Peng and I want to join basement cat in…

There are a ton of events going on in SecondLife today that I’ll have to check out now that Peng showed me how to get on SL from Intrepid. And Gurl 6 has some free hair for the occasion, in addition to the daily special, so get out there and celebrate like it’s 2008! Just don’t take any plastic (or wooden) candy apples.

Peng and I love the website I Can Has Cheezburger?. Some artists had a show of lolart in San Francisco recently to raise money for adult literacy. If you love lolcats as much as we do you should check out the video and pictures from the show on the Recap of The Lol Arts Show. You can also check out lolarts.com to find out how you can put on your own lolarts show.

Canonical, sponsor of the Ubuntu distribution of GNU/Linux, has announced the code name for the version due out in April. The name for each version follows a patter of an alliterative adjective followed by an animal name, and that has given us releases called Dapper Drake, Edgy Eft, Feisty Fawn, Gutsy Gibbon and the current Hardy Heron, with Intrepid Ibex due out in October. (In fact Beta 5 of Ubuntu Intrepid just came out last week, and one tester is “very much impressed” with it.)

With Intrepid having reached the feature freeze point Canonical CEO Mark Shuttleworth sent an announcement to the Ubuntu Development Announcement list, but I have to share with you a pair of images that Stefano Forenza created to celebrate the announcement.

As Mark says,

The Warrior Rabbit is our talisman as we move into a year where we can reasonably expect Ubuntu to ship on several million devices, to consumers who can reasonably expect the software experience to be comparable to those of the traditional big OSV’s – Microsoft and Apple. The bar is set very high, and we have been given the opportunity to leap over it. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime chance to shine, and we want to make sure that the very best thinking across the whole open source ecosystem is reflected in Ubuntu, because many people will judge free software as a whole by what we do.

That’s right, the codename for the next version of Ubuntu will be….

Mark goes on in the announcement to say

Another goal is the the blurring of web services and desktop applications. “Is it a deer? Is it a bunny? Or is it a weblication – a desktop application that seamlessly integrates the web!” This hare has legs – and horns – and we’ll be exploring it in much more detail for Jaunty. We have already laid some foundations for weblications in the online services discussions that took place in Prague, but since we fully expect those services to ship in 9.04 the discussion will be that much more intense in Mountain View.

Those bizarre-but-fearsome antlers might well remind one of the intricate pattern of collaboration between developers in a distributed version control system. So it’s fitting that Jaunty will see us move all of Ubuntu into Bazaar. For the first time, any developer will be able to branch any Ubuntu package with a single bzr command, publish their changes, and perhaps even publish builds of that package in their own Package Archive. We will also make the developer community structure of Ubuntu much richer – in addition to MOTU and core-dev, we are introducing ways for developers to participate in specific applications, either at the package-upload level or at the version-control level. Whatever your level and specialisation of interest, we’ll make sure that you can participate accordingly.

You can view responses from the Ubuntu community on Planet Ubuntu posts from Martin Albisetti, Jonathan Jesse, Stephan Hermann (who has a great picture of a Wolpertinger from Wikipedia) and Luis de Bethencourt.

Special thanks to Stefano Forenza for sharing his great Cheezburger pics with us.

I made a pair of lolcatz that I’d like our readers to vote for and help them on the main page at I Can Has Cheezburger and I Has a Hotdog.

Some of you probably already saw my first lol.

But at my roomie’s request we took a picture of our kitteh Shadow and turned her into a lol.

Please vote for my lols so they can hopefully make the main page of the sites. Vote early and vote often.

Thankee!

• Chris Blizzard: two cool things: ogg support in mozilla and canvas in IE. From the “it’s about damned time” file, Firefox 3.1 will finally support Ogg Vorbis/Theora (audio/video) files natively. Linux users have long loved the open source Ogg media formats, and now their favorite browser will know what to do with them out of the box, even on non-Linux platforms. I’m not sure what this means for codecs on OSX and Windows.
• Melissa Draper: You’re doing what now?! Ms. Draper interrupts her hiatus from blogging to post a very important Public Service Announcement on the problem with using scripts found online that use the apt “–force-yes” flag. That’s right, it’s a really bad idea. And Ultamatix (which I mentioned Saturday) uses it a lot, which makes using the successor to Automatix a really bad idea.
• Alan Pope: Ubuntu UK Podcast Episode 11 Out. The UK Ubuntu LoCo (Local Community) Team recorded some segments for their latest podcast at the recent LUGRadio Live UK 2008. Although some of us Yanks may need closed captions since we threw some tea into Boston Harbor so many years ago.

