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the "pre-blog polls", now reside bellow the blog. please jump to the end of the page to have a little vote in them, just for fun. :)

... now, on with the rambling blog!

Thursday 31 March 2011

Facing hard facts...

Microsoft Windows is the best opperating system.
It's code is really clean, concise and expedient.
It's size is justified by it's features.
It's really secure and Microsoft never use it's inbuilt backdoors to spy on you.
It's really advanced, ahead of all the competition, and pioneers ideas and innovations for opperating systems.
It's Proprietary License is really fair and empowering.
It's very educational and informative as to how an opperating system works, and encourages knowledge and excellence.
It's performance and resource useage is really excellent.
Microsoft's Customer care is the best, as shown by their insistence on protecting you from backing up your media, with DRM features, and it's "trusted computing".
I love Microsoft, and their business model especially, which is always very ethical, honest, and fair.
I think it's time to re-install Microsoft Windows, and get rid of all my gnu/linux partitions.
What time is it? April 1st. :p

Tuesday 22 March 2011

jawdropping anti-bloat.

FBUI.

i was sat there, installing parabola gnu/linux on a virtual machine, and was just installing xorg, with some reluctance, at it's 150mbness.

so i hit enter, n went off to do another search for xorg alternatives. and then i encountered fbui.

FBUI.

http://home.comcast.net/~fbui/

fuck yes!

it all sounds too good to be true, and with that, experience has taught not to get hopes too high... however, when it comes to performance, the website isnt telling fibs.

the logic is flawless.

well worth reading through http://home.comcast.net/~fbui/

the more I read about fbui, the more I'm in love. X has long been lauded as the achilies heel of gnu/linux. a necessary evil of a sort. the reluctant ally, a major boon, but a major bloated pain in the ass.... fbui looks like it could sort us all out.

idk how much effort is involved in starting to port X apps to work with fbui, but oh my sweet lord.... the performance boon, the anti-bloat, the keeeeeen savvy of it... ahhh...

this is what makes free software great. that someone can come along and go "i have a better way of doing it!"


however, so far, it's a case of "so close n so far."
fbui's live cd booted ok, n I could launch apps ok... alas, mouse in virtualbox fails.

gonna have to burn a cd (its only 11mb!) to check it out native hardwise.

yes, thats right, didnt i mention ther's a live iso to try it out. THERE'S A LIVE CD FEATURING IT TO TRY OUT!

i wonder if tinycore know about this. ^_^

it's certainly not a final destination, production ready sort of tool yet, but my oh my, it's a lot further on than one might think of such a little known about gem of the free software community.


what i really love about such concise lightweight code, not highlighted to great extent on the page, is that you can read it all. easily can expect to read through the entire code of your whole os, in your own lifetime, if it's only 11mb.

bloated free software projects, like (e.g.) GNOME, are waaaay bloated, too bloated to make it even close to reasonable, that you might read all the code. three new versions will have come and gone before you likely even reach half way through. a bootable os, in just 11mb though! that's doable. and that's what i rly like. the idea of many eyes, at it's best, where not only is it available to be looked upon, but it's not such a daunting hurculean, gargantuan mamoth of a mission, that more people are likely to take it up. ok, so the source is probably more like 23mb, but that's still in a pheasible range.

with people able to have a useable os, that they can know every line of code to it, makes the userbase HIIIIGHLY competent, makes the OS super secure, and no longer susceptible to a boy crying wolf, sending you running off to get a "security" update, that patches in more malware... because you know what it all does.

idk where that takes us in terms of analogies involving raised and lowered bars, but it's a vision of a future os that makes me smile.

