Author: pete

GNOME or Fluxbox?

I currently have two window managers installed on my computer: GNOME (which is the default with Ubuntu) and Fluxbox. I installed Fluxbox because I found GNOME to be just a little bit too heavy on the features, and I quite fancied the idea of starting with something really lightweight and then just finding ways to add the particular features which I needed.

I’ve been using Fluxbox as my default window manager for about a week, with some success. I’ve managed to resolve a good number of my gripes, but a few things still are outstanding.

  • Samba – I haven’t yet tried connecting to one of the shared folders on the other computers in the house, but GNOME makes this insanely easy. We shall see.
  • Delete – The graphical file manager for Fluxbox is called Rox, and is quite sleek. However, I’m having difficulty getting used to it for a number of reasons, the biggest of which is that if you highlight a file and hit the “Delete” key on the keyboard, it does nothing. Ctrl+X is the shortcut for deletion, and I can’t figure out how to change this. Yet.
  • Trash – On a related note, Rox doesn’t have a Trash folder. There is, I believe, a plugin available to do this, but I consider this to be something that can reasonably be expected to be in the base package.
  • Toolbar – My GNOME toolbar contains a nifty little workspace pager, and a system monitor that shows small histograms of recent CPU usage, memory usage and network usage. Again, I haven’t found equivalents in Fluxbox yet.
  • GAIM – Minor one: I’m not receiving sounds from GAIM in Fluxbox, which means I can’t tell when someone has IMed me, unless I keep the conversation window in view. Which defeats the whole virtual desktop idea.
  • Shutdown – the main menu doesn’t have a shutdown option – just an “Exit” option, which takes you back to the login screen, where you can shutdown. I think that this is reasonably easy to add (something along these lines with a little bit of this), but again, it’s surprising how much you take these kinds of things for granted in more polished window managers.
  • Bluetooth – GNOME is pretty slick when it comes to transferring photos from my phone to the computer. Haven’t looked into this on Fluxbox much, but it isn’t leaping out at me.
  • XMMS – A very scratchy itch, this one. When I right click on XMMS in the taskbar and move it to another workspace, the playlist window stays behind, and there’s no way to send it along without closing XMMS, switching to the destination workspace, and opening XMMS from there.

That’s the entire contents of my list.

I’ve got config fatigue now, and so I’ve set GNOME as my default again for a little while. When the time feels right, I shall go back and see if I can strike some of these items off the list. Rest assured that as and when I nail them, I’ll leave an update here.

Categories
Music

Warning of Impending Intelligence

Earlier today, I decided that I wanted to write about my band. In order to provide some context to my article (hereafter referred to as article A), I wrote a paragraph about who we were, what we were about, etc etc. But then it occurred to me that it would make sense to write two articles – a full history of the band (hereafter referred to as article H), and then the one which I originally set out to write (ie article A).

So I’ve written article H, but completely forgotten what article A was going to write about. What’s more, now that I look at article H, I find myself thinking that it’s just a little bit too detailed, and it would actually make more sense to just add relevant historical notes to article A, when I finally remember what article A was going to be about.

Watch this space.

Categories
Peril

How To Recognise A Gree

A gree is a terrifying beast, which lurks and creeps and pounces. It causes girls to whimper and scamper and pull up the duvet cover to their faces to protect them from its threatening call of Greeeee…

What does it look like? Well, if you can imagine me, but having just come out of the shower, and combed my hair backwards so that it sticks up in long spikes, then you’d be pretty close. Don’t forget the intense stare.

Categories
Parenting

Rich Tapestry Of Life

The slight improvements to which I alluded in my previous post have become significant improvements. She now suffers from very little morning sickness whatsoever, and though still experiencing some tiredness and moodswings, she’s pretty perky for the vast majority of the time.

Today was our 20-week ultrasound scan. The image on the screen was slightly harder to read, probably because there is less free space around the foetus, making it harder to detect its shape. But we saw much more detail – its spine is very clear and well-defined, and I remember well one brief moment where I could see every bone in its hand. The evidence also suggests that it will be a boy. This is a slight problem, as we have managed to come up with many superb girls’ names, but we are struggling with boys’ names at present. Ah well.

On a personal level, my role continues to consist of reassurance and lower back massages. I look forward with relish to fatherhood. I crave the challenges, the purposefulness, the augmentation of my identity, the stimulation. But then I wonder – what happens if I don’t get any of them? What happens if fatherhood turns out to be just mindlessness repetition of the same old tasks? Sure, I’ll be able to point to my achievements, and take satisfaction in a job well done, but I was hoping for a little bit of mental stimulation from this whole project as well. I suppose my only choice is to sit tight, not put all my eggs in one basket, and accept that what happens will happen. I should not abandon the search for mental stimulation elsewhere as well. It was not so long ago that I was just a kid, changing houses and jobs every few years. With so much variety, life is never dull. But now that I am settled down, this search for mental stimulation is crucial. I used to be definitely smart, but these days I’m not so sure. This must stop.

Sometimes I find myself fast-forwarding and practising conversations that are not due to happen for years and years and years. The “where did I come from?” conversation. The “can I have a computer in my room?” one. The “what does cuddy bufter mean?” one. The “you just don’t care about me, I hate you” conversation. Ah, rich tapestry of life.

