Love Starbucks but don’t love IE and Firefox? Starbucks may not love you back.

Lately I’ve been noticing a disturbing trend in emails I get from Starbucks. For some reason the images wouldn’t load in my Gmail on Chromium, even when I used their link to view the message in my web browser. I would always have to fire up Firefox just to drag the link into a tab to open the page. I finally got sick of it and sent them an email about it on Saturday.

The emails I get from My Starbucks Rewards always come in with broken images, even when I click the link to view it in a browser tab. The issue occurs in Chromium (16.0.912.75 (Developer Build 116452 Linux) Debian wheezy/sid) and Google Chrome (15.0.874.121), both with my ad blocking software disabled, but not in my alternate browsers: Firefox (9.01) and Opera (11.60). I really hate having to open another browser just to see the images in your emails.

Yesterday I got a response from them that made me wonder how much I want to keep giving Starbucks my business. rather than copy and paste their response I took a screenshot so you can see I’m not changing what they sent.

Yes, you read that correctly. “Unfortunately the website and other elements such as the e-mails we send are only designed to work with the correct coding that Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox use.” I sent back a response pointing out that it’s 2012 and not everyone uses Firefox or IE, and I don’t expect a reply. I actually had to take a bit of time to make sure that I wasn’t coming off as a geeky jerk, and I planned on just letting the matter drop completely but last night I decided to share their email with our readers.

When I tried to get a screen capture of one of their broken emails the emails displayed properly, but that’s no guarantee that they’ll always display properly. Consider this post a word to the wise.

[HOWTO] Open PDF files within Chrome

This post is now available on Peng’s new Tux + Me blog. You can find it at http://bostonpeng.wordpress.com/2010/12/26/howto-open-pdf-files-within-chrome/

If you came to this site form a link on another site please let the site you came from know that the post has been moved. Thank you.

Chromium Daily works again

If you’re like me and use the daily builds of the Chromium browser you undoubtedly discovered that several sites, including Gmail and the issue tracking section of the Google Code project hosting site, flat out refused to load. At first I thought it was due to Issue 40221: Incessant “Page unresponsive” errors in latest published build (Win, Mac, Linux), but it turns out that was a Chrome issue, not a Chromium issue, and Chromium users were referred to Issue 43042: Latest Ubuntu chromium-browser broke Gmail and news.google.com. The problem in a nutshell is that build 46027 of version 5.0.393.0 broke something important and was unable to render pages. I also found Issue 43013: [regression] Chromium 5.0.393.0 will not load http://www.google.com, that displayed the same misbehavior.

While we were waiting for the fix to come down the pipeline some of us rolled back to version 5.0.391.0~svn20100428r45775 while some of us switched to the ‘dev’ build channel, which combines the joy of testing code without the possibilities of brand new untested code committing sexual crimes against canines. Either choice is better than what some of us consider the barely acceptable option (at best) of switching back to Firefox.

I’ve been keeping an eye on the daily PPA to see when an update was available, especially since yesterday I wouldn’t help notice that it was being reported that version Chromium 5.0.395.0 (Developer Build 46223) Ubuntu was resolving the issues from  build 46027 although newer builds on the PPA were failing. All day yesterday I was waiting for i386 packages for build 46539 to build, wondering if it was supposed to take over 3 hours for the packages to build. This morning the updates were ready for me to install and I’m very happy to say that I’m finally back to using current nightly builds of the Chromium browser without problems on any sites I’ve tried. Gmail works, Google News works, the Chromium issue tracking site works, and even Twitter works.

I am running Chromium daily builds on Ubuntu 10.04 LTS Lucid Lynx, but I have a few issues to track down before I post my thoughts on it. I will say it’s working fairly well, but a couple of instances are being a royal PITA. I want to say they’re fixed, or at least identified better, before I post my review of the upgrade.

