There are a lot of things happening in my life, but it’s not time to broadcast them yet. The kids are fine (all 3 of them) and me and the wife are happy. My full-time job at Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is becoming more stable since I made a very hard decision about my freelance work with Digital · Alias. One can surely guess what I mean based on that sentence, but since everything isn’t final – I’ll keep it vague.

In the world of Linux, I’m getting very tired of Firefox not working out the way I’d like it to. It’s always ran very slow on my desktop (Fedora x86_64). I’ve switched to Epiphany (a GNOME project) and boy does that web browser need some work. Good thing is, it’s fast, bad thing is it’s very immature and I miss ALL the convenient features Firefox has. I’ll stick with it because I need speed more than convenience.

Social Life

I’m on Facebook a lot more now-a-days, but playing their casual games, such as: Mafia Wars, YoVille, and Metropolis. Funny; I realize that these games are a complete waste of time and they are ONLY fun in the beginning when you are trying to balance out everything.  I also see that everyone needs something to fun to do, even if it doesn’t progress your life in any manner.  When you play Xbox or PS3 – those games really don’t add to your life.  The same can be said about these casual online games.

Google Calendar

I’m using Google Calendar a lot more these days.  I’ve got everything from birthdays, tv shows, podcasts and FLOSS events.  Web 2.0 Expo is taking place.  I can see that it’s in San Francisco, but I surely can’t go.  I have a Weekly Joomla conference call with a local group titled, The Atlanta Joomla Open Source Meetup.  And so much more…

Micro-blogging

I have been micro-blogging like mad lately.  Unfortunately; I’ve been interacting on Twitter more than the Laconica instances.  I’ve noticed that there are a lot more mobile and desktop apps for Twitter.  As soon as I pickup on Python, I’m going to make more apps for Laconica.  That’s the social media I’d like to use the most, it’s FLOSS at its best – it’s just under marketed.

Pet Projects

As soon as I can free up so time, I plan on finally taking up some opensource projects.  I am going to start out by learning Python and doing some offline applications.  When I’m comfortable enough, I might then join a GNOME project or be more active with the Fedora Websites group.

I still don’t know the full story about this GNOME Do program, but so far it’s the best thing… besides slice bread…  you just can’t beat that!  I’ve heard about this package when Fedora 9 was released.  I installed it on my laptop, but never really learned, nor took the time, to understand how it works.  Recently, there was a blog post (LifeHacker) that highlighted the new “Docky” theme, which gives your Linux box a certain popular MAC component.  I’m not going to take a sip of the hateraide, this Docky component is awesome and it’s given my Fedora 10 a new lease on life!

Installing GNOME-Do

The popular distributions have it in their repos, such as: openSUSE, Fedora, Ubuntu, etc.  The only problem is some of the repos do not have the latest version yet – v0.8.0.  That version has the whole “Docky” thing.  Simply use your distro’s text installer; mine is YUM.

YUM install gnome-do

You can always install it manually, using the source files, but this is no easy task if you’re a Linux newb.  It requires other packages, such as: bzr, glib-sharp, glib-, gtk+-2.0, and much more.  I had the toughest time finding some of the dependent files.

Social Media to the Rescue

I posted a “call for help” on Identica and Matthew Schick came to my rescue.  He had it working, from source, and he even made some RPMs.  I quickly downloaded his RPMs and they installed without any issues.  So; visit his site to get the latest version.  Thanks Matt!

• http://www.excentral.org/fedora/10/
  • flickrnet – required
  • gnome-do-plugins – optional
  • gnome-do – required

What Does GNOME Do, Do!?

Beats me!  Ha-ha!  You’ll have to check out the web site for detailed informaton on that.  Besides the whole Docky thing… you call it up by using WINDOWS+Spacebar on your keyboard (it can be changed in the preferences).  Once the GNOME Do console/window is up you then type in a document you’re looking for… a program you want to run, etc.

In order to run it, for the first time you can either type in “gnome-do” in your terminal or use the one-time run window (ALT+F2).  Once it’s running you can go into preferences and have it automatically start on login.

That’s the extent of my knowledge.  If you know more, please post a reply and share your experience with GNOME Do!

Audio Review of Gnome Do

ProductiveLinux, episode #20 has a very good review of this new version of Gnome Do.

I’ve run into this issue from time to time and I would normally have to reboot.  So; one day I said, “No more!  This is LINUX and I should be able to work around it.”  Oh!? What issue am I talking about?  When your GNOME panel gets stuck and there’s nothing you can do about it!  I’m going to show you how to kill your gnome-panel process and then restart it.  Note that it’s only a temporary solution – I know there’s a better way, but this will do for the time being.

When your GNOME panel goes on the frizz you can kill the process using the “pkill” command.  The only issue with this is once you start the gnome-panel it’s not so stable and it’ll reset to factory defaults.  No worries though once you reboot it will resume to your normal configuation.  So; to kill a mocking bird… ah I mean a gnome panel:

pkill gnome-panel

Reanimate the Panel You Just Killed

After the panel goes away, you then want to bring your Frankenstein back to life.  Open a Terminal window and type “gnome-panel”.  That will start your GNOME panel process.  The only trick with this command is where you execute it.  Since it’s being executed in a Terminal window, you’re bound by it.  If you stop the command or close that terminal, your GNOME panel will go away, again.  After you run the command, simply minimize that Terminal window and go about your business.  JUST TO RESTATE, THIS IS ONLY A TEMPORARY SOLUTION.

Make sure you visit the GnomePanel page for more insight on this very useful module.

Quickly; just wanted to help promote this blog post.  If you have Gnome and you’re running Compiz and you’ve notice a very weird graphical glitch when running Virtualbox in Seamless mode, then here’s the workaround for you!  The blog post is by Rick Fleming.

Gnome + Compiz + Virtualbox Seamless Window + Workaround = Awesome

I tried it and it works.  It wasn’t extremely easy to understand though. At first, I didn’t know where the .exe file was.  You can find the executable file in “VBoxWorkaround\obj\Release\VBoxWorkaround.exe”.  Create a shortcut and put it in your “C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Start Menu\Programs\Startup” folder.

Download the Workaround File

Just in case their server is down, I’ve provided the files below.

Virtualbox Workaround

Rant: Here’s my ordeal with this horrible error, at least to a noob in linux, like myself.  I couldn’t figure out why I was getting this error.  When I opened Evolution I would get a pop-up saying “Summary and folder mismatch, even after a sync”.  I thought it was my mail stored on my server, I have 4 pop accounts and I ended up deleting all the old emails 500+ each (Yeah I’m a pack rat).  It was literally driving me crazy because it wanted to redownload ALL my old emails.

Well after all that foolishness I finally figured out the solution.  Most sites I visited stated the same solution to the problem, go into the ~/.evolution/mail/local/ and delete any file that had .ev-summary relating to the pop-up error.  So; if your inbox was giving you the problem then you would delete Inbox.ev-summary.

My problem was even after I deleted that file I was still getting the issue.  After a couple days of pulling my hair out of my head…  Finally I ended up looking at the directory through gnome-terminal and I saw an extra file that’s not visible in a GUI file browser.  It ended witha  tilda (~), Inbox.ev-summary~.

I’ve noticed in linux that any file ending with a tilda is treated like a backup file, it’s also hidden to the naked eye.

Once I removed that file – everything was back to status quo.  What a trip!  I’ve been on forums, mailing lists – you name it.  I haven’t properly checked my mail in Evolution within the past couple days.  I’m glad that’s all over with!  Linux rocks!