Posts Tagged ‘Ubuntu’
One of the programs I really rely on is Tomboy. Tomboy is a note taking application for Linux/Windows/Mac that keeps organized notes which can be synced over a number of computers. A fear I have had in the past about these kinds of programs is losing my notes. Tomboy makes it easy to move the notes folder to a folder in my Dropbox account for easy backup.
One of the reasons I have been pretty quiet in recent months is that I am writing a lot more on Twitter () these days. As Jill Walker-Rettberg notes, it is much easier to dump a series of links (what used to be posted here as “weekend reading” or “weekly reader”) and get instant feedback and discussion from peers and friends. I agree with Jill that this does not offer more long-term discussion, like she gets on a lot of posts, but this weblog doesn’t get a lot of traffic so that doesn’t bother me too much.
My concern at this point is with that real-time discussion. I like the idea of having more long-term discussion in comments like Jill gets, or websites like Prof Hacker, but it is not really realistic for here. This weblog has never been traffic heavy and comments are sporadic at best. Twitter allows me to get instant feedback and discussion going about links, topics, and anything else going on at the moment.
Lately, I have thought a lot about the changing focus of this domain. This line of thought began after I read Torill Mortensen’s recent post about the changing focus of her own weblog. My focus has changed from blogging about personal views, commentary about literature and technology, and my own private life to more about teaching, upcoming publications, and other miscellaneous events.
I will still post about literature and technology, and the intermixing of them, from time to time. Linux is in my thoughts, now more than ever, and will get coverage from time to time. In general, however, my focus has shifted and slowed down to focus on my teaching and writing.
Like Torill, I am a bit embarrassed by how actively I used to blog. When I began in 2004 I would set a goal to post at least ____ times per day/week and it led to some seriously silly/embarrassing posts. As the technology changes and we move to more real-time conversation I am sure this domain will continue to evolve and grow with it. Stay tuned.
Ubuntu users who want to try can now do so by installing Chromium, an open source project based on the Chrome code. has all the details, which will install the browser and also add the nightly build to your repositories. Some things don’t work yet like flash (although they are getting closer in nightly builds) and the ability to print.
Nevertheless, the browser itself is very nice and extremely fast. I find it is as fast, if not more, than Firefox. That said, this is before it gets boggled down with plugins, themes, and extensions like Firefox can become if you aren’t careful. I look forward to what comes next for Chromium and appreciate an open source port of another web browser.
If you’re looking for a light weight PDF reader for your Ubuntu system, I highly recommend Okular. It is straight forward, with a simple GUI that doesn’t hog memory like many of the readers for Ubuntu seem to do. I particularly enjoy the ability to not only copy/paste, but to actually box off large blocks of text for copying. This has been very helpful when working with a pdf in Zotero.
I like the new visual notifications in Ubuntu 9.04′s panel. However, this only works for selected processes and programs. An Ubuntu user has created an extension to add Firefox notifications to Jaunty’s panel. This is very useful and will hopefully lead to other programs adapting similar extensions.
(Or do they already? Is there an easier way to get my programs to use Jaunty’s notifications in the panel?)
It looks like I will have plenty to keep myself busy with for awhile… Powered by Twitter Tools.
I have searched for probably over ten years for a good ID3 tag editor. In Windows, most are clunky or, hilariously, only work with some programs. I’ve seen this same issue in Ubuntu via the Rythmnbox music player, which doesn’t seem to want to use my updated tags. Finally, a few years back I came across EasyTAG. EasyTAG is simple to use and allows the user to tag their music files as meticulously as they desire. I have my own system which isn’t too ridicilous, but I do like my files to have a uniformity. EasyTAG allows me to do this very easily.
Zotero Library
