First off, you need to go through a bit of a cultural shift. When you’re looking for/at quirky, little apps; you should be for the Linux version.Secondly, installing and maintaining all your apps under Linux tends to be easier than under Windows. Yes, I said easier. In Windows, you find application “XYZ” on a website. You download a ZIP file and extract it to find an EXE. You run the EXE and it installs, but the program doesn’t run. Why? You’re missing something. It might be Microsoft’s .NET, Java, DirectX, etc…. Only it’s highly unlikely XYZ will tell you in plain English what went wrong. More likely, the app will just die without reporting an error. Then you’re off to Google to figure out what went wrong. Or if XYZ will run, it has no way of knowing when a new version is available or at best it can check their website for updates and when one comes out; you have to download, unzip and install the new version of XYZ (possibly uninstalling the old version first). Since you’re used to this, it doesn’t seem like much but it’s actually a complex operation.

Now let’s compare that to installing/maintaining apps under Linux (specifically Ubuntu). First off, you should enable the extra repositories and after doing so you suddenly have thousands of apps you can install with a few clicks in Synaptic. With the added bonus of Ubuntu automatically checking for updates to every single one you install and then enabling you to update all of them with a couple of clicks. And if some app you want to install requires other packages, then Synaptic will download and install those for you automatically. For the occassional app that is not include in the extra repositories, many 3rd party developers who work on Linux will provide their own repositories which you can add to your sources.list in Synaptic, which gives you all the same benefits as apps in the official repositories. True, there are still other 3rd party developers who don’t provide repositories but for some of these there are sites like Get Deb which offer pre-compiled DEB files for you to use in installing a given app. DEB files serve the same purpose as the installation EXE you download for Windows apps. Lastly, there are those developers where all they provide is the source code. For these, you can generally find detailed instructions on how to compile the app to use it. Though, I’ve been using Linux full-time for about 5 years now and I’ve yet to find a must-have app which was only provided in source code form that I had to compile.

In reply to More Linux at Desperados Under the Eaves.

I’m sitting at the computer typing, when the dog bumps up against my legs. I look down, and she’s sniffing the floor around my feet intently.

“What are you doing down there?”

“I’m looking for steak!” she says, wagging her tail hopefully.

“I’m pretty certain that there’s no steak down there,” I say. “I’ve never eaten steak at the computer, and I’ve certainly never dropped any on the floor.”

“You did in some universe,” she says, still sniffing.

I sigh. “I’m going to move the quantum physics books to a higher shelf, so you can’t reach them.”

Myself, I’ve never had a physics course in my life. I do however have some interest in the various sciences and I have cracked open the occasional science textbook for classes I’ve never been in. Pretty much every time, it makes my brain leak out my ears and causes me to wonder why I bother. Then today while waiting for a rather incredibly slow server to finish running my SQL update, I hit up SEB out of boredom and found his link to the article on Uncertain Principles. The article both made sense and made me smile, which lines up nicely with my idea of good teaching. So thanks to Les for pointing out Mr. Orzel’s excellent article and double thanks to Mr. Orzel for writing it.

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Over the weekend, Ariesna and I met a bunch of friends at the Amana Ren Faire for an afternoon of frivolity. Overall, the faire was… decent. A few interesting vendors were there, notably: The Scots Dragon, Noble Bee Honey and the Royal Chocolatier1. On the down side, the Roast Beast sandwich from previous years had been replaced with something… else. I don’t recall what the faire folk called it, but I called it crap. It was an extremely fatty beef sandwich of some sort and throughly nasty. If more places at the faire accepted the dominon of Lady Visa, I probably would have chucked the sandwich and gotten something else. I saw a few things in the merchants’ tents that I wouldn’t have minded bringing home, but nothing in my price range. We wandered the faire with Cath and Bryon. And Laura when she eventually showed up. We watched some of the shows, though most were very lame. The joust was the highlight of the shows we watched, though it wasn’t one of the better performances I’ve seen of the joust at this faire. Later in the afternoon of the Amana Ren Faire Laura, Michelle & and I were sitting at some tables. We noticed some loose cash lying on the ground under a man wearing a fantastic Scottish outfit (see Ren Faire Attendees). Laura pointed out the loose cash to him. He thanked her and then came over to chat with us. It turns out he actually is Scottish (from Inverness) and was visting family in the area. He pointed out this pin on the edge of his kilt. He joked in Scotland, sheep are more than just a hobby. *Heh* He was a really nice guy, though with his accent2 and all the noise, I had a hard time understanding everything he said. And I’m not just saying he was nice due to the whee nip off his flask that he offered me. Though it certainly didn’t hurt my opinion of him either. 😀

Update: I forgot to mention, you can view some of my other photos of the day in my photo gallery under Ren Faire.

1 Man that was some seriously good chocolate!
2 Mind you, the Scottish accent is fabulous to hear. Just sometimes hard to understand. Especially with bouncing, screaming children nearby.

John Scalzi @ Prairie Lights

Tonight, John Scalzi made a stop at the Prairie Lights bookstore in Iowa City, IA for his book tour to promote The Last Colony. Michelle & I got there wicked early1 and chatted with a couple of store employees briefly. Fortunately, they were cool with me bringing in my own copy of The Android’s Dream to get it signed. *whew*

Then while we were looking around the shelves near the area for the reading, they said we could go ahead and purchase a copy of The Last Colony while we were waiting so we wouldn’t have to wait in line later. Schweet. Then I noticed they had copies of The Sagan Diary. I was most pleased by this as I was a bit strapped for cash when the pre-orders were announced for it on Mr. Scalzi’s blog and I’d heard the complete print run had sold out. Naturally, I grabbed one of the 3 copies they had left. 😀 Then we went into the coffee shop3 and grabbed a drink. I had their cafe mocha, while Michelle had a brewed butterscotch toffee coffee, which she promptly ruined by using soy milk for a creamer and adding sugar to it. Then we went back over to the reading area and found Mr. Scalzi had arrived. He was chatting with the few members of the audience4 and with the various members of the staff.
As Mr. Scalzi’s visit happened to be part of the Live from Prairie Lights. This is a local radio program that is recorded live and then later played back on a local radio station, as well as the UofI‘s school/public access TV channel. So he also spent some time talking to the host of the program prepping for the show.

Then just before the show began, he addressed the audience letting us know he’d start off by reading the first chapter of The Last Colony, go into a Q&A session and then he’d be happy to pose for photos. Naturally, that’s when I decided to snap a quick shot. Heh. I also took a couple of photos later, but they weren’t as amusing as this one so they’ll remain offline for now. The reading and Q&A were quite fun to listen to. Not being a writer, I didn’t join in and ask any questions (plus my caffeine buzz was wearing off). After the recording was over, Mr. Scalzi kindly offered to sign any books people had. I quickly stepped into line with my brand-new copy of The Last Colony — specifically purchased at Prairie Lights this very evening to support them, since they brought Mr. Scalzi in for us — and my slightly dog-earred copy of The Android’s Dream.

Side note: Yes, I realize this entry is rather disjumbled. This is partly explained by me having a caffeine-crash headache, partly by me staying up till 1AMish to write it and partly by me just not being a writer.
Side note 2: The quickie post following this will explain part of why the heck I’m still up writing this.

1 Mostly due to somebody’s lead foot2.
2 Said lead foot was not a Men’s size 13.
3 In his opinion on coffee, Mr. Scalzi is quite wrong. Coffee (especially good coffee) does not taste like ass.
4 Around this time, Michelle mentioned to him The Android’s Dream was her favorite book and he said it was his as well.