It seems I may have had more possible posts from Planet Mozilla, expect people got trapped at the Mozilla Summit thanks to a rock slide on the road they were expecting to take to Vancouver. There’s been good natured jokes about whether summit attendees were going to have to resort to lifeboat team building events, but there is an alternate route, even if it does take eight hours rather than two and a half hours.Luckily Neil Deakin, who didn’t have that many hours to spare, found an even better route to Vancouver, so he won’t have to be late for his own wedding.

Dan Glazman came up with an even funnier way to look at the problem, and in true open source fashion someone filed a bug on the problem. I can’t help but laugh at some of the comments added to it. I think I’m going to have to subscribe to it, if for no other reason than to get even more humor out of today than my favorite cheezburger joint. But hey, we found the remote!

Sorry about not posting for a couple of days. RealLife issues took more time than expected, plus I ended up pushing my bod further than expected so I’ve had to spend less time at the comp and more time in pain management. If this keeps up I’m going to have to do a sudo upgrade on my pain meds.

• Frank Taylor: New Google Earth 4.3 (beta) Available – Version 4.3.7284.3916. No new features, but a number of bug fixes. Either way if you like Google Earth and you love how GE 4.3 is progressing you’ll want to get the latest update. There’s also been an Imagery Update with a lot of new areas getting images, especially high resolution images.
• Barry Burbank/Beyond the Forecast: Dewpoint Discussion. As someone who grew up in the deep south I always heard relative humidity being talked about in the weather reports. Once I moved to Boston I started hearing about the dewpoint and had no clue what it was. WBZ’s Barry Burbank has a great blog post about the difference between relative humidity and dewpoint, as well as why the dewpoint is a better measure of how oppressive the weather is.
• Ross A Del Duca: WINE Whine WINE. An excellent post about WINE for those who wonder what the hell I’m talking about when I discuss WINE, as well as why I capitalize the whole word. If you have questions about running Windows apps in Linux, you definitely want to read Ross’ post.
• Dennis Kaarsemaker: Gnome 3.0. Yesterday Og Maciel had a nice little post about tabs within tabs, and Dennis gives us a sneak peak at something I expect is coming in GNOME 3.0. I had to post a comment on his blog asking for more info about his screenshot because I’d love to be able to use whatever it is he’s showing.
• Debian Package of the Day: email-reminder: Never forget a birthday or an anniversary again! This handy little program uses a small cronjob to send you an email reminding you of impending birthdays and anniversaries. I used to have this kind of thing on my PDA and I love the ability to have it on my desktop computer. It even has a simple GUI to add the events to remember.
• Christer Edwards: Please Insert 25 Cents To Login. I’m going to have to check out this Easter egg the next time I restart my comp, or at least log out once I finish blogging and checking it.
• I Can Has Cheezburger: Teh Ten Commandments of Ceiling Cat. I need to make this into a desktop wallpaper, and I bet every cat lover out there will laugh at how true it is.

There, that wasn’t so bad now, was it? I hope to get back to almost daily posts of one sort or another soon, although tomorrow looks crazy and I won’t be able to post much until at least noonish on Tuesday. I hope you guys (and gals) are having a nice weekend. Here’s hoping the week doesn’t get off to too horrid a start.

/me lifts his coffee cup for the toast

Can you believe it’s July already? It seems I just had my annual review (aka birthday) a couple of weeks ago (it was in mid-May) and at the end of the week I need to make sure my DVR is set to tape the concert and fireworks from the Esplanade.

