While it has nothing to do with Xubuntu, a tragedy has occured and now the world is not as good a place.
R.I.P. Frank Frazetta you will be missed.
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
Sunday, May 9, 2010
A Windows Fix
So my XP box as much as died in the middle of January, and until the first week of May I was pretty exclusively using Xubuntu Karmic for everything. I was quite happy to see that aside from some gaming, I was not in the least bit negatively impacted by this. Over the course of the past several years I've slowly but steadily migrated from using predominately commercial software to F/OSS simply because there are enough apps out there to do what I need. To a first-time visitor here, make no mistake, I'm a Windows user, and have been for quite a long time. I'm not a platform nazi and I don't think my OS is better than your OS, even though in fact it might be. I've been running at least one linux machine 24/7 since 1996 to do my LAN routing/internet sharing and such. For that machine I've stuck with Slackware since day one, but Ubuntu was the first desktop linux that ever worked well enough for me to actually use, which is why I picked up Xubuntu and then after I had to write an app for it, started this blog.
I didn't think when I started this blog that I'd be doing any kind of regular updates to it, and I'm not surprised to see that I haven't. That's not likely to change anytime soon. I'll update this blog when I think I have something to say about Xubuntu or something related.
That brings me to the point of this post. Since 1997 I've been using the Logitech MouseMan (later re-released as the Logitech Wingman Gaming Mouse) which is, in my mind, the perfect shape for a mouse and will likely never be improved upon. However, with only two of them still 100% functional, I just threw a generic Logitech wheelmouse on my Xubuntu box when I put it together, and that's what I've been using the last few months. When I ordered my new parts for my XP machine, it didn't have a PS2 mouse port, and I decided not to just get an adapter, so I ordered a new Logitech LX3 Optical mouse with my new motherboard and processor. After the install, I got around to actually using the new machine and it didn't take long to get annoyed about something. I'd gotten used to using the scroll wheel in Xubuntu, where it acts on whatever window is below the cursor, not the window that has the focus. In XP, this is not the case. After a while, I just wrote it off as a difference that I'd have to live with. And I could live with it, it's not that big a deal, really. Thankfully though, I don't have to. If you use Windows as well as (X/K/etc)Ubuntu and prefer the X method of scrolling applying to the window under the mouse rather than the focused window, relief is just a download away!
WizMouse is here to save the day. Now if I could just find something to make Firefox in linux automatically select the text in the address bar when I click on it like it does in Windows...
:)
I didn't think when I started this blog that I'd be doing any kind of regular updates to it, and I'm not surprised to see that I haven't. That's not likely to change anytime soon. I'll update this blog when I think I have something to say about Xubuntu or something related.
That brings me to the point of this post. Since 1997 I've been using the Logitech MouseMan (later re-released as the Logitech Wingman Gaming Mouse) which is, in my mind, the perfect shape for a mouse and will likely never be improved upon. However, with only two of them still 100% functional, I just threw a generic Logitech wheelmouse on my Xubuntu box when I put it together, and that's what I've been using the last few months. When I ordered my new parts for my XP machine, it didn't have a PS2 mouse port, and I decided not to just get an adapter, so I ordered a new Logitech LX3 Optical mouse with my new motherboard and processor. After the install, I got around to actually using the new machine and it didn't take long to get annoyed about something. I'd gotten used to using the scroll wheel in Xubuntu, where it acts on whatever window is below the cursor, not the window that has the focus. In XP, this is not the case. After a while, I just wrote it off as a difference that I'd have to live with. And I could live with it, it's not that big a deal, really. Thankfully though, I don't have to. If you use Windows as well as (X/K/etc)Ubuntu and prefer the X method of scrolling applying to the window under the mouse rather than the focused window, relief is just a download away!
WizMouse is here to save the day. Now if I could just find something to make Firefox in linux automatically select the text in the address bar when I click on it like it does in Windows...
:)
Sunday, November 8, 2009
Faster than I thought...
I just finished uploading the new files to my Google Code page with the source for v1.1 of Xfce Wallpaper Changer Mono Edition (as seen here previously) and v1.0 of Xfce Wallpaper Non-Mono Edition (new and unproved!).
