Oh snaps!

Ubuntu 11.4 was released today. I’m think I’m going to wait a little before updating my netbook but I am eager to give it a go.

Earth Day

– jesus freaks need to chill the funk out (mad props if we do die in a massive earthquake on may 22, 2011 tho)
– it’s earth day, stop handing me pieces of paper!!
– giant pictures of mutilated aborted fetuses are pretty metal
– hare krishnas make beautiful sounds and smile beautiful smiles
– god hates everyone except people who show their faith in him with hateful signs and banners and privately hired security
– I am all for population control

Kaws…

You ready. Tomorrow at noon EST. www.kawsone.com

Kaws x Bathing Ape Milo

I missed these last time. Collab with someone who I was not familiar with but they are on some melty shmelty. They are pretty rad and sold out pretty fast.

kaws companion kaws companion kaws companion

Happy Birthday Dock Boggs!

The man, if you don’t know get started here. Country Blues and Sugar Baby are prolly his most popular tunes but I also love Sammie. He had an odd choppy, clunky, somewhat staggered sound to his playing which is what initially attracted me to his music. Even though it sounds like hill billy music it possesses an otherworldly quality.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oACJ3VOHmhY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5KlMOZOH7m4

and a lil later in the game
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2hvdqQ7qfs

Must Have Android Apps

android market

So it’s been a while since I got my samsung vibrant android phone and I have come to rely on a bunch of really cool apps that make the phone even better.

For starters all the social networking apps are all pretty good. I also noticed all the companies seem to have their own apps ie: twitter app is by twitter, facebook app is by facebook, etc. All the Google apps are great too: Calendars, Gmail, Maps, Navigation, Reader, Talk (there’s many more!).

Barnacle

Barnacle is an easy way to get your wifi tether on. It turns your phone’s 3g signal into a wifi hotspot so you can mooch off of it with your laptop. There are other alternatives out there that claim to do the job better. Some are more advanced and require a lil bit more know how but this was easy as shit and worked as advertised upon installation.

DoubleTwist

It is itunes for android users. It is available for mac and pc but not linux (luhaaaaaaaame) It isn’t as nice but you’ll be fine. Install doubletwist on your machine and then download the app from the android market. Use as you would itunes. Done.

Dropbox

If you don’t use dropbox already shame on you! It is nice having a lil mini cloud with your shit on it accessible from everywhere. You can access dropbox from any browser. They also have an application for your computer so you can do everything you can do on the website but by just dropping files in folders, very nice. The android app simply adds the same function to the phone. With the app you can access all your files and download or upload to your dropbox.

ProfileChanger

ProfileChanger lets you set up schedules for your phones ringer profiles. For example I created a profile called “work” which I have set the phone to vibrate mode at 8:30 am M-F. Then I created one called “play” which I have set the phone back to normal mode at 5:00 pm M-F. This avoids me being in the office and having to not laugh when my phone goes “beeee beeeee ~ mail muthafucka!” Be sure to use the apps exit button to avoid turning off the app (it needs to run in the background)

Ringdroid

Very awesome, simple app. It’s a very basic editing app but it gets the job done. You can just use the first 5 seconds of a song rather than the whole song and save that as a mp3 and use it as a ring tone. Super handy if you have a bunch of music on your phone.

Titanium Backup

Use this to create backups and delete bloatware. Must be rooted though (go here if you aren’t rooted yet). I also believe if you purchased the paid version you can set your updates to automatically upload to your dropbox (Woot!)

I use plenty of other random apps too but these are the ones that I like most. Once I work up the balls to play with roms I will be attacking clockwork mod. Any cool apps you use? Sound off in the comments.

Samsung NC10 Net Book X Ubuntu 10.10

Samsung NC10 x Ubuntu 10.10

Well where to start? I guess I got the Samsung NC10 because it was on craigslist and it was affordable. I researched it and it was fairly compatible with linux. It was also a nice net book on it’s own when it came out a year or so ago. I also recently purchased a Samsung Vibrant and it is a nice chunk of phone and runs android smoothly. Seeing as android is somewhat based on linux I figured Samsung would be a nice option. I also looked into a few other Acer and Samsung net books but just figured I’d get more bang for my buck from the NC10.

