Happy New Year!

2010 has already begun across the globe and we’re about 12 hours away from the new year here in Boston. Three years ago I posted links to a great Java applet for the countdown on timeanddate.com and I wanted to make sure the links were easy to find for this year’s festivities.

• Java Applet Version (my personal favorite)
• Static version
• Single city text version
• Flash version with more graphics

I tried to embed the Flash countdown for Boston but WP.com won’t let us embed Flash objects due to security reasons. I understand their reasoning, and it’s just one more reason Nanci and I talk off and on about moving our blog to another service so we can include fun things like this countdown and the Ubuntu countdown widgets.

I hope everyone has a safe and happy New Year. May your 2010 suck a lot less than 2009 did for so many of us. I know 2009 is being a b!tch right to the end for me. I ordered a 160GB hard drive for my system to replace a pair of drives so old one they’re starting to fail and it arrived today but I got a very ugly reminder when I went to install it. I need to make sure I get an EIDE drive, not a SATA drive that my system has no clue how to talk to. Grrrr.

I do have some links that I’ll try to get posted this weekend (since I won’t have to spend so much time giving my system a clean install of Ubuntu on the nice fresh drive) and I have a review of a DVD I mentioned some time back that I’m hoping to get posted before long now that I’m finally able to enjoy it.

Does Chrome or Chromium get extra long on some sites?

A week or so ago I noticed that the Chromium browser would suddenly resize itself and get much longer than my desktop size. I reported Issue 31126: Chromium resizes the window without warning or user action, which ended up being a regression of an old bug. It also turned out to be a duplicate of Issue 30995: window resizes vertically when scrolling in a long page. But I saw some fantastic news yesterday on Issue 30995. Jamin.Thorns posted comment 46.

Bug fixed in Chromium 4.0.283.0  

I ran a sudo apt-get update and sure enough, the problem is gone! If you’re having this problem you can get a recent build and if you’re running Ubuntu you can use the Chromium Daily Builds PPA. While using that PPA could expose you to new bugs and regressions like the one that prompted my bug report, but it will also get you the latest fixes. Just make sure you are running Chromium version 4.0.283.0 or later and you’ll be free from this glitch.

The great news is that with this fix in place, as well as the extensions that are now even easier to install, Chromium is now an even better option for people who don’t want to run Firefox or Opera. It’s definitely better than the current version of Epiphany that’s available in Ubuntu 9.10. Now if only we can get a version of the StumbleUpon extension that works reliably on Chromium and I’ll be one happy penguinista. While it works for some users I can’t seem to get it working without having to jump through hoops to rate a page I’m on and I really wish I could give thumbs up to some of the web pages I visit. Although I’ve seen that if I have the SU toolbar active on one tab the next tab I open will also have the bar so it may work better than I realize.

Get control of how your Startup Applications launch

It’s an old, well known, issue. You’ve got some apps that you want to run every time your GNU/Linux system starts, or at least every time you log in. But some apps need other apps to run first, like you may need something to wait for your compositing manager to launch so the app doesn’t end up with fugly borders around them. Google Gadgets for Linux is a prime example. If the gGadgets launches before the compositing manager is running you will have to exit the Gadgets and launch them again once Compiz is launched or your nice clean desktop isn’t so clean. It’s an issue I’ve looked for a solution to off and on for at least a year.

Yesterday I ran another search for the problem with the Uboontu search engine and found a thread that was started in April of this year. In what I have since learned was the very first thread by UForums user drs305 I found a great howto for setting the session startup order. Thanks to drs305′s easy to follow, and some tweaking, I was able to insert a 45 second delay on starting the Google Gadgets Sidebar and now it looks as clean and pretty as it’s supposed to. Of course your mileage may vary so the best thing to do is to try different sleep settings until you find the right setting for your system.

You’ve undoubtedly noticed that I haven’t stated the setting that I used to insert the delay. That’s intentional because his entire first post in the thread has information you should read. Using other info in that post allowed me to finally get the proper icon for gGadgets on the Startup Applications window.

Merry Chrismukkuh, everyone! And if you’re running a WordPress blog you should read Nanci’s latest post for a great way to close comments on your really old posts so the spammers can’t use them to try to spread their comment spam.

There’s an easier way to perform bulk comment permissions on WordPress.com blog posts

A while back Peng and I agreed that we want to disable comments and linkbacks on our older posts to try to limit how much comment spam we have to deal with on a daily basis. Unfortunately we’ve disabled the permissions on a post-by-post basis as we’ve seen spam comments on them. Ugh.

Today I was poking around and found a pretty decent solution. If you have a blog on WordPress.com (it may also work with the WordPress software but I can’t say for sure since I don’t use it) go into your edit posts screen and get a group of posts you want to disable comments and linkbacks on. I used the date filtering to show the posts for a specific month. Then click the select all box in the header row to select all posts on the page, select Edit from the Bulk Actions menu and click Apply.

Now all you have to do is to use the dropdown lists to change the permissions on Comments and/or Pings to Do not allow.