Peng’s links for Sunday, 31 January

• Lior Kaplan: Hamakor, the Israeli Free Software Society, calls for the annulment of Software Patents. People have been calling for the end of software patents since it’s getting (almost) to the point where it’s getting tough to determine whether a new patent contains prior art due to so many patents being granted. I found this post on Planet Debian and I’m glad to see the Israeli Free Software Society taking the lead on this.
• MJ Ray: Get the Survey Monkey Off Your Back. I’ve long thought using surveymonkey was a pain in the rear because they (seem to) ask for so much from people who are just voting on a survey. It turns out that surveymonkey may be not just a pain in the rear but also violating UK accessibility and privacy laws.
• Lasse Havelund: OpenOffice.org is “a piece of crap” – or is it? OOo has gotten some pretty bad press lately so Lasse did a personal recreation of a study that had a group of teenagers try their hands at word processing and presentation management tasks using both OpenOffice.org and Microsoft Office 2007, all in the name of seeing how OOo really compared. He tends to use LaTeX for his writing and hasn’t used either OOo or Office 2007 much “over the last few years.” I won’t spoil his results so you need to read his post. You may be glad you took the time to read it and you can follow his links to get more background info on the test.
• Siegfried Gevatter: GNOME Activity Journal, and installing it on Ubuntu. I’ve been hearing about this app (formerly known as GNOME Zeitgeist) and am curious about it. Siegfried some nice info on why you’d want to use it as well as some easy steps for getting it installed.
• Stephan Hermann: Is it just me, or… People have been kvetching about non-free software being included in distros like Ubuntu ever since it first came out. Stephan writes such a good post on the matter that I doubt I could have said it better myself.
• DesktopLinux.com: Second Lucid Linux alpha said to offer 15-second start-ups. Eric Brown takes a good look at the latest early test release of Ubuntu 10.04, listing both the good and bad to be seen in this bleeding edge release, including some kvetching about support for some proprietary software being included (see previous link).
• Google Chrome Blog: Over 1,500 new features for Google Chrome. Google Chrome dev Nick Baum writes about some of the new features in Chrome and includes a video walk-through for installing an extension (not one that I personally use but you may find it helpful). The post is mostly about using Chrome on a Windows-based box but some of the info is also good for Mac and GNU/Linux users, as well as users of Chromium. There’s also a great tips post on the Chrome blog about managing tabs that you may find helpful.
• Launchpad New: ACTION: Back up old sources from PPAs. It turns out that Personal Package Archives on Launchpad are a little too popular. You may need to back up some of the packages you’ve gotten from PPAs. Jonathan Lange has some info every user of software from a PPA should have.
• Bastian Venthur: How to find packages installed/updated yesterday? If you’re like me you take regular updates to the software you run and every now and then you find a problem has cropped up after updating. The problem is that sometimes you don’t recall what got updated to know where to start tracking down your issue. Bastian asked he readers for ways to find out which packages got updated or installed and he got some really good responses. This is one post you’ll want to add to your permanent reference/resource list.
• Nick Mamatas: Ursula K. LeGuin to Google: Hands off my books! Not every author is satisfied with the proposed solution to the problem of Google’s plan to digitize books to make available online.
• Carlos Garnacho: Multi-touch support in Linux/Xorg/GTK+. Apple made other OS’s jealous with their ability to use two fingers to select and modify content on their smartphones and DMPs (Digital Media Players). Now GNU/Linux users can use it, if they can resolve the dependencies, that is.
• Steve Langasek: Ubuntu 8.04.4 LTS released. The Ubuntu devs have released the fourth maintenance update to Ubuntu 8.04 “Hardy Heron” LTS (Long Term Support). Since Ubuntu 10.04 “Lucid Lynx” will also be an LTS release this will be the last maintenance release for 8.04 LTS but there are about 70 updates in this update so if you run Ubuntu 8.04 you’ll want to take this update.
• Mike Hommey: Feeling alone. The Electronic Frontier Foundation has an experiment to see how much info your browser lets web servers know about you. I’m kind of worried about how much information they report about me.
• NewsAskew: Green Hornet #1 FREE! May 10, 2010… All right all you lovers of comics and Jay & Silent Bob. Kevin Smith has been lending his talents to comic books, including being the writer for the very first of the new series of Green Hornet comic books. Thanks to Free Comic Book Day you have a chance to pick it up without having to shell out any cash for it. And without risking an arrest for shoplifting!
• Nigel Tao: The Road to One Point Zerodom. Nigel is the author of the SuperSwitcher app, and he’s glad to announce that he has a goal of getting Superswitcher 1.0 out in time for the release of Ubuntu 10.04 LTS. I. Can’t. Wait.

