We’ll be back to our program in just a couple of minutes…

Public radio listeners know it’s that time of year again, time to interrupt your favorite public radio programs for the spring pledge drive. But today I saw a tweet from one of the folks at APM’s Marketplace with a link to a YouTube video that’s sure to bring a smile to the face of any regular public radio listener.

Greg Studley (yes, that’s his real name) has put together a take off on Billy Joel’s We Didn’t Start The Fire that replaces the names of celebrities in the original song with the names of people you hear across public radio networks (definitely NPR and APM, and I think even PRI although I don’t catch any PRX names). He even drops in Donnie Baseball, although I’m not aware of anything he does with public radio.  [My bad. I'm always confusing Don with Dave on NPR.] (If you go to the YouTube page for the video you can see all the names he drops.)

After hearing it many times I have to admit it’s kind of lame and the singing isn’t the best, although it still beats some of the vocals I had to record as a studio engineer back in New Orleans. What do you guys think of it? The only other problems I have with it is that after repeated plays of the video (I really want an MP3 of it one of these days) I had to go see Billy Joel’s original as well as the cover by Guns N’ Moses. Although it’s pretty ironic that I found the video yesterday, the day that WBUR, my local NPR station, officially started their spring fundraiser. Please consider supporting them as they try to completely do away with their summer pledge drive for the second year in a row. If you do you can get chances to win some pretty nice swag.

How to vote for my LOLs on I Can Has Cheezburger

Yesterday I created a pair of new images for the cat image site I Can Has Cheezburger (ICHC) and asked our readers to vote for them. After I posted it I realized that it isn’t clear how you would cast your votes so I wanted to create some screenshots to show you what you need to do to help my pictures reach the ICHC main page.

First you will need to click on the image on my post that you want to rate. if the post has multiple pictures, as my post yesterday did and like the Peng’s LOLz page has.
When the new page opens you will see several places that may be the way to vote. There is the Add to Favorites button, the row of Cheezburgers and the Share buttons below the image for Facebook and Twitter, but the place to vote is the row of Cheezburgers above the image. Click a rating (the more Cheezburgers the better) to let The Powers That Be know you love the image and think it should go on the ICHC main page. If you have a membership at any of the Cheezburger Network sites you can also click the button to add it to your favorites to give it an extra vote.

Thanks to everyone who likes my pictures, and thanks for helping to get them on the main page at ICHC.

New LOLs

I’ve taken some pictures of the adorable Shadow Cat with my phone and I have finally uploaded two of them to I Can Has Cheezburger.

Shadow wants some more barbecue. Or even just some burgers.

Please click on each picture and vote for them to appear on the main page at I Can Haz Cheezburger. You can see all of my LOLz on my LOLz page.

Happeh Birfday, Cheezburgahs!

Today the Cheezburger Network (I Can Has Cheezburger (ICHC), Pundit Kitchen, the Fail Blog, and over 30 other sites) is celebrating their third birfday!

I haven’t made any lols, but I see that Peng has made a couple of new ones that I’m going to share with you.

Please go to the Cheezburger site and vote for his lols. The definitely deserve to go on the font page, especially these new ones. Peng and I have been talking about making a page here with his lols but since Peng hasn’t done it yet I’m going to make it. It won’t get updated as quickly as his ICHC My Lolz page does, but it will be an easy way to see his lols when you’re reading our blog.

It’s Colin Pruitt’s fault (SFW but NSFYE)*

I enjoy getting the latest XKDC comic in my RSS reader, but it wasn’t until I checked out Planet Ubuntu did I know I should go hit their home page.

As pointed out by both Brian Burger and Colin Pruitt, GeoCities will reach it’s end-of-life tomorrow. I’m one of the millions of users that has had a GeoCities site at one time or another (until I learned how to create my own site, of course) so I definitely took note of the closing when I first heard about it some time back.

But as I read Colin’s post on Planet Ubuntu I discovered that the crazy folks (in a good way) over at XKCD have decided to note the passing of GeoCities by redesigning their site to look like it as created as a GeoCities site. He also includes a thumbnail screenshot that I won’t post here. Not because the pic isn’t CC licensed but to help preserve your eyes.

That’s right, XKCD has made their site look like it was designed by a noobie over at GeoCities. Almost as soon as the page loaded my eyes started screaming MAKE IT STOP!!! It’s that hard on your retinas, as pointed out by some readers on the XKCD forum thanks to Brian for the link).

Go check it out while it lasts, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.

—–
*NSFYE-Not Safe For your Eyes

A day without cats on the Wide Wide World of Web? What you talkin’ about, Willis?

