’t have any in stock.  Another weekend, I went down to Microcenter and picked up the 16 gb version of it, along with a cover for it.  I’m still loving the cover; I wish I’d found a smart cover that would sleep and wake when you open it, but we all can’t have everything.  There’s a neat M-Edge cover out that I might pick up later, but for now, my blue cover is working fine.

I’ve been customizing the heck out of it… basically moving things where I think they should go and changing backgrounds and experimenting with widgets.  I’m pleased with what I’ve done, so how about a picture?

Nexus 7 Screenshot

The picture is my Pandarian Monk from WoW.  I have my Fancy Widgets running for weather and time and whatnot, and all the apps I need in the folders at the bottom.

From left to right we have: Google, Reading, Media, Social, Gaming, and Utilities.

I’ve installed the following apps (broken out by folder):

Reading:

• Moon+ Reader Pro: Go-to reading app.  It’s really great and takes a ton of formats.
• Pocket: I use this for longer articles from my RSS reader.
• Feedly: My RSS reader.
• Comics: There are some free things so I decided to give this comics app a try.  DC and Marvel universes, plus indie publishers.
• B&N Nook: I have some books I like to read that are still in my Nook account.  I read them with this.
• OverDrive: For library books.  I’ve not figured out how to really use it yet.  Ahem.
• Wikipedia: Of course, duh.

Media:

• Spotify: Music!
• Pandora: Music!
• Netflix: Movies!

Social:

• Twitter: For short ramblings.
• Skype: Video chat.
• Facebook: To keep up with facebook.
• Instagram: Initially to test out my camera, but I’ll keep it around to browse Instagram.  It’s nice on a tablet.

Gaming:

• Fruit Ninja: I’ve a new addiction to slicing fruit…
• Angry Birds: Uhm, flinging little birds at pigs? Why not?
• Words with Friends: I’ve played this more now since I’ve installed it here.
• Frozen Bubble: Great FOSS game.
• WoW Armory: To show off my WoW stuff to people when I have an internet connection.

Utilities:

• Evernote: Notes.
• Dropbox: Indispensable.

Google gave me $25 at the Play store, so I paid for Fruit Ninja and Angry Birds to get rid of the ads.  I also did an “in-app” payment for WwF to get rid of the ads.  Moon Reader+ Pro was only $5 and it was worth every penny.  It’s by far the most used app on my tablet.

And I use this thing.  I read on it, game on it, use it to check the weather in the morning before work, and sometimes use it to watch a movie before bed.  I picked up a picture stand for $5 at Target; that works to hold the tablet in landscape mode to watch a movie in bed.

And now for some more pictures!  I took these while opening it all up.  And opening the box was a pain, let me tell you.  So here we go!

From the top left, you can see my screenshot again, and then the packaging, some general unboxing stuff, and then finally the tablet in the case.  I wish I could have gotten a black case, but they didn’t have one, so what can you do?

It fits really well in my purse or my bag for work.  I like being able to carry this device around so I can read or play a game if I have to wait or whatever.  Sometimes I’m without wifi, and in those times, the books are perfect.

A word of warning to Linux users: you’ll have to install gMTP to browse the files on the device.  It uses the Microsoft Protocol thing, and won’t show up as a device in Nautilus.  It took me a couple tries to pair the device with gMTP, but once I got it working, it was great!  Now I tend to upload what I need to dropbox so I can access it easily on the device.

If you’re looking for a 7″ device that you’ll use for games and reading and light browsing, I can’t recommend this enough.  It’s an amazing little tablet and I love this size.  It’s perfect for reading.

5/5 penguins.

Apple Macbook Air 11″, and why I decided to get one

I said I’d never get a Mac.

I swore I’d never get a Mac.

I thought people who had Macs were pretentious.  I thought people who had Macs had more money than sense.  Linux worked just fine for me and I was also pleased with Windows 7.

That was before I heard about the new ultrabooks that actually came out earlier this year.  I seriously looked at them at Best Buy early in June; the Dell XPS ultrabook looked really nice, but I read some hassles about Ubuntu and there was absolutely no guarantee about battery life (they were advertising almost eight hours of battery life under Windows 7).  I asked some questions, then wandered over to the Apple desk.  I played with both 11″ and 13″ Airs, and was impressed.

(This is long, so we’ll go under a cut.)

How One Teacher Built a Computer Lab for Free: iFixit

How One Teacher Built a Computer Lab for Free iFixit.

