i’ve been a longtime fan and occasional user of linux.  i had it running for about a  year as my primary operating system under ubuntu.  microsoft announced the release of their windows 7 RC-1 the other day, and as part of the announcement stated that all of their beta testers, whether you’re using win 7 beta or a win 7 RC, will need to do a wipe/reinstall to get the final, retail windows 7 installed.  not only that — which is somewhat expected — but to upgrade from beta to RC1, you also have to do a wipe/reinstall.  seeing as how i’m going to have to wipe/reinstall my system in the summer when the beta expires, i’m not overly inclined to wipe/reinstall my system now to get the RC1 running on it.

this got me thinking again about linux and osx as desktop operating systems and curiosity got the best of me.  it’s been a few iterations since i’ve played in ubuntu and i don’t think i’ve used wine since it hit 1.0 (and never used it for photoshop or ms office, really), so i decided it was time to poke around again.  the first thing i noticed was when i was looking for a version to download; in addition to the direct download and bit torrent downloads that they’ve had for a while, there was now a windows-based installer called Wubi (i’m guessing Windows UBuntu Installer?).  since i had my 1yr old daughter sleeping on my shoulder at the time, and moving to grab a blank cd-r may mean waking her up, i thought i’d see what Wubi was about.

wubi is a tiny download, but that’s because part of it is a downloader.  the speeds seemed too fast to be anything other than bit torrent, but even so, it’s a little unrealistic as a straight downloader/installer since even on my (really fast) connection, i still needed to wait about an hour for it to finish downloading, which is a bit much for one sitting (i’d be just as happy starting a torrent and walking away, then coming back to it later).  still, it offers 4 flavors of ubuntu, straight ubuntu, xubuntu, kubuntu, and mythbuntu.  i might suggest customizing it a bit so that the first step is just downloading core ubuntu files and the kernel, stuff that would be the same across the distributions, then offering a choice and a package list to pick what applications you want to install — that way you’re only waiting for the bits you actually want to install.  that kind of goes against the ubuntu philosophy of creating a package deal with everything you’d want out of the box, but i know a lot of non-n00bs use ubuntu, and for the advanced users, something like this would be a lot more useful to get out of a windows-based installer.

it finishes an asks me to reboot.  one interesting thing is it adds itself to the windows boot menu, as opposed to using grub as the boot loader — well, in addition to using grub, really, since grub is mostly irreplaceable in a linux install.  this means i was confronted by a windows menu asking if i wanted to boot to windows 7 or ubuntu rather than a grub menu.   then it loads a much prettier ubuntu loading screen than last i saw,  asks me to log in, and loads the desktop.  it actually loads so quickly, that i end up staring at the screen waiting for something to happen, sure that it must be loading something.  it’s been so long, i’d forgotten what a really fast operating system was like.

my primary goal here is productivity.  i am dependant on my windows apps that i use daily for design work.  namely, adobe creative suite, and, recently ms office.  i can probably do without office, using OpenOffice.org and Evolution for email, but the docx  has become so ubiquitous and, last i checked OOo still wasn’t supporting it, and being so familiar already with Outlook (and there really isn’t another email app with calendar integration that compares, unfortunately, especially with the Google Calendar Sync tool) that i made the switch.

so i set out to figure out if Wine was going to cut it for office and adobe cs.

the short answer is i’m several hours into this experiment and i’ve booted back into windows after having thrown in the towel.

the somewhat longer answer is this: i’m sure i could get the adobe and office products to install if i spent enough time futzing with them.  i found and tried various tricks and hacks and ultimately for office got to the documented error of getting 2/3 through the install before it crashes. (apparently it runs fine if it was installed on a different version.  however, the different version that would be functional is not the 1.0.1 that ships with the latest ubuntu, and not the 1.1.20 which is the most recent wine — it’s somewhere in between 1.1.13 and 1.1.17 and i didn’t spend the time futzing with older versions to try to get it to work.)  there were a few workaround/hacks and i was trying them, but one of them was sketchy (download dlls from random site with popups) and one of them required me to download CrossOver Games, which required an email, which i couldn’t really get since i didn’t have office installed and i didn’t really want to set up Evolution just for one email.  and my gmail inbox is inundated with thousands of messages now since i’ve switched to using outlook via pop3.

