I’ve been trying to install Beryl on my fresh Feisty for the past few hours and can’t seem to get it working. I’m using the tutorial over here. Everything goes perfectly until I do glxinfo | grep "direct rendering" and it outputs no rather than yes.
I’ve been searching every where I can think and have yet to find a solution. I really want to get Beryl working and this is really pushing my patience.
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Classes have ended, the weather is quickly warming up, and I’m about to go home. Summer is upon us.
Update: I’m home. Bathrooms are way better than stalls.
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A little more than a week ago I started using Camino, a Gecko (the same rendering engine used in Firefox)-based web browser written in Cocoa, as my default browser. I’ve used Firefox for a long time and have become comfortable with a lot of the features. Therefore, switching to Camino cold turkey came with an initial shock but afterwards it was mostly smooth sailing.
First Impressions
The first time I ran Camino I was surprised how fast it loaded. Firefox takes at least 3-4 seconds (sometimes as much as 10 seconds) where as Camino loaded in under 2 seconds. This is was definitely a good first impression.
Once the interface came up I realized why people called this the Mac-native version of Firefox; except for a lighter gradient and slightly different icons, Camino and Firefox share the same interface. I guess I can’t be that surprised really. If you look at all of the popular browsers these days you can tell no one is being very adventurous in their design. That being said, I’m used to this setup and don’t mind a little cross-browser consistency.
Preferences
My next move was to check out the preferences panel. The first two panels have all the standard options (home page, set default browser, etc.). The third panel, marked “Privacy,” contains options on how cookies and web forms are handled. What’s interesting here is that rather than managing the usernames and passwords by itself, Camino employs the OS X Keychain to handle everything. To me this was the first sign that Camino is truly a Mac browser.
The third panel is also home to one of the very few things I truly dislike about this browser. In Firefox I had it setup such that all cookies were allowed but only those on the exception list were allowed to stay across restarts. I admit that I’m a little more neurotic than most when it comes to browser security but this is a feature that I feel is important. Camino allows you to create an exception list but only by prompting you every time you go to a page and asking whether you want to allow or deny it. This is especially annoying when it’s a site that sets cookies from other sites.
I just wish Camino would look to it’s big brother Firefox for a better way to handle this.
The next couple panels are, again, pretty standard these days. Something to note here though: Camino comes with an ad-up blocker so there is no need for any external add-ons/extensions. Granted, it’s not quite as powerful as Adblock (Plus) on Firefox (or at least they don’t give you access to as many settings), but it’s a nice touch for people who want a simple solution.
When I finally got to the last panel I was very surprised (and then realized I shouldn’t have been surprised) to find out-of-the-box Growl support. Growl is an event notification system for OS X that let’s applications post notices of things that happen. In the case of Camino, this means that when downloads start/finish/fail, pop-ups are blocked, or bookmarks are imported/exported you’ll get a nice little notification box telling you what happened. This is a great only-possible-on-a-Mac feature that I hope they expand on.
Usage
After I had gone through all of the preferences I felt it was time that I actually went to site. Naturally the first site I went to was right here. Everything loaded very quickly and rendered just as it should have. This hasn’t changed in the week that I’ve been using Camino. I have yet to have a problem rendering a web page. Something I didn’t expect (again, even though I should have) when opening up that first page was seeing the native OS X widgets (the buttons and drop-down menus).
Firefox uses a standard set of widgets across on all platforms, increasing consistency, but decreasing the native feel. The embossed buttons fit very well with the scroll bars on the side of the window.
Yet another difference I saw (this time there was no reason to expect it) was how responsive text fields were. I know this sounds a little odd, right? I thought so too but there is definitely a difference. When you start to type in a text area or text field in Firefox it can occasionally feel a little sluggish. That is, sometimes there is a little delay between key strokes. On Camino though, letters appear in fields as if it knew what you were going to type. Believe it or not, it actually makes writing blog posts via the web interface (rather than in a text editor than copying and pasting) enjoyable.
A few days ago I realized that a small but very important feature was missing: find as you type. I used to use this feature ten times a day in Firefox as it’s so quick and easy. All you have to do is start typing and Firefox will search the page. In Camino you have to open up a window, type in your search, and press enter. There is a way to get find-as-you-type working in Camino. By searching around a little I was able to find a page on caminobrowser.org detailing how to enable some hidden preferences, one of which was find-as-you-type.
One more time, concisely
Now that I’ve gone through most of the important likes and dislikes, I present to you this list to round everything out.
