Peng’s links for Sunday, 22 November

• Sense Hofstede: Ubuntu Bug Control starts mentoring. Reporting bugs is an important part of using open source software so they can get squashed and in time others won’t have to deal with them. Of course there are already a lot of bugs reported, with many of them unconfirmed. Any user can help simply by triaging bugs to confirm the bug and the package it’s in. Sense has some very easy info on how to help with triaging.
• Stefano Forenza: Ubuntu One Music Store. You read that right, Canonical wants to include a way to buy music within next spring’s Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Linx. Stefano also has a follow-up post with answers to some questions that came up in his original post. Welcome back, Stefano!
• Aaron Toponce: Debian – The Universal Operating System. While Debian (the foundation for the Ubuntu family of GNU/Linux operating systems) isn’t perfect, is is pretty powerful, not to mention flexible as hell. Aaron gives us a great overview of Debian. Even I didn’t realize Debian was so good.
• Stefano Forenza: No more Gimp for you little Joe. Stefano mentioned it before, but it’s been confirmed. Gimp will no longer be part of the default installation of Ubuntu, although they are keeping F-Spot for image editing. In all honesty I have to admit that the Gimp doesn’t have the best UI, but I use it regularly. I tried F-Spot before, and with some versions I couldn’t get the damned thing open, while in others I was just so overwhelmed trying to figure out how to use it I shut it down and opened my image up in the Gimp. Luckily you can install Gimp easily, so you won’t have to jump through too many hoops. We’ll have to wait and see if in-place upgrading to 10.04 deletes Gimp. If it does I’m going to be one ticked off penguin.
• Danielle Madeley: Why Telepathy is not like libpurple. Some people think Telepathy, Ubuntu 9.10’s default messaging client, is like Pidgin, the client so many of us have come to love over the years. Danielle shows that they are two very different apps. Thanks for the clarification, Danielle, even though I still prefer to use Pidgin.
• Maia Kozheva: UI Rant: Computer Janitor. Thank the diety I’m not the only one who thinks Computer Janitor has one of the fugliest interfaces I’ve ever seen. Dude, we’ve gotta get this fixed and soon if we want people to use it.
• Anirudh Acharya: Chrome OS: First Impressions… Artem Nosulchik and Stefano Forenza have both written nice articles on the newly announced Google ChromeOS, but the developer of Mac4Lin gave it a spin and shares his thoughts, as well as some screenshots.
• Christoph Langher: Secure and unique passwords with PwdHash for Chromium. I asked for help with an add-on for Chrom[e|ium], but Christoph has found a Chrom[e|ium] version of a Firefox add-on that he is damned glad to find.

To those who live in the States I hope you have a wonderful Thanksgiving. But be careful when selecting your bird. I hear they’re fighting back this year.

I just found a new Must Have DVD and CD

I was looking through the On Demand listings today and didn’t find any TV shows or movies I wanted to see so I turned to the music listings. What I didn’t expect was to see an excerpt from a killer concert combining one of my favorite classic rock bands and a youth orchestra.

Concert.tv has let me see some great footage from some of my favorite bands, but when I found a 18 minute clip from Styx and a Cleveland orchestra I wasn’t expecting to get my socks blown off. What I found as a video made with the Contemporary Youth Orchestra (CYO) from a 2006 show. The concert was released as One With Everything in CD and DVD versions in November of 2006 with a Blu-Ray disk coming out earlier this year. The clip from concert.tv only has three songs (Blue Collar Man (Long Nights), Too Much Time on My Hands, and Boat on the River), but I was already sold. I had to watch it again just so I could enjoy watching the young musicians get into the songs while playing. I’m not saying that it’s odd that orchestral musicians don’t like rock and roll or that I’m surprised to see a group of high school students enjoying Styx so much, I just got a kick out of watching the players. It’s clear that they were having a blast.

It turns out that Liza Grossman and the orchestra are no strangers to working with big name artists in the rock arena, having already worked with Ray Manzarek of The Doors, Graham Nash of Crosby, Stills & Nash (and Young), Jon Anderson of Yes, Pat Benatar and her husband Neil Giraldo, as well as Styx and others. The orchestra has also premiered 46 world premieres and has received the Northern Ohio Live Award of Achievement in the Classical Music/Opera category.

If you have any interest in classic rock music, orchestral music, young musicians or any combination of these to visit the CYO website. After you find out more about this great bunch of musicians click on the “listen+ watch” link on the lower left and get ready to both see and hear just how good they are. Plus you get to see a clip of Lorelei from the One With Everything DVD. If you’re like me you’ll want to fly, not surf, over to Amazon and buy the DVD, CD, or Blu-Ray of One with Everythingfor yourself. Even if you hate classical music I bet you’re going to love this performance.