• Dining with ‘Dre: Shabu Hachi. While this review of a Los Angeles eatery may not mean much to those who don’t live in southern California, I love the way ‘Dre describes what a shanu shabu is. Just one problem: Now I’m hungry.
• Brian Burger: Happy Canada Day! Need I say more?
• SciFi Wire: Stargate’s Davis Is Dead. Don S. Davis, known to Stargate SG-1 fans as Major General George Hammond, passed away on Sunday of a heart attack. But people who pay attention know he was a character actor who has played whole lot more roles than just Gen. Hammond.
• Daniel Glazman: Linspire, Inc. It turns out that Linspire, who runs the Click ‘N’ Run (CNR) repository for some Linux distros, has quietly been sold. The question now is what will happen to Linspire, their free distro Freespire, and CNR.
• Christer Edwards: Enable Commercial DVD Playback on Ubuntu 8.04. One of the things that bug Windows users that switch to Linux is that playing a DVD isn’t as easy as installing something like WinDVD. But Christer has a great tutorial on not just how to get it to work in Ubuntu hardy but also why it’s not quite as easy as we’d like it to be.

Have a great rest of your week. I trust those of you in the States have plans to get together with family and friends on Friday, and I wish those north of the border have an awesome Canada Day. And I apologize for our current crop of politicians. I really didn’t have much to do with getting most of these particular asshats elected. In fact where possible I usually voted for the other guy.

Before I go, I have to admit that this? So me, other than the controller. So much so, in fact, that I turned it into a wallpaper.

• Casper Clemens Mireau: my package of the day: mpd – the Music Player Daemon. After checking this out I’m loving mpd so much that I’m not even firing up Amarok or Exaile most of the time when I want to play some tunes. I usually just fire up the Relaxx player in my web browser and start rocking out. Although I’m going to have to check out Sonata because I’m hearing it’s pretty good as well.
• Wine HQ News: Wine 1.0 Status. The (hopefully) final release candidate for Wine 1.0 is due out today, and we could see Wine 1.0 finally being released within a week.
• Deb Richardson: Field Guide to Firefox 3. Deb wrote a great guide to all of the new features in Firefox 3, as well as links to articles showing how to get the most out of each feature.
• Desktop Linux.com: Linux jukebox app achieves first stable release. Banshee 1.0 is here! Although after playing with test releases over the last few weeks I prefer either Amarok or Exaile. Or now MPD.
• Jono Bacon: Ubuntu Developer Channel: Packaging 101 Video. If you’ve been wanting to learn how to package things for Ubuntu there’s now a two-part video showing you how to make a package.
• Alex Polvi: State of the Add-ons Report: June 12. With Firefox 3 coming out Tuesday add-on devs are busy getting their themes and extensions updated for it. Are your Must Have Add-ons working in Firefox 3?
• SciFi Wire: Jericho Fans Buy TV Ads. CBS has canceled the show twice, but the fans still refuse to give up on it. You can check out the ad they’re running at SaveJerichoAgain.com.

That’s a lid. Have a fun weekend, y’all. And remember, even you need to schedule a little downtime every now and then. If you don’t your body will. Itherwise you definitely won’t have a happee.

I hope everyone had a nice weekend and didn’t find yourselves sweating like mad as I am. Yes, even Malden (just outside of Boston) is working on a heat wave, and as of this writing we’re a mere four degrees from officially being in one. Four degrees? At ten am? No problem. We’ll definitely cross 90. Luckily I only have a few of links for you coming out of the weekend. Or is that unfortunately, since once you’re done visiting the links you lose the excuse for sitting in the air conditioning. Sorry, my bad.

/me reaches for his iced coffee and makes sure there’s a pitcher of iced tea or lemonade in the fridge.

• Cody A.W. Somerville/Planet Ubuntu: New Tablet PC. Cody has himself a laptop that’s actually a tablet/convertible comp. And he got Xubuntu working so well he wrote the blog post on the tablet. Sweet!
• Mark Shuttleworth/Planet Ubuntu: Netbooks preloaded with Ubuntu. Since Canonical announced the Ubuntu Netbook Remix several computer manufacturers have expressed an interest in selling netbooks with Ubuntu preloaded. Mark looks at the launchers they were considering (he loves AWN) and includes some screenshots of what they came up with.
• NewsEmergency.com: FDA Warns Consumers Nationwide Not to Eat Certain Types of Raw Red Tomatoes. There’s a salmonella outbreak tied to certain types of tomatoes, so once again we have to be careful while shopping for fresh produce.

