Where in the world is Hardy Heron!?

I woke up early today, fresh and excited for Ubuntu 8.04, but what am I greeted with when I boot? No updates? hm..... Alt+F2 and sudo update-manager..... no......... I go on the website..... COMING SOON!? Where's my heron!? (and being I'm in the Western hemisphere, the rest of the world is ahead of me, so I feel bad for everyone else......

but bad news aside, I finally received my 7.10 server edition CD last night. it's pretty awesome!

Auto-Completion in OS X

An interesting feature I came upon by accident in OS X is auto-completion of words in the Dictionary. While typing, if you don't know the complete spelling of a word, simply press Esc for a word list to come up. As far as I know, however, this only works in Cocoa apps.

Top 5 Linux Commercials

As I was browsing YouTube, I found a couple of Linux ads. Here are the top five best of the group.

5. Evolution - reminds me of the old PowerMac ads

4. Linux is Working - an inspiring IBM commercial

3. Truth Happens - some may already have seen this one - by Red Hat

2. Prodigy - another inspiring IBM commercial

1. Penguins - you gotta watch it - absolutely the best

A Message To All GNOME Distros

They say imitation is the best form of flattery. So let's imitate OS X, but with some added style. Take a look at this home folder, and you'll notice the emblems next to the folder icons - I think adding these emblems by default and Ubuntu using the Tangerine icon theme would greatly boost nice looks. I've been really picky about desktop looks lately, haven't I?

What Makes a Desktop Look Nice

Have you ever thought about what makes your desktop look nice, and why many people may criticize, for example, Vista's UI? I decided to come up with a list of what seems to be that makes up a nice-looking desktop.

1. Color Consistency - Take Ubuntu's default look. Brown. Orange. Pretty similar looks. It fits well. Now, what if you take the default wallpaper but set the blue Clearlooks theme? It looks terrible, obviously - the colors aren't consistent. Remember that Ubuntu brown isn't necessarily the normal neutral brown - it's more of a dark orange. Now it's OS X's turn. The neutral dark grey used in OS X is what makes adding splashes of blue everywhere else acceptable.
   
2. Cleanliness / Organization - The cleaner or more organized a desktop is, the more visually appealing it is. If you have various icons scattered over your desktop, it will look unbalanced. OS X's close, minimize, and zoom buttons are familiar-looking because most of us see a traffic light daily.
   
3. Completeness - nobody likes pixelation or squarish boxes for icons. For example, the Pidgin icon is an example of what an icon should _not_ be like because part of it is cut off.

EDIT: Now, be careful to not misunderstand me - I wasn't blaming the Linux UI (the Clearlooks/Ubuntu-wallpaper thing was an example of what somebody should NOT do), and Windows XP's UI isn't bad at all. The icon colors are generally consistent with the title bars, and I don't know how Microsoft managed to be able to get the XP-style (not pre-XP) icons to blend in to the interface so kudos to them for that!

Although many people say that a desktop looks should not matter, the look of our desktops may affect our productivity either for better or for worse.

Downgrading to Tiger

Yes, I admit it. I downgraded back to Tiger. And then I upgraded back to Leopard two hours later - I can't live without the latest (and greatest) technology. This, of course, takes Vista off the list. Anyway, I decided to e-mail a friend about my adventures and I accidently made a poem describing my adventures back to Tiger. Here it is for your enjoyment.... or annoyance.

I downgraded to Tiger!

now I'm back with the pinstripes,
the low-contrast window buttons
the white menu bar
a brighter screen
office 2004 fitting into the interface
(it's more stable than 2008)
iTunes working fine
Safari 3

everything's nice!

Tiger is simpler - the look, the whole feeling about it
with Leopard, Apple changed its personality.
it's no longer the innocent company we knew in the 1990s (or maybe didn't know)
it's changed
it's mean
it's nice
it's better
it's worse
it's modern
it's old

and that's all there is to it
and Tiger brings back that feeling
that nice feeling
a good feeling
of the joy of computing

The "joy of computing" thing - nostalgia. Reminded me of the 1990's Macs and Windows 95.... :)