I can has desktop eye candy

So the monitor I'd been using for my desktop at home decided that it was time to start giving me problems...waking up after sleeping. With all the amazing Black Friday deals buzzing around, we decided to take advantage of them, coupled with some computer repairs needed on both 'Sea and Songwind's computers, we decided it was well past time for the adults of the house to get "family" Christmas presents, and thus a budget was decided upon for each computer, and voila, early Christmas present to each of us.

For 'Sea and songwind each, they have new processors and motherboards. 'Sea has joined the world of the multi-cored. Songwind has joined the world of the quad cored (lucky ;) ). I've had a dual cored computer for a while now, but it's an earlier generation - one that will not support the snazzy ePCI video card that 'Sea now sports :D.

For myself, I have a new monitor and new webcam (on its way). I have now fully joined the digital age of video devices. I inherited songwind's old video card, which only has dvi ports! However, my monitor only has hdmi ports - so we went looking around the house for an hdmi to dvi cables - of which we have one...the one that connects the DVD player to the TV *laugh*. The only person in the house who watches much in the way of DVD's is Spud - but we figured he would be fine for the couple of days it will take for Amazon to deliver the cable that will cost me 8.99 as opposed to the cable that Target, Best Buy, or Radio Shack will charge me 26.95! Besides between all of the computers and various and sundry other devices that sport DVD players, we would be able to find something for him to watch a dvd on if he got desperate.

So I figured it was time to join the ranks of the swank linux desktop. I've installed avant-window-navigator to enable a pretty task bar. My top panel no longer auto-expands...and on my laptop which is slightly more "buff" than my desktop, I've got more visual effect which enable shaders on the top panel.

Then I went looking for a new desktop background. My search started with a generic google search which found the violin image and this article *laugh* Oh my goodness! I have two favorites:

this violin image

The Elemental

and of course Zen Penguin (which even though it isn't a widescreen image, works well when stretched into widescreen - penguin just looks like a buddha)

Screenshot of my laptop



In and amongst all of the various sites, here are two collections that stood out:

animated robots - I had to link this one. This site reminds me of my mother, who seems to be attracted to cg robots :)

Widescreen wallpapers Now that both of my home monitors are widescreen, I am now avidly interested in wallpapers that work for widescreens :)

Promoting a high school friend's site

So I have no idea if anyone reads this given how rarely I post here, but...

If you do, you're in for a treat. The site I'm about to share is the site of a friend of mine from high school. We were in band together, and I must say he's done well for himself since then!

Hawkeye's Sketchblog

So please, sit back, scroll through and enjoy a feast for the eyes.

Help me Obiwan

Yay! Our gaming group is playing again, and we're creating new characters.

But I SUCK at creating character names.

We're playing d20 Modern, and the game is set in Minneapolis. Our characters work for a Pinkerton's like firm.

My character used to be a techie entrepreneur that turned to forensics when the dot com bubble burst. She's a Smart Hero (16s in Int, Wis, and Dex)...Oh yeah, and she likes demolitions...that's where she *learned* to be nimble and tumble. ;)

Ubuntu 8.04...check

Both my laptop and my desktop are updated to Ubuntu 8.04.

I'm liking this whole Firefox 3 concept.

If I were to share one of the things that I like most about Ubuntu over Red Hat (and its variants) is that Ubuntu gets updated frequently, on a predictable schedule, the repositories are maintained, and I can look forward to incorporating the latest and greatest software (most of the time). A few years ago there were issues with ubuntu repositories, but I'm not having as many issues with them now as I did then...But with the RH yum channels, for instance, I'm still stuck with gimp 2.2, whereas I've been using 2.4 on Windows and Ubuntu for almost a year. I *really* don't want to go back to 2.2 - there were significant enough positive modifications made in 2.4 that I'll do whatever I can to avoid using 2.2.

New type of geekery about to be posted here: baking and cooking!

Why baking and cooking? Well - I love cooking and baking, but I first really made my home in the kitchen via baking bread - and that's what some of my friends remember me best for. I don't expect that all of my talk is going to be about baking, though - I do forsee discussion about cooking in general.

Am I a trained cook/baker? No. I learned everything that I shall share in these pixels by trial and error, by reading, by learning from my stepmother and ex-mother-in-law, and by learning from friends. I'm not afraid to try something in the kitchen. Sometimes this is a good thing - sometimes...well...not so good. But in general it's fun, and the results are even better :).

Over the years I've had to face a number of culinary challenges. I'm allergic to fungi and all manners of aquatic food (fresh and saltwater, fish and shellfish). My housemate has issues with onions. My housemate's daughter is allergic to bananas. For a while I had to learn gluten free cooking because it looked like I might have either celiac disease or a wheat intolerance (I don't!). My ex-mother-in-law is vegetarian. A number of our friends face any number of food aversions or allergies, and when we throw parties, we want to make sure that they have home cooked food they can truly enjoy - not just eat. What has resulted is the knowledge and ability to be flexible as needed - frustrating at times - challenging at others - fun at others!

Testing out a new IM client

Once upon a time there was a Yahoo client for Linux called gyache. It was...well...ugly was a good word for it. It didn't support web cam all that well, and it wasn't all that great.

I was cleaning up my home directory today on my laptop getting ready to upgrade to the next version of Ubuntu (Xubuntu on my laptop) soon when I ran across it again. Huh. So I went online to see if there are any updates. The official website hasn't had any activity since 2006.

But wait a second...

There's a Sourceforge project that was updated less than 6 months ago. Hrm.

So I installed it this evening, and I'm looking through it now. It looks pretty. I haven't connected my webcam at the moment so I haven't seen how well that works.

How to tell one is a crafting geek?

Another doily,
originally uploaded by craftingdragon.

That one has to remind oneself not to play on her online crafting project management account during the day.

I was a good Code Monkey. I did not succumb to the lures to Ravelry. Ah...but the temptation...I have to be honest and admit it was there.

I'm currently digging through old pictures and looking for pictures of old projects to put up on my crafting flickr account so that they may then be brought into my Ravelry account (gods I love that Flickr/Ravelry interface! Mah-velous, I tell you! It's so easy! Pick a project, edit photos, pick a set or a tag, search, drag and drop - all in your browser. I love modern web applications development, I tell you!)