I found a few good resources on the Samsung NC10:

As far as my linux flavor I originally intended to run Fedora but did not find as much information about it in regards to the NC10 net book. So after looking around it seemed people were having more success and ease using ubuntu. Plus I am a total linux noob and ubuntu for some reason just felt more user friendly and like I would have less of hassle converting over as a windows user who uses a mac at work.

Preparation

I read about a few instances of some of the function keys not working on the NC10 once ubuntu was installed. The people who didn’t have this problem were on a later BIOS (11CA). I looked into flashing the BIOS. Some people did it some people said not to. I went ahead and upgraded the BIOS before testing out ubuntu as I didn’t want to have to deal with figuring out how to get regular stuff like the functions keys working upon switching operating systems. Everything worked fine. Get BIOS here: http://www.samsungpc.com/08/products/nc10/firmware.html#firmware (you’ll want 11CA) Folks who were against upgrading the BIOS preferred connecting to voRia’s repository via ubuntu’s update manager, link for that here: http://www.voria.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=296 Note: Do this after you install ubuntu.

Installing Ubuntu

After that I followed the online guide to making the usb launcher http://www.ubuntu.com/netbook/get-ubuntu/download#column-8. This is pretty cool and allows you to run your net book on ubuntu when you have the usb drive plugged in. However upon restarting the net book with the usb plugged in it didn’t restart into ubuntu. I tried it a few times and could not get it to work. I looked online and found out I had to move the usb drive above the C drive in the BIOS mode. You get into BIOS by pressing F2 when the samsung logo displays (right when you turn on the comp, don’t blink or you might miss it) Once in there be careful and look for the tab that says “Boot”. When you are on the boot page select the first item “Boot Device Priority”. Follow the directions on the page for rearranging the boot order. Save and re-boot and it should read the usb drive before the hard drive.

Once I got that all sorted out I gave ubuntu a try and everything seemed to work just like it did in windows. My wireless connected up, webcam worked, function keys worked and firefox worked. I went with ubuntu netbook 10.10 and after testing out I installed it. A few minutes later I was running ubuntu on my Samsung NC10. I opted to go for a complete hard drive wipe but ubuntu also offers the option to dual boot so when you start your netbook you can choose if you would like to boot in ubuntu or windows. You can also partition your drives when you are installing if you are into that sort of thing.

Once everything was installed and running I unplugged the usb and began figuring stuff out. The netbook version of ubuntu lets you choose from a few different versions of ubuntu when you’re on the log in page. This came in handy later as I was not digging the netbook version sidebar. It has no options to be hidden or moved around at all. It did look really nice though and it kept me happy for about two days. Then I noticed I could log in to different versions of ubuntu and I have been using the desktop version since. The desktop version allowed me to maximize the space in ways the netbook version wouldn’t. However the netbook version offered a really simple interface that made it operate more like a giant ipod touch or something like that. Whereas the desktop version is much more like what you’d expect if you were coming from windows/mac.

Post Installation

I set up the desktop just how I like it once I became familiar with how the panels work (so awesome!) and I got all the programs I need to build a solid website (except for photoshop but I got GIMP). It also has workspaces, a growl style notification system, easy way to make launcher icons (shortcuts), compiz effects and all sorts of expected stuff (mail/chat/social clients, rhythmbox (itunes like music app), open office, photo manager, software center).

Some helpful links for getting things right:

Gripes

Not many but still a few. First, when you start up the machine there is some scary bug that throws the following error message “modprobe: FATAL: Could not load /lib/modules/2.6.35-generic/modules.deb, no such file or directory” it appears to be harmless and just something that was overlooked (?) I haven’t really looked into fixing it after finding out it wasn’t anything to be worried about. Second, Evolution mail is turds and I cannot get it to connect to my gmail contacts for the life of me. But to be fair I haven’t really looked into that too much either since I usually just use my gmail in firefox. Gwibber appends the word “is” to facebook posts and in general I found the unity one interface to still need a little bit of work, mainly the sidebar needs get out of the way as it eats up a bit of precious screen space. But that’s it! Anything else was too minor to remember or I can live with.

Final Thoughts

Ubuntu rocks! Use terminal, it is your friend. Don’t be scared, the water’s fine.

