03.01.2006

(off-site links open in new windows)

Don says:

Hey, hey, hey, we got some negative attention recently.   This site asserts that their mission is to help bad sites see the error of their ways and further contends that our site is a bad one.   Of course I read his "Site Commandments" and figured out that Lisa and I comply with all of them while his own site doesn't. Furthermore, anyone who visits our site knows exactly who we are, where we live, and how to get in touch with us.   Finally our site is in no way supported by advertising.   Nuff said.

I've been talking/thinking/curious about Linux for a long time.   I've played with a Ubuntu LiveCD (on my Win2K machine) which boots your computer into Ubuntu Linux, in a limited fashion, enabling you to get a feel for the Operating System, without installing it or changing anything in your computer, and was very impressed.   I did some research and decided that while Ubuntu is very nice, Kubuntu is what I really wanted but "wanting" and "having" aren’t necessarily the same thing.   After all, Windows is all I know and I’m not prepared to stop writing my ezine or maintaining my website while I learn how to use Linux.   So, I've got to keep my Win2K machine running as is and find another machine I can use to learn Linux.

I’ve been checking flea markets, garage sales, and small computer shops in the area for the last couple of years, looking for an affordable used PC wherein to install Linux.   A few days ago I found an affordable computer.

Hey, hey, I'm on my way...

Over our DSL connection it took about two hours to download Kubuntu (the ISO file) and a few more minutes to burn a CD.   It took over half an hour to install Kubuntu (from the CD) and there were one or two error messages but everything worked once it was installed.   The computer I finally acquired had 128 Megs of RAM and was extremely slow in Kubuntu but one of the fellows in the Highland Lakes Computer Club had a couple of 256 Meg RAM boards which he sold to me for a very reasonable price and with expanded RAM the Kubuntu machine is very nearly as fast as my 2.1 GHz, Win2K machine.

I have to say, I’m still a total novice with Kubuntu but there are a couple of fellows in the computer club who’ve answered some of my "Newbie" questions and helped me along.   The coolest thing I’ve discovered so far is called a "Package Manager".   In Kubuntu, the package manager is called "Adept" and this thing is like Windows Updates on steroids.   For example, I was looking in the "Games" section and noticed a listing for a "Games Pack".   Well, I’m used to Windows; the games pack is maybe five games, no big deal, so I thought "What the heck" and clicked on it and then clicked on a green checkmark at the top the screen labeled “Commit Changes".   The thing "cut loose" when I did that and downloaded thirty one (that’s 31) games, among which are versions of Tetris and Mahjong (two of each mind you) which are long-time favorites of mine.   Again,

Wow!

Our eight-foot, home-made computer desk didn’t have room for another monitor, mouse, and keyboard so we bought a fancy gadget called a "KVM" switch.   Those letters stand for Keyboard, Video (monitor) and Mouse.   When I click on the Scroll Lock key twice, followed by the Enter key, my monitor, keyboard, and mouse switch to the Kubuntu machine.   Clicking the same keys again switches everything back to my Windows box.

Curious about the KVM device?   For one example, go to Pricewatch and run a search for a "Zonet KVM3002" (in quotes).   I'm sure there are other such devices available but this is the one I bought.   It came with all the cables required to hook it up to both computers, required no external power (the enclosed literature indicated that it doesn't in most cases), and I know it works very nicely.

As I type, I'm listening to Judy Garland sing "zing, went the strings of my heart", courtesy of Media Player Classic (a component of the Mega Codec Pack) and SHOUTcast.   What a wonderful thing!

After getting a fast connection, downloading Media Player Classic, and discovering ShoutCast, we've listened to Blues, Jazz, Big Band and several varieties of Latin music.   We both have eclectic tastes in music and really enjoy the diversity offered by Internet radio stations. The music is so good that I'd happily put up with a few commercials but, for the most part, there aren't any and that makes it even more amazing.

