This is why I love Linux/Opensource
Jeremy was playing around on ShinyCat trying to get Compiz installed for some nifty orange glows around his windows. Well, ShinyCat has crappy integrated ATI drivers and we couldn't get any of the drivers properly installed so Compiz kept giving stupid errors. He was kind of bothered that we couldn't get this to work, so jokingly I said "The xfce compositor does shadows, just change the color in the source code."
That joke turned into the project for the next ten minutes which included hunting down the XFCE Window Manager source code and finding where in said code the color for the shadow was defined. Jeremy now has orange "glows" around his windows and pop up menus without the bloat and resource eating that Compiz would bring to ShinyCat.
It was fun.
On the todo list for the window manager is "selectable shadow colors." I'm pretty sure I could patch it so that it accepts arguments from the command line for colors, but I wouldn't quite know how to bring it into the GUI (though maybe I should attempt that over break? If it's still on the todo list (which is only a couple of months old?), that possibly means that someone hasn't submitted a patch to implement such a thing yet?).
The changelog for the latest 4.6 beta (current stable release is 4.4.3) says that they've implemented changing the opacity value but not color yet. =P
Before (on white):
After (on black):
Why do I do the things I do?
Yesterday I was googling for some conky (system monitoring tool for Linux) stuff and came across a forum post on the Arch Linux site. I dunno why, but I downloaded Arch Linux and wiped Ubuntu from the desktop and installed Arch. I honestly can't tell you why I did that. What's worse is that I was upgrading the laptop from Ubuntu 8.04 to 8.10 via the graphical upgrade utility (which broke my desktop when I tried to go to either 7.10 or 8.04), so if anything happened to the laptop I'd be completely out of luck, because I knew not a thing about Arch while I was installing it. Well, I did know that a fresh install would give me a bash shell and minimal utilities (that's it), hence why I needed the laptop up and running to follow the guides on the website. Following the guides and familiarizing myself with the package manager (which is awesomely called pacman) has given me a usable system in a very short amount of time. The only issues I have right now are that some of the fonts in Opera don't display as nicely as they did under Ubuntu... From what I can tell, they're the same goddamn fonts, just rendered differently for some reason. Well, they SHOULD be the same fonts because the settings for opera are the exact same as they were before I installed Arch. I love having my home directory on a totally different harddrive. Makes migrating so goddamn easy. I installed X and xfce with pacman, ran it, and everything was here, all set up. Easy peasy.
I need to work on the font issue, but more importantly I need to study for psych exam tomorrow :/
Oh no..
I just changed my password on both AndrAIa and feldspar in an effort to get away from using the SAME BASE PASSWORD FOR EVERYTHING. Let's see how long it takes me before I'm locked out of my computers :(
Wow
So these Atlantis episodes are getting really good. I can't believe they're ending it after this season. Then again, I guess that's part of the whole reimaging of the Sci-Fi channel. Ugh. At least Wright and Glassner intend on doing movies with Atlantis like they did / are doing with SG-1, and with the experience they've already gained there they're sure to make some damned fine movies about the Pegasus galaxy. I just wish it didn't have to end so soon. Daniel Jackson was on Friday's episode! He appears again this Friday too, in the second part. It's pretty fun to see him and McKay go back and forth.
Oh. My. God. I just realized that I am similar to Amber when it comes to Stargate... Well, I don't so much know (or care) about the writers or what the directors are doing, but I have become very involved in the Stargate universe (not to be confused with the third show, Stargate: Universe) just as she is with.. well, every show she watches. Mostly Doctor Who. That's all she really talks about, she relates far too many topics to Doctor Who.. but when someone starts talking Stargate, whether it be Richard or Stephanie or Joy sometimes, I am so there. I think it's something about the universe and its lore that draws me into the show. Same for Amber with her shows. There's just something that pulls you in, makes you want to know more. I think Stargate has been the root cause of most theoretical scientific discussions in my house. Which is not a bad thing at all. It gets your mind working, your imagination flowing.
I don't really have anything else. Today is my poopy class day. Started eating the candies that Galina, Linda, and Pat dropped off. God I love Air Heads. I need a can opener so I can drink this Jarritos :( No offense or anything, I guess.. but it really surprised me that Linda remembered how much I love Jarritos. Then again, she met Yee and Nate (and Tim?) and they made us go to Meijer for some Jarritos... I'm sure that moment stood out for her, meeting my weird friends and goofing off in a gigantic south-eastern Michigan grocery store :razz:
I can never find good bass/treble levels for my sound card... It's annoying. And then the bass knob on my speaker controls only helps to frustrate me.
I finally found a program that will let me use the extra buttons on the wireless Logitech mouse that Casey gave me for my laptop (the mousewheel is wonky and he has like a million other mice, so he let me take this one for the laptop). Now I just need to figure out what I want those buttons to do...
I've been talking with Mary, Brian's ex, a lot lately, since like mid to early August at least. Her boyfriend broke up with her about.. a week before Jacki broke up with me. Is.. is it bad that I have some sort of satisfaction that she feels she can come to me in this time? I mean, that is a good thing, and I am sympathetic to her and am trying to help her.. but I just think I want for people to come to me with their problems far more than I should.
I wish I had two line-in's on Andraia's sound card. Sometimes I just wanna run my DS or Zune through my main speakers at the same time I have the laptop as well as the desktop going. Usually the desktop is for music or whatever show I'm watching or game I'm playing at the moment. The laptop is for AIM, most youtube videos, and sometimes a movie or show depending on what I'm doing on the desktop and is therefore always hooked up through Andy's line in. It would be nice to run the DS through the speakers so I get some decent sound quality, and sometimes I wanna listen to the radio, so the Zune is great for that. Too bad the laptop doesn't have a line-in.. Wait.. my sound control thingy has a slider for "Line 2." This may be perfect!
Ugh.. time to shower.. then class, class, lunch, homework, dinner, class, lab, homework.
I need to start working out. I'd say on a regular basis, but all I ever do is just a lame amount of push-ups. I'd like to get a fair amount of push-ups down before I actually start going to Keating though, for some reason. I don't know, it makes sense to me. Push-ups are easy, something I can settle myself into everyday, ideally.
What I am doing:
Setting up compiz on the laptop.
What I should be doing:
Studying for chem exam at 10am.
Working on chem lab write up due at 6:25pm.