Subtle Changes

This week the maintenance staff of our building changed all the lightbulbs in our hallway. When they did this, they also upped the wattage of each lightbulb slightly, so the net result is a much brighter hallway. EJ has also made some small changes in her behavior.

This week she has insisted on leaving the house early in the morning, I’m not sure if it is an effort to be more like her Mommy, or because she really likes playing with all the other kids in the Daycare. Anyways the net result has been some really fun moments, like yesterday morning. While Steph was dressing, EJ had to get dressed as well. She walked over to her cabinet of clothes and indicated that she expected to be wearing an outfit, soon.

We did the entire dressing routine, including climbing on the table to put her socks & shoes on. Then, to make sure that she was going to be able to leave in themorning, she gathered MY socks off the floor, and removed the pair inside of them ( maybe I’ll write a boring piece of drivel someday about my OCD habit of wearing two pairs of socks) and brought both to me to put on. Then while I was standing around in my pajama bottoms and socks, she fetched my boots so that I could take her downstairs.

I told her I needed pants, but I’m sure she realized that there had been plenty of other days where I had not bothered with more then wearing my PJs to drop her off. In fact there have been days where she has been dropped off in HER PJs.

So, it looks as if our little girl is shifting er schedule more toward the morning, which means Daddy has to become more of a morning person, getting more schoolwork done during the day, sort of like making the hallway slightly brighter.

Early Edition

click for full sizeThis morning I pulled one of my canvases out of the stack in the corner, dusted it off and unrolled it. I let it sit on the floor for a few minutes while I continued reading my news feeds and having a coffee. Then i grabbed my camera and was prepared to snap an image to use as the background for the flyer for the UbuCon here in New York, but after being rolled up for months, the canvas had creaes in it. So, I had to break out the steam iron and flatten the canvas. This took some real physical manipulation, tugging & pulling the canvas while pressing hard with the iron.

We don’t have room to have all my canvases stretched and mounted because we live in a tiny apartment in Brooklyn, that’s why.

Once the image was in the camera, I loaded into my computer and made some initial adjustments using [[digikam]]. The next step was to to make adjustments to the logo header and create a textbox. I fired up The GIMP and did the work. You really had to be there, I was having fun! Finally, I opened up [[Koffice]] and made a slide with KPresenter and printed it to PDF.

I must point out that Wifey, a pretty crackerjack copywriter, lent her expertise to the project and made the words flow very nicely! Thanks, hon.

download the pdf

Tags: Ubuntu

Blawahahahahaha!!!!!

I have gone plugin crazy here on the the old Wordpress software. First I added the LiveJournal cross posting plugin to allow me to fill up that website with the same drivel you read here. Then I added [[OpenID]] support to EckenrodeHouse.net so that when you want to leave comments you can sign in right away if you have an OpenID; thre are several different decentralized methods for getting one - check it out. Then just because I’m a freak of nature and it has been 532 days since I last signed into my Xanga.com account, I added a Xanga cross-post plugin as well. Now, we are totally syndicated in all sorts of krazy ways about the web.

What am I hoping to come of all this? Well, maybe there will be a few more contact which develop because of this, maybe a few more friends will popup out of the wood work and maybe I’ll just have some more fun. That’s really all that matters, I find this to be really fun.

So far I have yet to get a plugin that lets me cross-post into Myspace.com but one day it’ll happen and then all sorts of crazy stuff will be happening! Baw! Baw! Baw!!!!

One Click Programs

Tiago Rodrigues writes about one solution to what many users who have migrated to linux see as a major problem to preventing more from following. Autoconf appears to me to be another approach towards making installing new programs easier to install on linux. Something which I agree may be a bit daunting so some forms of users. On a Mac, you really couldn’t expect this to be any simpler. Open the .dmg that is downloaded onto your desktop with Finder (occasionally, there is an unzip with Stuffit Expander and occasionally there is a full-fledged system installer with click through acknowledgement, then drag the program’s icon into your Applications folder in the sidebar. QED.

Autoconf also appears to me to be somewhat rivalling Linspire’s Click-N-Run technology for linux, which they have just recently opened up to work on several major distributions, Ubuntu Linux being one of them. When this is fully operational, a user will be able to go to the [[Click-N-Run]] website, click on a package they want downloaded and installed, even to purchase some of the commercial packages which include the restricted codexes such as MP3 and DVD support that has been somewhat of a mystery for a brand spanking new Linux User. What will be interesting to see in the near futrue is how technologies such as these, Autoconf and Click-N-Run will affect bug tracking and reports within a distribution - if these installers will use the most up to date Ubuntu versions of programs, or if this will allow Dapper users to install Firefox 3 or OpenOffice 2.5 when they are released.

Tags: Ubuntu

Fun Assignment

So if you happen to be in New York City on the 16th of February, and you are looking to find all the other Ubuntu Users, SysAdmins, Advocates and Enthusiasts, then you’ll be heading to the Google offices on Ninth Avenue to the The Ubucon.

There was a planning meeting on Friday on IRC, and I drew the wonderful responsibility of creating the Artwork for the flyer. Yay!

