The Akashic Field Chronicle

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The newest version of the Ubuntu GNU/Linux distribution, code-named Lucid Lynx, has just been released this week (April 29th).

Here’s what I think…

Ubuntu 10.04 LTS

I’ve been running the release candidate (RC) for a week now, so I’ve been able to put this version through its paces, and believe that I’m now in the position to fairly evaluate this release. Through my years of using Linux, I have gone from being hardcore Linux advocate to a more pragmatic view. I know the strong points as well as the shortcomings of the OS and I also know that as much as I would encourage people to use it, it still isn’t for everybody. Having said that though, I can confidently say that this new release comes pretty close to achieving that. In addition to this, it’s an LTS release so stability and security are primary motivations.

The Good

It’s free… I have to say this before anything else. Too many people complain about this and that bug, or the look and feel isn’t right. It seems the better the Linux desktop becomes, the more criticisms are aimed at it. Let’s not forget people, this software is completely free (as in beer). It’s not gonna cost you anything to try it.

Polish, polish, and more polish… The desktop is stunning! You can clearly see that a lot of effort went into design as much as coding. Of course, not everyone is entirely happy with a lot of the design choices the Ubuntu made, but I think the majority of long time users would agree that this is probably the sweetest looking Ubuntu release ever. They dropped the orange/brown motif and went for a darker shade of gray (and a lot of purple by default).

Here are some screenshots of my desktop (click to zoom in)

Default theme. Very Mac-like (but that's actually good)

Lighter theme with similar elements

Accessing the internet (Firefox, Chat, Social Networks)

Integration… Linux is primarily a result of independent efforts from different developers. As a consequence of this, it has always lacked the tight integration that Windows and especially the Mac OS had. Each new release has brought the Ubuntu UI closer to near perfect integration. This time around, they’ve really gone leaps and bounds towards this goal. Everything just works together.

This is particularly true for social networks and chat. The notification system works with all the default programs and works with almost all major chat (YM, GChat, Live Messenger, and Facebook) and social network services (Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, and others ). It also has a file sync service called UbuntuOne that syncs all your bookmarks, contacts files, music, and chat logs (Similar to Dropbox but with very tight integration to the desktop).

Flash Finally… This varies from different configurations, but I’ve always found it a bit clunky. This is the first version to actually integrate Flash flawlessly (Hulu Desktop!). Also, with the new and improved interface for the Ubuntu Software Center, it’s very easy to install Flash (as well as the thousands of free software in the Ubuntu repositories).

Me Menu: Where all your apps come together (even a text box for tweets and statuses)

Multimedia, A built-in music store, and Hulu (works flawlessly with Flash)!

Revamped install center UI with thumbnails and descriptions for the entire Ubuntu software repository

Fast boot… I have yet to time my boot-up, but it’s quite impressive. I’m not sure how they manged it but it’s blazing fast to get to the log-in screen.

The Bad

• Minimize, Maximize, and Close Buttons… I’m not a big fan of buttons on the left-hand-side of the title bar. I could easily change it of course, but it would have been great if they gave novice users an easy way to switch the layout back.
• Multiple Monitors… If you use a laptop most of the time and use an external screen once in a while, Ubuntu has this irritating behavior of messing up the order of your panel icons. Kudos to the Windows bar for its flexibility in multiple monitor setups.
• No more chat pop-ups… Chats are shown as notifications instead of pop-ups (you then have to click on the panel to open up the message). I know, this is probably a good thing in terms of productivity because you don’t get distracted all the time. Still, if you leave your desktop for a while, and a message comes in, you might miss it. Okay, so the message icon lights up to inform you, but sometimes you just have too many unread messages for it to make sense anymore.

Final Words

Ubuntu 10.04 is a clean, polished and well integrated desktop. It has reached the point where I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend it to anyone who has an open mind to try something new. Ubuntu is here to stay and I’m very excited to see what the Ubuntu community can achieve for the next LTS version. Whatever it is, I know it’s gonna be beyond any of my expectations.