Categories
Gardening

Abandoned in autumn and left outside all winter

The other day I got very excited at the prospect of doing some gardening over the weekend. I hadn’t expected it to be quite so cold. However, on Sunday afternoon, after having been party to the sun’s rays for a few hours, the back garden finally warmed up to a bearable temperature, and I ventured out for a couple of hours before the light faded and I was forced back inside.

I raked up leaves on the lawn, and swept up leaves on the patio. I also discarded the remains of a few potted plants which had been abandoned in autumn and left outside all winter. I cut back the ivy on the fence, and dug up some of the larger areas of weeds in the borders with myWell, my dad’s new Okay, technically they are 30 years old, but they are in immaculate condition spadeSome people call a spade a shovel. That’s fine and forkAt this point, I’d usually make a joke, but I’m at a loss.

The compost bin has gone from full to… well, I don’t know what comes after full. It’s not overflowing, it’s just intensely dense.

Categories
Top Photos

Four Candles

Four Candles

Categories
Meander

Bitten in the posterior by an abstraction

My New Years Resolutions are always stealthy buggers. They lie in hiding for a while, generally until late-January, and then BAM! They up and bite me in the posterior.

Here’s one: I’ve been living next door to these people for about two years now, and barely made contact. We’ve said hi a couple of times, and a few weeks back I went to the gym without my key, so they loaned me their mobile phone so that I could wake Karen up to let me in, and then yesterday they took delivery of a parcel for us.

Earlier this evening, the fella brought it round to drop it off, and I said hi, and I assured him that I was the person with the name on the parcel, and he said that his name was Steve. I already knew this… ish. Two years ago, we invited them round to our housewarming party. They politely declined, but we briefly had their names. Forgotten them since, it seems.

But for some crazy reason, while he was stood at my door, I didn’t really make much in the way of charming conversation. It would have been a fine time to say “Got any exciting plans for tonight? Fancy a beer sometime?” but I didn’t. No idea why not. I could come up with a million possible reasons, but I anticipate that a contributing factor is that Steve and his significant other (whose name I probably once knew, but have forgotten) are not particularly forthcoming either, which gives me little to bounce off of. I am also a much more lazy conversationalist than I used to be, as I have mentioned before.

Either way, we have a resolution. I resolve to make contact with Steve this year – to actually find out who the hell he is. It would be daft not to.

Categories
IAMOWIM

A fool with a comfortable tongue

An update on [Opal Fruit… or Terrorist?][] follows.

[opal fruit… or terrorist?]: http://pete.nu/blog/2006/01/opal-fruit-or-terrorist/

This morning, after three and a half days of agony, I awoke to find my tongue feeling significantly better.

Okay, yes, agony might be a slightly strong word. Perhaps I should rephrase it a tad. For the previous three and a half days, my tongue had been very conspicuous. Periodically I’d feel a small jolt of pain as the swollen portion interfaced with the sharp edges of my lower teeth, reminding me of my ordeal. I’d try to pull my tongue down and back into the dark warmth offered by my lower jawspace, but the human body is clearly not designed in such a way as to facilitate this unnatural positioning for long, and when my concentration slipped I would suddenly be assaulted by this small jolt of pain once again.

This morning, evidently the swolling had dropped significantly, probably largely due to some clever, and repeated, use of [Bonjela][] yesterday. This begs the question, why didn’t I employ it sooner? Alas, I am a fool.

[bonjela]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonjela

But a fool with a comfortable tongue once again.

So I have created a new category called *Illnesses and Maladies, oh Woe is Me!* Writing about one’s ailments requires surprisingly little effort, and is therefore a perfect topic for those who have surprisingly little effort to donate.

(Waves sheepishly) Hi.

Categories
About Me

Monsters and Dust

> At any given moment, I am probably reading about seven books at a time. This isn’t a boast, either; some I intend to finish, some I am struggling through, some I am racing through, others I have stopped reading but think I am still reading but will not shelve because that would admit defeat.

By Cliff’s standards, I suppose I could be considered to be reading three books at the moment. There are three books underneath my bedside table, with bookmarks placed about a dozen pages in, but they are well and truly abandoned. I can’t remember their names, and if I had any sense I’d put them out of their misery. Fortunately, I’m not quite *that* much of a tidiness-freak.

In realistic terms, I read one book at a time. I rarely fail to finish a book, for the same reason that I rarely abandon watching a film partway through, and I can’t recall ever walking out of the cinema. It might be out of respect for the artist, perhaps a belief that these things should be unbroken entities, but it’s much more likely that it’s a naive optimism.

Continue reading “Monsters and Dust”
Categories
Gardening

My Chlorophyllic Nemeses

I hit the garden today. Thump – soil flew everywhere!

Damn – I promised myself that I wouldn’t stoop to such a poor gag. I am weak.

The temperature hovered somewhere around the 5°C mark, and it didn’t seem horrifically unpleasant. I took the decomposables out to the compost heap, and peered into the gloomy rotting contents, trying to imagine in my head what the stuff at the bottom must be looking like by now.

Due to the absence of any leaves on the bushes, this might be the right time to do some tidying up of the borders. I’d be able to reach to the back to extract the aliens, without needing to fight off a combo of attacks from my chlorophyllic nemeses. If the weather isn’t too horrific at the weekend, that would be an ideal way to pass the time. Thank God that Celebrity Big Brother will soon be finished – I made a mistake in sitting down in front of that show a few weeks back. If I had swiftly turned the television set off, I wouldn’t have formed any sort of interest in these people, and I wouldn’t find myself making time at 9pm every evening to watch them.