Ubuntu karmic koala and Glassy bleu theme

I recently upgraded to Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala 64bit.
I must say I’m impressed.
I also installed the HP glassy bleu theme, and it looks gourgeus.

Glassy Bleu Theme for Ubuntu Desktop, originally uploaded by Ced.

In my vertical world

originally uploaded by hayha.

In my vertical world there are no streets or paths, trees grow askew, and people walk on hands

‘unhackable’ netbook network

“The appearance of safety was mistaken for safety itself.” (Walter Lord)

It seems reasonable to me that the prefix UN- should be banned from the world of computing and technology in general.
We have several examples of UN-thingies.
RMS Titanic
Enigma machine
so why not go on with the ‘unhackable’ netbook network
“There was no way we could do any of this on XP,” he said. “Windows 7 nailed it for us.”
OMG

Google Gears on Amd64 in 300 seconds

Ok, I admit it could take you a bit more, especially if you don’t have the building tools already set…

If you are reading, you probably already know the issue: Google doesn’t provide and AMD64 version of Gears and you’re with yourself. Of course you can trust third-party xpi packages, or maybe you don’t want to.

Why compile? At least in my experience is easy, and you can see or have someone check the patch you are applying. I must admit checking for a patch outside its context may not be completely paranoic-proof, but at least you know gkovacs has not added some lines to phone your relevent details home. The patch he provided o me is nice and quite harmless, but you may want to check. I would like to thank him for his contribute

The usual disclaimer: follow the steps outlined at your risk. The patch is a third-party patch, and I don’t endorse it in any way. As for my patch, apply it at your own risk (basically it suppresses warnings,  so go figure)

TOOLS

Before installing the relevant tools but patch and subversion,  I strongly suggest you to check that the patch applies cleanly. Building tools are not known for poisoing any desktop computer but if you didn’t already install them chances are you don’t use them regularly, so  why trashing the system with useless stuff you’ll end not using because the patch is outdated?

• patch (apt-get install patch) you’ll need this one to check if the patch applies cleanly.
• Subversion (try out apt-get install subversion…you’ll need this or a similar tool to fetch the code from Google)
• the patch itself (gcc-4.3 patch)
• Google Gears Code (we’ll get it later on)

This stuff you won’t need having or installing until the patch is confirmed working:

• google_gears_config.mk.patch to disable warning as errors. It’s a.bz2 file, you may like to rename it before using.
• Building environment (hint a good start may be: apt-get install build-essentials and work out the missing rest)

Tools you don’t need

at least in my experience, sudo or a administrator account.

Ready on

$> cd yourpreferitedirectoryforcode

Project Icarus: take shots from outer space with 150$

Project Icarus is a damn interesting approach to high altitude photograpy.

The guys used off-the -shelf hardware (a Canon A470, a Motorola Cellphone, an energizer battery) to take photos of inner space as high as 93000 feet (28 km).