For the past six months, I’ve been avoiding Compiz Fusion like crazy. My little laptop is very loved, but is still kind of old (~5 years), and I didn’t want to learn too much about something awesome I couldn’t have. After all, a lot of it is functionless eyecandy, and the faster my system runs, the happier I am.

But for reasons unknown (I blame the caramel-filled brownies I had yesterday), I suddenly had an itch to try it out.

So I read this excellent (if lengthy) guide, turned on a whole mess of stuff and…

…am very happy I did it. Wobbly Windows, Annotation, random little effects I’m still discovering, FIRE (sorry, sorry, I’m a pyro). And the best part? My system handles it like a champ, and I have yet to witness a decrease in speed.

So I encourage you reluctant people to try it out. The worst thing that can happen is that it drags, and then you can easily revert to your previous settings, and come one–who doesn’t want to set their screen on fire?

—–

System specs, before you ask:

• 512MB RAM

• 1000mHz Intel Centrino processor

• Intel  82852 Graphics Card (learn more here, I'm terrible at hardware)

• 1280x768 LCD screen

Yesterday I went out Christmas shopping, which is a fairly normal activity this time of year

There’s nothing serious to say, but here are two pictures I snagged with the dinky 1.3MP camera in my phone:

Tux: He's everywhere, even music stores (who probably thought that penguins were just a really popular animal for some reason)

WEDDING FAIL!!

Google’s released a new Labs product called Moderator. It’s a “collaborative Q&A” tool, and is available here: http://moderator.appspot.com/
I don’t see myself using it much, but I just always get excited when there’s something new in Labs.

Sitting in my basement room, there’s a beautiful, ancient Gateway laptop (circa 2000). It came with Windows Mistake Edi–I mean, Millenium Edition, has a Pentium III Celeron processor, and a whopping 64MB of RAM.

When I got it a few years ago, I was really excited–it’s my first personal computer. Since then, and two laptops later, it’s fallen a bit out of favor (seriously–what can you do in ME that you can’t in XP? If it was 98 it would be a DOS gaming station. But ME?) But now that I’ve learned about Linux, and started reading KMandla, I know that it’s good for quite a few things. So I’ve decided to turn it into a Jukebox–load up a lightweight distro, fill the HDD with music, and rock out.

But I really can’t make up my mind about the distro. Xubuntu, Fluxbuntu and Puppy all want too much RAM. Ubuntu GTK 1.2 Remix‘s installer isn’t quite…stable…Does this leave DSL, and DSL alone?

OK Google.

Game’s up.

I tried. Then I tried some more, and after that a bit more, but now it’s over.

The purpose of a web browser is to make life easier, not to waste my time making me try to love it.

Chrome does not make my life easier.

So I will not be using it for a while.

A History: Timmy and Chrome

First, Windows wouldn’t work, and I couldn’t use it. I was getting really excited though–there was the comic (which came out of the BLUE!). Then the Ubuntu Forums thread. Then my friend’s one and only blog post, a positive (but well-supported) review. Never mind the general internet buzz surrounding it–that’s a given.

Then Windows was restored, and I actually tried the thing. I kinda hosed it, but I was trying to be optimistic. It was new, it was unextended, heck–it was still in Beta! So even while while completely slamming it, all I could think of was, “Don’t worry–it’ll improve.” And I was sure that it would…eventually.

A few months later…

• It’s out of Beta.
• Extensions are almost here.
• It has users. From the Google Blog:

In just 100 days, we have reached more than 10 million active users around the world (on all seven continents, no less) and released 14 updates to the product

• It’s still terrible. Yes that’s my opinion. But it’s other people‘s too.

So I think the time has come to stop coddling Chrome, and instead make it play with the big boys. You know where I stand on Chrome vs. Firefox. Comparing it with IE is trickier–one’s an awesome presentation of a terrible idea, the other’s a terrible presentation of an awesome idea. Opera and Safari users are too ingrained into their browser choice to care (ditto for Flock) and Epiphany, Konqueror, Kazehakaze, Dillo, et al. are *nix-only. Has Chrome gotten a victory in that? No.

So hopefully Google, geniuses that they are, will make a totallyawesomepieceofsweetness for Chrome 2, and the Browser Wars will turn into a pair of great, open source browsers taking potshots at an overly competitive old guy, with the browser equivalents of the Green Party flitting about in between (Opera, etc.)

Unfortunately, “hopefully” is nowhere near the same as “currently” So I’ll catchya later Chrome.

Much later.

I’ve been pondering, and have made the following Difficult Decision:

This blog is going on hiatus for an indefinite period of time.

Before I get comment-lynched, let me explain myself:

1. If you didn’t know, I’m taking several difficult courses independently. This is what they call “not-fun,” and requires a lot of work. Yes, I manage to find some free time, but my brain is in no condition to make intelligent posting.
2. I have been offered a job (as in contract, not as in career) writing a website in Python. When I finish, I’ll get paid cashy money, and quite frankly–who doesn’t want to write a website in Python?
3. To be perfectly honest, my list of things-I-want-to-write-about is showing it’s ugly backside. I almost wrote a post on Mnemosyne, but in doing research, I realized that any article I wrote right now wouldn’t do it any justice. I’ve also thought about pieces on VirtualBox, the command line, Python…but everybody and their dog has done articles about that.

All of that said:

• I will leave everything up–I just won’t post (and the archives seem to be helping some Googlers…)
• I plan to come back to this once life is a bit more tranquil.

So thanks, everyone, for your somewhat-pathetic commenting and the juicy altitude of my site traffic graph. To finish, the Python code for this blog:

import time as t

print "</blog>"

t.sleep(A_few * 60 * 60 * 24 * 31) #Multiplications convert from seconds to months

print "<blog>"

I’m sorry for the hiatus in post-making–I was on vacation in Gibraltar (which was fabulous, by the way.)

I should have a real article done by the weekend, but in the meantime here’s a picture I took on the Spanish end of the border:

I realize Windows has many uses–but for running specialty applications (like an ad-displayer) I really think Linux is the way to go….it’s cheaper too.