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djotaku's twitter feed
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- no more cable tv for me. Saving $53/month!
- http://tinyurl.com/653oo5
- I just got 2 achievements on Spore! http://raptr.com/djotaku
- just started playing Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne. http://raptr.com/djotaku
- just started playing Spore. http://raptr.com/djotaku
- just started playing Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne. http://raptr.com/djotaku
- Awesome concession speech by McCain, I actually felt really sorry for him
- obama won!
- Partaking in the age-old tradition of following the election all night long.
- just started playing Solitaire. http://raptr.com/djotaku
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Sep
29
Some more photo graduations
Category: Photography | 
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50 to 75:
75 to 100:
300 to 400:
500 to 600:
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Sep
27
Happy 25th Birthday Gnu!
Category: FSF, Geek Love, RMS | Leave a Comment
The GNU Software Project to provide a wholly free operating system turns 25 today! Check out this great video showing British superstar Stephen Fry . Thanks to rms, Linus Torvalds, Aaron Siego, Miguel de Icaza and others who have worked hard to give us a free operating system that we can tweak and that no one can ever own and take away from us.
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Sep
24
Robots is Released
Category: computer animation | Leave a Comment
A few days ago, I released my lastest video, “Robots“. It’s a fan-tribute music video based on the song of the same name by Flight of the Conchords. Check it out and enjoy.
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Sep
20
Quotes
Category: Quotes | Leave a Comment
Time, once again, to unload some of the quotes I’ve recorded onto the blog:
“I always say, ‘If you can’t beat ‘em …. Report them to Homeland Security. They’ll beat ‘em for you’ ”
-Colbert on The Colbert Report 9 June 2008
(03:25:23 PM) Danny: mom just gets pissed if we don’t eat three meals a day
“Under the Bush Administration, the value of human life has gone down $1 million” - Colbert on The Colbert Report 14 July 2008
A: “Do you have to stand at the standup [meeting]?”
J: “Yeah, and there’s a strict no-leaning rule”
Mike: “I’m the hulk”
Dr. : “Technically you’re Bruce Banner”
Mike: “Point taken — nerd.”
Mike Burbiglia at The Improv 23 Aug
“So someone’s holding the back of his underwear…” - Mike K about why someone was acting strangely
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Sep
18
Today I was listening to Fresh Air on NPR. They had an economics guy on who’s now a professor at one of the University of Maryland campuses and was involved in Clinton’s economic team. (Although he didn’t always see eye to eye with Clinton’s treasury secretary) This guy put the current economic crisis in the best terms and framed it so well, I can’t believe that we’re in this mess. Those stupid jackasses on Wall Street “were betting that people who did not have money to pay their mortgage would pay their mortgage.” Just take a second and read that again. Yeah, pretty nutty, isn’t it? If people had just used their noggins we wouldn’t be in this mess. “Sure,” you might say, “hindsight is 20/20.” Yeah, but it doesn’t take hindsight to see that people who have bad credit probably aren’t going to pay their mortgage. Couple that with the fact that Wall Street swindled them into interest only loans and variable rate mortgages, and you HAD to see that a disaster was on the way. Again, they were betting that people who didn’t have the money to pay their mortgage would somehow pay their mortgage. Again, in their defense you might say, “but they thought housing prices were always going to go up.” And to that I say, WHEN has ANY market EVER gone up FOREVER? Hello! The tech bubble was just 10 years ago! Nothing ever goes up without an end. That’s just ridiculous. Sigh! Seriously, I don’t know how they let this happen. These guys all have degrees in finance. They should have known and done case studies on how whatever’s hot now won’t be hot in a few years. And then AIG freakin’ insures the mortgages of people with bad credit? I just can’t believe it!