Monday 21 March 2011

even gnu and free software like linux arent imune to bloating over time

(05:59:12 AM) digitteknohippie: /me is gonna muse here for a mo...
(05:59:31 AM) digitteknohippie: you ever think about how much faster your os was back in 2003 to now?
(06:00:06 AM) digitteknohippie: I'm half-tempted to go fetch an old suse 9.1 disk out, and use it instead.
(06:00:26 AM) digitteknohippie: of course, just copying over some configs once installed my lightweight custom desktop apps.
(06:00:38 AM) digitteknohippie: so it'd look n feel the same as I like.
(06:00:43 AM) digitteknohippie: ... only, much faster.
(06:03:35 AM) digitteknohippie: thing is, all those times they issued "security updates", creates a mental block of "oh I can't go back, or it'll be insecure". pish posh, how insecure could it rly be. update some important core stuff, (like gcc maybe) and then install a decent firewall, maybe SElinux.... and away you go....
(06:04:07 AM) digitteknohippie: shud b secure enough. how secure do we really need anyways.
(06:06:42 AM) digitteknohippie: ^_^
(06:06:48 AM) ***digitteknohippie takes it to the blog

Saturday 19 March 2011

multilayer gimp animation

multilayer gimp animation

wouldnt you like that too?

reading this, you're probably a GNU Image Manipulation Program user already.

have you also become a GIMP Animation Program user? GIMP GAP is .. well... i was going to say great.. but it's greatness is by contrast with it's absence. like a grubby cup of water you find in the middle of the desert. it's great, you wouldnt dare slag it off. but really.... you know there are better sources of hydration in the cosmos. better ways can be concieved of.

so imagine, instead of using layers as frames, have the dimension of frames 90 degrees to the dimension of layers. ... er... i mean, so your timeline, each frame, sees all layers. so that it's sort of like taking GIMP [(like photoshop)] to make, uhh, ... "GIMPeffects" [(like aftereffects)]. sort of.

but see, it'd be better in many ways, than an after-effects equivalent in free software.

when i used after effects, i always loved it, but i always wished it was more like photoshop with animation.

now that i have gimp gap, i wish it was more like i had envisioned back in the day.

so i make this open suggestion to the community.

non-linear editing features for gimp, for the most awesome video effects application ever? mmmm

can you picture it? keyframeable layers, transition morphs, ...heck, even some effective non-destructive editing!

does this make sence to you? need me to draw some mock-ups to try to explain the vision?

Saturday 12 March 2011

ugh, that's not what i like to see...

[digit@LevinRhan ~]$ sudo pacman -S kdepim-akregator
resolving dependencies...
warning: provider package was selected (phonon-gstreamer provides phonon-backend)
looking for inter-conflicts...

Targets (43): clucene-0.9.21b-1 exiv2-0.21.1-1 strigi-git20110107-2 attica-0.2.0-1 raptor-1.4.21-2 rasqal-0.9.21-1 redland-1.0.12-5
libiodbc-3.52.7-4 virtuoso-6.1.2-1 soprano-2.6.0-1 shared-desktop-ontologies-0.6.0-1 qca-2.0.3-1 libdbusmenu-qt-0.8.0-1
polkit-qt-0.99.0-1 grantlee-0.1.8-1 jasper-1.900.1-6 phonon-gstreamer-4.4.4-1 phonon-4.4.4-1 upower-0.9.8-2
docbook-xml-4.5-4 docbook-xsl-1.76.1-1 kdelibs-4.6.1-2 pth-2.0.7-3 gnupg-1.4.11-2 pinentry-0.8.1-1 libksba-1.0.8-1
libassuan-2.0.1-1 dirmngr-1.1.0-1 gnupg2-2.0.17-1 gpgme-1.3.0-1 mysql-clients-5.5.9-1 mysql-5.5.9-1 akonadi-1.5.1-1
libical-0.46-1 kdepimlibs-4.6.1-1 kde-agent-20090801-2 ntrack-009-1 libssh-0.4.8-1 oxygen-icons-4.6.1-1
kdebase-runtime-4.6.1-1 kdepim-runtime-4.4.10-1 kdepim-libkdepim-4.4.10-1 kdepim-akregator-4.4.10-1

Total Download Size: 74.21 MB
Total Installed Size: 358.85 MB

Proceed with installation? [Y/n] n


...all that, just for a news ticker.... i think not!

i may be desperate, but not that desperate.

i may miss akregator, but not that much.

i'll stick with procrastinating on properly integrating news in xmonad with layout.gaps.

ahh, that's what i like to see...

$ sudo pacman -Syu
:: Synchronizing package databases...
core is up to date
extra is up to date
community is up to date
multilib is up to date
:: Starting full system upgrade...
there is nothing to do

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