ew gui

Free YouTube to MP3 Converter

2009-04-28T14:05:00.001-07:00

Last year I needed to steal some recordings off of YouTube for a video project. I found this little program that did exactly what I wanted. The other day I found this fantastic girl who covers Bad Religion songs with an acoustic guitar.

I knew I needed to reinstall that program.

Free YouTube to MP3 Converter does exactly what the name says. And it actually has a great interface. All you have to do is paste the URL from the video you want and it will detect it. You can add a whole bunch – very useful if you want an entire collection of Bad Religion covers, say.

You can even tag them in-program, which is awesome. You can’t select a bunch and tag them all as the same artist, which is a bit of a bummer, but points for tagging nonetheless. Saves an extra step.

Then all you do is select an output folder, an mp3 quality (or wav), and voila – done!

Just make sure you don’t install the Ask.com toolbar that tries to sneak onto your computer from this installation. Bastards.

Watchman Impressions: What’s Missing and What Works

2009-03-06T14:25:00.001-08:00

Well, it’s the morning after the midnight showing of Watchmen, and I just finished reading the graphic novel right before the showing. I thought I’d share some comments, seeing as adapting a comic into a film raises some questions about the change from one medium to another.

Also of note is Alan Moore’s total distancing from the project. Only Dave Gibbons is credited in the film as the artist of the source material.

BEWARE: Spoilers ahead.

Let me say first that it was a very enjoyable movie. The cinematography was great; Gibbon’s art was clearly used as storyboard references for the vast majority of coverage. Which was awesome. The camera moves mimicked the reveal shots of the panels, too.

My main problem is the whole thing feels really truncated. As some other review said, in my skimming of Metacritic, it’s like a Cliffs’ Notes version of Watchmen. A really dense Cliffs’ Notes version, and one that expresses the themes of the movie on the whole – but still misses lots of the nuances of the comic.

For instance, the investigator in the Comedian’s apartment is in the beginning of the film. The scene plays straight from the comic. But we never see him again. He reoccurs several times in Moore’s storyline, and an entire sequence with him being suspicious of Nite Owl and eventually raiding his workshop is totally missing. In my opinion, a great scene that raises the stakes and would have complemented the pacing of the film nicely.

Laurie isn’t a smoker. There’s no interpretation of the very neat looking cigarettes smoked throughout Moore’s novel. It would have motivated Laurie pressing the “Fire” button on Archie. (In the movie, she presses it just for shits.) It would have been a good background item on the streets of NYC.

And speaking of the people of NYC … we hardly see them. Granted, this was obviously done for the sake of the film’s runtime, and something that the mainstream audience probably appreciates. Still, the news vendor bits always hooked me, as well as the black psychiatrist’s growing desire to “really” help people. (That chapter of the novel was really told largely from his perspective. That’s 1lost too.)

What about Seymour and Mr. Godfrey? We don’t get a glimpse of their “office” until Rorshach drops his journal in their drop box. In the film, we don’t even have any idea where it’s arrived. In the comic, it’s very clear that they recieve the journal and ignore it, implying that Rorshach’s words might reveal some truth about the situation if only it were published in time. In the film, we only get the tail end of this.

It’s almost a little insulting to get brief glimpses of side characters and nothing more. ESPECIALLY when we get to see them just before NYC explodes – like the news vendor. Like, “Hey, that guy!!! – oh, he’s dead.”

I was also disappointed that there’s hardly a mention of Hollis Mason, let alone how he and Nite Owl regularly share nostalgic conversations over some beer, and certainly not his death – one of the most shocking and brutal moments of the comic, in my opinion. We get Laurie’s mom, but not Hollis.

Bubastis should be red. Right? Looked cool though.

This is a real nitpick, but when Nite Owl is guessing passwords to Veidt’s computer, he originally types “Rameses,” which is incorrect, and then types “Rameses II” – which is correct. In the film, he doesn’t guess “Rameses” without the II at all. I thought that was a memorable touch in the comic.

And, of course, there’s no alien at all. Granted, it seems a bit strange in the comic, but it makes perfect sense: the Earth would unite to fight off an alien invasion. I was looking forward to seeing all of the destruction caused by the thing, massacred bodies strewn about New York City.

Instead, we get a weird bomb, blamed on Doctor Manhattan. It still unites the Earth, but it’s kind of weird. It doesn’t really change anything; the people still unite (as addressed by Nixon), Rorshach still flees to reveal the truth to the population at large and is killed by Manhattan (except this time, Nite Owl watches), and then he still leaves the planet. There’s an interesting part where Veidt stands still while Nite Owl punches him, and it is intense to see the Owl’s reaction to Rorshach’s body exploding.

The movie did a LOT of things right, though. It adheres to the comic strictly for the most part, and focused on making it work as a film. The parallel action works just as well as it did on paper. The voiceovers are well integrated. Most of the characters are given good screentime, including the Comedian. Billy Crudup is great as Dr. Manhattan; in fact, all of the actors are excellent. I have no qualms with the casting choices (though Adrian seemed very young).

