Dave’s Tech Blog
A Third Eye on Technology

For the Ubuntu people out there, I have a Virtual Box vs. VMware Server software review in the works. But I want to take some extra time to get the details worked out.

I was taking a break by visiting a favorite site of mine, www.ted.com and I came across a rather (in my opinion) profound video about classical music.  It is an entertaining 20 minutes out of your day that will perhaps leave you thinking about more than just music, but also living a generous and passionate life.

After browsing the web for a little bit today, I stumbled across a something that I think many will find interesting.  It is a copy of an e-mail Bill Gates sent out to many of his developers complaining about his frustrating experiences with Windows itself.  The e-mail was salvaged from a stack of documents that were exhibit items in an anti-trust lawsuit Microsoft was battling at the time.  Here is an excerpt of Bill Gates:

I tried scoping to Media stuff. Still no moviemaker. I typed in movie. Nothing. I typed in movie maker. Nothing.

So I gave up and sent mail to Amir saying - where is this Moviemaker download? Does it exist?

So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated.

They told me to go to the main page search button and type movie maker (not moviemaker!).

I tried that. The site was pathetically slow but after 6 seconds of waiting up it came.

I thought for sure now I would see a button to just go do the download.

In fact it is more like a puzzle that you get to solve. It told me to go to Windows Update and do a bunch of incantations.

You can read the entire text of this e-mail by following this link.

I often like to go a little out of my way to write blogs that contain original information.  But for some things, it pays to refer people to a resource that’s already exists to save time.

Alan Pope is well known in the Ubuntu Linux community for his screencasts.  A collection of them can be found at http://screencasts.ubuntu.com/.  All of his screencasts can be streamed from Google Video, as well as downloaded in MPEG-4 and OGG  format.  The one you will likely want to check out when it comes to modifying your computers login screen, desktop background, fonts, color scheme/theme can be found here:

http://screencasts.ubuntu.com/Customising_Ubuntu_Desktop

The video covers:

• Changing Wallpapers
• Changing Screensavers
• Panel Properties (Location/Auto-hide/Background)
• Changing/Adding Desktop Themes
• Adding/Moving Launcher Shortcuts to your Panel/Desktop
• Modifying Menu Layouts
• Adding Applets to your Panels
• Modifying your About Me user info
• Customizing your Login screen layouts/themes
• Using Multiple Workspaces

The video makes use of http://art.gnome.org/ for it’s demonstration of downloading wallpapers and themes, but another noteworthy site you should check for such things is http://www.gnome-look.org/.  My personal favorite website for wallpapers is InterfaceLift Wallpapers.

A couple of things this video does not cover (which I think it should) is Compiz Fusion (the software behind Ubuntu’s special effects, such as wobbly windows, action animations, etc).  But in Alan Pope’s defense, the video was based upon Ubuntu 6.10 which did not include Beryl or Compiz by default.  I’ll write a seperate blog about customizing Compiz in the near future.

The video also does not cover the installation and use of a dockbar (such as AWN or Cairo Dock).  I happen to have already written a tutorial about Cairo Dock if you’d like to make you’re Ubuntu desktop look more like a Mac.

Well I leave it to you.  Have fun customizing!

A very long time ago, computers didn’t have mice, icons or fancy graphics.  Instead of an Operating System with a Graphical User Interface, there was the Command Line Interface.  With it, you would issue commands to your computer in a text only environment that is not seen so often these days.  But many computer technicians, expecially Linux geeks, consider it to be one of the best ways to interact with the PC for certain kinds of tasks.  Though there is a little bit of a learning curve about it new users shy away from .  So I’m going to try and flatten that curve with a introduction to the Terminal window for beginners.

Understanding the Command Line

To help get a better feel for the Terminal, you should open a one up right now and follow along with this guide.  To do this (in Ubuntu) click Applications>Accessories>Terminal.  Once you do, a new window will appear with a command prompt and a blinking cursor.  The prompt typically looks like this:

username@hostname:~$

The username is your username, the hostname is the name of your computer.  The tilde symbol “~” is shorthand for “your home folder”.  And the dollar sign indicates that you are currently operating under a kind of limited privilege mode (if you were running terminal with Root level privileges, the $ would be a #).   Following all of these things is a blinking cursor, which is your cue to begin typing a command into the Terminal window.

In the above screenshot, we have our Nautilus file manage to the left as well as a small terminal window on top of it where I’ve typed in the commands “cd Documents”, followed by an “ls” command,  pressing Enter after each.  If you’ll notice, the “dear ubuntu forum moderators.odt” file is shown in both the terminal window as well as the file browser.  It’s the exact same file, and I used those two commands in Terminal to “browse” to the folder containing that file and list the contents of the folder.  So we have two commands here that we can talk about briefly:

cd - Change Directory (e.g., “cd Documents”)
ls - List current folder contents.

When you first start Terminal, you are usually placed in your Home Folder (which is indicated by the ~ (tilde) symbol).  If you type ls and press enter, you’ll see all of the files and folder contained in your Home Folder.  Try to practice navigating from your home folder to some other folder using the cd command.  NOTE:  All Linux commands are case-sensitive! Once you’ve navigated into a folder, or perhaps into a folder within another folder, you can go “backwards” to the parent directory by typing “cd ..”