Music Review: Marcia Ball’s “Peace, Love & BBQ

I was browsing through the CD’s at the Boston Public Library and found some nice jazz, classical and classic rock to borrow to drop into my cd player, and I found a disk from an artist that plays frequently in New Orleans that is so good that I have to tell y’all about.

I first heard Marcia Ball not when I lived in the Crescent City but on a compilation of Mardi Gras music in Boston about 10-15 years ago. I loved her song “That’s Enough of that Stuff” and while i lost the cd in a move years ago I made a point of finding an MP3 of it a few years ago.

At the library I saw Marcia’s “Peace, Love & BBQ” and grabbed it just to check out more of her tunage. I was hooked from the first tune, “Party Time”, which was a perfect first tune from Marcia to hear after “That’s Enough of That Stuff”. The title track follows and cemented my love of her music.

“Miracle in Knoxville”, relating a story from Marcia’s childhood in Tennessee, grabbed me with it’s mellow blues, and “Watermelon Time” made me hungry for the produce that’s truly “Sweet as candy / Sugar on the vine.”

“Down in the Neighborhood” reminded me of The Radiator’s “Confidential” thematically and I was definitely bopping along with it. “Where Do You Go?”, with it’s Hammond B-3 foundation and the choral-like harmonies on the chorus sent my mind back to the gospel choirs I enjoyed as a kitteh in ‘Nawlins. “My Heart and Soul” set my feet a tapping, something I do fairly readily even when I’m mixing live sound.

I was totally unprepared for the duet with Mac “Dr. John” Rebenack on “My Heart and Soul”. I already knew I wanted to tell a special woman about the album, but when I heard this tune I knew I not only had to get it for myself, I also had to get it for my special someone, too. (Yeah, as an incurably hopeful romantic I’m a sucker for songs like this.) There are many killer lines I could share, but I don’t want to spoil any of them so I won’t.

“That’s Married Life” is the perfect follow up, humorous with it’s Cajun feel, and I dare anyone who loves to dance to a Cajun accordion player to stay in their seat when this song comes on. If my marriage had been half as much fun as this song I might still be in New Orleans with my ex rather than in Beantown.

Marcia goes mellow again for “Falling Back In Love With You”, and it’s a beautiful little ditty for those lucky enough to be with someone long enough to fall in love with them over and over again. She fires up a little boogy-woogie for those of us who seem to know hard times and seem to keep falling “Right Back In It”.

We get a reflective walk down memory lane to 1969’s Hurricane Camille for “Ride it Out” and Marcia breaks her fast/slow pattern that makes my one complaint of the album (it makes it hard to keep a mood for longer than a single song) to bring the disk to a close with “I Wish You Well”, an especially fitting close for an album that carries her thanks to “the people of the Gulf Coast, post-Katrina, post-Rita, who hold it together day-to-day.”

Survey says…

If I were reviewing new(-ish) albums on a regular basis, I’d have to give “Peace, Love & BBQ”

out of a possible 5 rockin’ Tuxes.

If you like the New Orleans music  of The Meters, The Nevills, Sachmo, Irma Thomas, etc., you’ll love this album. If you’re not a big fan of la musique de la Nouvelle-Orléans you should check it out anyway. Consider it an exercise in music appreciation. I have a feeling it may get a place in your music library, if not a place of honor. You can snag the MP3’s from Amazon, but I recommend that you get the physical disk. Not only will you get the liner notes but you’ll also have excellent source material for converting the songs to your favorite audio format.

Marcia Ball
“Peace, Love & BBQ”
2008 release on Alligator Records
www.marciaball.com

For those of you in the Boston area, you can see Marcia live at Scullers Jazz Club this Wednesday and Thursday, 1-2 March.