Check out What's On Watchmen's Cutting Room Floor? for some insight on what was actually filmed and not included. Apparently, the DVD version is going to be a little over 3 hours longer and will include Hollis Mason’s death. Cool. Hopefully the DVD contains the film that should have premiered last night.

It’s a great exercise in translating a comic to a film and succeeds in many ways. Still, you don’t get the whole picture that you would in reading the comic; the sometimes poignant ends of the chapters are lost in a blend, the missing side characters detract from the overall atmosphere, and the ending change seems unecessary, if not altogether bad. It’s a film worth seeing, and gets across many major themes of the book, and will introduce it to a lot of new people. For those who dearly love the comic, I feel it will be little more than a companion piece, exhibiting how many of its scenes work fantastically on film, but the larger structure seems somewhat strangled.

ONE thing about the Windows 7 Taskbar.

2009-01-24T22:19:00.001-08:00

I really want to be able to designate which programs exactly I want to be “grouped”.

I want Pidgin to have multiple buttons on the taskbar, each with the buddy icon of the user.

Dammit.

I want that.

I SHOULDN’T HAVE TO DO THAT (in Linux)!

2009-01-13T21:16:00.001-08:00

You know, I really enjoyed my six-month-or-so stint with Ubuntu Studio, but I have to admit that since trying Windows 7 6959, I’ve been hooked. I love the new taskbar. I love the jumplists.

No, Windows doesn’t have compiz, it isn’t free software, it doesn’t have a good repository system at all, it could be more customizable.

But it also actually plays flash video, doesn’t complain when multiple applications want to work with audio, and natively runs powerful editing software like Premiere. I found not one good video editing application on Linux. Sure, I could run Premiere in Virtualbox – but with just 2 gigs of RAM in this computer (I know, 4 is so cheap now!) it doesn’t really run all that well. But this is really what ended up happening a lot: I always had Virtualbox running because flash video IS such an important component of my web browser’s functionality. If I go to a page with like 30 Youtube videos embedded, my entire system may have locked up.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s fun, it’s a thrill, it feels good to use open source software.

Yes, it’s going places. I’m sure linux will conquer flash video. Linux is going to be a GREAT alternative in a few years, and I’m glad it’s finally being shipped by some major PC manufacturers. But is it going to be because our computers are so fast that emulation is a cinch, or will it be because people are actually actively developing linux software?

I want to hear about a competitor to the Windows 7 taskbar. I want to hear about how they’re going to rip off jump lists. Because they’re great ideas. And I love me some gnome-panels, really!

Questions concerning Windows 7 Beta

2009-01-13T21:04:00.001-08:00

Is this it? I mean, probably, right? The thing is pretty fucking good, very stable, very fast.

Question:

Is this it for the taskbar? Cause I would really like to have an option to make specific programs not group together. Yes, I realize there is a little bit of customization with the taskbar, but grouping options are limited to “Always combine, hide labels” – the default, “Combine when taskbar is full,” and “Never combine.” Microsoft, if you’re really giving me control of my taskbar, why can’t I just pick and choose which ones I DON’T want grouped?

I mean I’d really like to have my Pidgin windows separate. But that’s really the only thing I care about. I can’t figure out a way to do it. I’m constantly switching Pidgin windows. Having two open makes a previously 1-click action a 2-clicker. Shoot.

Also, why the hell can’t I just put the icons anywhere on the taskbar, like on apps for gnome-panel?

Don’t get me wrong, it really isn’t that bad – and I love the grouping functionality a LOT, especially in programs like Word, Notepad, Explorer, and basically any program that could benefit from a “tabbed”-esque interface. And Jump Lists being SO functional makes the taskbar button that much more useful, as I feel Jump Lists are a GREAT way to find and open files. Heck, the reason I love Tomboy Notes on Linux is because it provides me with a little drop-down of my recent notes that I can easily manage to a degree. Jump Lists suddenly give Notepad all the power of Tomboy Notes. (Finally!) And I’ve been waiting soooo long for Word to have a tabbed interface!

Anyway, my point is, keep up the great work and keep developing the taskbar – don’t let it stagnate like it has since it’s introduction in Windows 95. Please!

Question:

When will developers have the ability to program their own unique … what do you call these things? The things that come up when you hover over a taskbar item? Hoverboxes, I’ll call ‘em… do developers already know what they need to know to program these mini-apps? Because that’s what they should be. WMP12 already demonstrates it.

Fucking BUTTONS in that shit! Winamp is suuuch a better program, how long will it be before I can do this with Winamp?!?!

Another request: make any program’s balloon notification from the system tray go to the action center. That’s what I thought it was going to do – hide those fuckers but put ‘em all in one place when I’m ready to look at ‘em! Then I could just have the action center icon in my tray, and presumably it would change whenever I had messages… but I would be balloon pop-up free.