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Sep
13
Fedora 9 Review (also Gnome in Fedora 9 Part 2)
Category: Fedora, Gnome, KDE | 3 Comments
So I waited until about halfway through Fedora 9’s initial life-cycle to install it. I listed the reasons for that here. Once KDE 4.1 was finally out and most of the complaints had stopped, I took the plunge. I am actually very happy with Fedora 9. I think most of the reviews you may have read criticizing Fedora 9 focused on the initial version. That was, according to the mailing list, very buggy. But, for those who run Fedora on their day-to-day systems, simply waiting a few months is enough to get most of the bugs ironed out. First I’ll focus on what I have thought of Gnome since I’ve been using it since the install. Due to Fedora’s servers getting cracked, I just got KDE 4.1, so I’ll just be giving my preliminary impressions there. I’ve been wondering if KDE 4 would bring me back into the KDE came from the Gnome side. We’ll see. I intend to boot into KDE 4 for the next week or so to see how I like it.
First, let me mention some of my pet peeves which are no longer a problem. Compiz no longer comes on every time I log into Gnome. You may remember my struggles in getting it to stay off instead of turning it off every time I logged into Gnome. That’s what caused me to use Xfce exclusively for a few months. I also like that GDM now actually remembers your previously selected Window Manager. Before the option “Last Window Manager I logged Into” didn’t work. You could select to use your new one as your default, but that always seemed so “permanent” to me. So I really like that it now just defaults you to whatever you used last time. The new GDM that Fedora is using is nice, and very clean. I don’t like that it has to show the names of the users - that’s bad security practices. It also stinks that it’s so new there aren’t any themes for it. I had about 10 or so themes that I would cycle through for the older GDM. Before moving on, I want to mention that I haven’t had any problems with PulseAudio.
There are some other new benefits in Gnome. I’m not sure if this is from the Gnome Virtual File System, but now anything you have mounted in /media gets put on the desktop. They already would put your usb drives on the desktop, but now they also put nfs shares if you have them mounted in media. Also, with the USB “logo” they make it easier to tell which of your drives are internal and which are USB-attached. That’s pretty convenient. I would still like for the media to have better user-friendly names like how you can name the volumes in Windows. There does not appear to be an easy way to do this in Linux. So I’m left wondering which drive has my pictures, 160 GB Media or 122.9 GB Media?
The other major update is with Fedora using PackageKit. The great thing about using PackageKit is that all of the Gnome distros are moving to using it so now the Linux user only has to learn one way of installing packages. They don’t need to learn a new package manager for each distro they use. PackageKit also tends to have much better descriptions of the updates and packages deing installed than any previous version of Fedora’s package managers. When you first get notified that there are updates to install, it gives you the chance to review the changes. Otherwise you can just install all the updates.
Some of the other changes, though cosmetic, were welcome. They were, I think, Fedora’s new theme (a
s opposed to the new Gnome theme). First off, there’s the change to the scrollbars. I know it’s just aethetic, but I love how instead of a square crashing into another square, now it’s a rounded edge finding its home where it fits neatly like a puzzle. I just like it, perhaps it’s some Fruedian thing. Who knows? Also, I really like the Window Decoraction they’ve chosen for the maximise, close and shrink buttons. I think a plus sign makes perfect sense for the
maximise button. After all, you’re making the window bigger. It certainly makes more sense than the symbol Windows uses for maximising a window. And now we get to the exciting part, I will use KDE 4 on Fedora 9 for the first time. So I will be, in a sense, live blogging about my experience in KDE 4 as implemented by Fedora 9. As you may recall, I was pretty impressed with openSuse’s port of KDE 4.0 and 4.0 wasn’t supposed to be as good as 4.1. So I’m going to log out of Gnome and I’ll see you on the other side!
Ok, here’s the initial screen on first boot.
So you can see they’ve fixed the problem everyone was having with a lack of desktop icons. That icon view can be moved around. I got a little preview at Kopete’s message notification when it popped up in the top middle of the screen where I was looking around.