Peng’s links for Thursday, 15 January

• Desktop Linux: “I’m Linux” contest open for video entries. Back on Chrismukkuh Eve I mentioned a contest from the Linux Foundation for videos spoofing the Apple and Microsoft adverts. The contest isn’t open just yet but you can start uploading your vids, so if you have a video get it in. Who knows, you may get a free trip to Tokyo in October.
• João Pinto: Development Plans for 2009. João, the person behind the GetDeb family of websites has posted some of what they have in store for the new year. Check out his post, and if you’re able to help with any of the projects please let them know.
• Lucas Rocha: New friends of GNOME. Have you ever wanted to find some way to help the devs of your favorite open source software? The GNOME team has a brand new way you can help their devs, mostly by helping funnel some cash to them to let them spend more time working on GNOME projects. I know the economy is in the dumps, but now may be the best time to help your friendly open source developer. I’m not talking hundreds of dollars, and even just buying a tee, mug, etc., will help in a real way.
• Jon Beebe: Theming Wine. Did you know there’s a way to make apps running under WINE look more like the theme you have running? WINE’s theming capabilities are kind of limited, but Jon has links to articles telling you how to do it.
• Ryan Troy: Recent Ubuntuforums Downtime. If you tried to use the Ubuntu Forums lately you know they were having some issues. Ryan was kind enough to post some information on exactly what went wrong.
• Karl Lattimer: Wine-doors 0.1.3rc1 released. WINE and CrossOver aren’t the only ways to run Windows apps on GNU/Linux, and Wine-doors is getting ready to ship an update. If you run WINE apps you should consider helping make wine-doors even better.
• Jun Auza: Free Software Song Rocks! Have you heard Richard Stallman’s “Free Software Song”? Jun has the lyrics, as well as a story about how it was written, as well as links to sone recordings of it. Plus you can see Stallman himself singing it in a video!

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!

Peng’s links for Tuesday, 16 December

Sorry about not posting my new links sooner. Yesterday was a very full day and today I was hunting down some things for Epiphany, and while I’m writing this in Epiphany (with an assist from the Fox) I’ll share what I found in a post tomorrow.

• Ted Gould: Where are my messages? The Ubuntu devs are working on a new combined applet for fast user switching, session management and IM status. Users of Ubuntu Intrepid will know that it’s already in use, but they’re making it even better for the Jaunty Jackelope.
• Daniel Holbach: Alberto Milone. I meant to post this sooner, but the developer of Envy is now a member of the Ubuntu Hall of Fame. Congrats, Alberto! You definitely deserve it.
• Mackenzie Morgan: Dear Phisher… Mackenzie has an open letter to an asshat that tried to get her in a fishing scam. You should read it, especially if you need a smile or a laugh today. I got both when I saw it.
• Leonardo Fontenelle: Student punished for distributing Linux. You nay have heard about the instructor who caught a student giving his friends CDs with GNU/Linux on them. The instructor confiscated the CDs, thinking that the student was promoting software piracy. Don’t just read Ken Starks’ original post about the matter, you should definitely read his follow-up, which includes the report of the instructor in question. Ken is refusing to name the instructor, and I salute his insistence on not identifying her for all of the people who would have tried to make the instructor’s life a living hell for their errant belief about the Free and Open Source Software movement. I’m linking to Leonardo’s post because he gave me the most complete links on the matter so I could have the full story. Thanks, Leonardo!
• Karl Lattimer: Free software developer punished for using free software. Karl posts his unfortunate experience in response to Leonardo’s post that had him getting told that his ISP refused to support him for using Linux. Woops!
• Dustin Kirkland: Ubuntu Allstars Bootlegged! Did you miss the performance of the Ubuntu Allstars at the UDS Jaunty? If you did you can download audio files of their perf for your enjoyment, and you can either download individual songs or a .tar.gz of the entire performance. The files are a tad on the quiet side, but crank up your volume and enjoy the show.
• Tom Dryer: Animated Wallpaper on your Ubuntu 8.10 Desktop. Do you wish you could have an animated background? You can, but you can’t have links on your desktop and you will need to have a bunch of CPU cycles you can spare for the job. Tombuntu has all the info you need, including (of course) instructions for how to do it.
• Jono Bacon: UDS Killed The Radio Star. No, he’s not channeling the Buggles, he’s instead celebrating the release of videos from the recent UDS Jaunty. They even have video of a presentation from out fav spaceman.
• TualatriX: Ubuntu Tweak 0.4.4 released! Believe it or not, but Ubuntu Tweak is even better than it was the last time it got updated. TualatriX has screenshots of the new features.
• Christopher Denter: Ubuntu Logo Similarity Contest. Christopher has noticed some corporate logos that are almost eerily similar to Ubuntu’s. Is it trademark infringement? Are there others?
• Bastian Venthur: How many bugs have you fixed today? It’s easy to criticize the software release process. I know I’m guilty of doing it when Firefox 3.x is concerned, but Bastien has a response for the people who complain about how long it takes without helping move the process forward. Patrick Schoenfeld has a response to Bastien that points out something that Bastien may be missing. For the Mozilla devs who want to belittle me for not being constructive in my criticism of some of the decisions the Firefox dev team have made, I finally saw the best way to follow the development process and communicate with the devs, and you really need a better way to let your testing community give you feedback on some of your choices. But then I haven’t enjoyed the same Koolaid you guys have so my opinion probably isn’t worth the energy it took to type this.