[This post was actually written by Nanci, but I'm changing the authorship to mine so we can get it on the Ubuntu Universe. -Peng]

It’s come to my attention that somebody has decided that someone has declared tomorrow, 9 September, to be A Day Without Cats on the Internet. The idea is to have a worldwide ban on cat-related coverage for the day. Of course I have to agree with the good people at I Can Has Cheezburger and say that this is an utterly horrible idea. Lucky for us fanciers of felines the good folks at Cheezburger have out backs.

To those who think this “celebration” is a good idea, just remember that you can post about other animals any time your heart desires. In fact the Cheezburger devs already have a site devoted to the adorable canines out there. You may remember that I wrote about it back in 2007 when I found out about it.

[sarcasm] Of course if you would prefer not to see posts about cuts felines, canines or other animals there’s an invention you can use to avoid them, just like there’s an invention for people who hate a particular television program. For web users you can connect a device called a mouse to your computer and use it to leave any site you don’t like. In fact I bet you already have one connected to your computer. [/sarcasm]

I trust none of our readers are getting this error message today.

A feline penguinista

I saw this pic and I simply HAD TO post it.

Hell yeah.

Peng’s links for Sunday, 22 Mar

As much as I tried to stay on top of my feeds this week I still end up with 25 items in my ToBlog folder. Luckily I’m going to cull out some of the older ones as well as a few things that aren’t so post-worthy at this point. But I have a great (OT) vid to share with y’all at the end.

• ArsTechnica: Get it done with GNOME Do 0.8. A very nice story on how much easier Gnome Do makes using GNOME-based GNU/Linux distros. Thanks to Peter Stuifzand over on the Do Google Group for letting me know about it.
• Jonathan Ernst: HP refunds 520$ for unused software. There was just now way I wasn’t going to share this story.
• Jon Beebe: Top 10 Reasons I’ll Never Use Ubuntu. Yes, it’s from a Linux guy, but it’s a great tongue-in-cheek list.
• Srinivasa Ragavan: Announcing ‘Anjal’- the new mail for netbooks. If you use a netbook you should definitely check out Anjal for your email client.
• Stefano Forenza: Chinese MID deploying Ubuntu by default. Speaking of netbooks, I may have to find a way to get one of these. Not only do they run my fav OS, but they’re pretty darned inexpensive as well.
• Stefano Forenze: New wallpapers for Jaunty. Don’t hold your breath. I’m liking how some of them look, although I know they won’t be everyone’s cup of espresso.
• Wouter Verhelst: Dealing with apt’s GPG signing stuff — the right way. If you use third party sources for installing and updating your GNU/Linux you know about adding GPG signing keys. Wouter has instructions for adding them in a way that doesn’t inject a security flaw, and that defeats the purpose of importing a GPG key in the first place.
• Jose Carlos Garcia Sogo: Is ext4 unsafe? The next update to Ubuntu will add support for ext4 partitions, and lately people have been talking about security concerns with ext4. Luckily Jose has info to set your mind at ease.
• Josselin Mouette: Which logo for the main GNOME menu in Debian? I could have skipped this post from Friday, but the “swirl foot” icons are so cute I may have to grab them for my own system.
• Isabelle Duchatelle: Ubuntuforums nuts and bolts. Isabelle has some very handy Ubuntu Forums links you may want to bookmark, as well as some rather nice numbers for what’s going on at UF)
• Tom Dryer: How-to Install Google Earth 5 on Ubuntu. The latest update for GE brings some really nice new features. Tom gives us a very quick and easy way to install this new version, as well as some troubleshooting info.
• Joe Barker: Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty) – My Thoughts So far. Joe’s been playing with late alpha of Ubuntu 9.04 and is kind enough to let us know how it’s behaving on his system. Remember, no matter how well (or unwell) any software runs on a person’s system, Your Milage May Vary, simply because their hardware, software and particular configuration is bound to be different from yours. But so far Joe’s pretty happy with it, although I’m hearing that those of us on the Mac4Lin dev team are unhappy about yet more bloody changes to things that are affecting our software. Yet again. Grrr.
• Guillaume Desmottes: Good GNOME news. We’re just about to see a beta release of Ubuntu 9.04 and that means there is an update coming down the pike for GNOME. And as a matter of fact it came out on Wednesday. Guillaume has the best post that I’ve seen with info on what’s new in this update, next to the release notes, that is. Hell, just looking at the improvements for users makes me want to snag the beta for Ubuntu 9.04 “Jaunty Jackelope” just so I can play with it sooner!
  