Overall, KDE 4 appears to have a Mac OSX type of theme and it’s pretty good. Just as I said with openSuse 11, I like how the maximise and close Window icons are separated so I have less of a chance of accidentally closing the WIndow. One bad thing, right off the bat, is that Konqueror cannot properly do the Visual Editing in Wordpress, so I had to switch to Firefox 3. The neat thing about Dolphin, and KDE 4 in general, is that there are a lot of neat effects even if Desktop Effects is turned off. As you hover over files in Dolphin, the preview window fades into the preview rather than just switching abruptly. KDE 4 is definitely going to give Mac OSX a run for its money in the effects department. Especially as it continues to mature into 4.2, 4.3, etc
An interesting technology they’ve been touting for KDE 4 is nepomuk which intends to bring the innovations of the semantic web over to the desktop. Therefore it supports tagging and commenting files. This would facilitate better search because the search program wouldn’t have to depend on reading the file or the file’s title to find it. It would do it based on what you’ve tagged the file. I can see this having some great new implications.
Annoyingly, I haven’t been able to figure out how to make it so that only the applications in your current desktop show up in the panel.
I know there’s a way to fix this, but I couldn’t find it within five minutes and gave up. The Widget selection seems to be about the same as in openSuse 11.0. I crashed plasma when I tried to use the Twitter widget, b
ut I think that’s because I didn’t have KWallet enabled. Interestingly, there doesn’t appear to be a dashboard
button like in openSuse. Perhaps that was changed between KDE 4.0 and 4.1? Ah…it’s now a widget you add. Here’s my widget-crazy desktop with KDEtwitter, simple calculator, binary clock, fuzzy clock, RSS reader, and show dashboard. In practical use I’ll probably get rid of the binary and fuzzy clocks. I’m always in need of a calculator, so I’ll probably keep that one on the desktop. Same with KDEtwitter.
Ok, so a while back, I blogged about one last look at KDE 3. So now I’m going to revisit some of the 
applications I talked about there to see how they’ve changed for KDE 4. First up is Amarok. I know we’re still waiting for Amarok 2 since it follows a different schedule than KDE 4, but let’s see if it’s changed for KDE 4 nonetheless. It looks pretty much the same as before. So I guess we have to wait for Amarok 2.0 for dramatic changes. Kopete has has some cosmetic changes, but it more or less operates the same. I trawled through the options to make sure. Overall, it’s not too bad and it’s pretty informative. I like it.
I think Fedora has done a pretty good job with KDE 4. It works pretty well - as good as it works on openSuse. I still have some work to do to get used to using KDE 4, but overall it’s not too bad. I’m still not a fan of Kontact, but I’ll give it another shot and see if I can get use to it. I’m going back to Gnome for a little bit since I have all of my ToDo items in Evolution and I want to keep KDE to QT programs to see if I can get by with only KDE applications. Overall KDE seems to crash a lot less than KDE 3, widget crash notwithstanding. It feels a lot more polished and mature and it looks a lot better than KDE 3. The new menu isn’t that bad at all once you get used to it. Perhaps, given some time, I can come to love KDE again. Later this week I’ll probably be giving it another shot. I leave you with two little things I like in KDE 4. The first is a panel widget and the second is a menu item.
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Sep
10
Physics and the End of the World
Category: xkcd | Leave a Comment
This one goes out to all the physics geeks out there. (Applied Engineering Physics counts too, Jing Qing)
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Sep
4
System Information for Windows
Category: M$ | Leave a Comment
System Information for WIndows (SIW) is a program you MUST have installed on your Windows computer. It gives you all the information you could ever want to know about your computer in a nice easy to use interface. I learned about it in a recent Computer User Magazine. Here are some examples of the information it provides:
Motherboard:
Property Value
Manufacturer ASUSTeK Computer Inc.
