openswitch

This guy has the right idea. Seriously. If you’re gonna try to convince me to give you money by feeding me some B.S. excuse for your life’s problems I’d rather the B.S. make me smile. Be creative darn it! Don’t bring me down with crap stories about how your sister-in-law’s dog needed a heart transplant so you closed out your 401K and emptied your savings and now you’re out of a job so you don’t have money for gas. If you’re going through the trouble of making stuff up, make it good.

If I saw a guy on the street with a sign that said, “Ninjas killed my family — need money for kung-fu lessons” I’d pull out my wallet without hesitation. He’s moved from the “poor beggar” arena into the “poor comedian” arena and hell, that ninja story is creative and funny stuff, he just worked for my dollar.

It’s Wednesday and that means it’s time for me to take a little break from writing, and time for you to find some high quality entertainment elsewhere on the Internet.

For starters, have you ever wondered what advice a serial killer or Dick Cheney would give to a 10 year old? Wonder no more.

That’s a lot of Diet Coke.

Did you know that China makes flags that say ‘Free Tibet’? Ironic doesn’t even start to express.

Only in Saudi Arabia.

If you ever wondered whether or not Kobi Bryant can jump over a moving vehicle, here’s your answer.

I giggled like a school boy when I saw this.

I saw that the title said “What to do when Windows really messes up” and was waiting for a punch-line like “When Windows really messes up, install Ubuntu” but that joke never came :(.

I want. Just think of the possibilities . . .

After watching this video of Reggie Watts I instinctively bought some of his music from Amazon. Wow, just, wow.

If this guy were smart, he’d have written “Would we have allowed Soviet Russia to host the Olympics?” Oh . . . wait.

As if the shirt alone didn’t make you look goofy enough you had to open your mouth.

And for my next trick, I will make this rabbit disappear!

Atrocities! 22 year-old woman still not married?!

This video is a great way to sell your product. Wow.

And now, thanks to Texas, we have a benchmark for the word “stupid.”

I’m addicted to Twitter. And ever since Adobe released the alpha version of AIR for Linux I’ve been eager to try some of the Twitter desktop clients because, let’s face it, gtwitter and those other Linux-only Twitter clients suck. No offense to their developers, but they lack a certain polish that AIR clients possess.

For my comparison I’ve taken four of the most popular Twitter desktop clients for AIR, installed them on Ubuntu Hardy Heron 8.04 and made some general, but revealing, observations. Below is a screen grab of the four clients side by side just so you can see what they look like (click on the image to see larger).

OK, on to the interesting part. Reviews will follow the order presented in the screen grab from left to right.

Spaz

IMHO Spaz is the best looking Twitter client for AIR. Then again, that’s just an opinion. It has a super useful growl-like notifier of new tweets. Works great at retrieving and sending Twitterings. Unfortunately it doesn’t remember my password, even though I save it in the preferences. Also, and this is just a minor annoyance, I select the option to “minimize to systray” but it doesn’t. It just minimized to its place on my application bar just like every other program does. Though to be fair, none of the clients reviewed actually minimized to the systray like Amarok or Banshee do.

Conclusion for Spaz: Very usable on Linux.

Snitter

On Windows or Mac I absolutely love Snitter. But on Linux it’s crap and I don’t know why. For starters, you can’t close the application by clicking the close button. Nor can you close it by right-clicking anything. Attempting to close Snitter only results in some obscure error and you end up having to force quit every time via the System Monitor. Also, when Snitter is minimized it doesn’t go to the application panel like other programs do, it disappears completely. To make matters worse it has a lot of lag when typing. It’s usually 3 or 4 letters behind my fingers which gets very annoying very quickly. Other than those three issues it works just like it should.

P.S. – lack of those growl-like notifications is a bummer.

Conclusion for Snitter: Unusable on Linux.

Tweetr

Tweetr was the only AIR Twitter client tested that didn’t restyle the window decorator (in my case, Emerald). That’s neither a positive nor a negative, just an observation. It works flawlessly. It minimizes just fine, it closes without a glitch, updates quickly and looks good doing it. And like Spaz it has that super useful growl-like notifier of new tweets. This is definitely my favorite AIR Twitter client on Linux. It was also the only client tested that succeeded at remembering my username and password. The biggest negative for Tweetr is that it has no word count, and that’s kind of important when you’re limited to 140 characters. The word count for Tweetr is found in the title bar once you start typing. I guess that means there are no obvious negatives for Tweetr.

Conclusion for Tweetr: Very usable on Linux.