I have more things to post but I want to give them their own posts so if you’ll allow a  little commercial promotion, I found a great product that you may join me in wanting to buy.

• QMx Insider: Put a Firefly in Your Pocket for $9.95! Fans of the Joss Whedon show Firefly and it’s follow-up movie Serenity will be glad to know that you can finally own your own Firefly-class ship without having to spend an arm and a leg. Shiny!

Have a most excellent start of February 2010!

Peng’s links for Tuesday, 26 January

Ack! I meant to write another links post two weeks ago! I hate when things get so busy that I can’t blog for two weeks.

• Ante Karamatić: Is this for real? Ante found some interesting screenies in his sister’s high school IT textbook. They teach IT in high school? Damn, have things changed that much since I graduated in ’78?
• Jordi Mas: gbrainy 1.30. Once again the leading (?) open source smartness app gets an update, now bringing the ability to track your personal records, nine new verbal analogies and a new logic puzzle, as well as an improved scoring algorithm to the mix, as well as better multiplatform support.
• Elizabeth Krumbach: New Leader for the Ubuntu Women Project. I’ve been meaning to congratulate Amber Graner for being named as the leader of the Ubuntu Women Project for about ten days but I kept letting time slip away without blogging it. (I’m surprised that Nanci didn’t post about this, although I know she’s been about as busy as I’ve been so far this decade.) I’ve linked to some of her posts in the past and I’m glad to see that her work as a woman using Ubuntu has opened up this great opportunity for her. The project can only get better, and I don’t think there could be a better woman to lead the project. Amber has also written a post about her new position that you should take the time to read.
• Paul Cutler: Debunking GNOME 3.0 Myths. As news comes out about the upcoming GNOME 3 there are some things that GNOME 3 is supposed to bring that aren’t quite accurate. Paul gives us a great site to bookmark so we have quick access for when we hear something about GNOME 3 that seems almost too good to be true. Or even just a bit far-fetched. Shane Fagan also has an informative post about GNOME 3 and the shell and panel support, two subjects that are finding some confusion in the user community.
• David “Lefty” Schlesinger: Browser Discipline. Lefty has noticed that sometimes he has “a bazillion tabs” open in his browser. He found a nice solution that you may find helpful as well.
• Martin Owens: Ubunchu Chapter 04: Licensing. That’s right, all you manga lovers, there’s a new chapter in the ongoing story of Ubunchu, the world’s first Ubuntu manga written in English. They don’t have a left to-right copy of the newest issue for some reason, but don’t let that stop you from getting up to date on their adventures.
• Alan Pope: MiserWare Beta for Windows as well as Linux. You may have heard about this very nice software title for helping you save money on your electric bills, especially since it was initially a Linux-only app. It’s now available for Windows users, so if this app sounds like something you may be interested in and have a Windows box you should definitely check it out.
• Dustin Kirkland: LCA2010: Day 2, Wellington, New Zealand. While attending an open source software conference in New Zealand Dustin was able to sit in on a presentation that revealed the juicy little tidbit that Avatar, the latest blockbuster that has surpassed Titanic as the highest grossing motion picture ever, used Ubuntu to render their digital effects and graphics. Yes, when I saw this news the geek in me definitely went squeee! Big thanks to Algot Runeman from the Ubuntu Massachusetts LoCo for bringing this news to my attention.
• Danny Piccirillo: Download Disobedience, pro-piracy campaign. I meant to pass this along last week because it’s a campaign aimed not at trying to get legal approval for theft of copyrighted materials but to raise awareness about the massive amount of misinformation that’s out there in the name of protecting intellectual property. He also has a nice vid protesting the heavy handed protection of the copyright of that old chestnut “Happy Birthday”.  Yes, it’s illegal to sing that without paying royalties, something Dan Rydell got slapped for doing. (Extra points to Danny for allowing me to include a link to one of my favorite shows. )
• Martin Owens: Generating Calendars. Picture this scenario: You want a hard copy of your calendar for the month but you want to have your birthdays, anniversaries, and other important dates so you can let others consult it. And it can’t look like crap. Martin has info on a nice little app that can do just that, and he’s even been kind enough to share the 2010 calendar he made, but without his personal info. While it’s a bit late for helping you make personalized Chrismukkuh gifts you never know when you may find yourself needing just this kind of program.