The Non-Mono edition is written in C/GTK+ and duplicates the functionality and feel of the C# original. The 1.1 update to the mono version contains a few aesthetic changes to standardize it with the non-mono version.
Again, these are only tested on Xubuntu 9.10 32-bit because I'm too lazy to test them on anything else.
The Non-Mono edition is written in C/GTK+ and duplicates the functionality and feel of the C# original. The 1.1 update to the mono version contains a few aesthetic changes to standardize it with the non-mono version.
Again, these are only tested on Xubuntu 9.10 32-bit because I'm too lazy to test them on anything else.
Friday, November 6, 2009
Xfce Wallpaper Changer 1.0
I was looking for an automatic wallpaper switcher for Xfce. Before you type your fingers off in comments, yes I'm aware of doing it with a shell script. That just wasn't what I wanted. I developed a Mono application with Gtk# to do what I wanted, and I thought I should share it. A few notes:
1. There is nothing professional about this, I hacked it together in a few spare hours over the course of a few days.
2. It's written in C# with Mono/Gtk#. If you don't like that for any reason, there's nobody twisting your arm to use it. I am planning on trying to write this in straight up C/Gtk+, however, and presumably by the end of next week I would be done with that. It's a really simple app, after all.
3. This is basically just implementing the one extra step that the Xfce developers didn't build into their desktop wallpaper manager. The Xfce team is doing great in my book, they can't think of every little thing somebody would want.
How It Works:
Set up your Xfce desktop background to an image list.
When you compile and launch the app, it will live in the tray (system notification area). You can click on the tray icon to toggle showing the GUI. You can right-click on the tray icon and close the app or force it to change wallpapers. In the GUI, you have a menu and a spinbutton control. You can change the spinbutton control to the number of minutes between wallpaper changes. The menu will allow you to (again) switch the wallpaper immediately, or exit the program.
What the program actually does is force the Xfce desktop module to reload, which refreshes the wallpaper from your list.
I've hosted the source code and icon at Google Code in a tarball. I included a binary that I compiled as well, but no idea if it will run out-of-the-box or not. You'll have to have at least Mono and Gtk# installed for it to run. I have only tested it on Xubuntu 9.10 (Karmic) 32-bit. I don't see why it wouldn't work on other Xfce-based platforms, but I can't test it so I won't say it can.
I hope it's useful to somebody, and I hope to have a post up about a C/Gtk+ version of it sometime next week, which I'm sure would make some people happy.
1. There is nothing professional about this, I hacked it together in a few spare hours over the course of a few days.
2. It's written in C# with Mono/Gtk#. If you don't like that for any reason, there's nobody twisting your arm to use it. I am planning on trying to write this in straight up C/Gtk+, however, and presumably by the end of next week I would be done with that. It's a really simple app, after all.
3. This is basically just implementing the one extra step that the Xfce developers didn't build into their desktop wallpaper manager. The Xfce team is doing great in my book, they can't think of every little thing somebody would want.
How It Works:
Set up your Xfce desktop background to an image list.
When you compile and launch the app, it will live in the tray (system notification area). You can click on the tray icon to toggle showing the GUI. You can right-click on the tray icon and close the app or force it to change wallpapers. In the GUI, you have a menu and a spinbutton control. You can change the spinbutton control to the number of minutes between wallpaper changes. The menu will allow you to (again) switch the wallpaper immediately, or exit the program.
What the program actually does is force the Xfce desktop module to reload, which refreshes the wallpaper from your list.
I've hosted the source code and icon at Google Code in a tarball. I included a binary that I compiled as well, but no idea if it will run out-of-the-box or not. You'll have to have at least Mono and Gtk# installed for it to run. I have only tested it on Xubuntu 9.10 (Karmic) 32-bit. I don't see why it wouldn't work on other Xfce-based platforms, but I can't test it so I won't say it can.
I hope it's useful to somebody, and I hope to have a post up about a C/Gtk+ version of it sometime next week, which I'm sure would make some people happy.