More to come! Obviously.

Tags: Ubuntu

The future is looming ahead

Today, we all slept and slept and slept, then finally when we crawled out of bed and got dressed to go for a walk we ended up at the coffeeshop in our neighborhood it was 3pm. EJ was pleased to be out until we left there to head into the park. On the sidewalk she threw a little tantrum about wearing mittens. Then a tantrum about crossing the street. Then a tantrum about the mittens again, and yet again another tantrum about the mittens. However as it was 32F outside this was an issue which was closed to debate.

Finally, we got her into the park where she just wandered about for nearly an hour. After two more episodes with the mittens, I picked up up and stuck her in the stroller - put the mittens on her and they were promptly removed but I let it ride because we were leaving and heading home.

We have realized and acknowledged that she is nearly two and what is happening to her is she is being ‘blessed’ with a wide array of emotions and will continue to develop more and more emotions which are quite strong, just like ours! So, here we sit, sort of like the moment at the beginning of a rollercoaster ride, when you have nearly finished the climb up the lift and are poised to barrel over the edge and drop off into an extremely wild ride that will have us all screaming with our hands flung into the air. Or something like that.

Triple Replication

I just suppose that it would be easier to work it out this way, plus I can really spread my words around this way. What am I talking about? Well, Due to some adversity on my part to doing any really difficult work, I have decided to repeat my blogging in triplicate.

I have this blog, this blog and this website, which is basically a blog with a photo server application.

Now, why do I have all these different address? I don’t know! But rather than making the content something I really have to work hard to make totally different, I have recently decided that I will use them all for sort of the same thing. EckenrodeHouse.net is my flagship, its where the family goes to look at pictures of my daughter growing up, it’s where I write cute stories about her and us as well as the things that we are doing, including my activities with Kubuntu.

so.nacreo.us. yes that’s the url, don’t you just love it! Gets my (K)Ubuntu only postings, mostly because I have yet to configure the crossposting from WordPress to the new BloggerAPI. [sounds like a php project to work on.] Also this will let me have a good feed to send to Planet Ubuntu Users which is the real prompt for all this activity.

This leaves LiveJournal. I have that account from leaving comments on other people’s blogs that are hosted by LiveJournal.com it seems a shame to me to waste a perfectly good plugin to not crosspost all my wordpress categories (well, just nathan and ubuntu) to LiveJournal as well.

In this current configuration, I can triple post with one writing (ATM, I cut-and-paste from the blogger into my wordpress, but that will change soon) and I can concentrate on further developing “my art” rather than pulling out my hair.

Tags: Ubuntu

Kontact has Klass

As school is now starting a new session, and I was going to actually do the work anyways, I thought I’d write about how I use Kontact to help me go to university via the internet.

Each class, gives us a syllabus(pdf) and a class calendar(doc) which lists when assignments are due. I am a bit forgetful and short focused so I need some help getting through the next nine weeks.

First, I set I task in Todos that starts on the first day of school and is due the final day of classes. Korganizer, a Kpart of Kontact, lets me put subtasks underneath of it. Then I go through the calendar, which I open with Kword, and title all my subtasks exactly what the Instructor calls them.

After all the subtasks have been assigned and the correct date applied to them, I open the syllabus with Kpdf which is one of the modes for Konqueror, and cut and paste the descriptions of each assignment into the notes.

When I am done with all this work, takes about three to four hours for two classes that last nine weeks, I no longer have to open the class calendar or the syllabus, I just look at my calendar and see what work I have coming up and how to fulfill it.

Tags: Ubuntu

School’s over - back to class

If you were trying to get a hold on us over the weekend, chance were I had my nose pressed up in the books as School reached a Finals weekend. With the exception of a visit on Saturday to Thijs’ house for his first birthday, I was busy trying to complete my Finite Maths exam and write a huge systems development paper.

Now that this is done, I have new classes that start today, so in nine weeks, I’ll have another Finals weekend and will be slammed and then it’ll start all over again, but for now, i can take care of some other things.

Tags: School

SHINY Shinyness!

So, from what I have seen, Feisty is one beautiful desktop, and the KDE love is particularly pretty. It is totally within my nature to test-drive and tweak the environment - I like what I like and that’s good enough for me, but what I have seen so far are some really nice graphics and this all KDE3.5.5 not the upcoming 3.5.6 or the much anticipated KDE4 we are talking about!

There are some noticeable differences in applications, that really do make them a joy to play with. Basket Notes is a prime example of dashing changes. A sidebar has been added to store all of your baskets. You can still drag and drop text, images, and links into a basket - additionally you can now take screen shots of zones of the desktop!

Your notes no longer need to stay locked within vertical columns, but instead you can set them free and drag them about the basket at will. Notes can be grouped together and tagged as a group or individually. When you are completed with filling in all the information you want to add to our basket - you can export it directly into HTML. Wonderful!

Click here for full size image
When you change baskets in the sidebar, there are some neat animations that cause notes to jump about and look very happy. And did I mention how beautiful it all is?

Tags: Ubuntu