Migration

I have migrated the siteover to self-hosted Chyrp.

However, I am using this as an archive for old posts, commenting, and OpenID.

The link is here.

Windows 7 Jump Lists and them

Now you may be aware that Windows 7 has a new feature called Jump Lists. Just right-click and open window’s button on the taskbar, and a jumplist appears. You may be able to get screenshot’s of Paul’s site.

Now some applications would work wonderful, but some can’t. Tomboy for Windows is an awesome example. You can have the recent notes at the top and the new note, restore Tomboy, and Close buttons in it. Genius.

I love you Chyrp!

If you’re going self hosted, WordPress is a nightmare to transfer over FTP. I was looking up lightweight blogging php and found Chyrp as the first result. It is much better to try to transfer, and is putting WordPress’s self-hosted setup to shame. Just transfer, chmod, make database, create .htaccess that they tell you to fill with the right content, and input the info. It is very barren, but modules for comments and TinyMCE helped. The default theme is not as good as WordPress’, but change be changed. (unfortunately, most themes can’t work on Windows extraction because of the UNIX-ish folders.)

 

If you want self-hosted, go with Chyrp. If you can’t, then WordPress.com is for you.

Back to the Village (again)

Well I’m back to Windows.

Linux didn’t go down without a fight though, and I missed it. It first started by Midori crashing and killing foomatic, then Firefox started typing backards. Then it killed my bookmarks. Evolution was puking on mail, and Tomboy thought I had no free disk space.

I missed the Mono poster children. I loved F-Spot, Tomboy, and MonoDevelop. I loved Dillo, Evolution, and Liferea. I loved the freedom of choice in theming.

I shut down Ubuntu and reboot into Windows. Thank goodness I installed through Wubi, and backed up with my new Gmail account.

I have the sudden urge to make Tomboy for Windows. Not exactly a port, but close or similar.

Microsoft Office Mondo: It’s the Guinea Pig

Microsoft Office Mondo. Now if you notice, it has more than Ultimate why? It’s M$’s testing version that includes all the cowbell. Get over it!

Python is the new Visual Basic

Is it just me, or it? Python is getting to be really popular, like VB, and anyone with a little effort can make a program with it. It’s widespread, it’s popular, like VB. It’s slow like VB. Unlike VB, developers take Python seriously when it’s a toy language!

I’ll have to try it with Boo, see how the .NET implementation is.

Creating a tiny GNOME enviroment in Ubuntu

Note to Debian users: you may have to replace the thunderbird and sunbird apps with the Debian versions.

If you like GNOME, but also want a tiny, fast, and functional enviroment, this guide is for you! Just install Ubuntu alternate (or any Debian-based textmode Linux) and run after installation:
sudo aptitude install xorg menu gnome-core gdm gcalctool gnome-utils epiphany epiphany-extensions eog evince gimp abiword gnumeric thunderbird sunbird synaptic alacarte totem rhythmbox gnome-games gtk2-engines


This should give you a light-weight, yet working desktop.

The some of the apps are:

• Epiphany browser
• Thunderbird E-mail
• Sunbird calendar
• GIMP image editor
• Eye of Gnome image viewer
• Evince PDF reader
• gedit text editor
• gcalctool calculator
• Nautilus file manager
• Totem and Rhythmbox media players
• AbiWord word processor
• Gnumeric spreadsheet
• and the GNOME games

Linux alternatives for OTHER common Windows apps

How many times have you heard someone who won’t migrate to Linux because they would lose their favourite app. This list, instead of covering apps like Word or Explorer, we cover other apps like OneNote and Quicken. Well look no further! All the apps here are

• OneNote alternative: Zim
• Quicken/Quickbooks alternatives: GNUcash and HomeBank
• Windows Live Writer alternatives: BloGTK and Drivel
• PROPER (built-for-diagrams) Visio alternative: Dia
• Dreamweaver alternatives: Bluefish
• HyperCam2 alternatives: Istanbul

Postbox – a review

No, the desktop email client is not dead yet. In fact, it’s more alive than ever. But most don’t impress me. That is, Postbox has finally.delivered. (pun intended)

Pros:

• Customizable UI (as shown in screenshot)
• Flexible search
• Nice object search (attachments, images, link, contacts)
• Tabbed
• GTD integrated
• Thunderbird based

Cons:

• Ugly in Windows Classic (yellow toolbars)
• Buggy UI (e.g.: double-click results in a blank tab)
• No junk folder (though junk removal is supported)
• No easy setup of Hotmail (had to do manual POP3 setup)
• Crashy newsgroups
• No extensions or themes
• Lack of “see only read mode”

What? I like it. The pros outwiegh the con, in mass. If you’re still using outlook express, ditch and switch. 4 out 5.

BloGTK

OK, here goes BloGTK. It has an awful icon. But it hopefully works.