Adorable Feline Pic of the Day

Again I had a hard time choosing which kitty to share with you. I had a tiny yawning kitteh that was so cute I didn’t mind yawning myself and an absolutely adorable kitteh from Slovenia, but when it was all said and done I had to pick this ferocious little beastie.

Check out the audio clips people submitted for the pic. I especially love the one by soapip.

[Updated to include a link to info on installing Google Gadgets in Ubuntu. - Peng]

Sorry about not posting links the last couple of days. Let’s just say this flightless waterfowl was pretty toasty when I finally got my list of dumb things I had to do done, and it wasn’t from drinking. Although I sure did want a drink when I was done.

• David Thomas/Planet Ubuntu: Google Gadgets for Linux. One thing that Linux users have been missing from our list of Google tools is Desktop Gadgets. Davis tells us that we may not have to wait that much longer for them. Sweet! UPDATED 12:26pm: I found a thread on the Ubuntu Forums with instructions on installing them on Ubuntu via a PPA.
• John Slater/Planet Mozilla: The T-Shirt History of Mozilla. I have a Firefox tee that I’ve loved wearing (not so much now that Firefox 3 is almost out, and watch for a post this week about exactly why I don’t love this new version). Some of the Mozilla folks put together a history of Mozilla tees that you’ll probably get a kick out of. It’s great to see how the clothing presentation of Mozilla has evolved over the last decade.
• Markus Thielmann: Installing Ubuntu Netbook Remix on Ubuntu Hardy 8.04. My last links post included a link to news about Ubuntu Netbook Remix. Markus wrote a piece on using it with Ubuntu Hardy.
• Ubuntu QA blog: Who wants a copy Ubuntu on the small screen…. Not only is Ubuntu coming to netbooks and MIDs, you will even be able to use it on your smartphone.
• Madhava Enros/Planet Mozilla: Get add-ons in Firefox 3. One of the nice things in Firefox 3 is that you can gett add-ons without having to point your brower to the Mozilla add-ons site.
• Alex Polvi/Planet Mozilla: State of the Add-ons Report: June 5th. Speaking of Firefox add-ons, Alex has a report on add-ons and their compatibility with Firefox 3.
• Mike Beltzer/Planet Mozilla: What’s new in Firefox 3? Here, let me show you! Mike has put together a screencast showing off the new features in Firefox 3. It’s already been on post by several others on Planet Mozilla, and I’m glad to say that it’s now been Stumbled.
• Wine HQ News: Wine 1.0-rc4 Released. The good people at WINE (Wine Is Not an Emulator) have stepped one step closer to the official release of Wine 1.0 yesterday with the release of their fourth Release Candidate. Ubuntu Hardy users can now get it if you have the hardy-proposed repo enabled.
• Ken Gurnick/LADodgers.com: Kuroda channels Dodgers history. Who cares about Dodger baseball you ask? If you’re a baseball fan you’ll want to read about this rookie from Osaka and his complete game shutout. It’s even more impressive when you see that he didn’t give up a single walk and struck out 11, including the last two batters he faced, and he only allowed four hits to the red hot Chicago Cubs. While you’re there you should check out some of the videos from the game, no matter what team you follow

Adorable Feline Pics of the Weekend

I have every intention of taking tomorrow off from blogging (I want to check out the latest SecondLife clients) so I’m going to give you a pair of kitties for the weekend. I didn’t get to post Thursday’s AFPotD, or one of the several pics from yesterday, so I hope these two kitties will brighten your weekend.

Damn but that pic looked like me the last couple of mornings, especially since my asshat neighbors kept me up until 11 pm Thursday night watching the damned Celtics game

This one may be me this evening. Except I have to watch out with my pain meds, especially after the last several days

Have a great weekend! I hope y’all can manage to keep cool this weekend. I know I plan on being in air conditioning as much as possible from here to Tuesday.