Model P4P800-E
Version Rev 1.xx
Serial Number MB-1234567890
North Bridge Intel i865P/PE/G/i848P Revision A2
South Bridge Intel 82801EB (ICH5) Revision A2
CPU Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 3.00GHz
Cpu Socket Socket 478 mPGA
System Slots 5 PCI, 1 AGP
Memory Summary
Maximum Capacity 4096 MBytes
Maximum Memory Module Size 1024 MBytes
Memory Slots 4
Error Correction None
Warning! Accuracy of DMI data cannot be guaranteed
Property ValueBIOS Vendor American Megatrends Inc.BIOS Version 1009.003Firmware Version 101.114BIOS Date 09/05/2005BIOS Size 512 KBBIOS Starting Segment F000hDMI Version 2.3Characteristics - supports ISA- supports PCI- supports Plug-and-Play- supports APM- upgradeable (Flash) BIOS- allows BIOS shadowing- ESCD support is available- supports booting from CD-ROM- supports selectable boot- BIOS ROM is socketed- supports Enhanced Disk Drive specification- supports INT 13 5.25-inch/1.2M floppy services- supports INT 13 3.5-inch/720K floppy services- supports INT 13 3.5-inch/2.88M floppy services- supports INT 05 print-screen- supports INT 09 and 8042 keyboard services- supports INT 14 serial services- supports INT 17 printer services- supports INT 10 CGA/Mono video services- supports ACPI- supports legacy USB- supports AGP- supports booting from LS-120- supports booting from ATAPI ZIP drive- BIOS Boot Specification supported
Property ValueNumber of CPU(s) One Physical Processor / One Core / 2 Logical Processors / 32 bitsVendor GenuineIntelCPU Name Intel Pentium 4CPU Code Name PrescottPlatform Name Socket 478 mPGACPU Full Name Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 3.00GHzRevision E0Technology 90 nmInstructions MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, HTOriginal Clock 3000 MHzOriginal System Clock 200 MHzOriginal Multiplier 15.0CPU Clock 2999 MHzSystem Clock 199.9 MHzFSB 799.6 MHzL1 Data Cache 16 KBytesL1 Trace Cache 12 KuopsL2 Cache 1024 KBytes
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Sep
3
Google’s new Chrome Web Browswer has been all over the news today. See this general one here. Or this one mentioning how it’s supposed to be a Microsoft killer. This one talks about how blazingly fast it is. (I agree!) And, finally, this one talking about how Google is becoming more evil with the release of this web browser. I decided to take it for a spin and cut through the hype.
On first startup, I thought - hmm this browser looks a bit bubbly. Reminds me a bit of MSN Browser in the late 90s. Then I suddenly noticed something - no top bad on the browser! Where’s the File, Edit, Tools, menu so common to Windows programs? Even the tabs are right up in the titlebar window. But you know what? I like it - more room for viewing my websites. Tabs load up ridiculously fast. And the little things are so nice - like how there are animations when you create the tabs. They slide out from the left. Or when you close a tab, all the ones to the right of it slide over to the left. It’s pointless eye candy, but I love it! It really adds to the experience.
The search bar appears at the top. Also, when you’re typing websites into your bar, all kinds of suggestions pop up that have nothing to do with websites you’ve been to before. Like for server.ericsbinaryworld.com, when I hit “s” - sears.com was one of the choices even though I’ve never been there. I can see Google using this as a way to make money.
Your most viewed sites are there for you to click on whenever you open a new tab. Very convinient. But it reminds me a lot of Opera’s speed dial. (Except that it’s automatically filled out) Check out this shot from my Opera review.
And compare Google’s recently closed tabs to Opera’s trashed tabs:
I wonder how it feels to be Opera. They are always coming out with the latest and greatest in web browser paradigms, but no one uses them. I guess it’s their penalty for charging for their browser back in the day and then displaying ads. Otherwise, they could be eating Microsoft’s lunch now instead of Firefox. Firefox took tabs from Opera (the first MAJOR browser to implement it). Now Google’s Chrome takes Opera’s speed dial and recently closed tabs - two of their best features. (The latter is rumored to be in IE 
Although most pages loaded a LOT faster than in Flock or Firefox, flickr wasn’t THAT much faster at all. And they were touting their awesome Javascript interpreter. I wasn’t as impressed as I’d hoped to be. That could have cinched the deal for me. In fact, it seems to be, more or less, comparable to Opera in terms of rendering speed.
Overall, I am really happy with how fast and responsive Chrome is. I think I’ll use it for a couple of days like I did with Opera, Flock, and other browsers I try out. If it turns out to be fast enough, it could end up being my new default browser.
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