James LaRue - myliblog

After a lovely Thanksgiving, I plugged in the Linux Mint 12 live DVD, 64 bit version (on my System 76 desktop unit. It seems rather obvious and intuitive to use. On the one hand, there's the familiar panel below (with Window pager), and the familiar start button. This is Mint's response to the outrage and outcry of Linux users who can't deal with Ubuntu's Unity or Gnome's latest version (3.0). On the other, I can ignore all that and just click on the infinity symbol (upper left) and find myself in the middle of Gnome 3. Which is also rather obvious and intuitive, although it may take an extra click or two. Linux Mint 12 started rather rapidly, and seemed to have no trouble at all finding the network; it even felt a little faster than 11. I can take a screenshot of the usual (familiar desktop), but can't find a way to take one of the newer Gnome one. But this may be because I've been sick, and have run out of steam. Time to turn in early. Of course,...

Last year I had the privilege of playing Ebenezer Scrooge for the Front Range Theatre Company's "The Education of Mr. Scrooge." I was also asked by the Castle Rock Chamber of Commerce to write a brief history of Castle Rock's "Starlighting" ceremony -- a longstanding tradition for my home town. So I wrote a script, a skit, really, to tell the story. Originally, my "character" was Scrooge, and I wound up with a plug for the play. This year, the Chamber fiddled with the script to make me "Horace Ebenezer." But I thought putting this online somewhere might make for a nice bit of local history. My thanks to the many real life officials who performed this last night. The usual big Starlight crowd seemed to enjoy it, hokey though it was. I should say, by the way, that I've got a heck of a cold, or flu, or something. So I hope I did my part OK. But the advantage of writing the script is that you can give everybody else the long bits. In th...

Check this out.

This has only had about 49 million hits since it first went up in Dec. 2009, so I'm guessing I'm not the first to blog about it. But I love this kid. He doesn't know the words to the song, and it doesn't even matter. Attitude is all. THIS is content creation that counts. Watch this when you need not only to be reminded of the indomitable spirit of humanity, but you need a laugh. Thanks to Maddy for finding this. Wonderful beyond words.

I mentioned in my last post that I finally broke down and upgraded my Acer Aspire netbook from its original Linpus Lite (Linux) OS to a new Linux Mint 11. It is MUCH better (and yes, I got tkoutline to work -- just had to apt-get install the file it told me it couldn't find). But Mint also told me that I have an older and never more than 34% charged battery. Truth is, with this 3 cell battery, I don't think I ever had more than an hour before I had to plug it in. Which is pathetic, given that this computer doesn't even have a hard drive. (It uses an 8 meg SD card, which truly has always been plenty for my modest needs.) So I noodled around on the web and found a 9 cell battery that promises 10 hours of charge. I ordered it. That will be an interesting thing, if it works. It is certainly much easier to write on the netbook, and do various other computing tasks, than it is to use an iPad. But the point of this posting is to underscore the advantage of holding onto equipme...

I guess the issue is Google. It seems to have upgraded some things in Google Docs, and suddenly my old Acer Aspire netbook, running a version of Linpus Lite (based on Fedora 8, which is WAY back there by now) doesn't work that well with Google anymore. Not only that, I couldn't get it to load Chrome. It's the problem of maintaining an aging platform. I haven't been updating the little netbook because (a) it wasn't broken, so I couldn't see a reason to fix it, (b) Linpus Lite does boot VERY quickly (20 seconds), and 3) I hadn't backed it all up first, which of course I should do first. So I burned a CD of Linux Mint 11, and launched it as a Live CD to see if it worked on the Acer. It did. No customization was required at all. I'm using it right now. I was working through the files to see if I could get it all set up, and then started reading about Linux Mint 12. I aked myself this question: Do I upgrade to the last stable version, based on Ubuntu...