I just read an article about common grammar mistakes that occur in blogs. I hope a lot of bloggers read it and it has a positive affect on blog grammar. Its always been one of my pet peaves. If your interested in improving your grammar, then their are many sites on the web to help out (i.e. Lynch, Guide to Grammar and Style).
PS: I should of mentioned that I taught English in Berlin for 5 years. So I consider myself somewhat an expert.
This was originally going to be a response to a comment on my last post but it got a bit long.
I’ve been using Ubuntu Dapper Drake since Febuary and often forget about the improvements I noticed upon first upgrading. For me, Nautilus has finally become a pleasure to use instead of the pain it used to be. Although not in the default install, NetworkManager is my absolute favorite improvement. Even my wife can now connect to almost any network. The infrastructure for updates and adding/removing software is a huge step forward for linux distros. And last, but not least, the documention is light-years ahead of Breezy. I applaud the documentation and localization teams.
Some of the smallest things are also what makes Dapper such a pleasure to use. For example, my laptop’s (Thinkpad T43) volume keys finally change the master volume and not just the PCM volume. Also I now get an on-screen indication of the change. The menu layout is also much improved.
Even with all the wonderful improvements, there are still so many things to refine and many things that are still semi-broken. One of the more questionable choices in my view is making the live cd the recommended install path. I’ve tried this a couple times on machines with 256mb of RAM and it hung everytime. Even on the machines with plenty of RAM I found myself fighting with the partitioner. Both of these issues have been quite a lot of attention in Malone (The Ubuntu Bug Tracker). For me the “text-based” install is extremely easy to use and works flawlessly. I’d like the idea of have an atttactive introduction before the actuall install but not at the expense of causing a large portion of potential users the headaches that will prosumably come from the live cd.
Overall Ubuntu is hands down the best distro for the largest audience. Not only because it is currently the most user-friendly distro but because the communty (users and developers) that surrounds it is rapidly growing AND dedicated to continuing this tradition.
PS: For anyone interested in getting started with Ubuntu, Linux or open-source software, please don’t be afraid to ask questions to me directly. To start, go to ubuntu.com to get a feel of what ubuntu is.
Last night I went to the Berlin Ubuntu 6.06 (Dapper Drake) release party at Danial Holbach’s (dholbach) place. It was nice to meet other ubuntu lovers. I arrived at 8pm and left at ~4:30am. By then the sun was already on the rise and by the time I arrived home it had already become completely light out. I finally woke up at 12:30pm with a sore throat from all the talking I did.
It seems as if Danial and I share a love for a certian british band from the 80’s and the singer of said band. I met Ellen, a kde usability contributer. I envy her persistence with such a thankless task. I also met Daniel Elstner, co-maintainer of gtkmm as well as a very easy-going and likable guy. Furthermore, Matthias Klose, Nina Feyh and about 20-30 others including a couple people from Frankfurt were there.
So it seems as if the Berlin Ubuntu community is pretty strong. Too bad I’ll be leaving in a few months. Of course, the wonderfull thing about the open source community is that it really doesn’t matter were you are. The community is global.
Jeff Croft has a nice tutorial on how to set up Django, a python web framework, on Dreamhost.
If you want to use the sweetness that is Python to do web development, are a Dreamhost customer and would like to be able to avoid this in the future, I propose that you vote to have it included as a standard feature. Go to Home > Suggestions in the Admin Panel, search for Django and then cast your vote. This is how Ruby on Rails got included.
While you’re at it, cast a vote for Postgresql, Django’s preferred database and a vote for mod_python.
A friend of mine just finished up his Masters of Arts thesis project. Basically the project consists of two moody boxes, Otto and Ada, blogging about how they feel. So you ask, “How do the know how they feel?” Otto and Ada have built in sensors that detect changes in their environment. They then express themselves via their blog. Their grammar is not always great but they are both still quite young.
In a recent post, Sam discusses his experience with Python which he used for the project. In the post, Sam mentions the aspects of Python that make it ideal for artists. Those points are equally as valid for general programmers, though.
As a side note, I hereby take credit for introducing him to Python. Seems as if my persistant nudging paid off. 
“I have a hard time caring about “KDE vs. Gnome”. It’s like watching your two best friends fighting. I’m not going to take part.” - Chris DiBona
I just read about a firefox user’s experience with MS’s new adCenter advertising service. Unfortunately, this is what one expects from MS. It’s natural for MS to have IE as the preferred browser. Someone should tell them, however, that the days of useragent checking are thankfully behind us for the most part. Maybe it was the same developer(s) that did this site. Firefox users see:
We’re sorry. Windows Live Shopping Beta does not yet support Firefox.
We’re working to correct this as soon as possible.
At least they say they will correct the problem “soon“.
I wonder if the inline ads that the service displays will be firefox-friendly. That would be stupid on top of stupid if not.
Explorer Destroyer
Speaking of useragent checking, I was looking into the Explorer Destroyer the other day and there seems to be quite a debate over whether this is the “right” approach to getting new firefox converts. I’m definately not going to use it for my site but I will be putting up a Google firefox referral button on this site. I’ll probably try the Firefox Referral Plugin for Wordpress. I’ve been wanting to see how adSense works so this is a good opportunity. I’ve opened an account already.
While reading up on google co-op, I was pleasently surprised to see that the screenshots used to show previews of the ‘co-op’ed search results are of firefox running on Linux. From the Gnome theme, it looks like it’s a redhat-based distro.
Let the google linux rumor mill start again!
I’m still working on understanding co-op, though.
I just submited the following feature request to Google Maps today.
[Subject] Feature Idea: Collaborative map viewing
It would be quite useful to be able to view maps together with others. I often find sending links to google maps too disconnected with what I’m trying to communicate.
I imagine the zoom and drag functions that one person does are visible to others that are ’subscribed’ to the session. This could be nicely integrated with the chat functions in gmail. I could invite a friend to view a map with me and they would be informed of the invitation and can either join or refuse just as one can with Google Chat. We could then communicate in a chat pane (or even Google Talk) and each control the movement of the map.
This would be useful for instance to give more descriptive directions, giving a travel group an overview of the days plans or just to help people get an idea of what’s available in an area.
Making the session recordable would also be nice in order to webcast the tour.
If this is being worked on or if you think it’s a viable idea, please let me know
I’ve been wanting something like this for a while. Since I live so far away from alot of my friends it would be useful to be able to show where I live and to see where my friends live.
If it’s ever implemented I expect a fat check for the idea.
So it looks like Berlin (and Europe) has finally gotten decent coverage from Google Maps. Now I can Finally give folks an idea of what it looks like (from the air anyways) where I’ve been living for the last 6 years.
So, a small tour is called for….
Notes for new users:
You can change the zoom factor with bar on the left. You can change between the 3 view with the buttons on the top right. If you want to send someone a link then you need to click on the “link to this page” link at the top right (above the map). If you don’t, then the link will only take them to Google Maps start page and not to your destination.
Enjoy.