The problem? An underfunded school needed computers for the classroom. Budget? $0. Staff involved? Just one: Robert Litt, a sixth-grade teacher.

Robert teaches at ASCEND, a small arts K-8 school in the Alameda County School District. He’s a fan of technology and believes that it’s an important part of K-12 education. Yet ASCEND had no computer lab and no computers in classrooms. So in 2007, Robert acquired 18 donated computers. But these computers were less help than he’d anticipated. The operating systems were slow. Some computers had viruses or malware. Students became frustrated.

Brilliant.  I would really like to see this happen more often in public school systems; so many times they’re stuck in the Windows or Apple money spiral that they can’t get out.

I’m not opposed to paying for software, but many schools aren’t in the position to pay for a lot of software or operating systems to run that software.

Glad to see Ubuntu being put to good use on donated school computers.  Fewer viruses, less malware, and a decent experience for the students.  And they can learn something about an alternative to Windows and Apple.

Ubuntu 12.04, Precise Pangolian

I’ve been using the newest long-term support (LTS) release of Ubuntu for awhile now, and I have some thoughts on it.

First, let me say that this release installed very easily to my new desktop.  I had no problems initially with the setup and Ubuntu detected everything.  Considering that I don’t have anything really proprietary on my desktop, everything should be detected without a problem.

I’ve been using it on this machine for a little less than a month.  The sound is solid, the HDMI off the motherboard works (including the integrated graphics).

Unity is amazing.  I’ve been trying out different programs; it’s interesting to see which programs have taken advantage of the Unity quicklists and which haven’t.

Now, onto my problems!

I really only have one problem and that’s a doozy of one:  A complete system crash caused by the shared RAM for graphics on my Ivy Bridge CPU.  It brings the computer to a complete standstill.  I have no keyboard, mouse, or anything, and the only way to fix it is to press the reset button or do a hard shutdown.  It happens randomly as well, so I don’t know what causes it, really.

BUT, it is fixed!

I enabled the “proposed” repository, and I’m running the newest kernel.  That seems to have fixed the problem, and I’m pleased that I can have the machine up and running for hours and not worry about it quitting on me.

Interested parties can find the computers “stats” here as well as some pictures and a desktop screenshot.

I’ve got all my programs I like installed, and even fixed a problem with Banshee.  There was some issue with my databases, and it was causing errors that made the program segfault when I was importing a CD or pulling in new music.  So, I deleted the corresponding dot files and folders, and restarted Banshee and I was in business!  Importing a CD caused no problems, and reimporting my music caused no problems.  We’ll see if it continues to work. I hope so.

I’d rate this release at a 4/5 penguins.  If they’d caught the Ivy Bridge error, I’d give it 5 penguins.

A better Ubuntu Unity Launcher – Part I by ~rylexr on deviantART

A better Ubuntu Unity Launcher – Part I by ~rylexr on deviantART.

Wow.  I really like this mock-up and could see it working really well for Ubuntu.  I hope they take some of these ideas and implement them to make Ubuntu better.

New Desktop!

Ahhh…

The joys of new hardware.

I’d been thinking of a new set-up every since I got my new job.

And… I have.

First some pictures, I think:

 The desk with the monitor on it and such.

The computer and printer..

This computer is a dual boot with Ubuntu Precise Pangolin and Windows 7.  Windows is for the games and Ubuntu is for everything else.

I’ve had no issues with either OS on this system, except for Windows just taking forever to update and reboot a bunch of times, but that’s normal.

Now for some specs:

• Case: Antec 900. 4 fans of cooling.
• Display: Asus… something.  It’s LCD, 1920×1080.
• 1 TB Hard drive.
• 8 GB of RAM.
• Motherboard: MSI Z77MA-G45
• CPU: Intel i5 3570K 3.40 GHz, 6MB cache.
• Logitech speakers.
• Logitech M510 mouse.
• Microsoft 4000 keyboard.
• Random DVD drive (it was like $20).

I don’t have a GPU as of yet.  We’ll see what I need as far as graphics go.

I probably have about $1000 into it, including the keyboard I bought and the monitor.  I’m liking it so far.  The motherboard has several USB 2.0 ports on the back and 2 hookups for the USB 3.0 on the front.  The case has 3, but if I decide to update the motherboard, then I’ll probably look for one that supports 3 USB 3.0 ports on the front.