Before I close this post I want to pass along some great news to people who want to use the Chromium browser but have heard that there are some annoying bugs that mat be keeping you from using it more often. Issue 24210 – Cannot drag a bookmark into desktop has finally been resolved (at least in the daily builds) so when you find a site you want to return to you can finally drag a bookmark to your desktop where you can remember that you want to revisit the page. In addition, Issue 2238 – Add search engine dialog doesn’t allow “{” (open curly brace) has also been resolved so you can use all those great bookmarklets you used in other browsers. There’s also a great extension for Google Chrome called Chromy that makes it easy to manage your bookmarklets, although it may not be as easy to use as it’s predecessor, Bookmarklets Manager. I just installed Chromy though so I may simply need to play with it a bit longer.

If you’ve begged for forward slash searching it hasn’t been added to Chrome or Chromium, but there’s an extension called Type-ahead-find that brings this function to Chrome although it’s not as easy as the behavior built into Firefox.

Of course I can’t close without extending my congratulations to the New Orleans Saints for winning the NFC Championship game on Sunday. I’m still amazed that they made it this far, especially after all the times they snatched defeat from the jaws of victory in the past. That gives the Crescent City even more to celebrate, especially with Mardi Gras Day 2010 about 20 days away.

I’ll try to get another post up in a few days, especially since I still have 18 items flagged for blogging. I do know that I may be offline for a day or three next week when I get my new SATA controller card and finally get my 160 GB hard drive installed. It will take some extra time because I’ll be doing a fresh Ubuntu install and creating a fresh user account, so I’ll also need to see about migrating some of my user data to the new account.

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.

Peng’s links for Sunday, 2 August

Holy crap it’s been a busy month and a half. Remember the long links post I wrote last month? I’m afraid this one may be even longer, in fact when I started writing it on Friday and I ended up having to save the post and finish it later. I honestly hoped it would have been published on yesterday, but that didn’t work out like it that.

I’ve pulled some of the older items I had flagged for posting, but there are still a few from early this month that I just couldn’t justify not passing along.