Exercise 1:  cd and ls

1. Click Applications>Accessories>Terminal
2. Type ls to view the contents of your Home Folder
3. Type cd Documents and press Enter to navigate into the Documents folder.
4. Type ls to see the files (if you have any) listed.  Then type cd .. and press enter to return to your home folder.

Ok, how about a few more commands?

The cat command can be used to create new files, but it can also be used to append text from one or more files to the end of another file… but we’re not going to get that advanced.  We just want to create a new file and play with it using other terminal commands.

cat - Create new files, combine text files and display them
cp - Copy
rm - Delete/Remove

Using these commands, we’re going to create a text file, copy it, then delete the first copy.

Exercise 2:  cat, cp and rm

1. Open terminal, and browse to the Documents folder by typing cd Documents, and press Enter
2. Create a new text file by typing cat > foo.txt and press Enter.
   
3. You’ll be sent to a blank line just below the command prompt.  You can type whatever you want, starting a new line each time you hit Enter.  It’s a basic text editor.  When you’re finished typing, you can save and exit by pressing CTRL-D.
4. Type ls to see the new file in the directory.  To display it’s contents, you can type cat foo.txt.
5. Copy the file by typing cp foo.txt foo2.txt.  Type ls again to see the new second file.
6. Delete the first file by typing rm foo.txt, and then type ls again to see the change you made.

There are other commands out there besides cat (such as touch) that can be used to create new files, but we’re trying to keep this short and simple.

Now lets create a file, then a new folder, and move the file into that folder.  We’ll do this with the mkdir, mv and ./ commands.  The ./ command in particular is interesting — it basically stands for “the current directory you are in”.  Sound redundant, right?  Here’s why you need to use it:  There are many commands in the Linux system that can be run from any directory, such as the ones we’ve been using (cat is an example).  These commands reside in a location of the computer that’s been designated to be available at the terminal no matter what folder you reside in.

So say you created a computer program called “cat”, but had nothing to do with text files, and more to do with the feline animal.  If you simply typed “cat”, Linux would assume you meant the cat program we used to create a text file, and not yours.  By adding the ./ in front, it forces Linux to focus on that local folder you happen to be in.

Exercise 3:  mkdir, mv and the ./ delimiter

1. Open terminal, and cd into you Documents folder.
2. Type cat > foo2.txt, press enter, type some text, then CTRL-D to save and exit cat.
3. Type mkdir foocopyfolder to create a new folder.  You can type ls after this to see it.
4. Type mv foo2.txt ./foocopyfolder/ to move the file into foocopyfolder
5. Type ls to see that the file is now missing, then cd foocopyfolder, and then ls one more time to see the recently moved file.

Other Useful Commands

By now, you should already be familiar with the basics of the terminal.  Here are some other commands you can experiment with:

rmdir - Remove Directory
sudo - This is typically inserted in front of any regular command that requires root level privileges in order to do.  You can think “Super User Do” to help you remember how it’s spelled and what it does.  For example, if you wanted to execute a command that required root privilages (such as installing a program) you would type “sudo apt-get install vlc”.  Remember, the terminal windows is Case-Sensitive.
locate - a useful index-based file search utility
lspci - Lists PCI devices in your computer (used for technical troubleshooting)
lsusb - Similar to lspci, but for USB devices
apt-get - This is used very often to install, remove and update software.  An example of this command would look like:  sudo apt-get install vncviewer.  Note the sudo in front.

The Manual Command

Now, a lot more could be said aboutt these commands.  If you ever want to read all you can read about any one command, you can do that with the man command (which is short for Manual), followed by the command you’re interested in reading about.  For example, if I wanted to read about all the different options for the ls command, I would type man ls.  When viewing a manual for a command in terminal, you can use the up and down arrows to scroll, and then when you’re done reading, you need to press the Colon key : followed by the q key.  This will take you back to the Terminal window.

That’s all I am going to write about the Terminal for today.  The three very simple exercises above should have you feeling just a little more comfortable with the Terminal and navigating around your file system.  Here are a couple tips though, in case you get lost:

cd / - takes you to your root directory
cd ~/ - takes you to your Home Folder.

And just so you know, your Home Folder is actually located in /home/yourusername/.

There are a lot of great guides out there that go into a lot more detail that I’m willing to do here, so check Google to see what you can find.  Here’s one that I think is pretty clear and concise that you should take a look at if you intend to learn more about the command line.

I just finished working for 13 days in a row, with the last of those days being the same as a concert I was lucky to attend.  Sigur Rós is a band from Iceland that plays a lot of mellow tunes.  I couldn’t believe how friendly the crowd at this show was. Very kind, very soft spoken.  I actually bumped into two people who I hadn’t seen since I graduated from high school in 2001 (though I expected one, thanks to that crazy Facebook news ticker). The show started with a fantastic opening act: One of the background trombone players (Helgi Jonsson) was given the opportunity to come out and play several songs on his guitar as well as one of the organs on stage.  If you didn’t know any better, you would have almost sworn that it was actually Thom Yorke of Radiohead in a wig.  The guys voice and playing was incredible.

