Not dead yet

This is a bit spammish, but just in case anyone has been reading this blog, and is wondering whether it’s dead, you will be happy/ecstatic/dismayed to hear that it’s still live and kicking ! But it’s holiday time, so there won’t be any new posts for another couple of weeks to come.

 I also expect that getting a tan may improve my writing ability, so stay tuned.

Ubuntu 6.06 Is Current Desktop Linux Champ

Yes, the title reeks of fanboyism. It is, however, really how the linux desktop landscape looks at the moment. And eweek isn’t afraid of getting all excited about it. The real issue here, however, is that this gives me an opportunity to use an image of ubuntu-tan.

Body Fortress Creatine Powder Review

Given my previous review of a creatine product, you’d think I wouldn’t be trying creatine again. Or at least, not from the same company. Well, this is where I got really clever and impressed myself. I bought them both at the same time, without trying just one first. At least, now you know what kind of brainy site you’re reading.

I only tried using this product mixed with Body Fortress Protoplex Deluxe MRP, as part of my post-workout shake.

• Mixability (5/5) :Mixes fine.
• Taste (1/5) : The MRP product I’m using has a very strong taste, and it’s also very thick. Somehow, however, this creatine really messes up the overall taste. Maybe this is how all creatine tastes, I don’t know, but the fact is that mixing this in has started putting me off my post-workout shake. So much so, that for the last couple of days, I’ve stopped using the creatine.
• Digestion (3/5) : It’s probably psychological, due to the bad taste, but I find it hard to get this stuff down.
• Overall : My biggest problem with creatine has got to be that it doesn’t seem to work for me. Yes, I’m a newbie, so I’m probably not training right, but seriously, I make gains at the same rate without creatine. If I felt the great creatine gains other people seem to get, I wouldn’t mind the taste. But, it doesn’t work, and tastes bad. Really can’t recommend this.

Ubuntu Women

This has been around for a while now, but I thought it was worth mentioning. Ubuntu Women is aimed at increasing the female/male ratio in the ubuntu world. It’s not a women-only forum, but simply a place to organize and talk about projects and ways to get women more involved in ubuntu, or more comfortable in the forums and linux world in general.

I think this is a very good idea, and if you agree, swing by the forums to get involved, or just to voice your opinion. There are a lot of guys who seem to get upset, thinking that women get to have a special forum, bla bla bla, so every vote of approval from women counts.

What happens when you combine Ubuntu and Gentoo ? Gen-bun-too, apparently

So a couple of folks down at the ubuntuforums have started trying to put together that holy grail/panacea/anti-christ, ubuntu+gentoo. It’s like peanut butter and jelly, or better yet, peanut and butter.
The idea is to use ubuntu sources, for the ease of use, but allow for recompiling using optimizations, in a limited gentoo-ish way. It’s very early stages, but it looks like they’re honestly scratching their heads over it and trying to make things work, instead of just bullshitting about how awesome and l33t things are going to be and why ubuntu/gentoo sucks and the other rocks.

If this sounds like a good idea to you, and would like to contribute or encourage, or just see whether it ever pans out, keep an eye on this thread.

Step by step instructions to install VMWare Server 1.0 on Ubuntu Dapper

Follow these detailed, easy steps to get VMWare Server up and running. You never know when you’re going to need to deal with some pesky file format, or sort out a problem for a friend who uses windows.

Cottage Cheese recipes

Pancakes…. nachos… cheesecake… smoothies… waffles. Follow the recipes on this page, and you won’t be bored with your cottage cheese anytime soon.

Make your own Palm Ebooks using MakeBook

I like to have an ebook on my palm, just in case I find myself waiting somewhere unexpected, and I don’t have a printed book with me. I also like reading classics and classic philosophy, which means that there’s plenty of free electronic texts around. Here’s how you can create your own ebooks in linux :

mkdir ~/installs/MakeBook
cd ~/installs/MakeBook

wget http://ereader.com/download/product/15097/makebook.tar.gz (or go to the site and read and accept the license, if you want)

unzip MakeBook\ 1.0.0.zip

tar xzvf makebook.tar.gz

java -classpath “makebook.jar” com.peanutpress.MakeBook

Point it to an input text file, and an output file, and it will generate your ebook.
You’ll also need a reader, available here.

QComicBook. A, umm, comic book reader.

If you’re a fan of comic books, you’re going to come across cbr files at some point. This is a compressed format for packaging jpegs. Going through each jpeg in a comic book would be annoying, but thankfully QComicBook transforms it from a chore to a joy – well, at least for good comics.

To install it in Dapper, simply add this to your sources.list :

deb http://qcomicbook.horisone.com/ dapper main

And then execute :

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install qcomicbook

Enjoy !

Mousewheel in Emacs

Mousewheel not working in emacs ? The beeps giving you headaches ? Edit your .emacs file to include the following :

(mouse-wheel-mode)
(setq bell-volume 0)
(setq sound-alist nil)

Of course, if you don’t have a .emacs file, create one.