Now click on Update Posts and you’re done with that group of posts. The only two ways it could be easier is if you could filter for multiple months at a time and be able to edit more than 15 posts at a time. There may be a setting to change for the latter but I haven’t found it. As it is now it’s pretty time-consuming if you have as many posts as Peng and I have written over the last couple of years but it’s a lot better than having to make the changes one post at a time.

I’ve gone though the old posts and disabled comments on everything before May of this year. I’ve allowed comments to continue on posts that are still getting comments, but if you’re unable to comment on an old post please let Peng or I know and we’ll get comments re-enabled for that post.

Updated 12 March2010: We’ve turned off comments on this post because it’s turned into such a spam magnet. We apologize if you have a valid comment to make on this post, but even with limited comments allowed on our older posts it’s still taking quite a bit of time each day just to go through the comment spam to see if valid comments got a false positive from our spam catcher.  -Peng

The GlobalMenu PPA has been updated for karmic users

One of the issues people have been dealing with since the upgrade to Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala is the fact that the GlobalMenu Team’s Personal Package Archive (PPA) hasn’t been updated for the new release (Issue 524 on the GlobalMenu Google code issue tracker). I’m very happy to say that Pierre Slamich has resolved the bug and karmic users are now able to use the PPA to keep their version of GlobalMenu updated, as it now has version 0.7.8 packages for the current version of Ubuntu.

Many thanks to Pierre and the rest of the GM team. You guys rock and I owe y’all a case of brewskies.

Lifehacker readers love Mac4Lin

I know we get a large percentage of our daily traffic from people looking for information on the Mac4Lin project, and I often see people coming from Lifehacker, but the Lifehacker folks have even better news for the project.

When they were compiling their Most Popular Linux Post of 2009 they found that they had to include their article Mac4Lin Gives Linux Desktops the Complete Mac Look on the list. Right between their mentions of their articles on Elisa and Jolicloud we find this:

Mac4Lin Gives Linux Desktops the Complete Mac Look

It really, really does. If you don’t mind the obvious break in your your free-as-in-speech fidelity, it’s a pretty nice setup.

You can read Anirudh’s post about the good news on his blog. Congrats to Anirudh and the rest of the team on making software so nice that it seems everyone wants to know about it.

Full Disclosure: I am a member of the Mac4Lin dev team. I mostly helped update the documentation for their (somewhat) recent version 1.0 release.

Our favorite spaceman steps down as Canonical CEO

[I hoped to post this yesterday but it turns out Evolution is having issues parsing the Planet Ubuntu RSS 2.0 feed. When I switched to getting the RSS 1.0 feed I was able to snag some updates but I definitely need to file a bug on the Planet's RSS 2.0 feed. -Peng]

Yesterday the Ubuntu community got some surprising news when Mark Shuttleworth, CEO of the company that is behind the Ubuntu family of GNU/Linux distributions, announced that in March, 2010, he is stepping down as the top dog at Canonical.

From March next year, I’ll focus my Canonical energy on product design, partnerships and customers. Those are the areas that I enjoy most and also the areas where I can best shape the impact we have on open source and the technology market. I’m able to do this because Jane Silber, who has been COO at Canonical virtually from the beginning, will take on the job of CEO.

As Martin Owens on his blog, Mark will be taking “a more focused Steve Jobsian roll for Ubuntu.” Taking his place at the helm will be Jane Silber, Canonical’s Chief Operating Officer.

On behalf of Nanci and myself I want to join Martin in extending by congratulations to both Mark and Janet and wish them the very best for the future. I still think Ubuntu’s future is so bright I’m glad my glasses automatically darken in the sun.

Peng’s links for Thursday, 17 December

Sorry about not posting a links post last week (or two). I’m going to include some of the links I found because they’re still beneficial even a week (or two) after they were published.

