Update: Thunderbird 3 has moved out of testing and now has an official release. I’ve posted installation instructions here.
One of the things I’ve never really been fond of, on any computer, are desktop email clients. This is especially the case when they come preloaded on the machine. I find that using Gmail fulfills most of my needs, however, if you’re on a Linux machine and simply must have a desktop email client I highly recommend using Mozilla’s Thunderbird over Evolution.
Draw a crazy picture, Write a nutty poem, Sing a mumble-grumble song, Whistle through your comb. Do a loony-goony dance ‘Cross the kitchen floor, Put something silly in the world That ain’t been there before. -Shel Silverstein
I’ve written about wordle before, and I am still completely blown away by how useful it is at conveying information without completely removing the context. I feel that this sort of word count analysis has been especially useful in the current political setting. The New York Times used this method recently to compare the Democrats and Republicans during their conventions this year.
Below is a wordle I created using Obama’s portions of transcript of the first presidential debate. Before simply copying and pasting the transcript into the wordle creator I parsed the text myself in order to remove words and phrases that would simply clutter and overshadow the key issues mentioned during the debate – from over 4000 words to about 1500. You can find the text file here.
I’ll post McCain’s portion of the debate soon.
UPDATE: I’ve posted it here.
Adobe AIR, the runtime environment I’ve written about before, has been moved out of beta and is now inline with releases for Windows and Mac. Expect apps to run more consistently with how they appear on other operating systems as well as having better integration with the Linux environment . That means apps won’t disappear when you minimize them.
Be sure to uninstall any previous releases of Adobe AIR before moving forward. Especially alpha/beta releases. This can be done in a number of ways depending on how it was initially installed.
Enter these commands to get the newest version (currently 1.5.2):
Instead of keeping your browser pointed towards the Facebook web page, Pidgin users should take advantage of an open-source plugin which enables Facebook chat via the XMPP/Jabber protocol. Users can then chat with friends, view the online status of their friends, and set their status through the third party chat program.
To install the plugin follow these steps:
cd ~/Desktop
Download the .deb and .zip to your Desktop (one line):
You should notice a folder named usr on your desktop now. It contains a few .so files, however, you only need one for the plugin to function. Depending on what your system is running determines which of the three you need:
32-bit Linux users enter the following command to install the plugin:
I’ve finally gotten somewhat settled into my new house. Here’s another doodle, also from the fridge, that was once accompanied by a somewhat passive-aggressive note that read “If you eat food that isn’t yours, you are a communist.” It makes me laugh, and my milk was thereafter safe.
I can’t recall when it was that I first ran across these typographic representations of film clips. Recently though, I discovered a few more videos, non film related, that really grab me with the way the type is used to express moods and ideas. Here’s a playlist:
Bonus: Also, I don’t know if there is a video of this, but I found this via StumbleUpon a while back. Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright
As I prepare to move to my new apartment I’m trying gather all my little doodles and drawings which seem to have skattered throughout the house over the past year. I’ll try to post more as I prepare for the move.
The past few days here have been wet and gray, so here’s a short list of some of my favorite web games (-10 to productivity). I was feeling nostalgic after spending an hour playing Line Rider, which is as far as I can tell, endless fun. So, I decided to revisit a few of my favorites. Each is relatively simple, some taking less than five minutes to complete, some, with no actual objective could be played for hours. Enjoy.