in the process, i learned a few things: pidgin has a plugin for facebook chat.  there’s a very nice osx dock-like window manager from google called avant.  you can now write to an NTFS file system – a previously impossible feat in linux, which really opens the doors a huge amount in ways that don’t really translate well into non-geek-speak, but basically means that you can now save stuff on your windows side of things (which means, among other things, that you don’t need to reserve nearly as much space for your linux install since you can now use your windows partitions natively — see, non-geek-speak-untranslatable…). also, my desktop resolution was matched 1:1 when i booted to linux — previously, in other installs, i had to downgrade to a lower res because it wouldn’t handle the higher display.  either my graphics card is better, the nvidia graphics driver is better, or there’s some other magic going on that makes the hardware more supportable.  whatever the reason, it not only displayed at my 1440 x 900 display but recognized the type of monitor i was using (considering that not all monitors identify themselves and even windows defaults to “generic plug and play monitor” about 90% of the time, i was impressed).

as i’m typing, i’m wondering if it may be possible to export my entire registry (or at least just the keys that apply to office and creative suite) and import them into the Wine registry and run my already installed versions that way.  and maybe i’ll try that.  eventually.  for now, running windows is a necessary evil, still, for graphic design.  now all you mac addicts will throw your arms in the air and gape about what kind of freak would use windows for design rather than a mac.  well, i’m not arguing with you — but the kind of freak that would do that is the kind of freak who would rather spend $600 and build his own, custom, kickass system rather than dropping $2500 for a mac pro.  period.  i would really like to try photoshop under linux, to see how well it handled memory allocation and if it’s more/less likely to crash when dealing with large files.  and really, dreamweaver isn’t all that irreplaceable, there’s plenty of other options under linux that would do just as well.  but that will, alas, have to wait.

the state department, after a “reply-all” storm caused their servers to crash.  apparently, not only were people pissed at being included on the reply-all lists, and sent angry replies, but the problem was further compunded by more traffic caused by email recalls.  

i’m left speechless.  read the post and scathing replies on /.

found on gizmodo

so we got a new client for thinktank.  it’s a wordpress blog, and it’s mostly maintenance and updates, but it’s still pretty cool.  our client wants to build/integrate a social networking component, so i did some researching and found KickApps Social Networking Software.  the more i read into it and compared the alternatives, the cooler (and more KickAss) KickApps became.  they run a SaaS — Software as a Service, an intriguing concept Wired wrote an article about a while back.  what it means in this case is that the social networking software is provided by and hosted on KickApps’ servers.  you setup the gateway, and everything else lives on their side.  which means less twiddling, infinitely easier setup, no maintenance (other than cosmetic stuff) and also means, for them, that they get to control the flow of traffic and how things work monitarily.  you see, as a free service, they control 2/3 of the ads that show up on the site.  1 of the 3 ad banners you control and can set up as you please.  there’s an option to buy out the ads, but according to the video on their site, it starts at $100/month for 5000 clicks — not a small-scale deal.  they have an impressive client list though; professional sports teams, vibe, npr, universal music, etc.  and it plugs right into the standard cms apps.  not just joomla! and drupal but also wordpress.  it’s exciting enough of a concept to tempt me to create an account and set one up here.  even though, you know, no one visits me, really.

i also just finished optimizing this blog for search engines.  from which i learned a few things about seo-friendly coding, and hopefully does something to counter the last part of the paragraph above.  all this seo’izing and working on a new blog made me think of making affiliate buttons for thinktank.  well, the other thing that made me think of that was the email i got that said that firefox set the world record for most downloads in a 24 hour period for the firefox 3 download day campaign.  it all made me think that creating more ways for people to link back to thinktank couldn’t hurt, and the buttons are prettier than my cleverly unobtrusive “website designed by thinktank” tag at the bottom of our sites.  oh, the other thing the seo stuff taught me (or reminded me, really, i already knew it, but i wasn’t implementing it) was that it’s better to link the whole phrase “website designed by thinktank” than just the “thinktank” which is what i was doing before.

