Archive for category Computing
Google Wave – is it any good?
Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past few weeks you’ll probably have heard ‘Google Wave‘ being mentioned. So just what is ‘Google Wave‘, and is it any good?
The simplest way I can think of to describe Google Wave is this: think of a collaborative MSN, that’s basically it. Currently, Google Wave is in a preview state. You can sign up for it, but you are in a (very long) queue for invites. I signed up several weeks ago and have had nothing from Google, as yet, I managed to scrounge an invite from a Twitter user that I follow (thanks Susan!).
A word of warning: do NOT buy Google Wave invites through eBay (and other such places) as inevitably you either won’t get the invite or it will only be a partial invite where you don’t actually have a full account. Culpa mea.
Ubuntu, SDLmame and Wahcade – a match made in heaven
With my new computer roaring like a Tiger, my old computer is like a kitten demanding attention. Thus it is now connected to my TV (via tv-out) running Ubuntu and is functioning as a MAME machine! Yay!
Retro gaming goodness ahoy!
How did I manage this? Funny you should ask, I’ve written an article about it right here.
Installing New Brushes in to GIMP
I’ve had a couple of people ask me how to install brushes to GIMP, it’s quite easy really:
First, download a set of brushes. Try deviantArt.com, they have an excellent selection of free brushes for GIMP, that’s where I got the brushes I use for the digital paintings I’ve been doing.
The brushes will probably come in a ZIP, or RAR, archive. Open the file using winZIP/winRAR (Windows) or arK (KDE), or FileRoller (GNOME). Select all the brushes in the archive and unarchive them to:
Windows:
C:/Program Files/GIMP2.0/share/gimp/2.0/brushes
Linux:
/home/username/.gimp-2.0/brushes
NOTE: in Linux, you may have to ’show hidden files’ to see the .gimp directory.
Your directory structure might be slightly different if you’re using a newer version of GIMP, but dig around a bit and you’ll find the brushes directory.
Now load up GIMP and you should see your new brushes! If not: click the ‘refresh’ button (bottom right) in the brushes tab.
Good luck!
testing WP-Jaiku – Wordpress > Jaiku plugin
Since my posts show up on Twitter, I thought I’d try and get them to show up on Jaiku too.
What’s Jaiku?
Jaiku.com - like Twitter, but with SMS working...
Like Twitter, only better, and with SMS in the UK – which Twitter decided to kill off. Boo hissss!
You can download wp-jaiku from: http://code.google.com/p/wp-jaiku/
Here’s hoping it works!
*fingers crossed*
Conky, finally! System monitor woes…
Having seen many a flash desktop with system info, I decided to give Conky a go. Going in to the package manager and installing ‘conky’ was easy enough! With no menu entry I did the old Alt+F2 trick and just entered ‘conky’ to see if anything would happen.
Life!
A small window popped up at the bottom left of the screen with some basic info, but it wasn’t embedded into my desktop, nor was it pretty. Back to the drawing board.
After a quick search at Ubuntu Forums, it seems you need to create a .conkyrc file in the home directory and configure it through that text file.I found a basic conky configuration and pasted it in to my .conkyrc file and gave it a whirl. Progress! Conky was now embedded in the desktop but it was flickering like mad. The almighty Ubuntu Forums then tells me that you need to enable double buffering in the conky config file. Ok, done that. Try again.
What the…
Now my desktop icons are missing! What gives?! But wait, moving my pointer over where the icons were, brings them back. For a flash. Then conky wipes them out again!
Grrr!
Eventually, after many a search, I came across a small piece of code which said:
own_window yes
own_window_type override
own_window_transparent yes
own_window_hints undecorated,below,sticky,skip_taskbar,skip_pager
… and that was it!
My Ubuntu desktop with Conky in the top right corner
Conky seems to work better when it is in a window which is transparent, has no decorations, and is stuck to the desktop.
Once I had conky working I found a more elaborate config file and chopped out some unnecessary bits to give me:
My current conky setup
As conky configs go, mine is pretty standard, you can get really creative and have Gmail alerts, weather reports (my next project) and all sorts in there!
Long live conky!
I’ll post my conky config in the comments below…
KDE to GNOME – I’m going through change-eee-es
* post should be read with the Black Sabbath song ‘Changes’ playing in the background *
For nearly two years now I’ve been using Kubuntu (Ubuntu + KDE) quite happily. It was a happy marriage between us, but yesterday we filed for divorce.
Kubuntu Gutsy, and Hardy, had been fine. I’ve even been using KDE4 since 4.0, but recently KDE would just, for no reason and with no warning, corrupt the screen and return to the login screen. When this happened yesterday in the middle of some (as ever, unsaved) work, I snapped.
The courtship of Ubuntu 8.10 (Intrepid) began, and the divorce papers were served to Kubuntu.