• Stephan Peijnik: How to copy partitions under GNU/Linux the easy way. I may not be the only one hoping to find a new hard drive under the Chrismukkuh tree next week, and you may need a way to transfer your data off a dying drive, or even just a smaller one, to a new one. Stephan has a very easy way to accomplish the task. And he has the added benefit of spelling his name the right way. Just ask my son Stephen.
• Launchpad News: Getting the most from bug mail. Filing bugs is an important part of being a member of he open source community, but sometimes the follow up emails may not seem to be giving you much value for your time. The Launchpad team has some information that may help you make the most of your bug reporting work while taking up less time out of your busy days.
• Chromium Blog: Extensions beta launched, with over 300 extensions! I know this post is just over a week ago, but if you don’t know that there is an official home for extensions for Google’s Chrome browser and its open source sibling Chromium then you should definitely check out this post. It’s not as easy to surf as Mozilla’s addon site but they have a lot of very helpful extensions to help you use Chrome or Chromium as your new default web browser. To make things even better, Google Chrome for Linux is now available for beta testing.
• Panji Nushantara: How To Use Google Public DNS or OpenDNS in Ubuntu 9.10. If you find that your ISP’s Domain Name System lookups are slower than you find on other systems you can try a pair of public DNS services. Panji makes it easy with step-by-step instructions and screenshots.
• Rick Spencer: And Do it Begins. We can no longer say that there are no malware threats to Ubuntu users. Luckily the news isn’t nearly as bad as you may think from that last sentence. Kees Cook follows up on Rick’s article with a very simple bit of advice: “As quickly pointed out by Rick, don’t install random software that isn’t in the official distribution archive unless you really know what you’re doing (and copy/pasting commands from a website doesn’t count). You’re just asking to be made part of a botnet.” You’re damned Skippy, Kees.
• Juanje Ojeda: Is GNOME 3.0 for users or developers? GNOME Shell is being mentioned as one of the cooler things in the upcoming 3.0 release of the GNOME desktop environment but Juanje looks at the important question of who are the new features designed for?
• Andrew Cowie: Get your icons back. Have you lost the icons on your dialog buttons? Some people prefer a plain text look to their buttons but some don’t. Andrew has information on on why it changed and how to get them back if you prefer seeing them.
• The Fridge: LoCo Directory. The official Ubuntu Local Community (LoCo) Directory is now online! If you’re a part of a LoCo make sure your information is accurate, and if you’re able please help get it translated so even more people can make use of it.
• Launchpad news: Showing the number of affected users. Launchpad has long allowed you to say if a particular bug affects you, but you can now see how many of your fellow users have been bitten by the same bug. That is one nice feature they’ve added.
• Martin Owens: Anime Boston: First Goal Reached. Back on the third I included a link to Danny Piccirillo’s article about efforts to get Ubuntu represented at Anime Boston. Martin has some very good news for us about the plans.
• Robert Ancell: The demise of the function key. If you’re like me you often use function keys to do things without having to wade through menu after menu to do something. Unfortunately many keyboards are re-purposing those very keys, if they include them at all. That’s not just bad news for users, it’s bad for developers as well.
• Tom Dryer: Setting up Ubuntu 9.10. Tom has finally gotten Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala on his system and he shares some tricks he used to get it to run better. He’s also got screenshots of a damned nice theme that he uses.

I hope you’re all getting things ready for Chrismukkuh. Rather than add to the holiday post I wrote last Saturday Nanci and I have been adding some vids to her stickied holiday video post. If you’re still looking for some great holiday wallpaper you should check out the offerings over at blirk.net. You can also check out the posts in the Delicious December 2009 Screenshot Thread over on the Ubuntu Forums. And speaking of Chrismukkuh posts, I have one more link to share with you all before I hit Publish:

• Collin Pruitt: Christmas Online. Collin has some sites to help you make the most of your holiday. And if you’re more of an anti-Chrismukkuh person you should definitely check out the official YouTube channel for Foamy the Squirrel and all the folks over at iLL WiLL PrEss.

A few of our favorite Chrismukkuh things

Yesterday my brother posted some great Chrismukkuh videos that he’s found, and of course there are other holiday videos that are worth making sure you know about.

We’ll probably be adding more vids as we find them or remember them (yes, you should post some more vids here too, Peng) so I’m going to make this post sticky until Twelfth Night.

Peng has a great idea.  The videos do shove the other posts down pretty far. Rather than have to decide which videos to keep on the main page and which to make you have to go to the entire post to see I’m just going to add a break here. As the guys at SciFi Wire say, the videos are after the jump.

Merry Chrismukkuh from Nanci and Peng!

In less than two weeks the jolly fat man will be loading up his sled and visiting all the good cats and kittehs. A good friend of mine showed me a video that we simply must share with y’all to help celebrate the season. Make sure you also visit the page Nanci started with even more fun holiday videos.

BBC America will be sharing a trio of Doctor Who specials this season. They’ll start with The Waters of Mars on Saturday, 19 December, and continue it with The End of Time, Part One on Saturday, 26 December. You won’t have to wait long to see the conclusion of not just the story but also David Tennant’s time as our favorite Gallifreyan one week later on 2 January. If you love The Doctor you should make a point of visiting the BBC’s Doctor Who Adventure Calendar every day. You can’t see the vids if you’re not in the UK but you can enjoy the stories, wallpapers and other goodies they post. There is a way to enjoy the vids on our side of the Pond thanks to the YouTube channels for Planet Who News and the Doctor Who Time Vortex.

The Doctor isn’t quite your cuppa? How about the latest video from those crazy cats and kittehs at JibJab?

Perhaps your idea of celebrating the season is just some holiday tunage. You may remember back in October my writing about an incredible concert DVD. (The DVD is still at the top of my wish list in case anyone wants to send it as a thank you for being helped through my articles here.) I found a pair of video clips from the disk that may be just what you’re looking for, but the person that posted it to YouTube has disabled embedding so you’ll have to head over to YouTube to see it for yourself.

No matter what holiday you celebrate (or don’t celebrate) Nanci and I want to wish everyone a happy and safe Chrismukkuh. We really appreciate everyone coming to our blog.

Updated 23 December: I learned this am that the maternal one is in fact buying me the DVD I’ve been drooling over since late October. It won’t be here in time for Chrismukkuh Day but I’ll definitely be enjoying it soon enough. If you’re still thinking of sending a gift my wish list still has some items on it that I would be more than happy to receive.