I had a few other links I was going to share with y’all, but I think that’s enough for a weekend. If you’re in need of a good laugh (and some of your NCAA brackets may be in the toilet by now from what I’m hearing), check out this vid. As much as I try not to laugh at what happens to the poor feline I just can’t help myself.

OMG! You can now favoritize Cheezburgers!

I just heard the best news from Peng! For quite a while now you’ve been able to add pictures on the Pundit Kitchen and I Has a Hot Dog, but not on the Cheezburger site. But that’s no longer the case.

Peng contacted the Cheezburger folks and asked about it and was told that it seemed to be a browser issue because IE and Opera users, and maybe Safari users, could do it but Firefox and Chrome users didn’t get the button on the lolcats pics for some odd reason. But he tells me that when he fired up Epiphany this morning he was able to mark Cheezburger pics as favorites. Woo hoo!

It seems like you can’t mark videos on ICHC as favs yet, but I’m going to have to join Peng in going through some of the older pics and mark some as favs. I just wish there weren’tover 90 pages to go through.

Thanks for letting me know about it, Peng, and thanks for letting me blog this one. Heopfully I’ll get this new video card installed soon and be able to start getting a few more things to post, like maybe some pics from SecondLife since I’ll finally be able to see all of the pretty Windlight goodies.

Peng’s links for Christmas Eve

Ho ho ho. Merry Chrismukkuh!

I meant to post some links yesterday but there were a few too many things that had to get done before the jolly old fat man started coming down chimneys. I’ve got some special links down at the bottom, but I do have some (hopefully) great links to share with y’all. I know some of them are a little old, but I didn’t want to make some of you miss out on them.

• Jeff Baily: “I’m Linux”. The Linux Foundation is having a contest (or two) for people to create some videos. Some will get rolled out to corporate tech folks (and their suits), and some will answer the “I’m a Mac” and “I’m a PC” ads. Although I really wish we’d see more vids in Novel’s PC Mac Linux series (see under Other Marketing Videos).
• Jun Azua: 5 Known Linux Anti-virus Software for Paranoid Users. While Linux doesn’t have the need for anti-virus software like the users of that big, proprietary operating system do, but if you do much dual booting or run things under WINE, or even if you simply want more to be extra careful, Jun has five apps you may want to get installed on your Linux box. And even if you don’t need the extra protection you should go read Jun’s article and see the very cute Warrior Tux.
• Thomas Wood: New art.gnome.org. The GNOME Art website has gotten an update. I’ll join Andreas for some very good work done on the page design.
• Gerry Ilagan: Linux netbook market share dwindling down. Netbooks started out as a great way go expose people to the joys of our favorite open source operating system but lately more netbooks are getting sold with another OS installed. Gerry did some checking and found out why our market share is trending downward. We definitely need to find a way to correct the bullet points Gerry lays out.
• Uwe Hermann: 256 Creative Commons Christmas Songs. Before you fuss at me and tell me I should have posted this link earlier this week (I saw the article when it hit Planet Debian on Sunday), let me just say that this may the perfect link to finish the preparations for your holiday gatherings. And all of these songs are licensed with Creative Commons licenses so you don’t have to worry about some big multinational conglomerate telling you what you can do with the songs. You can even burn them to CD’s or add them to the pen drives you’re giving those friends and family members.
• Daniel Holbach: No More Holy Cows! No, he’s not referring to a twist on a certain Dogma scene, it’s an honest look at how to try to make a much loved GNU/Linux distro even better.
• Dave Morley: But lo what light through yonder, Windows breaks. Tis the east and Ubuntu is the Sun… A member of Planet Ubuntu looks at his deciding to go 100% GNU/Linux.
• Ryan Troy: Ubuntuforums.org Upgrade. The GNOME Art site isn’t the only one to get an update/upgrade, the user-to-user support forums for Ubuntu Linux has gotten a software update and there are some new goodies waiting to be discovered.

And for your additional holiday cheer…

Jun Azuza has found some great holiday humor that may be just the thing you need after a meal with your family or (deity forbid) assembling all those toys for your little ones. There are Christmas Tech Jokes and Chrismukkuh jokes for Linux/Unix geeks, and Amaya Rodrigo (another Planet Debian blogger) has an adorable post called Self-steem issues? But whether you need a smile or not, be sure to check out Gerry Ilagan’s most excellent Chrismukkuh “card.”

On behalf of Nanci I want to wish everyone a the very bestest possible holiday season. I’ll be back in a day or two (or three?) with some more links, but I’m going to take some time off with some very good friends, my sis, and some of her friends. Our family is back in New Orleans so we won’t be able to make the trip this year, but our friends are the next best thing to family.

Merry Ho Ho!