Twhirl

Last on my list of AIR Twitter clients to review is Twhirl. The design looks fruity to me, but that’s just my opinion. Also, there are way too many options surrounding the input box. But again, that’s just my opinion. Functionally Twhirl does just fine as a Twitter client. It retrieves updates, it sends my Twitterings and even makes itself opaque when it’s not in focus. Unfortunately it suffers from the problem of not remembering my password even when I check the box labeled “remember password?” Lack of growl-like notifications was also a let down.

Conclusion for Twhirl: Very usable on Linux.

Conclusion

All the clients with the exception of Snitter would make fine AIR Twitter clients for Linux. The only reason I would prefer Tweetr is because it actually remembers my username and password. Then again, Spaz is really great too and it even has a word count feature which Tweetr lacks.

I’ve heard it said that we should “Hate the sin, but love the sinner.” On paper this sounds like a great Christian principle to live by. But in real life I find it to be a difficult, if not impossible, task to accomplish. We know that God hates sin, and that we should too. I hate abortion (well, abortion as birth control anyway), I hate drug abuse, I hate murder too. Yes, so far so good. My conscience is still intact.

But when we get down to the nitty gritty of living with people I think our perspective has to change slightly. Now, don’t go misunderstanding me, we need to call sin “sin” and we need to see sin the way God does too. But I also think a lot of folks get hung up here. I know I do, at any rate. For one reason or another we can’t get past a person’s sin to see who they are (or could be) in Christ. I see a drug abuser and think how depraved they are. “Scum of the Earth” is what I feel. Yet along with hating sin the way God hates sin we also must love people the way God loves people.

This presents a problem for me, and I suspect it does for you too. I simply can’t get past other’s sin to be able to wholly love them. More than that, I don’t want to associate with them because they are “dirty” or “condemned” or “sinful.” But I think Christ gives us the prime example that those are the very people we should be mixing with.

One practical way I’ve found of accomplishing this is to change my verbiage a little and say “Love the sinner, look past the sin.” I find there are two results from this change in mindset:

1. I feel more concerned for a person’s welfare and eternal fate

All of a sudden I see them as a person in need of a Savior. No, more than that. I see them as being exactly like me. When I look past their sin and see the person underneath I’m utterly compelled to love them. Without a genuine love for people you can never be used by God.

2. My ego gets put aside and I’m a more humble person

When I get hung up on another’s sin, whether that be drug abuse, homosexuality or adultery, I almost always end up feeling somehow “better” than them. Believe me, it’s quite unintentional on my part, a result of my own sinful nature no doubt. But once I see others as being in the same sinking ship I am in, both in need of the same thing, well, all my haughtiness dissolves.

If we really want to be humble, if we really want to love people, we have got to look past their sin and love them. Remember, I never said we have to say the sin is “OK” or to love the sin, but I think it’s very possible to keep the mindset that sin is a horrible assault on God and at the same time look past it to see the fragile person underneath.

The great failing of Christianity for the past millennium (at least) hasn’t been lack of legislating Biblical morality. We’ve had plenty of that. It would be easy to find instances in history where virtually every one of the Ten Commandments has been illegal.

Similarly, the great failing of Christianity has had nothing to do with evangelism, preaching (in its modern understanding), or “conversions.” Thanks in no small part to the revivalist movement and the Roman Catholic church we’ve had plenty of this as well.

Christians have mastered the art of beating, smashing and generally devastating anyone who lives a “sinful” life . . . whatever that is. The definition of “sinful life” changes throughout history you know. Today we see homosexuals and supporters of legalized abortion taking the brunt of the Christian beating all for “biblical” reasons, of course.

We make blanket statements, distance ourselves from them and then judge them to Hell. In the past we’ve seen the same thing happen to most minorities including, but not limited to, rock ‘n roll and mixed-race marriage. But I’m not here to talk about race and sexual orientation.

No, I’m here to point out that the great failing of Christianity for the past millennium has been the seeming inability of its adherents to use their smallest bones. As any middle grade student can tell you, some of the smallest bones in the human body are found in the feet and the inner ear. What an enormous thing it is to walk with someone and listen to them.

The night before last my family experienced our first all-nighter. And by “all-nighter” I mean, of course, that my son threw up all night long. It was extremely odd as he didn’t have a fever, 98.6F all the way. And when he first thew up it was clear, no food in his stomach. Food poisoning? I’m not sure. All I know is that when a 3 year-old child throws up it’s never a silent affair. Crying, loud crying, always ensues.