• Andrewsomething: GNOME-Colors in Karmic. I’ve played around with some of the Shiki-Colors themes available but I ended up sticking with the Mac4Lin themes. Your milage, of ourse, may vary. Which is the beauty of open source software. Andrew even has a screenshot to help you see why you may love GNOME-Colors.
• Dustin Kirkland The Ubuntu Museum. With Ubuntu 6.06 LTS (Dapper Drake) reaching the end of it’s support lifespan Dustin put together a great site with some great info and images from Ubuntu’s past. If you want to know more, just go to Dustin’s post. It’s one museum you don’t even have to get dressed to go visit.
• Chenthill Palanisamy: What’s cooking in evolution? There are some nice additions coming down the pike for GNOME’s email client, and Chenthill has some info.
• Tyler Mulligan: The “easy” way to listen to internet readio in Ubuntu. Tyler has gone through the usual pain of trying to listen to his favorite ‘net radio station while running Ubuntu, and he’s found a way to do it that is probably easier than any other way, including Rhythmbox and Exaile.
• Alan Pope: Migrating from WUBI to Full Ubuntu Install. Have you (or a friend of yours) looked at Ubuntu with the WUBI tools running on Windows? If so you may have decided you like Ubuntu and don’t really need Windows around anymore. If that sounds like you or someone you know Alan has a nice tutorial on making the switch to full Ubuntu without losing any of the data you currently have.
• Martin Owens: Learning: Identifying Computer Ports. Alan is teaching a System Adminsistration course, and he’s had to come up with some of his own materials for it. Luckily he’s sharing his guide to computer ports with the rest of us. Thanks, Martin!
• Christer Edwards: Updating Default GDM Theme: Ubuntu 9.04 “Jaunty” and My Ubuntu Look and Feel. Christer has posted a pair of tutorials that will show you just how easy it can be to change how Ubuntu looks. Who says you have to settle for how an operating system looks when it comes from the “factory”? Not a GNU/Linux user, that’s for sure, although in all fairness it’s getting to be easier for other OSes as well, although Linux users have a crap load of possibilities to choose from.
• Matthew Helmke: The Official Ubuntu Book, Fourth Edition — first review and more. If you have a copy and want to get an updated edition, or if you’ve been meaning to get a copy and never have yet, you can now get it in PDF format rather than in dead tree format. Matthew”s even got a link for you to get a sample chapter if you’re not sure you want to get it yet.
• Muammar El Kahtib: Flash player in Google Chrome for Linux. If you’re testing Google Chrome, or even Chromium, you can now enable plugins such as Flash in Chromium! No more having to open another browser just to see Flash applets, whether it’s cheezburgers or something as simple as the MLB Gameday applet to keep up with your favorite baseball team. You can also get some addition info in a post by Omshivaprakash H L.
• Marc Deslauriers: Goodbye Apple. Marc and his wife have had quite a few iPods, but they won’t get another one. I’ll let you read his post for more details, and it’s not simply an I-frigging-HATE-Apple post. I will say, however, that once I can get some details worked out with the device I got a month ago I’ll be posting info on getting another company’s digital media players (DMP) working with GNU/Linux. There’s just one or two annoying little bugs I’m trying to get resolved, but I will say this: You can get a DMP that plays Ogg Vorbis files right out of the box, and as soon as you get it out of the box you can load not only Ogg Vorbis files on it, but also text, pictures and videos (but sadly not Ogg Theora vids) on the little buggers using nothing but your favorite file manager.
• Andreas Nilsson: A tale of menus. I really hate saying this, but they’re at it again. The GNOME devs are changing the themes yet again, this time adding 256×256 icons for places, etc. But it’s not all bad news, unless you’re a third-party theme designer like the good folks at Mac4Lin. At least this time we’re forewarned.
• Garrett LeSage: Nautilus, streamlined. The GNOME artwork devs have come up with a bit of a winner: a simplified Nautilus that gives you more space for the things that count, the filespace you’re working with. There’s a PPA with the new look and I have to say that it looks like it fits with the Mac4Lin themes really well.
• Hylke Bons: Adding fonts in GNOME. Yes, we have yet another post on adding fonts to your system, but Hylke is working on an even easier way to do it, complete with visual mockups. I have to say I really like what he’s come up with so far. Thomas Wood has a followup with a little more work on the idea.
• Linux * Screw: Top 3 Linux HTML editors. If you’re running the MacOS or Windows there are a plethora of options for doing HTML coding, including the old standby “real web designers code  by hand”. Let’s face it, some of us just like having a visual editor handy when we write or change HTML code, even if it’s just for some of the time. The guys at Linux * Screw have looked at three tools you may want to add to your Linux toolbox.
• Steven Rose: Removing Evolution Mail is NOT dangerous in the slightest… Some people want to remove Evolution from their Ubuntu installation, because they prefer another email client, and others are quick to predict doom and gloom if they even attempt to uninstall Evo. Personally I love Evo, but not everyone likes the same apps. Steven dumps some of the FUD and brings the truth of the matter of removing Evolution. And guess what, it doesn’t unleash the four horsemen of the apocalypse. Although you can have my Evo when you pry it from my cold dead fingers.
• Mark Brown: Full quoting. Yes, it refers to replying on email lists, but it’s not another rant about the right way to write a response. In fact he says nothing about replying above or below the quoted message, although Mark reminds me I need to spend another half minute (or less) before I hit Send on any email response.
• Jono Bacon: Change for Change. Jono’s got a great idea for some of the loose change we keep finding in our pockets and purses. I can’t wait to see it get started and make its way to Beantown. It’s a hell of a lot better idea than all of the stemmers I keep finding outside of stores and restaurants, but then I know some stemmers who make more money in a given day than I do.
• Dougie Richardson: Replacing Firefox. I admit it, the moment I saw his post title I flagged it to read later, but now that I’ve read it I knew I had to share it. Dougie needed something leaner to use on his netbook and looked at all the possibilities “from Epiphany to Opera”, and he decided to go with a Webkit browser. He looks at Midori and Arora in his post, complete with some screenshots. If you need a browser for a device with a smaller screen (and available memory) you owe it to yourself to read his post. He does bring up some bad news, namely that some apps in Ubuntu’s repositories aren’t exactly current, and while he doesn’t have a solution he does have some good information.
• Shane Fagan: Reply to Ballmers recent interview. You may have read or heard an interview with Steve Ballmers on cNet, especially his comparison with Mac about quality and price. Shane has a great response for Ballmers, and no matter what OS you prefer you should see what Shane has to say.

