Stephen Fry (a British celebrity) is using Twitter for a while now and because he’s funny I’m following him too. This way I saw how he retweeted a tweet sent by one of his followers, it was a youtube link containing an ‘commercial’ made by Microsoft. They are developing new software to make your own music. They show what it is, how it works and why it’s cool. The name of the software is Microsoft Songsmith and it should be competing with Garageband made by Apple:
Are you crying already? I don’t know what to think of it. I hope this is a very good spoof, because if it’s real, it would be VERY BAD. I do know that the girl should never want to sing again. Microsoft Songsmith: Garageband gone horribly WRONG!
When I say I’m easily distracted, I’m not kidding! My head is sometimes more similar to a strainer than to anything else. I have a difficult time keeping track of the things I need to do. I tried several things to get organized, but nothing really worked well. I tried the free Remember The Milk service and even the To-Do lists that come with every e-mail client or dedicated scheduling software like Sunbird but nothing really worked. But now I found something that helps at least a little bit.
Today it’s Monday and on Mondays I usually get ready for the week. I empty my inbox, clear the podcast list of unlistened podcasts and clean up my room. I hate clutter and the thing about clutter I hate most are those little notes and receipts lying around. They are clutter, but you can’t throw them away or put them away, because otherwise you forget to follow-up on things.
Sometimes I feel like my mind is exploding because of all the things I need to remember. At these moments I’m glad I’m living in the ‘internet age’ without Remember The Milk and Google Calender, my life would be a complete mess. I am distracted easily and if I let things go on without intervening, the place becomes very chaotic. I am my own worst enemy in this regard. Therefore, I need to keep things in one place, online if possible so I can access it everywhere. But what to do with a desk littered with little pieces of paper, notes, receipts, train tickets and so on? How do you put that online? And more importantly: how to search for things in such a pile of mess?
Photo by M i x yA minute ago I tripped over a site with all sorts of nice Firefox add-ons written for Gmail. I knew about the whole grease monkey thing, but I never really liked Greasemonkey, don’t ask me why. I’m kind of lazy when it comes to looking for scripts as well. I’m just not alert enough to think about googling a script for a task I do repeatedly, let alone write them myself. I have to stumble over it by accident, like today.
I’m subscribed to the Lifehacker RSS feed, which occasionally contains items that make me want to click-through, like this Better Gmail Add-on. What it does is aggregating all existing gmail-related scripts and have them work in combination with each other. They turned it into a ready-to-go Firefox Add-On, so the only thing I needed to do was click that link, tell Firefox I know something tries to install itself in the browser, install the thing, restart the browser and I am ready to go. It’s PERFECT!
Since yesterday evening I don’t have any connections to the university’s data center. Which means I cannot access anything study related. Even biking to the university didn’t help: the university’s network also couldn’t access their own data center. So therefore I decided to start tinkering with Linux again: upgrading Ubuntu to version 7.04 which has been adopted “Feisty Fawn”. It’s still in beta, so if you’re not familiar with the operating system, I wouldn’t recommend installing it.
I have to say that every version gets more professional. Of course there were all sorts of things wrong with the installation, most importantly recognising my video card. Ubuntu was very persistent in saying I had a vesa card, which I had not. I have a nvidia FX 5200 graphical card. What I did was start up the shell and edit xorg.conf manually, which solved the problems I was having.
After getting the graphics working, I installed Compiz and Beryl. And because I was tinkering anyway I also installed Emerald. I wanted to make “eye candy” which would be better than Windows XP. (Agreed, anything is better than a teletubby background with bright blue task bars). After a couple of tries this was my result:
Screenshot: Ubuntu 7.04 'Feisty Fawn' with Beryl
Conclusion: if you’re relatively experienced with Linux and Ubuntu, give it a go. If you’re relatively new, I would advise to wait until it comes out of beta and keep using Edgy. I should keep this in mind myself too, but I also want to note that it’s usually not wise to tinker with buggy beta versions of an operating system on a primary computer which one uses for important work/school related stuff. I’m afraid I’m too much of a geek to ever learn that last part.
Taquoriaan has decided against going to the birthday party: I haven't had a moment for my self during the last week. I need to refuel for next week. :( [Taquoriaan].
Taquoriaan Getting a shower and thinking over the idea that I am invited for a birthday party tonight. My day was busy already, is this wise? [Taquoriaan].
Taquoriaan Had a great session at the neuropsychologist. I'm a bit bummed though that it caused me to miss the Stations of the Cross this week. :( [Taquoriaan].
Taquoriaan Back inside. Had lunch and an energy boost. Preparing to leave for another appointment and after that Stations of the Cross in the cathedral [Taquoriaan].
I do know that the girl should never want to sing again. Microsoft Songsmith: Garageband gone horribly WRONG!
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