Things I Love About Linux, pt. 1

2009-01-03T01:32:00.003-08:00

And miss, lately, since I’ve been using Windows 7 quite a lot.

Simply by hovering over any field that accepts mousewheel scrolling that field will react to your mousewheel, uh, scrolling! I don’t know if that’s specific to GNOME, or if most or all Window Managers for Linux do this, but my last distro did, AND IT WAS FREAKING SWEET.

In Windows, I have to click on the field before it accepts my scrollwheel input. What a bummer!!!! WHY DOES IT HAVE TO DO THAT??

If you know of a fix for Windows, please tell me! My mouse is a Logitech MX700. (And I love it.)

The Firefox Awesomebar is better than Windows instant searching.

2009-01-03T01:32:00.001-08:00

Seriously. Because it learns from what you type. I went to type “live writer” when I clicked Start to open this blog writing program that was a download from, I believe the Windows Live Essentials package. (In fact it might be the only Essentials program I downloaded. It’s not bad either!)

You’d think I’d have been fine, knowing I opened the program this way before, so I only typed “live” and hit enter. It’s called Windows Live Writer, so that should work, right?

And I get Adobe LiveCycle Designer ES 8.2… What in blazes is that anyway?!

And the other two that show up are Office Live Add-In Help and Office Live Workplace. No thanks. Even “live w” just moves Office Live Workspace to the top, and offers Windows Live Movie Maker Beta, and Windows Live Photo Gallery! What the heck?? I actually had other Live Essential programs installed and I forgot. Probably because I only opened them once, if at all! I know this blog doesn’t get that many new posts but I’ve definitely opened Live Writer more! THAT should be the first thing that pops up when I type “live w”, let alone “live”!

Firefox’s awesomebar would know better than this. When I type “p” in Firefox, my bank, PSECU pops up. I can type p, ps, whatever – it’s apparently the only

Brownie points for searching, I think, my Libraries’ designated folders for actual files with ‘live’, so that’s nice I suppose… if I wanted to hear the Violent Femmes’ ‘Kiss Off’ [Live], anyway. I assume this is Windows indexing feature (which strangely broke on my last Vista install).

Err, anyway, on to the real post…

Web Site Jump Lists

2008-12-29T12:46:00.001-08:00

Expanding on my “Super Tab Bar”, I’ve made some mockups of how Jump Lists (here called Shortcut Lists) would work. By right-clicking on the favicon, the jump list comes up.

The beauty of them is that they’re fully configurable.

Intrinsically all web sites can display a list of starred/bookmarked pages, as well as recent pages (maybe this one should be off by default). It should also be able to detect as RSS feed for a site and display that, too.

But like in the Digg.com example below, sites should also be able to program to their benefit. This can be tailored to user accounts, as in listing pages dugg or submitted, and friends’ activity. It could also merely be used to display feed-type material but perhaps tailored for the jump list. That would of course require no log-in.

One could take this farther and create mini-extensions. I’m thinking there’s already a Weather type applet that does this in IE8, but I might be mistaken. Something like that would work well.

Other site-specific ideas I have include favorites on Youtube, Flickr, even SuicideGirls. eMusic could display your most recent downloads or new arrivals. Netflix could suggest movies for you and display your queue. Gmail could show inbox entries. A calendar application could be very useful.

It might even be possible to use some kind of infrastructure that allows the porting of widgets like those found on Netvibes and iGoogle.

I realize how WIndows 7 inspired this all is, but it’s just too damn fun to think about.

Firefox 4 Concept (AKA Tab Bar Overhaul)

2008-12-28T11:46:00.001-08:00

First of all, I was curious as to whether Google Sketchup had a kind of "floor planning" feature that I could use to help my rearrange my basement. It's just plain full of shit and I had a notion to rearrange furniture to make it more livable.

I never actually got to downloading SketchUp because the realization set in that the basement just sucked because it was so full of crap that we just didn't have any other place to put. There are couches - but the only thing that sits on them is boxes of crap.

So for some reason, I click on the Wikipedia entry for SketchUp instead, and I skim through it, and the bottom of the page has one of those Wikipedia Template things that help you navigate other related pages. I really like those templates. The one on this page was for Google, since SketchUp is a Google product now, and it was bolded in the template under Software. (There's also groups of pages under Advertising, Communication, Platforms, Search, and so on - really a lot of products.) At the bottom of the template is even their annual revenue, stock symbol, their motto, employee count. At the top is a list of directors and other notable people in the company.

My point here is, the damn things are cool. But I'm getting distracted. I'll save that for later.

Ah, surfing the web, and having new tab syndrome.

If only I could star that tab, like in Gmail. I would star it Red or something, as you could when they added Gmail Labs and all the star options. Ah well. Hopefully the tab name will help me remember I was looking at a tree of Google's subsystems. No, wait, it says SketchUp. I'll probably forget.