Peng’s links for Saturday, 25 October

I know I owe you a follow-up on upgrading to Intrepid but I’m checking a few more things and making some screenshots to share with everyone.

• Ruben Romero: Announcement: SpreadUbuntu alpha0.1. If you like Ubuntu and SpreadFirefox you’ll love SpreadUbuntu! I can’t wait until it’s out of testing.
• Ubuntu Release blog: Ubuntu 8.10 release candidate available. The Intrepid RC did come out on Thursday. They do have a link to some release notes that do have some important information, you may find some additional information Ubuntu wiki, although it’s not as pretty as the link they provide.
• Dustin Kirkland: Announcing ‘musica’ for Ubuntu Intrepid. If you are looking for a way to browse and stream your MP3’s over HTTP musica may be for you. And yes, he has a screenshot and there’s a package in his PPA for Hardy. For Intrepid users it’s simply an apt-get away. In fact I need to check it out for the possibility of sharing my tunage with the roomies a little more easily. ETA: Dang. It doesn’t support Ogg Vorbis files. Yet.
• Jordi Hernàndez: Gloobus-Preview 0.11. Another new version with even more new features.
• Christer Edwards: Upgrading Using the Alternate CD (8.04 -> 8.10). If you’re looking to make the upgrade to Intrepid Christer has a tutorial to help you get it done.
• DesktopLinux.com: You, too, can learn Ubuntu-fu. A brand new book has come out to help users of every experience level, including a “crash course” in doing system administration work in Ubuntu.
• Christer Edwards: Ubuntu Tutorials Search Plugin. One of the very best features of Firefox is the Search bar that you can add any number of the Mycroft Open Search site searching tools. Now the Ubuntu Tutorials site has a site search plugin for both Firefox and IE7. Adding this search tool to your browser should be the very next task on your todo list.

I’ll try to get that Ubuntu Intrepid article posted for you tomorrow morning. Unfortunately one of my roomies has finally come home from his hospitalization (about a week early, actually) and it’s ended up putting a few things on my “gotta do” list several days before I expected to have to get to them. Have a great evening!

Isaac Hayes, dead at 65

Yesterday the music world lost a legend when Isaac Hayes, a member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, died at his home just east of Memphis, Tennessee. Family members report that they found him near his treadmill, which was still on, and were unable to get a response from him.

With 21 studio albums, beginning with 1967’s Presenting Isaac Hayes and 1969’s Hot Buttered Soul, Hayes definitely left his stamp on soul and funk music, extending it’s audience into pop music with his Grammy and Oscar winning first soundtrack song. Like many white American males, when I think of Isaac Hayes my first thought is always the wah-wah guitar intro and staccato horns of his “Theme from Shaft“, and his song arguably made him more known from the movie than star Richard Roundtree. His reworking of the theme for 2000’s Samuel L. Jackson starring sequel brought his unique brand of music to a new generation.

But dipping into even a selected discography shows that he’s known for a lot more than just Shaft. His cover of the Jackson 5’s “Never Say Goodbye” for 19791’s Grammy-winning double disc Black Moses in many ways betters the original. He also covered a diverse range of artists as Jimmy Webb, the Carpenters and Burt Bacharach and Hal David as he opened up a wider music market for artists such as Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, Funkadelic, and Curtis Mayfield.

In addition to his music and his charitable work through the Isaac Hayes Foundation, Hayes also found work as an actor through a recurring role on “The Rockford Files” as The Duke in John Carpenter’s “Escape From New York”, and in 1995’s “Johnny Mnemonic.”

He also lent his voice to the animated hit South Park when he took on the role of Chef. His departure from the show after the episode “Trapped in the Closet” mocked Scientology, which Hayes was a member of, brought mixed reactions, but you had to respect him for standing up for his faith, regardless of your views on Scientology.

The comedic world lost a star Saturday when Bernie Mac died, but I dare say we lost an even brighter star with the passing of Hayes. Many have tried to duplicate his sound, but nobody could match it. I’m going to miss him.

For more information on the work of Isaac Hayes you can read the coverage in the Los Angeles Times and Reuters, as well as many other news sources.

Amazon shows Linux some lovin’

Back in September Nanci told y’all about Amazon’s DRM-free MP3 store, but that it didn’t support Linux. They’ve changed that and you can now install Amazons MP3 Downloader even if you love penguins.

Journey set to rock SecondLife

(Added good news, especially for Linux client users below. -Nanci)

Journey, one of several rock bands that simply refuse to die (yea!) have bought an island in SecondLife and have planned a kicking grand opening party.