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Say Hello to Wade

Yeah, you (should) remember Wade from Garfield and Friends. I seen this shirt and flipped (sideways). It is an absolute must have shirt! Wade yo!! Wiki knowledge bomb in case you grew up in a paper bag:

Wade Duck (voiced by the late Howard Morris): Wade is the “cowardly craven duck” of the farm. His good nature is sometimes shadowed by his overwhelming hypochondria and phobia of everything. He constantly wears a kiddie pool inner tube (which, as a recurring joke, has a head like his on the front that always imitates his facial expression and what direction he’s looking to match his own).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Acres#Characters

A tip of the hat to the Hundreds for joining forces with Jim Davis on some ill, nerdy shit. Peep now! Many thanks to Ivan Ives for rollin out to the shop in LA and pickin it up for me!

Hundreds Garfield - Wade

I Made X-mas Tags!

I just wrapped some gifts and made little tags out of the left over wrapping paper scraps. Pretty cool but slightly time consuming. I doodled them up using one of those pens with four colors. If I make more I will post them up. These have the potential to get pretty evil.

xmas tags

Ludwig Love & Larkin 2004

Got a package in the mail a few days ago from Ludwig. A few weeks back they sent an email to acknowledge the fact they aint dropped nuthin new in a minute and offered a print/sticker pack for the first 100 folks to email back. Naturally I emailed back and was lucky enough to score. All you other clothing companies out there need to take note and up your customer appreciation game. Pics courtesy of the ludwigvan blog.

ludwig stickers

Stickers

ludwig print

Print

I also recently had the pleasure of drinking some fancy pants wine my mom brought me. It was this Larkin 2004 Cabernet Franc. It was so friggin good, smelled very wood infused in the glass. Not sure if that is good or bad in the wine world but I dug it. She left some other bottles I’m hoping are also as yummy.

Larkin 2004

Post Turkey Reflections & Ubuntu

First off, a big thank you to Conor & Lu, his awesome family and Bob & Des. I would like to think I’m too cool for thanksgiving but I can’t lie, I was slightly bummed that again I did nothing for thanksgiving with my own family because my mother and brother were both working. So it was really nice to get my mind off the that and get some turkey in me while sharing laughs with good people. Um… not once but twice yo! It was a nice long weekend with mucho good foods (yum!)

When I wasn’t eating I was getting to know my new Samsung net book. I recently had the urge to fiddle with linux so I installed ubuntu on the net book and rid myself of windows xp and I must say I am impressed. Once I am fully comfortable with linux and all it’s ups and downs I would even entertain the possibility of becoming a linux only household with a crappy pc around in case of emergency. Yeah it’s like that.

Why so impressed? First off, it is really easy to install: download ubuntu, make a usb installer, reboot with usb drive plugged in, test it out and install. That’s it! I will admit I was a bit frazzled watching windows xp go bye bye, hoping it went smoothly and that I wouldn’t be stuck with a bricked net book I just purchased. But it was fine and in a few minutes I was rockin and rollin in ubuntu figuring stuff out. Second reason is it works. It actually works, I thought I’d be hacking it to bits to get it how I like but right out of the box it works well enough for any seasoned mac or pc user to find his or her way around. And the most important reason I was so impressed was that it’s FREE! By free I mean free, zero dollars for a product that is in my opinion as good if not better than windows or mac (depending on your needs). There is something way gratifying about knowing that I’m running a computer that will in no way give any money to Bill Gates or Steve Jobs. It is also gratifying to know that I am using a product that is put together by people who are working on it out of love for the technology and not for the money (sort of, I’m sure most of em have other paying gigs). That isn’t to say the good folks at windows and mac don’t love their jobs, just not enough to do it for donations.

So yeah, nothing but good things to say (okay, okay a few uber nerdy gripes but I’ll be okay) I will cover my particular net book model, ubuntu version and gripes in a later post in case anyone is heading down the same path.

That time of the year

When I try not to  say what I am actually thinking out loud. I’ve been conditioned to care but I am unlearning it a little more every year. We should be thankful for every day and every one of life’s mis-givings. I would also like to give thanks to all the laughs and the ability to look left when everyone else is looking right.

And with that I will post the annual creature slapping turkey and I will commence watching the parade and getting faded.

Have a Creature Turkey Day!