I search for "star a tab firefox" just to check and see if nobody already made the extension. Nope. No results. Did you mean: "start a tab firefox"? Google asks.

The Wikipedia logo IS nice, though. It kinda looks like shit with Colorful Tabs on, though. The white background makes it very squarish. Well, it could be transparent. Google's new small "g" favicon has a transparent background, there. Favicons should really be more well designed.

No. Wait a second.

Web browsers need to recognize favicons larger than 16x16 pixels! That is NOT much room to work with.

Then I looked at my Windows 7 Taskbar.

What if favicons were like 48x48, and ... wait a second ... what if the browser grouped subpages of a site together like the new taskbar does?

I mean, my tab bar is a total mess. It's a mess right now. There are arrows leading to tabs on either side of what's visible. In the past I've even had multiple rows of tabs on.

I think the tab bar needs an overhaul. Time for some quick and dirty Photoshopping.

Okay, I obviously got a little distracted because I intended the proof of concept to show thumbnails for that Wikipedia Template. But I digress. Take a look and please try to ignore just how much it looks like the Win7 Taskbar since I pretty much just copy/pasted/edited.

Funnily enough, the entire Firefox interface is definitely smaller than it is now, which means more viewing room. I realize my concept is a LITTLE cramped, but still.

Mostly because in my concept a lot of the empty space is condensed, but really, what’s the point of empty space anyway? I think the CS4 interface for Photoshop and some of the other updated programs is a proof of concept of that, but I’ll talk about that later…

I realize that this is a blatant copy of the Windows 7 taskbar and I didn’t really develop an original interface. (Too bad Windows isn’t open source.) But I think there’s DEFINITELY room for browser tab bar improvements. For many of us, tabs are just plain getting out of hand, moreso than taskbar items. And a lot of the same behavior that the Win7 taskbar introduces would work well, I think. Including pinning items to the bar (ie. Gmail in the example.) Heck – maybe even Jump Lists would work well for some sites – maybe every time you starred a page it would be akin to ‘pinning’ it to a list. This might work well for items at Amazon, Youtube videos, etc etc.

Also, you can see that in my Flickr example, the actual image is represented in the thumbnail preview. I mean, why not?

An Expand All button would display all pages in the main browser window.

I also don’t see why there couldn’t be a hover behavior that previews pages, just like with the Windows 7 Taskbar…. maybe I should be pitching this to Microsoft as an update to IE????????

One issue is the multitude of pages that don’t even have favicons. But there’s no point in worrying about that right now.

Anyway, if anyone’s interested, I’ll gladly do more mockups, but I really don’t think anyone reads this thing. If you like, Digg it.

Holy Windows 7, Microsoft.

2008-12-17T19:47:00.001-08:00

Yes, I know I’ve been excited about Linux lately, but Microsoft’s endeavors in the OS world have always been something that, at the very least, gives me something to talk about.

With Vista, my talking was more like, “All right – they haven’t really changed very much from XP!”

So I hoped that history wouldn’t repeat itself. I hoped that they would come up with some creative solution to solve taskbar clutter, a better way of implementing folder bookmarks, and maybe a more customizable tool tray on the taskbar.

It’s like they were reading my mind because the Windows 7 interface now looks like this:

Just look at how many applications are running there! And you can still clearly see what each one is! In fact, some are conveniently grouped together!

I realize that some will or already are claiming that the new taskbar is a direct ripoff of Mac OSX’s dock. Yes, I recognize that programs are now represented by a large icon, and programs can be pinned there permanently, and you can re-order them to your liking. These things are all dock-like. On the other hand, the basic behavior of the thing is essentially unchanged – if you open a program from the Start menu, it will have a button on the taskbar, and when you close it, that button will go away. Is it inspired? Maybe. Is it a huge improvement? Undoubtedly.

But it goes above and beyond. I have always taken issue with managing multiple windows on the OSX dock. Just because I feel like a proving a point, take a look at the way it manages minimized windows:

Um, not anywhere near their main dock icons – in fact completely off to the right – and in total disarray, with no real way to differentiate one, say, Firefox window from another. Okay. I’m just bitter about Apple fans being on their high horses. I’m done.

But really, take a look at what happens when you have multiple, oh, Pidgin IM conversations open in Windows 7.

Wow! When you hover over the Pidgin icon, which looks a little “stacked” to indicate there are multiple windows, you get to see all three. And if you hover over a specific one:

-- all other windows will go transparent, save for their outlines. You might think this is just eye candy, but think about this in terms of the live thumbnails that were introduced in Vista. They were dumb. They were too small to see. Here, they’re a little bigger, but still too small to see many striking differences. But now, hovering over the thumbnail gives you a literally full size preview of the window, and your eye is conveniently drawn to it. This feature is called “Aero Peek”, I think… and it’s really nice!