Try it for yourself

• Ubuntu 10.04 Main LTS Features
• Linux Mag article about Ubuntu 10.04
• Download Ubuntu 10.04 LTS (The Lucid Lynx)

Click here to read other Pick-of-the-Week (POW) entries

Click here to read other Pick-of-the-Week (POW) entries

As promised, I’ll be trying to blog with a little more semblance of regularity. I figured, what better way to get back into the zone than by bringing back a regular blog segment. Fortunately, I had just the thing in my archives, the AFC Pick-of-the-Week (P.O.W)!  But a weekly segment seems completely unrealistic at the moment. Perhaps bi-monthly sounds a little more practical (we’ll see). Anyway, it’s still a week and I still pick something, just not every week, so there.

This week, I’m picking…

Beamer

LaTeX Beamer to be exact. What’s Beamer you ask? Well technically it’s just another LaTeX package, but a pretty awesome one if you ask me. A friend introduced it to me while I was doing my MS at  UP Diliman and I’ve been a huge fan ever since.

It’s basically a package (i.e. an extension) to LaTeX in order to make presentation slides using standard LaTeX syntax. If you already write papers or dicussion notes in LaTeX and you’re familiar with its syntax then Beamer is definitely for you. If not, then it’s a perfect opportunity to start learning LaTeX. I previously wrote about how useful it is in this post, and I still believe so.

Why Use Beamer

Here are some reasons why I’d recommend using it:

• LaTeX – It’s built on top of LaTeX and if you think LaTeX is great (esp. for rendering math) then this reason is pretty self-explanatory.
• It Looks Great – It’s hard to sell this claim, esp. to people who are obsessed with PowerPoint. But you have to see it to believe it. Here are some great Beamer examples:
  • A Sample Presentation by Till Tantau (creator of the Beamer class)
  • Demo of different features
  • My MS thesis defense presentation (ok, maybe it’s not great, but it has sentimental value)
• Portability - A Beamer presentation is essentially a PDF file so it will work almost anywhere (and preserve ‘animations’).
• Reusability - the LaTeX code in your paper, discussion notes, book or whatever, is exactly the same code used in Beamer. Including the structure (section, subsection, etc.). This means formulas will render perfectly whether you originally used it on a paper or a presentation. If you’re cramming a presentation, you can even make it straight from your paper (just put \begin{frame} … \end{frame} on certain segments)
• Structure - Beamer, without messing with the nitty-gritty, enforces a certain style to your slides as you will see if you look at the examples I have above. Some PPT users might see this as very limiting, but after a while you begin to realize that this actually forces you to adhere to certain rules (font size, image placement, margins, etc.) that actually make your presentations look very professional.
• It’s Free - and not the ‘illegal’ kind of free

Did I mention they look great?!

Who Should Use Beamer (and who might not want to)?

If you regularly write research papers and make presentations (Faculty, Grad Students, Researchers, etc.) then I definitely recommend you at least try it out. If you’re already familiar with LaTeX then I recommend it even more. Also, if you find yourself rendering mathematical formulas very often, then the LaTeX equation rendering is the best there is.

Still, there are some who might not see the point of using Beamer and might not necessarily benefit from the things I listed above. These include:

• People who can’t invest time learning LaTeX - I admit, the learning curve is a little steep and for some people it just isn’t worth it.
• People who want their presentation to focus on the animations – although beamer has some animation capability, it won’t give you that nasty ‘Swivel” animation. Sorry.
• People who need their content to  be accessible to their superiors - and by this I mean, people who are expecting their bosses to re-purpose their hard work to please their respective bosses (you know who you are). You can’t expect the bosses to learn LaTeX. Sorry.

How can I learn?

I won’t go into a tutorial of Beamer, much less LaTeX. Fortunately, Google is your friend. To save you a little effort, here are the tutorials I really like:

• A Beamer Quickstart – this should get you started real quick (huh? wait?)
• Beamer v3.0 Guide – the most comprehensive one I’ve found besides the user manual (also, it’s made with beamer)
• Beamer User Guide – the manual
• LaTeX Tutorial – by Eudean Sun, presented (using beamer!) in a seminar sponsored by the UCLA Graduate Students Resource Center. Specially targeted to Grad Students.

So there. Start making professional looking presentations and make your adviser think you’re actually making progress on your research

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I had a little slack time (i.e. I was feeling lazy) and decided to hack me up one of those photo galleries that seem to be standard issue nowadays on most blogs. I’m not much of a photography expert. In fact, all I have is a point-and-shoot camera which isn’t even mine.