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in other news, i got my computer working again, although i haven’t had a chance to look at the old hard drive, see if it’s usable, and figure out wtf happened.  for, you know, fun, and because i wanted to figure out what hardware i should get, or more accurately, if the hardware i was planning on getting would be comparable, i downloaded 3Dmark06 — the standard benchmarking tool that gaming magazines use to rate.  it seemed kind of silly to be using this benchmarking tool that i’ve read about in computer gaming world, but i wanted to see how erin’s system (roughly the equivalent of my broken system) compared with the media center which i was using (roughly the estimated equivalent of what i would be using).  i made a fatal error in doing this — while the mainboard and processors would be comparable (the mainboard i got was a mini version of the one i’m using in the media center) the fantastic graphics i was experiencing in guild wars on the media center was not due to a highly advanced onboard graphics processor which was my assumption at the time.  in fact, it was from the graphics card i got for the media center specifically because i needed s-video out to go to the tv.  as such, erin’s computer with an nvidia geforce 6600 ranked about a 600 and some change on the 3Dmark06 test.  the media center (not designed as a gaming computer by any means and only holding 1gb ram) ranked a 300.  these were, of course, piddly compared to the high scores of people who actually cared to build a gaming system and uploaded their scores to futuremark’s database.  so my plan was to get 4gb ram to overcompensate.  but, as i wrote in one more to file under “it’s always something”, i only had 2 ram slots and my power supply wasn’t spiff enough anyway.  so, having to order a new power supply, i also ordered a new graphics card as well, an off-brand nvidia geforce 8400gs.  it was the cheapest and most powerful solution.   when the power supply came, i started installing vista ultimate, and when the graphics card arrived a couple days later i started transitioning over to my new/old system.  in all, it’s performing well.  my new 3Dmark06 score is around 1600, and guild wars nightfall looks gorgeous — pretty much like the screenshots on their site.  so i’m a fairly happy camper and using a mostly functional operating system again.  while vista isn’t as simple and intuitive as osx and the start menu is all fuXX0red — seriously more messed up than previous versions imo — it works, the glass effects are pretty and it is better than XP and it’s no 95/98 by any means.   it’s definately an advance, albeit not a ground-breaking one.  there are a couple issues:

when i started using vista on the media center i discovered a problem — while i could create new folders (and new files through the right-click option) i could not NAME them.  i.e. New Folder.  New Folder (1).  New Folder (2).  etc. etc.  no matter what i did, i couldn’t get it to work.  apparently, after googling a bit, i discovered this was fairly common and required a registry hack to fix.  annoying, and a waste of a couple hours of banging my head on the computer screen.

random lockups and freezes in explorer, especially when accessing files on a shared network drive.  both vista computers do this so i can only assume this is fairly normal as well.  also, having to log in to the network drive after every reboot is obnoxious and i’m still trying to figure out how to save my password.  :/

so that’s the scoop.  a few quick, final closing remarks:

to answer the comment in my last post: avatars are user icon things for social apps like blogs and forums and messaging programs, but also are used by microsoft to visually represent different users.  it’s sort of the digitized representation of yourself to the world.

i’m planning on sending off my 8mm reels to get transferred to dvd in the next couple weeks.  once i get the dvd back i will rip the video, add new soundtracks and post them here (possibly to youtube as well).  i’m also going to do something about the gavin video and the guy in a hat video (guy in a hat might need to move to youtube also, just for kicks).

i want a google phone.

yes, i’m playing guild wars again.

look for joss whedon’s Dr. Horrible in a couple weeks.  it’s gonna be aweX0me.

so it’s been bugging me for a while.  why is it that in the comments of my posts, there are avatars (or generic, blank avatars), but no way to use/change/update/upload your avatar?  i even poked around in the user preferences in the blog several times trying to find where “upload avatar” was located, to no avail.

finally, i stumbled on — literally stumbled, i have no idea how or where i found it and i can’t find it since — the source of wordpress’s avatar implementation.  wordpress uses Gravatar which stands for Globally Recognized Avatar.

aside from sounding like some kind of lost Transformer (in actuality, Gravitar is a long lost Atari arcade game), Gravatar-enabled sites allow you to use a single avatar across the board without the need to re-enter all your profile info, upload a picture, etc.  now, to date, Wordpress (well, and Gravatar) is the only thing i’ve found using this.  however, it’s a neat idea.  having a centralized location for all your profile info is a good idea for that matter.  one place to register and then you can use that account (it verifies by your email address) across the board for everything.  sort of like the failed Microsoft Passport theory, except, you know, functional.  of course, Gravatar suffers from the same flaws of Microsoft Passport, which was participating sites…

anyway, i created my gravatar account and got my pic uploaded and voila, now my comments have an avatar.  so make your own gravatar accounts, people, because i’m sick of looking at those empty avatar shells.