Staring at glass…

I’ve been thinking about Ubuntu, with Natty Narwhal releasing in a couple days, and all the flutter about Unity.  I don’t think I’m deep enough in it to have an opinion.  But I do have what I think is a fairly straight-forward idea.  It certainly wouldn’t heal any wounds, but it might make it clearer for some.

There’s Ubuntu, and Kubuntu, and Lubuntu, and Xubuntu…well if Ubuntu (see the “U”?) uses Unity, then why can’t Gubuntu use Gnome?  Huh?  Just spin up another distro?

OK.  Maybe it’s not a great idea.  But it sticks with the theme, doesn’t it?

I follow a couple of web startup feeds like KillerStartups.com, and am continually amazed at the constant stream of new web sites. Now, to be fair, there are some duplicates, and there are a lot of similar themed ones that make you wonder if they’re for some college course somewhere.  And the themes seem to go in waves, and one of those waves a couple months ago was lists and to-do apps, and I found one worth trying.  In fact, I’m still using it, and it contiues to get better.

Now this is a simple and fast tool.  The way I like it.  There’s no extra junk to distract the eye. It has keyboard shortcuts for pretty much everything, which can really speed it up (once you remember what does what).  But there’s not too much functionality.  It’s a list, and it does it well.

They’ve expanded the use to mobile devices, via a browser.  I’ve used it on my iPad and my Android phone.  While the mobile version doesn’t let you do everything the full version does, it’s more than adequate if you’re dropped into a meeting, or at the grocery store.

There may be one thing I’d like to see added: the ability to highlight or to change the color of a certain list item.  That would be cool.

Take a look.

After installing  on Ubuntu very smoothly and liking it, I got the urge to try Linux Mint Debian.  I like it a lot.  The only thing that I haven’t liked so far is my difficulty in getting MySQL Workbench installed.  Small challenge really, and mostly fun.  I do realize the this version of Debian is “wheezy/sid” which is only in “testing”.  Still, it works great.

Of course, first I found somebody else who got Workbench compiled and running on Debian Squeeze and then wrote about it over at Robo47.net. Then, through trial and error, I modified the steps as I went, but they basically stayed the same.

Here’s what I did to get it running on my system

1. Install a whole lot of dependencies:

   aptitude install libzip-dev libzip1 libxml2-dev libsigc++-2.0-dev libcairomm-1.0-dev \
   libglibmm-2.4-dev libpangomm-1.4-dev libglade2-dev libaudiofile-dev libavahi-client-dev libavahi-common-dev \
   libavahi-glib-dev libbonobo2-dev libdbus-1-dev libesd0-dev libgconf2-dev libgcrypt11-dev libgnomevfs2-dev libgnutls-dev \
   libgpg-error-dev libpopt-dev libselinux1-dev libsepol1-dev libtasn1-3-dev libsqlite3-dev libboost-dev  libmysqlclient-dev \
   libmysqld-dev uuid-dev liblua5.1-0-dev libncurses5-dev libreadline-dev libreadline6-dev libfribidi-dev libgl1-mesa-dev \
   libglc-dev libglc0 libglu1-mesa-dev mesa-common-dev libpcre3-dev libpcrecpp0 python-paramiko libgtkmm-2.4-dev \
   libgnome2-dev python-dev

2. Download the source. Make sure you get the ‘oss’ not the ‘gpl’. Untar and position inside the directory:

   wget ftp://ftp.gwdg.de/pub/misc/mysql/Downloads/MySQLGUITools/mysql-workbench-oss-5.2.22.tar.gz
   tar xzvf mysql-workbench-oss-5.2.22.tar.gz
   cd mysql-workbench-oss-5.2.22

3. Build and Install. NOTE: I ran the autogen three times, adding more needed packages (see list above), and it took a long time (old laptop), but it worked.

   ./autogen.sh --prefix=<some path>
   make
   make install

4. Run it:

   <some path>/bin/mysql-workbench

Did you ever meet someone who got really upset about how someone else used a screwdriver, or a hammer? Maybe not. But how about how someone uses their car, especially around you? Sure, we’ve all experienced a little road rage, or at least frustration, at the people we have to drive with.

But we shouldn’t get too emotionally attached to tools. That’s what a car is; a tool. And that’s how I see Facebook or Twitter. They are tools.

They have a pupose. And most likely, your purpose is different from the next guy. Someone I know signed up on Facebook and asked, “what do I do with this?” To which I replied, “anything you want.” It’s yours to use as you like. If someone gets offended because you’re not using it the way they want you to, that’s their problem. It’s OK.

For instance, on Facebook, I just want to be connected with people I know and see their pictures, etc.  I don’t want to play games, or save the world.  So I ignore and block applications and request for that stuff, because it’s not why I use it.  I’m sure I’ve offended someone, but it’s nearly impossible not to.

They are tools, utilities to be used.  Don’t be religious about it, and don’t try to “get it right”.  Just use it.

The competition in the Hosting realm of the internet has been tight for many years, especially for Web Site Hosting.  There’s so many options.  Every ISP will host, every domain name register, and they’re all the cheapest and best.  But what if I want a hosting solution that provides SSH access?  Or Windows, not Linux?  How do I find it?

Here’s a great site:  http://www.hosting-review.com/

Pretty straight forward, but their front page gives you an immediate view of what’s driving the competition.  For instance, the top ten rated hosting companies offer unlimited disk space and bandwidth at about $5 a month.  That’s pretty cool.  You can also read the reviews and see which way they’re trending.

But what else do they offer?  Scroll down the page (or click the Top 10 Lists link) and choose a list based on the feature offered.  I wanted SSH Hosting, so I chose that.  After looking at the the offers there, I went to the Adult Hosting link and made sure my choice WAS NOT there.  It’s worked out great.  

I’ve been very pleased and I check the list often to see what’s going on.