Wobbly Windows for everyone ! Beryl and Compiz in Ubuntu.

Jul 30

One of the things I absolutely LOVE about the new Feisty Distro of Ubuntu Linux are the Compiz and Beryl additions to the Gnome and KDE desktop. For those of you who think I'm "Geordi-la-Forging" ( Pulling techterms out of my butt) let me simplify it for you : What Rox about Ubuntu are the wicked wobbly windows ! An amazing little peace of eyecandy that does much more then liven up the way you interact with your computer. Forget play-doh like blue Xp-desktops : Lets Wobble the windows in Linux, Spin the desktop cube, exposé-away and more. Honestly.. When you line up a Beryl-enhanced Ubuntu desktop with an XP or even a Mac .. THe Ubuntu machine looks like Marty Mcfly brought it over from the 22nd century.

 

beryl

 

What however IS a bitch is getting it all setup and working nicely. Sure there have been some enhancements done in Feisty making it all a lot simpler .. but the simple "enable desktop effects" option you have leaves the geek in my lacking. And if you cant get everything working right away.. you are screwed. Thus enter Kevin Vanzonneveld who has written up a little script that does some serious lovemaking between Compiz, Beryl, Gnome and your Ubuntu machine. So this way you can have both : The time to go out.. get drunk and score a girlfriend .. but still have wobbly windows in your Ubuntu. Check out his manual and enjoy.

Links : Kevins Beryl-Compiz-breadcrumbtrail.

 

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Transformers movie launches in Belgium.

Jul 25

No additional comment required. 

 

soundwave

By Crow on Flickr. 

 

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More power using SSH in Ubuntu (or any distribution for that matter)

Jul 24

 

in tha shell
 

For those of you tracking the " Feisty for the family" series or those who have listened to the podcast episodes ' Remote domination part 1 and 2 ' , you all know what SSH is by now. For those of you who don't  ? Well SSH is a way to control a remote linux machine via the command line. Much like Telnet, but in a secure way. Kind of a lovechild between a Dos Window and a Vpn connection. 

 

You can do an amazing amount of things in an SSH session. For noobs this means mostly copy-pasting the commands they found on the how to website. But there is more to SSH then just plainly running commands on another system. How about swapping around files from one system to another ? And i'm not just talking "copy here paste there" You can actually remotely MOUNT a folder on your local system and copy stuff back and forth without having to worry about anything  (no authentication, no risk of security etc). 

So i've rounded up some websites that might help you use SSH on Ubuntu or any other distro of linux (and mac ! ) to give more power to the terminal ! 

Downloading Putty.

Secure File copy, Remote mounting of drives, ssh without passwords, forwarding graphical applications through an ssh tunnel.

Secure surfing from work through your machine at home using Putty Firefox and SSH.  

Punching the Samba hole right through the remote machine with Putty , SSH and Windows Filesharing !

eleven cool SSH tricks.  

Leave your SSH Sessions running even if your window closes using "Screen"  

Browse the net anonymously by using Putty and an SSH server.

Mount a folder over SSH using your Mac.  

The Remote Domination podcasts part One and Two.

The Famous Feisty for the Family manuals. 

Picture " In tha Shell " by Teryaki

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Gourmet at Goffy's : Trail runs for the new Digital Camera.

Jul 23

A low technology weekend is something everybody should have once in a while. Time to clamp down on keyboard time an gently squeeze down on the " bandwidth consumed per hour " to actually spend some time with the family. Goffy (Nyana's sister) invited us for some Gourmet ( Where a combination of raw meat and a steaming hot plate allow you to either burn stuff to a crisp or eat cold steak). So it looks like a low tech afternoon does it not ? Yeah right. Not in THIS family. Usually everybody packs up their laptop or newest gadget before they leave and the family Christmas dinner looks more like a LAN-party then anything else (I kid : The food is MUCH better then at Lan parties).

enya

Back to Sunday. What I have for you are not only cool family shots but also the try-outs of my new camera. Having dropped my Nikon Coolpix almost a year ago, I was growing tired of having to lock up the broken battery door with sticky tape. Its a fine camera but it was looking a little "getto" lately. So it was time to shop around and look for a nice camera. I did some surfing on the internet and browsed around what kind of camera I was looking for. As for the look and feel I was thinking about getting one of those 'bigger camera"s' ( A little bit like an SLR camera). Because they have some more possibilities and it looks a little more professional when you are shooting shots for the website. (Try making an artistic shot of people or objects holding this teeny weeny Coolpix, people think you are insane). 

finepixSo last week I went out for the most time consuming way to spend your afternoon : I walked by some photography shops and let people "sell me" a camera. The first thing they ALL tried was to sell me a Sony camera.  As a matter of principle I don't buy anything from Sony since the whole "rootkit thing" but they reason shops do this is because they have a much larger profit margin on Sony camera's then on any other brand (at your expense of course) And of course they all tried to sell me a 500 euro+ SLR camera. I tried to explain this was too far over my budget so the recommended this little compact hybrid camera's. (Also from Sony of course) that gave me no manual control whatsoever. 

Of course I already knew what I wanted. Having spotted the exact model I wanted in a shop in Maastricht I was looking for somebody to give me a great price. But NONE of the shops even mentioned the model, not even the brand. Because these things are pretty cheap and shoot darn good colors. I was referring tot the Fuji Finepix S6500fd a hybrid camera with the look and feel of an SLR (manual zoom and focus ring) the automated functions of a hybrid and HALF the price of an SLR. I used to own a little Fuji Finepix A201 a few years ago and took it along on quite a lot of holidays. The thing cost 250 euro's, had no zoom but shot the most amazing pictures ( see the France 2002 set on Flickr) So I liked my Finepix. 

Acquisition time.  : No way in hell was I going to by this camera in a small retail shop. Not only where they still forcing the Sony's up my nose, they even said the model I suggested (the Finepix s6500fd) was not something they had on the shelves and that it was hard to acquire. ( Hoggwash ! ) So some extensive price searching brought me from the highest price (375 euros), to the lowest one ( 295 euros ) but in the end I bought a second hand one on the net (from an old school buddy of mine) With the bottom price of 205 euros (including the bag and the card) I was pleased with my new toy. After digging through the 150 page manual it was time to take it our for trail runs so .. enjoy these ones and more to come.

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The Paradisio Video : Online.

Jul 20

As promised 🙂 The video of our little outing at the Paradisio Zoo .. hits youtube. 🙂 Enjoy !

 

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