Mmmm…
Posted by chris in Uncategorized on 27 June, 2010
Delicacies in Cambodia. The bright red things are chiles. The rest is up to your imagination.
Driving quiz…
Say you’re driving a truck on a narrow road also occupied by scooters. There’s a puddle up ahead. Do you:
A) Slow down before hitting the puddle so as to minimize splash to the other road occupants?
B) Swerve suddenly to the right, ignoring any scooters that might be beside you?
If you chose A, you’re not ready to drive a scooter in Viet Nam. On a positive note, nobody gets splashed.
Catching up…
It’s been a while. Things have been very busy and hectic as we wind down the really hot season and move into the merely hot season.
We’ve moved to a new house in the Vinh Loc area of Ho Chi Minh City. It’s a little further out from the centre than our previous house, but it’s a much nicer and quieter place.
The rains have not yet officially arrived, but there have been auditions. The other night there was so much rain that our trash basket began to float away. Some kind soul happened by and moved it to higher ground.
As usual, I have immigration issues to deal with. We’re off to Cambodia as a family this time, and the boys and I will tour Angkor Wat. Daniel is looking forward to seeing the temple of the Tomb Raider.
I have a bunch of blog posts saved up in my head, and I hope to get them out over the next few days. Sorry for being so slack in keeping everyone up to date!
The dangers of pre-release software…
As previously mentioned, I’m running the Lucid Lynx preview of Ubuntu. It’s due for release 29 April, and I can hardly wait. My experience with it so far has been extremely positive.
One issue with pre-release software is that it’s in a state of flux until it actually ships. I receive update notifications pretty much every day, and some of the updates are pretty major (274 packages this morning). The most recent update broke things in a bizarre way that took me about an hour to fix:
During the update, compiz was removed and my nVidia driver broke (kernel changes). I quickly figured out the nVidia problem and fixed it, but it took me a while to figure out why I couldn’t activate compiz. It didn’t occur to me that it would be gone. Only compiz was removed–the setting managers (simple and complex) were both left untouched. Reinstalling compiz fixed the problem.
The symptom, in case someone else runs into this, is that setting Desktop Appearance would hang the Desktop Appearance manager. Even after reinstalling compiz, the next run of Desktop Appearance hung. The run after, though, worked, re-enabling all of my desktop tweaks.
I did have to go back and make my standard compiz tweaks, though–those weren’t preserved when compiz was removed and reinstalled.
Running pre-release code can get you access to cool, cutting edge features. But it’s not without it’s potential pitfalls. And with open source, you don’t get to cry when it breaks. You get to figure it out on your own (with help from Google) and fix it yourself. “If it breaks, you get to keep both pieces.”
Ubuntu + Chrome: Rock Solid Web Browsing
I’m using the soon-to-be-released Lucid Lynx (Ubuntu 10.4) and I have to say it really rocks. Coupled with Google Chrome, it’s the best web browsing experience I’ve had on my laptop. Rock solid. If a page load disrupts things, Chrome identifies the faulty page and kills it. In the rare case that the browser itself gets torn apart, the next stop automatically rebuilds all the open browser windows and tabs. No worries about losing your place. And it’s fast, too.
One thing that did bother me was the way Chrome uses its own UI elements to paint the window borders and control buttons. The buttons wind up on the opposite side from every other apps buttons. There is a way to fix that, though. In Chrome Options, on the Personal Stuff tab, select ‘Use system title bar and borders’. Chrome will take up a little more space, but it’ll look the same as other windows and the window controls will be where you expect them.
I’ll be writing up a little more on Ubuntu shortly, as the release date approaches, so watch this space. For now, the pre-releases are rock solid and if you like to live on the edge, feel free to install now. No need to wait for the April 29 release date.
You can’t make this stuff up!
Posted by chris in Blog, Freelancing on 15 March, 2010
Just look at this fine press release!
Chúc mừng năm mới!