Bah! Windows XP had grouping, you say. Sure it did. And it looked like this:

And personally, I always turned it off. (Yes, this screenshot is obviously from Windows 7. I wondered what would happen if too many windows were open. Although in this case, for internet explorer, every tab is listed… not window. I don’t really know why. It seems counterintuitive to the point of tabs. Firefox, thankfully, does not do this, although the Downloads and Add-ons windows ARE conveniently grouped with your browser window. Those two bastards caused a lot of unnecessary clutter.)

If I used IE, it would always look like this.

Another fucking great feature is Jump Lists. If you right-click a taskbar icon, a little guy like this comes up:

You get a list of recently opened files as well as files you’ve pinned to have available at your fingertips.

THIS IS AWESOME.
AND IT WORKS FOR EVERY PROGRAM.
THIS IS SERIOUSLY AWESOME.

Some programs also have tasks, like Windows Media Player has options like “Play All Music Shuffled” and “Resume Last Playlist.” The only thing that kind of sucks is that it isn’t clear how to customize any tasks for other programs. For example, Winamp has no tasks yet. Hopefully this can be remedied in the near future.

By the way, Windows Media Player also has a cool, different live thumbnail:

Skip and pause buttons! Cool! And functional!

Jump Lists are also present in the Start Menu. The right side of the menu changes when you hover over the corresponding arrow:

Seems like a good idea to me.

One more thing concerning taskbar icons. One window that always bugged me because it took up space was the “file transfer” dialog, especially during long transfers. Now, those dialogs are grouped with other Explorer windows, and actually, the icon’s background itself gradually turns green, indicating transfer progress. Nice touch.

The tool-tray, or whatever you call it, also gets a revamp. Not only are icons equally spaced, you now have the power to easily reorder them or get rid of them completely. Clicking the arrow brings up a little box that hides the other guys, and you can drag and drop to your delight.

Notifications are also handled more gracefully, as most windows messages are relegated to the new Action Center, which on clicking, does something like this:

Yes, I can dig it. It also helps that User Account Control (UAC) can be fine-tuned to be a little less nagging in asking for your permission to install programs. I still find it too annoying to be anything but OFF, but at least little icons let me know when I’m doing important things:

And in case you were wondering, that is in fact an install button for a font. I had no idea why I didn’t seem to be able to drag and drop fonts into the Fonts folder… until I noticed that button. You don’t even have to unzip them. What a convenience!

Microsoft is continually messing with the idea of Virtual Folders, but now they’re called Libraries, and I think they have some potential. Basically you assign any number of folders to a library, and you can sort all of the folders in various ways. I found it useful to make one for my school folders:

And then you can narrow things down by Type, like I can look at all of the ODFs I have in all of those folders at once:

I actually think they’re on to something – there are some practical uses for this, but it’s admittedly hard to find them. There are multiple types of Libraries, and if it’s a “Picture” library and not a “Generic” one, the option to sort by types like ODFs doesn’t seem to exist. If you change your pictures Library to a Generic Library, though, you can then look at all 6,000 of your JPGs at once, which is kind of neat.

Libraries: a little confusing and need some polish, for sure.

Okay, one more thing with this long-ass post:

New version of Paint. Jesus Christ. It even has a ribbon.

Windows 7

2008-12-16T09:49:00.000-08:00

I got my paws on a pre-beta, so you fools (all none of you who read this) better look out, there's gonna be some major posting very soon.

Linux Orpdort!!

2008-08-19T20:46:00.000-07:00

That's 'update' in Coach Z speak.

So, it's been quite a while since my last post. The good news is I haven't booted into Windows once since that post. As I discovered the other day, I apparently mucked up the boot manager when I did install ubuntu - so I couldn't have, at least until I fix that, anyway. Ha.

The other good news is that I love it. Really, I do. I didn't discover my Windows install was incapacitated until very recently because I didn't have any desire to boot into Windows at all.

So why DID I?

Well, games. Yeah, games. On the bright side, it was only 'cause I couldn't figure out how to get TeamSpeak to work, and Steam was acting just a little funky (the chat wasn't working quite right, and I was trying to join a group of friend's game in TF2.) And Team Fortress 2 actually does work flawlessly, assuming you add -dxlevel 81 to the game's launch properties. Likewise for Half-Life 2 and its episodes. That's a big plus because they're really the only games I tend to have a hankering to play (or replay as it were). Unfortunately, some day I'm going to want to actually finish BioShock, and replay Crysis... but that day will not be today, at least not without getting Windows up and running.

Amarok is great. It was crashing on me often at the start, but after changing the audio engine to xine it's been solid as a rock. I think I like it better than Winamp, although Winamp's AlbumList addon trumps the Amarok cover manager in many ways. The Amarok 2 nightly right now is awfully buggy and still missing a lot of features, but maybe a solution will crop up. Either way - no big deal.