Still, I thought it would be great to have a photo gallery that’s integrated into my blog. That way, I could refer to pictures from my posts and also use a particular post to let people know if I’ve uploaded a new album. Kinda like how multiply.com does it, but with so much more control and right here on my blog.

Some guidelines

Here are a few issues I considered when building the gallery for my blog.

• I don’t really have a lot of webspace to host full albums in my own server. Good thing there are loads of services on the web that will do exactly that for you. A lot of people like Flickr, so I chose that and went ahead and created an account.
• I needed to find a plugin for werdpress that will do all the work for me. I’m not much of a web programmer so building one from scratch was definitely out of the question. Besides, with this great Flickr Plugin for WordPress, designing my own gallery was plain dumb.
• I wanted something that would allow me to create a blog post whenever a new album is uploaded to my account.
• It also has to be aesthetically pleasing and should look at home with my current theme.

My First Album

Here’s my very first album for my gallery. These pictures are from the recently held WordCamp Philippines 2008.

WordCamp Philippines 2008

Just go to the Gallery page (menu bar on top) to view my filckr sets (i.e. albums). Or click the picture above to go directly to that album.

Some Issues

The plugin worked great for my needs but of course there are some minor kinks that needed (or still needs) a little tweaking to be workable.

• Your Flickr API key (needed for the installation) won’t work until about 5 mins. after you create it. I was so excited to make it work that I thought something was wrong when Flickr was complaining that my key was invalid. Apparently, you just had to wait a bit.
• The look and feel of the default template was just not working for my theme. The album view was a bit cluttered for my tastes, showing all the pictures as thumbnails. I just wanted a single photo as cover for the album. A few changes in some php and css files ironed it out really well.
• I still think the look is a bit too bare but my web styling know-how is not enough to improve it significantly. So for now, I’ll just have to be satisfied with it.
• When clicking on the cover picture (at the Gallery page), you are directed to the specific page for that picture. It would have been better if it directed you to the album page, since that’s the use of a cover page.
• Uploading big pictures is too slow using my connection (and a bit costly in terms of my free flickr.com bandwidth limit). So I downloaded the jUploadr program (available sourceforge.net) which automatically resizes as well as uploads your pictures to flickr.

Head on over to my gallery section and test drive it. Don’t forget to comment on this post if you encounter any bugs or if you have any suggestions on how I can improve it’s look/usability.

Edit:

Possible show-stopper (thanks scion) – Flickr non-pro only allows 3 photosets, after that, you have to pay 25$ for 1 year. Unfortunately, the plugin I use tracks these photosets to group pictures into albums. Darn. So I guess, I’ll have to be content with a max of 3 albums for now.

Plan of action:

• Just use photosets for the 3 most recent albums
• Tag older albums so that they are still grouped somehow
• Figure out a better way!!! (if you know a solution, please comment. Note that I don’t want to host my own pics due to limited space and I don’t want to manually link every single picture)
• Get lots of MONEY from a kind soul and upgrade to Flickr pro (haha. I seriously doubt this one)

Edit: Edit:

Flickr now allows more than 3 photosets so this isn’t an issue anymore.

With any luck, (i.e. if I managed to follow this howto properly), all the guys at Multiply should see this post as if it were from Multiply. If by any chance, you are in multiply, and you are reading this. Woohoo!!! Success. Otherwise… Just move along.

Thanks to Scion for suggesting that I cross post to multiply. This way, I get a “wider” audience (at least in the Philippines).

After reading about it in this cool blog, I’ve enabled OpenID on The AFC.

This means that anyone with an OpenID can now comment using their OpenID url. Amazingly, that means anyone from:

• Blogspot – blogname.blogspot.com
• Flickr – www.flickr.com/photos/username
• LiveJournal – username.livejournal.com
• Technorati – technorati.com/people/technorati/username
• and a host of other sites (or even your own site)

I think it’s a great way of improving the inter-operability of different blogging / social networking platforms. It will definitely mean a little more convenience for those who will comment on this blog since they won’t have to type all those info to comment. Just type your OpenID url on the text box with the OpenID logo.

Enable OpenID on your own wordpress site by installing the OpenID WP Plugin just as I did. You can also install the OpenID Delegation Plugin to make your website (i.e. http://urriza.net/blog) your very own OpenID identity. So now I can comment on my LiveJournal and Blogger friends using my own URL. Nice.