Friday, September 28, 2007

Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon enters beta


Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon) has entered beta.  I have been running the Tribe 5 alpha version for a while, and I have been pretty happy with it.



 [via Download Squad]

$7 CD sale


AnywhereCD is going out of buisness, and is selling CDs and 192kbs mp3s from those CDs for $7 , for a limited time.



 It is unfortunate that this business model failed, as the customer paid full price for a CD, and then got a digital copy of that music file.  (Which they will probably do as soon as they receive the CD.)

Saturday, September 22, 2007

Bleezer


I have been setting up my new laptop, this weekend, to run Vista and
Ubuntu. The hardest thing so far, is to find replacements for the
various Mac OS X applications that I used. For example, ecto is a great
blog editor for Mac OS X. There aren't many blog editors available for
Linux.



apt does include some blog editors, but they are pretty limited in
their functionality. Scribefire
is also available, but if I wanted to write blog posts while in my
browser, I will just use my blogging software's web interface.



The best application that I have found so far is Bleezer.
This is a cross-platform java application, that supports many blogging
services. Some of the other features it has are:




  • Image uploading


  • Multiple category support


  • built-in tagging support


  • spell checking


  • integrated xmlrpc pinging



links for 2007-09-23

Tuesday, September 18, 2007

INSTEON SwitchLinc Relay Countdown Timer


We are trying to conserve electricity where ever we can.  We have switched all of our light bulbs, that aren't contolled by dimmer, to compact florescent bulbs.  We also turn off all unnecessary lights.


The lights that have been usually left on, are the one down to and in the garage.  Since we normally keep the garage door closed, I tend to not notice that the light is on, so the light gets left on.  The other problem is that when we are rushing out in the morning, the lights get left on


I wanted to find a solution that would automatically turn off these lights, but I also wanted the light switch to look like a regular light switch.  Unfortunatelly, the motion sensing light switch that we used in our previous house wouldn't work with florescent light bulbs.  Also, many of the timer light switches aren't as easy to use as regular switches.



Friday, September 14, 2007

LockerSync 3.0


In this post I mentioned that I wanted to try MP3Tunes to store all of my music content in a central location where I can have access to it, both inside and out side my house.  I previously had problems uploading my content with their synchronization tools.


LockerSync 3.0 is an new application that performs this same action.  This is working perfectly for me, so now I am in the process of syncing my music collection.


[via Webware]

Thursday, September 13, 2007

Wii Remote API


jbanes posted a comment to this post and pointed out the Wii Remote API that can be used by game developers to recognize all of the remote buttons and the accelerometer input.

Tuesday, September 11, 2007

Self-playing game


Here is a video of a Mario Brothers game that plays itself.



http://embed.break.com/MzU5MzEz
The Only Mario Level That Plays Itself - Watch more free videos



[via Boing Boing]

Updated plugins


Yesterday, I updated some of the plugins for LifeType.


  • reflection - Upgraded to the latest version of the reflection javascript

  • related - Now you can specify the minimum number of keywords that are required to generate a list of related articles.  This should prevent short posts to have a list of not very related other articles.

Monday, September 10, 2007

links for 2007-09-11

Songbird


I am getting frustrated by iTunes, as I mentioned before.  I decided to look Songbird for playing music.  I am also planning on setting up a dual-boot laptop running Vista and Ubuntu.  Since Songbird is a cross platform application, I can use the same application across all my computers.


When you first start Songbird, it offers to download several helpful add-ons.  The iTunes library importer imports your iTunes library into Songbird.  The QuickTime Playback add-on allows you to play protected AAC files.  And the iPod Device Support add-on, lets you support, well..., iPods.



SCPlugin


SCPlugin is a Subversion client for Mac OS X, that integrates svn access directly into the Finder.  This is similar to how TortiseSVN integrates with Windows Explorer.


I had two problems with SCPlugin.


  1. There isn't a way to diff a file or directory from within its contextual menu.  This is a major obmision, as I try and diff my changes before checking in.

  2. It is using a higher version of the svn client library than the version of the command line tool that I have installed.  This causes a problem where if I try and to a commit with SCPlugin, I can not use the command line tool on that directory


[via TUAW]

Wednesday, September 5, 2007

ScreenRecycler


I was looking at the other products that the developer of JollysFastVNC works on, and I saw that he is developing ScreenRecycler.  This looks like a cool product, that lets you use a second computer as a additional display.


This is different than synergy, where you can use the same keyboard and mouse to control two different computers, but with synergy, when the cursor is on the remote computer, you are accessing that computer. 



JollysFastVNC


This week's Pick of the Week on Mac OS X hints, is JollysFastVNC.  This is an amazingly fast VNC client.  It is significantly faster that Chicken of the VNC.  The developer has posted a video showing the speed.


It worked great for me, when connected to my Mac mini running OSXVnc VNC server.  It looks like it currently doesn't support the Tight encoding.  But, event without that it was completely useable when connecting to the Mac mini over the internet.

Remember the Milk Widget


I was taking a look at the third party products that are available for use with Remember the MilkThis Dashboard Widget allows you to view your tasks in the Mac OS X Dashboard.  It is easier to view your tasks in the widget than to launch a browser.


You can mark tasks as complete from the widget, but you can not create new tasks.

Unlocking Seamless Integration: Navigating Unexpected Hubitat Device Queries and VLAN Challenges for a Smoother Home Automation Experience

During my network debugging efforts , I came across an intriguing observation related to the two Hubitat devices on our network. The logs b...