I love the gnome-panel. I love how you can customize it to your heart's content. Task manager not where you want? Move it. System tray? Move it. Clock? Volume? You get the picture. The main menu is completely configurable, and it's terribly easy to add launchers to commonly used apps. But the best part are the apps you can add, super easily. Tomboy Notes is my favorite notepad-esque app ever. Glipper keeps a convenient drop-down of your copy/paste history. Phases of the Moon? Aww yeah. CPU stress indicator is handy, but the netspeed one lets me keep an eye on exactly how much data is going in and out of this machine, which is just plain invaluable.

Conky's real cool. I know a lot of people have it visible at all times, but I like to keep it in a compiz widget layer. Easily checked by tapping F9!

Flash support is decent. It varies. Sometimes Youtube vids play great, other times they look full of crappy artifacts or refuse to play. If you're scrolling down a page and there's an embedded vid, sometimes scrolling halts or gets real chunky.

Alas, there is Virtualbox. This is a whole 'nother article in itself. The idea is you install a new copy of Windows inside of your installation, and it works surprisingly well. I installed a (semi-hacked) copy of XP, and it runs as fast as any install of Windows I've ever used. Once you install the Virtualbox Guest Additions, you're able to access all of your folders as you normally would. And with the "Seamless" mode, it expands Windows to fill the entire screen, but lets you mix Windows windows with Linux windows! Just plain AWESOME. It works great on your second desktop.

Here's a short little video demonstrating it:

Half the time I keep Firefox running just because flash support trumps that of native linux. And for some reason I have terrible luck getting ANY of the eMusic.com download managers to work in linux, so I use the Windows version still.

Photoshop works quite well. So do most of the CS3 apps (Photoshop CS3 doesn't work in Wine, though CS2 does). I haven't done any REAL heavy lifting with Premiere Pro, but I had no problem splicing together some 300+mb clips and encoding the thing. (I do wonder what the encoding time would be like in a "real" windows install vs. the virtual one.)

It's a little questionable having only 2 gigs of RAM and having the virtualbox on quite often (as you can gather from the conky screenshot), but if I had 4 gigs I would have no qualms at all.

So, just a quick and dirty update. I don't know if anyone has even ever read this blog, but I guess I'll continue to (sporadically) keep it updated with my linux adventures and other GUI stuff that I've been neglecting.

PS. Compiz is AWESOME. Love the Domino effect, especially for opening windows.

PPS. Never really got those 1.1MB/s speeds much after the first few days of using ubuntu. I have NO idea where those came from.

Ubuntu Thoughts (plus Photoshop CS2 on Wine!)

2008-07-03T14:46:00.000-07:00

So, I've gone Linux.

Well, it's not my first time. Nor can I truly predict at this point whether it's safe to say I'm done with Windows, but at least for this summer, my goal is to not have to boot into Vista for any reason.

So far, so good.

Technically, I've installed Ubuntu Studio, a sorta sister distro of Ubuntu. It's based on the latest 8.04 release, which I admit I DID try to install, but after continual mishaps with the Live CD installer, Ubuntu Studio's installer worked on the first try and has a few nice perks so I see no reason to ditch it.

My hardware often clashed with Linux. I've had network issues, with some ethernet cards (often onboard ports) not working at all. I've had sound issues, which took me a LONG time to figure out (turned out the ALSA mixer had an extra channel full of fuzz turned up the whole way). I've had graphics card issues, especially with my X800, and having to manually configure X after installing. Mounting hard drives was the worst - I've been specifically putting all my files and media on a separate partition for both windows and linux to access, but it was always a supreme pain to mount them and have to keep 'em in fat32.

And on the software side of things, Firefox 2 always seemed sluggish, Flash was a bitch, GAIM left me wanting more, and installing programs just confused me. And fonts looked nasty.

But it's been a few years since I've done more than just muck about with live CDs - I built a FreeBSD/XFCE desktop from the ground up back in maybe '05, and that was about as far as I went.

It probably helps that I recently (around christmas) put together a brand new system, with a Gigabyte mobo, Core 2 Duo chip, 8800GT, 2 gigs ram, sata hard drives, and so on. But the installation was the cleanest ever. In fact, all those niggling issues I had in the past were essentially GONE. With absolutely no extra steps, my sound worked perfect, I connected to the net instantly (and strangely, a lot faster than in Windows), my partitions (NTFS, now) were detected instantly and mounted painlessly, my graphics card displayed the best resolution even before downloading proprietary drivers (again, straightforward, too!)....... remarkable.

Pidgin (previously GAIM) has become my IM client of choice over the years, so I welcome it, and Firefox 3 works as brilliantly on Linux as it does on Windows. Flash actually works, too!!! Amarok is an easy transition from WinAmp and its cover manager is solid compared to winamp's AlbumList. After installing some TTF fonts, everything is looking sharp. VLC is working better than ever, Google Earth is available, Hamachi seems to work ... and of course my favorite notepad app, Tomboy Notes, is there. I really love the customization potential of the gnome panel.

Oh, and Compiz is awesome. Wiggly windows!

