Fitting the battle of life

Well, I asked a flatmate if I could listen to some of his music earlier, and he said ‘Sure, it should be on the network through iTunes.’

I fired up Rhythmbox and, sure enough, there his name was, under ‘Shared’. I clicked on it, expecting it to show me his music and allow easy navigation to The Feeling. But oh now, it stayed stuck on ‘Retrieving music’ in the status bar.

Of course, I checked to see if it would work the other way. I quickly turned on my own sharing, and it popped up in his copy of iTunes, streaming flawlessly. (We then had ‘a good laugh’ at some of the music in my ten-gig collection, but that’s a story I’d rather not share.) So Rhythmbox -> iTunes works, but iTunes -> Rhythmbox doesn’t.

Apparently this is due to some way in which DAAP, the Apple-owned protocol that enables ‘easy’ sharing of music across a local network, changed in iTunes 7 (after working fine before that). The implementation in Rhythmbox (and other open-source, non-Apple apps) doesn’t work as a client (i.e. receiving music across a network), which is annoying.

A silly little proprietary protocol from Apple, trying to lock people into using its products. Apple basically wants me to switch to iTunes to hear music from the room across the hallway, when I run Ubuntu Linux and have no intention of going back to Windows (or onto a Mac). The simple thing to do would be to use an open protocol, so anyone could implement it perfectly. Then we’d see a real market in software, competing properly on features and aesthetics. Is it that Apple are afraid that, given half the chance, people would switch from iTunes to something else? They can’t be that unconfident in their own product, can they…?

Well, I decided a few days ago to revert to having no fancy desktop effects on my laptop, just to see how much I would miss the Compiz love. So, setting desktop effects to ‘None’, I removed the desktop cube, wobbly windows, the expose function, quick screenshots (windows button + mouse), fancy alt-tab switching, windows previews, and a fair bit more to boot. I realised that actually Compiz offers a whole load of supposed functionality that’s just not present on a basic level.

That said, you can still have more than one desktop; you just won’t be able to slide between them in as pretty a manner. Now it’s an instant switch from one set of windows to another, which is only a very minor boost to productivity, as you’re only saving about half a second.

The thing that I have noticed is far fewer problems with my computer:

• Full-screen iPlayer - and indeed flash generally - is a whole lot smoother,
• No lockups or crashes since disabling desktop effects,
• Supertuxkart works at any resolution, full-screen or windowed, without flickering, and
• Laptop runs a lot cooler and therefore quieter.

The experiment is a success. Although I do rather miss my fully transparent terminal windows, it’s no big deal. I can actually read some of what people are saying in irssi better, anyway. Desktop effects are all very well and good, but as I’m sure a lot of people have noticed, Compiz is quite buggy (and having an ATI card doesn’t help). Although the overall desktop experience is perhaps less aesthetically pleasing entertaining now, it’s a lot more stable and, importantly, functional.

This is a bit late, and I apologise. I apologise also for the lack of photos - there’s a very good reason I forgot to take more, and it’s to do with the beer, and all the kind kind folks (Daviey, Popey, Kirrus and a couple of others) who bought me beer. In addition to the few I got myself.

(There is one photograph that has been censored and is not available to view. The person responsible knows who he is!)

Anyway - the night was great, the people friendly and the cake delicious. Now, if only I could remember more of what happened, that would be awesome! It’s a shame Popey and Daviey were not in a, er, able state to record any interviews for the podcast, but I’m sure it’s probably best they didn’t. The Canonical peeps were all really good fun to chat to, and the rest of the community I met (including Wubi guy, who has made it a lot easier for Windows-types to try Ubuntu out), were all fantastic.

Bring on Intrepid Ibex and more Belgian beers!

I recently submitted a couple of photographs to be used in the rotating header images on the Ubuntu UK website, and they’ve made it onto the page!

This is one of St. Pauls from South Bank in London, and the other is an arty shot taken from a punt in Cambridge last summer. Check out the site and see if it pops up!

Mail-trends is a nifty little python app that logs into your gmail account via IMAP and analyzes your entire mail history, outputting the results into one html file full of graphs and loveliness.

There’s a wealth of different ways to look at your e-mailing habits, from who you send to, to when you receive most of your emails. As you can see above, once I subscribed to the Ubuntu-UK mailing list last year, it quickly took over a large chunk of my inbox, and has also received more emails than anyone else from me since I joined gmail (which isn’t too surprising, considering I use my uni e-mail account for a lot of correspondance).

Whether or not this analysis is useful depends on your situation: in a business environment you might be able to use it to recognise that since most of your emails arrive between 2 and 3, you should catch up with your growing inbox after that time. Personally, I was just intrigued as to my emailing habits.