Screenshot?  Screenshot:

So.  Here we go.  I’ll have a report about my mobile computing solution in another post!  I also might have a writeup about Precise in the near future too.  I’ve been using it for awhile and it’s really solid.

Life Update

I have sadly neglected this blog since I transferred it over here from Posterous.  For that, I apologize.

What is up in my life?  Well, let me make a list:

• I’m still working at Chrysler.  I still love it.
• I bought a new TV.  It is awesome.
• I bought a PS3.  It is awesome as well.
• My car is getting closer to being paid off.
• I bought Skyrim.
• I went to Portland and their Shrine Hospital.  I had an awesome time and met some uber cool people from Tumblr.
• I bought a Macbook Air in Portland.
• Consequently, my debit card got a hold on it.
• I took care of this via the phone at the Atlanta airport.
• I got home from Portland.
• I slept over 12 hours and missed most of Sunday morning.
• I drove back down here to be at work tomorrow.

Wow, what a list!

Review of some of those things will be forthcoming (the Portland trip and my Air).

The TV is awesome in general; it’s large without being too large.

Well… that’s it for now.  I have some things to write about the Air and my Portland trip, but I’ll tackle those when I’m not as tired.

Moving

I’ve decided to move to Posterous for my main blog.

The URL is http://gamerchick02.posterous.com

Posterous was able to pull in all my comments, so that’s pretty cool.  I’ll leave this as a archive.

Ubuntu Unity

This post is kind of a response to this post on OMG!Ubuntu.

What is wrong with Unity?  It’s a question with a lot of different answers.

For me?

Speed and ease of use.

Those are the most important things.  An operating system should allow me to do what I want without bugging me.  Without making it difficult to get to my files.  Without making me relearn where everything is.

That is where Unity is a problem for me.  Maybe I’m used to my dock-and-menu setup in Ubuntu, or my taskbar-and-menu setup in Windows, but making me think about where my files are, or making me type up a search (while handy in some respects) can make me irritated, as I can’t get to my files and programs faster.  If I wanted a search metric, I’d be using Gnome-Do or Launchy or something.

I’ve grown used to the menu structure of Gnome.  I like it and it’s comfortable.

I also don’t want to have to wait for my operating system to chug and think about getting my file structure.  I’m particular about where I put things, and I have a special way I do it.  If I were to just throw everything in /home without a thought, then this searching metric might work for me, but I don’t.

Unity seems to be aimed at someone who’s never seen a computer before.  This is fine, but the further we go on in time, the fewer people will have not seen a computer before (anyway, speaking from my white, middle-class, college-educated, engineering background).  I mean, everyone in my community has access to computers either though their own houses, a public or private school (for students), a university, a community college, or the library system.  I’d be shocked at anyone under the age of 60 who hasn’t seen a computer in their lives.

Also, most of these people who have seen computers will have seen a Windows or Mac-based system.  It’s just a fact of life because of the market share Windows and Apple have.  Ubuntu and other Linux-based operating systems are trying to change that, but with Ubuntu and Gnome3 going to the “shell” model of things, many people are going to see it and reject it.  Which is unfortunate because there are a lot of good ideas that have come out of Unity.  For instance, the dock.  I use a dock (Docky), but at a different location than where Ubuntu puts it.  If Unity wants to win me over, they can do the following:

• Make the dock movable; to the right, top or bottom, as I please.
• Make the dock re-sizable, which I think they’re working on (this is not available in the version I’m running on my netbook).
• Allow me to change the size of the icons on the dock and make sure Unity respects that.  I’d like a smaller dock on my netbook, as the screen is very limited.
• Allow me to use the regular file system easier.  When I click on the folder in the dock, I expect a Nautilus window to open; this does not happen.
• Give me better categories and whatnot when I click on the applications button.  Seriously, having a list of my applications is not helpful if they’re not sorted better.
• Make the dock expand to hold the icons, instead of expand the whole side of my screen.  This is similar to the behavior of Docky.
• Use Compiz (this is in the works; Mutter was found to be unstable, so the Ubuntu devs have moved to Compiz, which is more stable.  I remember when it wasn’t, and I was unsure of why anyone would use Compiz.  Now I can’t live without it.).

I will be looking forward to the improvements in Unity.  Hopefully with the inclusion of Compiz, the speed factor will be taken care of (my netbook can handle Compiz, which is pretty cool).

The Natty release looks to be interesting at the least.