Installing programs via Add/Remove and Synaptic is ten times better than searching out programs on the web and its library is quite expansive. Even Wine-Doors, a gui installer for wine, can download certain programs. I used it to download Photoshop CS2, after reading various blog posts about the general not-working-ness of CS3, and was surprised to see it ACTUALLY DOWNLOAD IT. Sans keygen of course, but still cool.

I also tried to install Steam. Download speeds were insane. I never get more than 200 KB/s on this connection - at least in Windows - and all of a sudden Team Fortress 2 is downloading at not 200, not 500, not 900, but 1.1 MB/s!!! WHAT?! ... Awesome.

Well, I haven't really ironed out the bugs with TF2. It sort of runs, albeit with all the HUD blacked out, and it seems to crash when I change the textures from Low quality to, well, anything else. Still, a good start.

Photoshop CS2 crashed the first few times I tried to run it but after a restart it seems to work quite well. Performance seems good. Mouse control might not be QUITE as smooth as it is natively, but still good enough I could draw this bear. The filter gallery works fine as well.

So, I'll keep you updated. Next on my list of things-to-do is get VMWare or something up and running so I can edit video in Premiere CS3. I'd also love for Soundbooth to work.

New Windows UI in the works?

2008-05-01T09:43:00.000-07:00

Mark Hamburg, who has been working on Adobe's Photoshop since 1990 until he decided to create Adobe's Lightroom, has apparently been hired to work on "user experience" for Microsoft Windows.

"Given that I find the current Windows experience really annoying and yet I keep having to deal with it, this opportunity was a little too interesting to turn down. I can't imagine doing serious imaging anywhere other than Adobe, but I needed to do something other than imaging for a while."

[b]I[/b] think it's about time we saw some major innovations in desktop UI.

News
Photo Blog of Mark leaving Adobe

Extension Spotlight: Firefox Tabs

2008-04-26T18:04:00.000-07:00

It's time for Extension Spotlight.

The extensions in this segment, you will find, are often going to be Firefox extensions. But there are loads of great extensible programs out there, so please, send any suggestions you have! I'll try and be as varied as I can in the mean time.

Anyway, with the impending release of Firefox 3 (of which we will soon talk about the Awesomebar) comes a necessity for new and compatible extensions to tweak the ever-important Tab bar.

First of all, I must make some comments about Tab Behavior. For whatever reason, Firefox still does some silly things. The trusty Tab Mix Plus always remedied two important aspects:
1. I like tabs opening to the right of my current tab, not at the end of the list.
2. When I close a tab, I want to go to the last selected one, not the one to the immediate left.
While you can still do this with Tab Mix Plus, unfortunately some new mechanics of the tab bar are somewhat crippled. Primarily, I'm talking about what happens when you open "too many" tabs - there's now a nicely animated shrinking, and a horizontal "smooth scroll" when using the mouse wheel when hovered over the tab bar. (And I do love smooth scroll of all sorts!) In any case... TMP makes this stop working. And I kinda like it. So I tracked down two extensions to remedy (1) and (2):
1. "Tabs Open Relative"
2. "FLST - Focus Last Selected Tab" *

Now that that's settled, I came across a not-new, but very cool extension:
Faviconize Tabs. *
I almost always have several tabs permanently open. For me, it's Gmail, my homepage, and often Digg, so instead of having them take up precious tab bar space, this extension turns tabs of your choice into simple favicons. Cool. Easy to manage, aesthetically pleasing - I like it a lot.

As an aside, if your favorite websites have crappy favicons, try this extension: Favicon Picker *

(click for full image)

And what, you may ask, is the deal with the different grayed tabs? Well, another cool extension I stumbled upon is Aging Tabs *, which highlights your most recently used tabs and desaturates those that you haven't been using. It's a great way to keep your tab bar from getting out of hand, and likewise wonderful if you're trying to accomplish something that requires a lot of switching between a few tabs. (Like scheduling for classes, ugh!) Aging Tabs is especially cool because you can customize not only its colors, but the rate and method of aging. I have it set to age "When switching tabs" at the smallest amount possible (25%) to achieve the behavior I just described.

I also happen to like the way it highlights the active tab. I was actually looking for an equivalent of Colorful Tabs or ChromaTabs, neither of which work very well with Firefox 3 - and I found this. And I'm digging it. And you should try it, too.

Finally, I wanted to give a shoutout to Tab Scope, which on hover gives you a popup of the page at hand. Nifty at times, and fun anyway, you can even scroll pages in the preview, or go back/forward/refresh/etc. You can also customize the size of the preview. Cool stuff!

So, ye scurvy tab bastards, get customizing!
And check out Firefox 3 now! And share any cool things you find.

* (You will have to disable compatibility checking or use Nightly Tester Tools for these extensions marked with asterisks, but I've encountered no issues with them. However it is worth noting you'll probably have to register at Mozilla to be able to access extensions for "incompatible" versions of Firefox.)