Instructions for use are here on the mail-trends site linked above.

It’s a pain in the derriere when you realise the e-mail you just sent to a huge list of people didn’t actually have the file you meant to send attached. You look a bit silly, especially when you don’t realise for a few hours until the replies start trickling in.

Fortunately, there are some helpful solutions out there to spare embarassment.

1. Evolution’s built-in attachment reminder
   Thankfully for me, Ubuntu’s default mail client Evolution has an attachment reminder plugin as default:

   

   [Apologies for slightly blurry screenshot - compiz was acting up again!]

2. Greasemonky script for Gmail
   This here script is designed to work with your online gmail account for much the same effect. I don’t use gmail online very often, so I can’t vouch for its effectiveness personally.
3. Thunderbird + add-on
   Of course Evolution isn’t everyone’s favourite open-source mail client, so for those on Thunderbird, there’s an add-on that reminds you to attach files if it thinks you should have.
4. Outlook + macro
   If you’re not on the open-source bandwagon, or are forced to use Outlook for some bizarre corporate reason, there are instructions for creating a visual basic macro here to alert you to missing attachments. Of course, I have absolutely no idea if this a) works, b) rick-rolls you or c) makes your computer explode, so be wary and check it out with someone more familiar with Windows first! [Update: I've just received an e-mail from a friend to tell me they've successfully followed these instructions. Still, your mileage may vary.]
5. Mail.app + plugin
   Finally, for those on a Mac, there’s a plugin here for Mail.app. Same caveat as before: no idea whether it does what it says on the tin!

P.S. - Google suggests there are various versions of Evolution, my preferred client, for Windows, but I obviously haven’t tested any, and they seem to be quite old.

In repsonse to Sionide’s post, this is how tidy my desktop is at the moment. Obviously quite clear - I only use it to save files temporarily, such as e-mail attachments that will ultimately be sent back to the sender and then filed away in the appropriate folder in /home, screenshots or downloaded stuff (such as the mail-trends folder, which I’ll blog about soon).

The one thing that sometimes annoys me is the placement of mounted media - I like to have drives and CDs in the bottom right-hand corner, but can’t work out how to set this as a default area…any clues let me know!

Or, how I learned that the newest isn’t always the best.

Firefox got an upgrade last night, to beta 5 (the final beta before release later this month) - and my two favourite extensions - in fact, the only two I ever really use - are incompatible. Yes, AdBlock and Twitterfox are no longer my friends. This is bad for a few reasons:

• ads are evil, obtrusive and just plain annoying
• the web looks so nice without them (oh, I remember the singing ads on facebook…)
• I am getting addicted to twitter.

I look forward to seeing these fixed sharpish!

Would have been better two release ago, and it would have been facebook and f-spot in feisty for alliterative goodness, but oh well.

The previous facebook plugin for f-spot (0.95) was pretty broken, and the online facebook uploader won’t work with Firefox 3 at the moment, which sucks a little because photos is an application I use quite a lot - I’m now up to 35 albums, many of which have the full 60 photos in them.

So imagine my delight when I realise there’s a new version of the plugin available (0.96) which does indeed work. I had a few glitches getting the log-in working, but once it did I was able to export photos to facebook without a hitch. The plugin allows you to create a new album or add photos to an existing album, add captions, and right-clicking brings up a ‘Who’s in this photo?’ dialogue, although that’s quite buggy (and by quite buggy, I mean, I won’t be using it because the dialogue doesn’t seem to work at all, and doesn’t come off the screen until you close f-spot).

Uploaded photos require your approval when you open the album online, but this is standard facebook behaviour.

I saw a friend exporting photos to an album from iPhoto (is it called that?) on his Mac last summer, so we’re a little behind with a fully functioning version, but at least it now works for me.

[On a side note, f-spot very rarely exits gracefully on my system, always requiring a force quit. Anyone else have this problem?]

You know, I’ve had enough of Ubuntu. I realised today that I feel guilty.

Even as a student, I’m expected to get things on cheap. Sainsburys basics food, cheap pints at the Union, that kind of thing. But the thing is, however cheap we students get, we never sink so low as to take something for free. It’s an unwritten rule: if it’s free, it’s wrong. You’re probably stealing. And stealing’s a Bad Thing, trademark.  (To say nothing of the patent issue…)

Ubuntu may looks shiny and be fully functional. But a Jaguar is shiny and fully functional as well. Don’t see me just taking one of those without paying for it, do you?

No, Ubuntu is making me feel guilty. I want cheap computing, not stolen computing. Today I am going to back up all my documents (taking care to re-save all my odt files back into doc format), find my old XP install disk, and blast Ubuntu off my computer. Mark today in your diaries: it’s when I start going clean.

jerichokb, 1/4/08