Coolest thing I've seen about Linux yet!

So, I've been using Ubuntu (first 8.10 and now pre-release 9.04) on my IBM laptop (thanks Lana!) for the past several months, and in general, I have been very impressed with its usability, capabilities, and function.

First of all, Ubuntu, like most Linux distributions is free (as in beer and speech), so that instantly gives it a leg-up on Windows for the computer tinkerer who occationally messes up their system beyond help and needs to reinstall. It also has a great update manager that keeps your system up to date without hitting you over the head with "genuine" versions and involuntary reboots. The out of the box folder organization leaves a little to be desired for users who are not used to Linux, but that's a pretty minor point of contention.

To further my uber geeky experiments, I recently setup a headless (no monitor or keyboard) file server to share, um, "data" between a small group using Ubuntu Server Edition 8.04. The setup was mostly smooth and the updates and installation of the pertinent programs was very straight forward, but using a text-only Comand Line Interface really left something to be desired when it came to renaming and moving files around. It's a long adventure of typing in the full path of the file you want to move and then the full path of where you want it moved to. Not really my idea of fun.

This brings me to my point of the coolest thing I've seen about Linux yet. While I was Googling around to figure out how to use SSH to access my server from off-site, I found this gem:

Re: How to use sshd

---

You can also do:

sftp://username@IP.add.re.ss

in nautilus or konqueror and it will allow you to do drag'n drop file moving.

How friggin' awesome is that? Not only does it get me a secure connection from any computer running Linux back to my server at home, it gives me a graphical environment to manipulate files and folders! Rock on!

Now, there's probably a Windows version of this, but it probably isn't free and definitely requires more work than I just invested in figuring this out.

My first job: landscaping

This is my first experiment using the website Plinky.com to help avoid "blogger block" by answering their daily prompts. The prompt that, um, prompted this post was "What industry ushered you into the workforce?"

I worked the summer I turned 16 for the landscape maintenance division of a local real estate developer. I made a little over $6 an hour and was the only native English speaker on the crew. For the first three weeks of work my dad had to drop me off at the yard in the morning and pick me up in the afternoon because I was still 15 and hadn't gotten my drivers license yet.

Who has time to vote for town hall questions? Oh yeah, stoners!

Yesterday, President Obama hosted an online "town hall" campaign stop, er, meeting where he took questions submitted by the public and answered the most popular ones. In addition to the obligatory softball questions, thanks to the winners over at NORML, many of the top rated questions had to do with the legalization of marijuana. As Politico reports:

In this moment of national economic crisis, the top four questions under the heading of “Financial security” concerned marijuana; on the budget, people voted up questions about marijuana to positions 1-4; marijuana was in the first and third positions under “jobs”; people boosted a plug for legalizing marijuana to No. 2 under “health care reform.” And questions about decriminalizing pot occupied spots 1 and 2 under “green jobs and energy.”

Luckily, even though Mr Obama does have some experience in the drug world, he stuck to his political and reasonable guns and answered the question directly: "'The answer is no, I don't think that is a good strategy to grow our economy,' he said, as the audience in the room applauded and joined him in a laugh."

Even though I think that the "War on Drugs" has been an abysmal failure and is really misdirected in its goals and tactics, I am still against the blanket legalization of pot and most other drugs, and this was certainly not the format for it to be addressed. It does seem kinda obvious though that it's the pot-heads that have the time to vote those questions to the top of the list.

Blackberry Upgrade, A Week Later

Okay, so last week I posted about the firmware / operating system upgrade from 4.2 to 4.5 that was offered to Blackberry Curve users (and others, I would imagine). Well, after a three hour installation process (hands off, thank God!), having to reset my ringtones and alerts, and fiddle with a few apps, I have to say that I am quite pleased with the upgrade!

I'll go through the features and give my impression of each:

• Video recording capability - Freakin' cool! I've never had a phone that could do that before, so it's a lot of fun to mess with. Not the best quality, but I've also seen worse.
  
• HTML email for
  Internet email accounts - I know what this should do, but since I have my mail working with the Gmail app, I'm unaffected by this one. Only thing I'd like Gmail on my phone to do better is to be able to click on embeded links.
  
• Music and Video Streaming video capabilities - Also freakin' cool. YouTube and other embedded flash video on a phone that's not an iPhone. The quality is pretty crappy (as it is on the iPhone), and it doesn't quite go full screen, but it's spiffy nonetheless.
  
• New browser home page design - I could take or leave this. Could be good for non-tweakers, but I had my iGoogle page setup for my phone, and it worked perfectly. Luckily you can reconfigure this to your liking.
  
• Improved downloading experience - Seems quite a bit faster... that's all I can tell.
  
• Improved UMA and data performance - Definitely faster. Feels like you're on a 3G connection when you're really still on the older EDGE. I'm impressed.
  
• Attachment downloading and document editing - Downloading good, haven't tried editing yet, but the upgrade did include Word To Go and Slideshow To Go, so it should work.
  

So now my only gripes are with Google. You can view attachments sent via Gmail, but that's it. No saving, editing, etc. But, I suppose if that's the worst thing, it's still not that bad.

In conclusion, good work, RIM!

BlackBerry Upgrade!

Finally, BlackBerry sent out an upgrade to the newest version of its operating system (4.5) to upgrade those using the older (4.2) version. There's some sweet new stuff in this upgrade, including video recording and video streaming (YouTube?).

Here's the new features list for my phone, the Curve 8320:

• Video recording capability
• HTML email for internet email accounts
• Music and Video Streaming video capabilities
• New browser home page design
• Improved downloading experience
• Improved UMA and data performance
• Attachment downloading and document editing

These are all fancy things that the new BB Bold is supposed to do, and I couldn't understand why they didn't push an upgrade out to their existing users sooner. However, in hindsight, I should have known that it was a ploy to get users of older phones to upgrade to the fancy (and expensive) new models instead of waiting for an update. I'm glad I waited it out!

I'm currently installing it on my phone and I'll follow up with my impressions.