For those who voted for Mac4Lin in the SourceForge Community Choice Awards, I’m afraid to say that they didn’t win. Anirudh Acharya, the main dev for Mac4Lin, does thank all their supporters and mentions a very nice surprise in the final tally. There was also a great article in Linux Magazine comparing Ubuntu 9.04 with Mac OSX, and while it doesn’t mention Mac4Lin it does present Ubuntu in a very nice light.

Baseball fans were made very happy last week with the news that Vin Scully, the voice of the LA Dodgers would keep working for one more year.You may remember that almost a year ago I posted the good news that he’d be working for this, his 60th year, and even if you hate the Dodgers you have to respect that man’s talent. There’s no better example of Suclly’s talent was shown just last month when Manny Ramirez his is pinch hit grand slam. Check out the video on that page if you need any more evidence of Vin Scully’s wisdom and class.

And for those who hate baseball and need a smile on this first Sunday in August, there’s a post by directhex from last weekend that I dare you to read and not smile at.

That’s a full lid. Have a good week, or at least have as good a week as you want to have.

Peng’s links for Monday, 16 March

Sorry about how long Friday’s post was. I hadn’t quite realized how many links I was posting until they all got on the page, and I considered removing some of the older links or pulling some for another post but I decided against it since I’d been waiting so long to post them. As it is, once Nanci saw it she called me and said, “Damn, Peng! Did you forget anything?” We had a good laugh with it but I knew I didn’t want to get the list that long ever again. So here’s today’s shorter list.

• Bernd Zeimetz: gimp-plugin-registry update planned
• Antonio Arcudi: [How-to]Tired of sudo asking for your password?
• Tom Dryer: Midori: Extremely Fast and Standards-Compliant
• Aaron Toponce: Use The Tools
• Stefano Forenza: Chromium on Ubuntu ! [HOW TO]
• Chris Gregan: Desktop Automation
• Dirk-Heine Hofstede: Urban Terror (one for the gamers out there)
• Pavel Rojtberg: Finally free voice/ video chat is there
• Noumaan Yaqoob: Totem Youtube Search and Play Plugin
• Matthew Garrett: ext4,application expectations and power management
• Christer Edwards: New Features In The Upcoming Ubuntu 9.04 “Jaunty”
• Debian Package of the Day: fwbuilder: Manage Firewalls Professionally
• Jose Carlos Garcia Sogo: Upgrading my laptop to ext4
• Martin Owens: Ubuntu: Understanding The Media Codec Problems
• Martin Owens: Linux: The Brand
• Stefano Forenza: Sunday+1 Round-up
• Alexander Larsson: ext4 vs fsync, my take

For those of you who saw the link about Wicd on Friday but wondered if it was worth trying, a week or so ago we changed some settings on the home network so the roomies would use their Nintendo DS on the ‘net and I had a hell of a time trying to find the place to change the settings on my Ubuntu system. (I had it set to a specific WiFi net, not roaming, or else I probably would have had a lit easier time with it.) I put in Wicd yesterday and other than having to play with some of the authentication settings on my end everything went beautifully. Now I wish Ubuntu would ditch network-manager and just use Wicd by default. It’s that easy to use. If someone knows of an idea on Brainstorm for the change please post the link. I tried to check but I’m away from my Ubuntu box and the comp I’m using is refusing to play with Brainstorm. Grrr.

Updated 17 Mar 9:30a: After a bit of hunting I saw Idea #2591: Replace NetworkManager by WICD. Of course that would also entail getting Wicd into the repos since the Wicd Download page had me add a repo to my sources list, but it’s much easier to use than network-manager. The good news is that once I got it installed the panel applet showed the status of the wireless net that I’m nlogged into.