Easily Distracted

Rhythmbox is becoming more awesome

The new version of Rhythmbox included in Feisty, version 0.10.0, is very nice! I’m totally impressed with the enhancements since the last version I was using.

Jamendo integration: it will download the catalogue of artists and songs on Jamendo, and you can browse or play it just as if it was all on your computer, with the regular interface. If you like something, there’s a handy “Download Album” button. Music by donation. Awesome. Kinda like open-source for music. 🙂

Last.fm integration: I can now play my neighbour radio within Rhythmbox! Oh joy of joys! Seriously, that’s awesome. The last-exit client is still cool, but I think I’ll be using this most of the time now.

Magnatune integration: Just like Jamendo, except downloading an album requires purchase.

Here’s some screenshots of Rhythmbox:

Feisty and Wacom

Still not there. I’ve been waiting and waiting for the day I can plug in my tablet when I need it and start using it, without having to restart the X server. Apparently, however, that day is not far off.

From https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Wacom:

With the version of the Linux Wacom driver (0.7.2) in Ubuntu 6.06, 6.10 and 7.04, if you unplug you tablet, it won’t function when you plug it back in and you will have to restart X. For this reason, it is best to leave the tablet plugged in. This limitation will be removed when the 0.7.4 version of the driver is included in Ubuntu.

I can’t wait for that.

Azureus was acting strange, stopping all downloading shortly after it started. java -version told me my default java was not Sun’s Java 1.5, but gcj 1.4-something. In fact, I did not even have Sun’s Java installed.

Installing Sun’s Java:
Use Synaptic and search for “java5” to install or….

sudo apt-get install sun-java5-bin


Updating the default Java:

sudo update-java-alternatives --set java-1.5.0-sun


Seems to work now. Yay. Now I can catch up on Lost.

Gatherings

Had a nice get-together with the gifu-crew, on Sunday. Chinese-Taiwanese-Japanese fusion hot-pot shabu shabu. 😮 The pot was courtesy of Shirley (thanks!), despite her not being able to make it. Unfortunately, I don’t think there were are any pictures captured in the digital medium to show. But it was good times!

Ubuntu Feisty

My Desktop PC was not able to complete a dist-upgrade of Ubuntu from Dapper to Feisty, and consequently has trouble booting. Yes, I tried skipping Edgy, and I advise you not to do the same. I’ve decided I’m just going to start with a fresh install, because my system was very cluttered with stuff I don’t use or need. So I started going about backing stuff up, from a live CD boot onto my external USB drive… it was becoming very apparent that this would be painfully time consuming, as I was quickly running out of space. Easiest solution? Get another hard drive. I did that and am now running Feisty. Most of my settings and everything have been transferred and I must say I’m very impressed with the latest Ubuntu. Videos seem to “just work” on Gstreamer Totem, and many things seem much snappier. It will be making its way to my laptop soon, as well.

goals

When my computers are all back and healthy, I plan on regulating a few short-term goals:

• Reading a chapter a day in my Python book, Dive into Python. I think I’m on Chapter 6 or something, at the moment.
• Blogging every 2-3 days. I don’t need to have earth shattering news to report (do I ever?), but if I can’t say a little something every few days, then I’m certainly not doing enough with my time.
• Update blog aesthetics. ’nuff said.
• Enjoy the sunshine, when it comes.

I was planning on making a nautilus extension for easy image resizing, but someone beat me to the punch. It uses ImageMagick, is pretty much what I had in mind, and seems to work great. 🙂 I just tested it out with my meal from the Cloud 9 rotating restaurant, on March 8th. (I went there to take advantage of their extended Dine out Vancouver with a couple friends.) I now demand that you become hungry, with pictures of FOOD!

links of the day

• Western Perspectives on Japanese Game Development – Interesting Gamasutra link John sent me.
• Family Guy vs Christianity – I swear, Family Guy is the Kevin Bacon of Youtube.