Another reason to abandon Kubuntu was that most of the applications I used were all GNOME based, so essentially I had a KDE/GNOME hybrid. It had the look of KDE for things like Amarok and K3B but the look of Windows95 for things like Firefox, Thunderbird et al.
After a quick test of the Ubuntu 8.10 in LiveCD mode I saw that most of my needed apps (GIMP and those mentioned above) would be installed by default. And I’d only need to manually install Scribus and Thunderbird.
One quick backup later and Ubuntu was installing.
my spanking new Ubuntu desktop
What was yesterday. I’ve been using Ubuntu now, exclusively, for a whole day and, I have to say… I like it! I can definitely see a speed increase in Thunderbird and Firefox, in KDE they were ok to use, but a bit clunky and ugly – hence why I, at one point, switched to using Opera as my browser. I can get a decent screen resolution too, which I could never get in KDE. Ok so I lose Amarok, but Rhythmbox seems quite adequate. Not tried it, but Brasero seems more than capable of burning a CD/DVD.
All in all, I feel like a new man.
Wait, that sounded a bit…
Another GIMP painting
I installed the snazzy new 2.6 version of GIMP on my TabletPC and gave it a spin by doing another painting. I’m getting to actually prefer GIMP over PainterX. PainterX is incredibly powerful but it has too many options, mediums, brushes etc. GIMP is just nice and simple. Hopefully the KDE4 Krita will bring a middle ground between GIMP and PainterX.
Anyway… here’s the finished ‘painting’:
The video of it being done is, as ever, on YouTube:
An Honest Interlectual
Anything emails that try and sell me Viagra or implants are immedaitely deleted, but I always get a laugh reading the Nigerian 419* emails, here’s a brief excerpt from the latest one:
URGENT INHERITANCE CLAIM STRICTLY CONFIDENTIAL.
I am quite convinced of the fact that this will come to you as a surprise, however I am writing you based on the privilege information i gathered about you on internet during my interlectual search, for urgent and confidential transaction which we will both benefit from, though, I know that a transaction of this, will make you magnitude,worried and apprehensive.
An ‘interlectual search’? And the transaction will make me ‘magnitude,worried and apprehensive’?
Oh, and he claims to be a Barrister. Call me old fashioned… but I smell a rat! 
* if you’ve ever wondered what happens when you (jokingly!) play along with those emails or just want to wet yourself laughing, check out: http://www.419eater.com/ quite possibly one of the funniest sites EVER!
First Painting From Acer Tablet PC
Based on a photo taken from BBC Wildlife magazine. It’s a Lammergeir which, as far as I can gather, is a type of Vulture.
Lammergeier - Digital Oil
CLICK IMAGE ABOVE FOR LARGER VERSION
Not bad for my first attempt at digital painting. Still trying to get used to the gazillion different brushes available in Corel Painter X, but I’m getting there, building up a little custom palette of brushes.
All comments welcome! 
Acer C301XMi Tablet PC
Got my Acer C301XMi tablet PC yesterday. Boy is it nice!
tablet in laptop mode
It came with Windows Tablet Edition installed and with Alias Sketchbook to show off it’s pressure sensitive screen. I installed Corel Painter X (above) on it and it seemed fine but the pressure sensitive stuff wasn’t happening. After a quick bit of Googling, I found that you have to install the Wacom drivers to get the pressure sensitive stuff working in some apps (like Painter) so all is good now.
tablet in easel mode
The screen can rotate through 180′ and fold back to give a sort of ‘drawing table/easel’ mode which is nice. It does mean that the keyboard is hidden but one tap gives you access to an on-screen keyboard.
Painter X is reeeeeally nice though, you can see in the above photo (top right of the screen, the brown square) the little mixing area where you can put paint then mix the colours as you would with real paint then ‘lift’ a colour. With the paint looking ‘marbly’ you can ‘lift’ the marbley colour and paint with that, again, like you’d do in real life with paint. Even better: rather than just let you guess colours by moving sliders, it can list all the different colours by name! So I can scroll through the list and choose ‘Cobalt Blue’ or ‘Burnt Sienna’. A really nice touch that.
tablet in book mode
And when you fold the screen right back and clip it in to place, the screen automatically rotates into vertical mode to give you a ’sketchbook’ mode which is nice. The buttons to the side of the screen let you rotate it back to landscape format if that’s what you want.
All in all, I’m VERY impressed with it. I have updated Sketchbook to the new Adobe Sketchbook 2009, this is nowhere near as powerful as Painter X but is excellent for just knocking out quick pencil/pen sketches. Painter is king for the real media stuff such as chalk, oil paint, watercolour etc. It means that I can now also do digital painting and print it out on my nifty HP Photosmart C3180 printer that I just recently bought.
I’m giving it two thumbs up, it is WELL worth the £200 I got it for on eBay
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