Saturday, February 25th

Today was a very bad day; today was a very good day. A plumbing job we're doing had a small leak in a place that's extremely difficult to reach but we had plans this evening and had to leave before getting it fixed.   On the way home we had car trouble and were forced to leave the car parked and locked up about 20 miles from home.   A very nice woman gave us a ride home (Thank you Sherry).   After we got home, our other vehicle wouldn't start (we do have two more vehicles but both are in the shop *sigh*). The friends with whom we'd planned to have dinner had to come and pick us up and then give is a ride home (Thank you so much Larry and Emma, dinner was wonderful).

Does getting by with a little help from our friends make us honorary Beatles?

How boring life would be if something didn't go wrong now and then.   Solving problems; surmounting obstacles, is part of the good stuff life brings us.   A week from now, if I still don't know how to do much of anything with Kubuntu or have a vehicle that runs, I may feel a little differently.   For now, my tummy is full and I have a steaming, delicious cup of Passion Peach tea in front of me.   Tomorrow is soon enough to deal with dysfuntional vehicles.

Sunday, February 26th

Our son-in-law helped us transport the non-functioning vehicle to the shop today.   Once that was accomplished I put a battery charger on the other vehicle and, after an hour or so, it started up just fine.   Tomorrow we'll learn whether or not it will continue running long enough to get us to town.

For the last few days I've been playing with a new fractal program Lisa discovered. I made some 1024 X 768 wallpaper images to "show off".   These are screenshots I edited and saved as Portable Network Graphics (.png) images. Click on any of these smaller versions to view the larger image in a new browser window where Internet Explorer users can right-click and select "Save Picture As..." or Firefox/Konqueror users can select "Save Image As..." to snag yourself a copy if you like.

These are screenshots of Whorld

Monday, February 27th

We have a road-ready vehicle again, for the moment, and should have another vehicle out of the shop tomorrow.   Our tools are in the car that's still in the shop so we took a day off, hung out with family, worked on the ezine and played on our computers.   For us, "playing on the computer" means finding links for the ezine, working on the ezine, working on this page, or playing the occasional computer game.   Our new favorite computer game is one that came in the Kubuntu Linux games pack called "Shisen-Sho".   Lisa liked it so much that she went and found a similar game called Shisen for Java which is available for any platform, to put on her Windows XP machine.   the game is a version of Mahjong and while there are some differences between Kubuntu's Shisen-Sho and Shisen for Java, they're both excellent games.

Lisa says:

Here we were driving to work again, when we saw a rather incredible sight. I grabbed my camera, went to the gentleman's front door and rang the bell. When he answered, this is how it went;

" You have baby goats... "
" Yes, ma'am, I do." (little chuckle)
" In a tree! "
" Yep."
" May I take some pictures? "
" Yes, ma'am, you can. "

People around these parts are very courteous and friendly. As he watched me take the photos, I think he was more amused by my enthusiasm than the everyday sight of kids at play.  They were swarming up the tree to jump about 2 feet, balance on their wobbly legs and go to the end of the line to jump again.  Thank you to the nice gentleman in the Ancient Oaks/Westwood Hills neighborhood for the opportunity to take these shots.

"All right, you can jump, but just one at a time."

"OK, that's high enough."

We've been having fun trying to make images for the web as small as possible.   One consideration is bandwidth, the other is to keep the file sizes small so that our friends on dial-up don't have to wait for the images to load.  Most people are on dial-up and waiting for images to load is no fun.

For those of you who would like to know how I got the file sizes for these images so small, 22.6KB and 20.8KB respectively, you can go to Don's tutorial called "Optimizing images" (look for the link on our home page) to get a feel for how compression is used.  Irfanview is freeware and probably the most popular freeware image editing software on the web.   Ken Silverman's PNGOUT plugin is a component of the equally free plugins pack that's available from the Irfanview website.

I edit the original jpeg images produced by the camera and save them in jpeg format.   Next, I reduce the color count and save as a png.   Then I resave as a jpeg with compression.  Regardless of the compression setting, jpegs processed in this manner will have smaller file sizes than the edited originals, saved as compressed jpegs.

Don and I are still rabid Tetris fiends.  Our son-in-law visited the other day and played a game (of Tetris) but fussed because we have our game set to begin at level eight.   Sometimes while playing I curse at the obvious author of the game--Satan himself.  Most people have to have something at which they will never achieve perfection.  If I didn't have Tetris, would I have to take up golf?