The first couple of times we were like, “Crap! What a mess! Get the Lysol!” Then I had the brilliant idea to get a small trash can for, ya know, the stuff. At first Toddler Boy was all like, “You want me to do WHAT in there?!” Then after a few puking episodes he was like, “ZOMG! Where’s the can?! It’s coming again!” Suffice it to say, he’s an old pro at hurling (not to be confused with Curling, which is a sport . . . but that would be cool too.)

If you’re an Ubuntu Linux user and you’re still using that old GTK theme that came with your OS then you’re really missing out on a great visual experience: Emerald. To the right is a screen grab of my current desktop setup (click it for a full view). As you can see, gone are the choppy corners and the ho-hum colors. With Emerald you have hundreds, if not thousands, of choices for a really great looking desktop.

To install Emerald just open your Synaptic Package Manager, do a search for “emerald” and install it. You should see it appear under your system menu under System > Preferences > Emerald Theme Manager.

To use an Emerald theme on your desktop you first need to download one from Gnome Look and then install it via the Emerald Theme Manager. All that should be somewhat self-explanatory.

However, getting Emerald to work with Hardy is not self-explanatory. In Hardy the default window decorator is not Emerald, so getting it to work with 8.04 is as simple as changing the default window decorator. Here’s how you do it.

First, install Compiz Config Manager

You do this via Synaptic Package Manager. I simply did a search for “compiz config.”

Second, go to your Compiz Settings

Third, edit your Windows Decoration setting

When looking at the Compiz Config Settings Manager you will need to scroll down a bit and find the “Window Decoration” setting. Click on the icon (as opposed to the check box) to edit its settings. In the “Command” field delete whatever is in there and put this in its place: emerald --replace

Restart your X session by holding down Ctrl + Alt and pressing Backspace. In certain instances you may have to reboot. Everything should be working now. Enjoy a delightfully pleasant desktop experience that, in my opinion, rivals the looks of OS X.

Just finished installing Hardy Heron so here are my first impressions.

Nice looking theme

There’s a new-ish Human theme included by default called “Human Murrine” which is a big improvement over the clunky standard Human theme. Also, unlike the fugly default background for Gutsy, the Hardy background is actually worthy of being seen. Very nice job, Ubuntu team!

Transmission included by default

w00t! Transmission is included in Hardy by default. Okay, okay, it’s a small thing but you know what? (Sniffle) /me wipes nose with arm. It shows they care about me. It’s the little things.

Firefox 3

Interesting that Firefox 3 is included by default seeing as it’s still in Beta. Oh well, I’m sure it must be stable for someone to have made that decision, right? RIGHT?

Cool icons showing which processes are working.

Not really a necessity for a fellow like me who’s used to running *nix but for the first-timer stuff like showing when a Synaptic Package Manager is running can be very useful. Very good call on the part of Ubuntu.

Change BIOS option from IDE to RAID

This was my wtf? moment of the week but it makes sense when you think about it. Originally I was having trouble with Hardy on my Dell 530. The new 530s strictly use SATA connections for the hard disk(s), they don’t have any IDE connections or those fat ribbons you find in computers of yesteryear. Seems that my BIOS was set up on an IDE configuration and Hardy didn’t like that. Gutsy didn’t mind so much but it threw Hardy for a loop. The solution was to go into my BIOS and find the option where I could change it from IDE to RAID and that solved the problem.

FWIW, this should never have been a problem in the first place. I really don’t understand why the Ubuntu devs couldn’t fix this as it was reported before the final release of Hardy last Thursday.

At any rate, The new Ubuntu rules and I’m hooked (again).

The more people I talk to people about the ’08 presidential election, the more I hear that they’ve lost all hope in the candidates and oftentimes in the process itself. Well, I take that back. Obama’s supporters are extremely happy over his landslide success in this election. After squashing Huckabee and Clinton his only remaining challenge is to overcome all the die-hard Republicans who’ll be voting for McCain.

Interestingly, it seems that no one will be voting for McCain because they feel he’s the best man for the job, but rather because they just don’t want Obama in the White House. Personally, I think that’s a lame reason to vote for anyone but I suppose I can at least understand the reasoning behind a vote cast in that manner.

I’m still pulling for Ron Paul. He’s clearly the best man for the job. I’ll leave it at that. But instead of a guy with a conscience and a clear head about things, we’re left with the three stooges. But hey, I mean, at least it’s entertaining to see Clinton going for the dual-eye-poke on Obama, who throws the vertical-hand-of-defense in typical stooge fashion.