It's been a long time since I've posted anything, it seems I just don't have the ego required to maintain a regular blog. Oh well, I'll continue posting things that I find interesting at my own pace. Like a lot of my posts are probably going to be, today's post will mostly be for my own benefit. I want to write down all that I did to set up my new install of Ubuntu 10.04 (Lucid Lynx). That way if things go wrong I won't have to depend on my terrible memory to set it all back up again.
64 bit GnoMenu
GnoMenu is a fantastic project to get a main menu for Gnome that IMHO looks a little nicer than a plain menu system. Check it out:
Why I Switched Back from Arch to Ubuntu
While I've had a great deal of fun using Arch Linux I've decided to go back to Ubuntu. The biggest reason why? All the recent changes to Linux to create Ubuntu Karmic and the changes being proposed for Ubuntu Lucid. While what can be customize in Arch is fantastic and the wiki, tutorials and community are incredibly helpful, somethings are just too involved to build and too enticing to avoid. But in Ubuntu these things are getting integrated into the default distro so that anyone can use them.
Day of Conky
The Day of Ubuntu wallpaper is a beautiful and subtle transitioning wallpaper that makes your desktop scene of a tree in a field change with the passing of time. To complement this effect I've written a conky configuration that changes colour along with it.
Gnome-panel Transparency Without Shadow
Enabling desktop effects in Ubuntu can be a beautiful thing but it's default handling of window shadows with another effect I like to have which is to make my panel transparent. While I like having my windows make shadows (it makes them look more 3D), I hate it when my transparent panel casts one too.
Missing GPG Key?
Today I was installing Ubuntu on my new laptop (my Compaq F700 was sadly destroyed by extensive hardware failure for no apparent reason; the motherboard, hard drive and possibly everything else is all gone. It's been replaced by a shiny new Asus K60). I missed grabbing the GPG key for a new source I was installing. Rather than go track that down I found a more general solution for any missing GPG key.
Installing XPCE Prolog in Ubuntu
One of my current coding projects at UBC right now is designing a program to help someone play the board game Clue (aka. Cluedo). I can't give away any of the implementation details because part of our grade will depend on how well our program helps us play against the other teams, but I just wanted to share how I got XPCE (the graphical user interface library for Prolog) to work under Ubuntu as it doesn't by default. I did find some help online but it took me a while to understand what this guy meant when he explained the fix. Hopefully I can clear up how to do it.
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