The number of musicians on stage peeked near the end of the main ticket, with something close to 3 keyboard/xylophone players, 4 violinist, 5 brass, probably 3 guitarist (including the lead vocalist)…. I might be off a little on the numbers, but it was a spectacular show!  Part of me regrets leaving at the next to last song, but it was pouring rain, my girlfriend had very little sleep the previous night and she had another nearly sleepless night around the corner.  Time was of the essence.

Here is the song they started their set off with.  It is called “Svefn g englar”, which means “Sleepwalkers” in English.  Enjoy!

I was looking around and also discovered they have a movie out, called Heima.  Here’s one of the trailers for it.  The climax in the song near the end gave me chills.

I was recently visited by a few very friendly e-mails from someone who has been quite taken by my blog.  I don’t know if it’s the layout I selected, the Ubuntu tutorials I have scattered about or the clever reference to the pineal gland in the subtitle… nevertheless, they demand I write more!  They even gave me a list of things to write about so I don’t have to spend time brainstorming topics that may or may not be interesting.

So that I don’t spend too much time writing this particular announcement, here’s a list of topics I intend to write about in the very near future:

• Terminal for Beginners
  • We’re going to take a look at the Terminal in Linux.  This is very similar to the Command Prompt found in DOS/Windows.  We’ll take a look at some of the most common commands used here, as well as some neat tricks and shortcuts you might fall in love with.
• Customizing Ubuntu’s Appearance
  • This is actually a topic that I said I wanted to do quite a while ago, but kind of let things slip.  In this topic, we’re going to take a look at gnome-look.org’s collection of desktop themes, as well as look at ways to change your login screens’ appearance.
• Ubuntu Application Reviews
  • For the first time ever, I’m going to begin writing reviews about different applications found in Ubuntu.  My hope is to bring attention to applications that are good, but not very well known yet.
• Gimp Tutorials
  • Gimp is an open-source alternative to Adobe Photoshop which is actually quite a powerful tool for being free.  I use it to create or modify all of the graphics on my website as well as promo images that you probably haven’t seen before.  We’ll take a look at simple things like cropping, scaling, rotation, a LOT of the tools in the tool box, a few filters, and whatever else pops up along the way.  It’ll be a lot of fun!
• Web Design Tips
  • I often get compliments about my website’s clean looking design.  I have to admit that a majority of the site was the result of a template that I stole out of Dreamweaver, but all of the work I’ve put into it since then has turned it into something very uniquely mine.  In at least one blog, I will write some tips for web design based upon the things I think my website does right (as well as a few things I think my site does wrong).

If you’re new, you might want to subscribe to my RSS feed. The easiest way to do this (in Firefox) is to click Bookmarks>Subscribe to this page.  A new special kind of bookmark will be added to your bookmarks collection.  When you click on it, all my posts will fan open and you can select the one you want to read.  What a time saver!

Stay tuned.

Ubuntu on a phone.  Too cool!

My loving girlfriend bought me a new monitor (click for larger picture).

Before you go and call me obsessive compulsive, I’ll have you know it took me at least an hour and a half to clean all the junk and dust off of my desk for this picture.  You’ll notice in the lower right corner that I’m using my mouse that my girlfriend also bought me for our one year anniversary!  I love that woman

This morning I decided to begin work on a lot of little things on my website.  The greatest change that has taken place so far is a simplification of wording used on my Virtual Dave page, so it’s now easier to read, and some excess crap was cut out.  I also modified my Services page to reflect a few new products that I now offer, namely Dave’s Custom Ubuntu Linux PCs and Web Development for small and medium size businesses;  I’m creating new pages for each of these new services at the moment.

Another idea I had of writing up storyboards and scripts for short promotional videos I’d like to make came into mind as well.  One idea that has been on the back burner for a little while now is a new Ubuntu Linux video for the FAQ, which would showcase Ubuntu 8.04.  It is a low priority to me for the time being, mostly because new users can’t see much of a difference between 8.04 and 7.10 in a short video.  What I’d like to focus on first is a video that demonstrates Virtual Dave.  And hopefully after that another video that will focus on my made-to-order Ubuntu Linux PCs.  And then finally something more along the lines of a very clever, funny commercial (it’s already been written, but won’t be shot for a while).

Ok, time to relax.

I came across a funny screenshot today that provides a pretty clear example of how social engineering is used to con people (in this case, Windows users) while browsing the Internet (click for full size):

Clearly, this user is not running Windows XP but Ubuntu Linux.  Yet with their pop-up blocker disabled in Firefox 3, a malicious website presents a window that mimics a “real” warning.  But it’s actually a trap.  This is probably the most common reason viruses find their way into Windows systems — by exploiting a users lack of expertise and susceptibility to intimidation on a technical level.  So fair warning to you Windows users out there.  Fortunately for our Linux user, he’ll just laugh and close this window.  If you’re a Windows user and you see an alert like this, you should close it too (but run a virus scan using something like AVG immediately afterwords).