Diverse Google Results

2008-04-25T13:33:00.001-07:00

There's a good read over at Google Blogoscoped about the good and bad in Google search results and the importance of diversity. Check it out. http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2008-04-25-n83.html

Paint.NET Innovations

2008-04-23T23:43:00.000-07:00

Here's a couple of the cool interface features that Paint.NET developers have implemented that I really like.

Open toolboxes turn transparent - only if they're on top of the image. With a hover, they're opaque. Nice. [The Layers toolbox itself could use an overhaul, though. That goes for you, too, Inkscape...]

Paint.NET is a great program for taking screenshots. It is a peculiar mix of "ease of use" and more advanced photomanip tools. It has a simple "Crop to Selection" function that is very useful. But one cool thing is when you're pasting something bigger than the canvas at hand, like a screenshot, this super straightforward and easy to read dialog pops up. How sweet.

My true favorite feature, though, is how easy Paint.NET makes it to work with multiple canvases. It actually has a sort of TAB BAR with thumbnails! This is a huge triumph over the way Photoshop does it, which is essentially "uh, just don't worry about that." (Actually, more accruately, "That's what Bridge is for," probably). So even though Paint.NET may not have the most features of any graphical editor, when you only have to do something simple, it makes it VERY easy to do so because the interface is so comfortable! Additionally, that drop-down arrow displays a longer list of all available canvases.

Paint.NET ain't perfect, but it has some innovation that should be recognized.

Facebook Chat

2008-04-23T22:28:00.000-07:00

What an interesting and potentially profound new feature for a massively utilized website.

First, I feel I must disclose some thoughts running through my head about "IM" as we know it.

I primarily use AIM (with Pidgin) and Google Talk (through both Gmail and the Windows client). Both of these programs are generally running on my system. And as it so happens most of the people I regularly instant-message are only on those respective networks; in other words, they don't use Facebook at all.

Insofar, I have only spoken with people I normally talk to on AIM or GTalk. I am curious as to whether Facebook Chat will inspire people who are "only Facebook friends" or "oh, I went to high school with him" contacts or any others who normally don't hold IM conversations to, er, do so.

And an IM is quite different from an e-mail or a 'wall post'. IMs are real-time. They're direct. When two people are having an active conversation, it feels like... an active conversation. Not a spell checked letter or a fleeting, non-committing piece of communication graffiti. Then again, on a whim a message like "Shitty exam today, huh?" to someone who is, anyway, your friend... why not?

If this ends up being the case, Facebook will not only have implemented one hell of an effective chat client, they will have opened up an IM network that is made up of a substantial number of people who they likely never IM'd each other before in their lives.

Facebook is not by any means the first instance of IM in the web browser. Meebo proves that the web provides a platform almost as functional as an operating system, and the Google Talk chat box inside of GMail demonstrates the same kind of "Locked to the Browser Bottom" minimizable windows.

Anyway, on to the interface stuff.

The new chat bar, which should be available to all Facebook users with a decent browser, spans the bottom of the browser window snugly, not quite reaching the edges. From the right, there's a button labeled 'Chat', then 'Notifications', then 'Online Friends', and finally all of the chat sessions that are engaged.

The actual chatting is very nice. I've experienced no lag. The window is topped with the contact's name and picture, and their status, if they have one. The chat displays the name and timestamp for the first message sent, and just the text on a new line after that, until there's a response. The results are clean and readable.

The Buddy List. Er, "Online Friends." When you press the button, the buddy list pops up like this, separated into online and idle contacts. Their status is listed in part (and in full with a tool-tip), and everyone - for once - has a picture! (Usually a relevant photo, too, not one of these. Oh, and there's an option to keep the buddy list on top at all times, if you like.

The little "Chat" button provides some basic options. You can set your status here, go offline, or change a few settings. You can also "Pop Out" the Chat, which results in this:

This appears to be the only manner in which you can "pop out". (Break on through to the other side?) There is space for chatting with one contact, which can be shrunk down to the same size as before, but only one person at a time. You navigate through multiple engaged conversations with tabs exactly like in AIM 6 and other IM clients with vertical tabs. There appears to be no way to have separate windows. There is also no way to collapse the friends list permanently glued in place. It's a Swiss-army knife of a box, but completely UNcustomizable.

This is what the chat bar shrinks to inside of the browser when in "Popped Out" mode.

If you're curious, that's what the chat bar looks like when you go offline. It doesn't shrink and there appears to be no direct way to completely disable it (short of using an incompatible browser).

Chat Bar with all windows minimized. From left:
Unread message from this contact. (The little red box bounces once, too.)
She's gone offline.
He's online, no new messages.
It's actually a pretty informative interface. Simple and effective.

Please comment with your current thoughts on Facebook Chat.

The Blog for User Interface Freaks.

2008-04-23T22:16:00.001-07:00

With plenty of screenshots. Mockups. VISUALS!

And NOT from a Mac user!