A little belated, but Happy Lunar New Year to one and all!
We’re spending Tết in Can Tho with Kim’s family. This is my second Tết in Viet Nam. I’m hoping that next time I’ll be able to see what the celebrations are like in the Big City.
I have a couple of blog posts in me looking for a way to get out but, in the meantime, my Western clients are unaware that it’s a big holiday here so I actually have work that needs doing.
So Chúc mừng năm mới once again, and I hope everyone has a healthy and successful Year of the Tiger!
Still not going to buy a Kindle…
A while back, I wrote a blog post about why I wouldn’t buy a Kindle. At the time, I accused the publishing industry of forcing Amazon to hobble the ebook scene. It turns out I was wrong about that. The true story is much more complex, and convinces me even more that I’ll never buy a Kindle.
Charlie Stross, an author that I greatly admire, explains the latest happenings. There certainly is a fight between publishers and Amazon on ebook pricing, but Amazon is not the knight in shining armour that its customers would probably prefer it to be. Customers and authors are both caught in the middle of this, and that’s unforgiveable. There is much to admire about Amazon. Amazon certainly has a duty to its shareholders to maximize profits, and I certainly don’t blame them for trying. But using authors and customers as pawns is flat out wrong.
However this plays out, I will likely be reading ebooks on my Android phone for a while. I’ll wait, patiently, for a tablet that meets my requirements. And I’ll probably write about it when it arrives.
But I still won’t get a Kindle…
Propagating a meme
This blog post’s only purpose is to propagate a meme…
And now for something completely different…
In which I not only don’t bash Microsoft, but praise them. Who knew?
Microsoft is a company every geek loves to hate. And, really, what’s not to hate? I’ve railed in the past about their operating systems and I still think that for the datacenter there are better alternatives. Their productivity software, on the other hand, has been maturing steadily. If you’ve not had a look, let me highlight a couple of unsung gems:
Windows Live Writer – I use this tool for blogging to my WordPress blog. It’s an excellent, minimalist editor on one hand and a complete blog management tool on the other. It gets out of the way and lets me write. It has a simple interface and automates a lot of the tasks associated with blogging. Things like automagic photo upload, drag and drop text and image insertion, links to the WordPress management page—these are all handy features that just work. I’ve edited a ton of entries on various blogs and it’s been rock solid.
Windows Live Photo Gallery – I am a huge fan of Picasa. I use it to manage my photo library and Picasa Web is where I keep my photos for sharing. Picasa makes it simple to tag photos with faces and geolocation, then upload them to my Picasa Web account. Having said that, there are features that Picasa lacks and Windows Live Photo Gallery takes up the slack. The most notable missing feature in Picasa? Stitching.
It’s hard to tell, but this photo is a composite of 9 photos in a grid (3×3). My camera only has a stitch assist mode for horizontal strips, so the 9 pictures were shot without any kind of in-camera stitch assist. Point, shoot, move over, shoot. Eyeball it all the way. In Photo Gallery, all I had to do was select the 9 photos and select “Create Panorama Photo” from the right-click menu. Photo Gallery chewed on the pictures for a while, then gave me the results. A little cropping and the final photo is as you see here.
Classic strip photos work well too:
This panorama is almost 270 degrees of arc and consists of 7 individual shots. This time, I used the in-camera stitch assist. The panorama function of Photo Gallery was able to generate almost a complete 7 shot stitch. Only minimal cropping was required.
I’ve not given up on Picasa. It’s preview function (for viewing photos in Explorer) is fast and rich. It’s integration with Picasa Web is excellent, of course. I’ve really only used Photo Gallery for the Stitch Assist/Panorama features, but for that it’s truly an excellent tool. I plan on playing around with it to see how it compares with Picasa for more basic functions. Expect a post about that soon.
So. Two Microsoft productivity tools that don’t suck. There are more, and I’ll write about them as I get around to using them.