Annoyances
Sweetness
Do you use Camino? What do you think about it?
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Personally, I’ve got no idea. But this guy presents both sides of the argument.
Either way, AACS has a ton more money than Digg and that usually plays a big part of deciding the winner.
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…I want to work here
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I saw this funny little post on digg a few minutes ago.
It’s a top 10 list of ways you can tell you’re charging too little in whatever job you’re working.
I think I need to get a job before I worry about getting underpaid…
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Earlier today the guys over at Wordpress.org released the API and a new plug-in for their stats system.
For those who don’t know, hosted blogs over at Wordpress.com have access to site metrics that allow them to track visitors, clicks, etc. Until now, everyone with a self-hosted blog (such as the one you’re reading now) has had to find other means of tracking visitors (like Google Analytics or Mint).
Personally, I don’t get enough hits (yet!) to justify spending money on site metrics so I’ve been using the first service at Google.
Now that Wordpress has released a plugin made specifically for all of the WP blogs out there, this is just another option.
Some interesting details about the WP Stats plugin:
I only activated the plug-in a few minutes ago so it’s going to take a few minutes for hits to start tracking. I’ll be sure to post again about how I like it. Later.
Update: WP Stats doesn’t seem to be working at all. I just checked my Analytics account and (to my delight) had a fair few hits. I went to check the stats on my Global Dashboard expecting to see a nice size spike on the end of the graph but was disappointed to find a flat line like yesterday. Maybe the guys at WP still have some setup to do behind the scenes. I’m not giving up that easily.
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As most people have heard at this point, HD-DVD’s content protection (AACS) has been cracked. There is a 32-character hex key making it’s way to just about every website out there that will unlock any and all HD-DVDs currently available.
What does this mean exactly? Quite a few things.
First, it could mean the death of HD-DVD as we know it as there is little chance that the big name studios will be thrilled to know that the movies they are selling on HD-DVD are completely unprotected.
That being said, it could also go the other way. Think about it: you’re at Best Buy trying to decide which technology to buy into. On one side you have Blu-Ray which offers great quality and potential but is (at least for now) completely locked down with it’s extra layer of content protection. On the other side you have HD-DVD which also offers great quality but comes with a neat (unintended and definitely illegal) feature: you can make “backups.” Yes, with AACS cracked you can now make backups of the HD-DVD that you own. Personally, I’d choose HD-DVD for that feature alone. Factor in PS3 sucking (at the moment because of crappy games) and the choice is easy.
Definitely keep a look out for more info on this story. There is likely going to be a handful of press releases this week regarding the crack which may or may not be accompied by the crowning of the winner in the “Next-gen DVD war.”
Stay tuned.
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INCREDIBLE!!
That pretty adequately sums everything up. Seriously though, the show was awesome. Around 6pm a buddy and I drove from Cleveland to Detroit to see Ted Leo play in concert. The drive was fine (a little rain at the end though) and we got to the club (that’s the only way I can describe it because it was part café, part bowling alley, part bar, part other-bar-with-stage) just after nine.
The band they’re touring with (and who opened for them) is called Love of Diagrams. I really wasn’t a huge fan of these guys. I think my biggest problem with them was that all the instruments just melded together into one blob (blob being a negative word…) of sound and I like to be able to pick out different instruments.
Then TL and Rx came on.
One of the best parts of the show was, before they started playing, Ted Leo showed his support for Net Neutrality. That was sweet.
Around the middle of the show, between songs, while TL was fixing his amp or something, someone shouted out “I want to be just like you Ted Leo!” then added “…when I’m old.” TL’s first reaction was a direct “Fuck you!” but then asked the guy how old he was. The guy said he was 20 to which TL responded “Yeah, yeah…when you’re old…” The little interactions between TL and the crowd were what made the show so awesome. Most bands will talk to a fan or two between songs but usually it’s just to say that they did it. TL had actual conversations and seemed not to care that it was only making the show longer. He’s a cool guy.
OK, here’s what made the show incredible.
During the last song, TL (and I think pretty much everyone) was having problems with his equipment. It took him a few minutes to get everything sorted out but finally got it together enough to play the last song. They finished the song, said thank you, and left the stage. Obviously everyone kept cheering for a few minutes until TL came back on stage.
Except, initially, he didn’t have good news. Basically, they really couldn’t play because their equipment was all screwed up. Everyone was all sad and whatever until TL offered to sing a song a cappella. Umm…HOLY SHIT!!
After a few shout outs from the crowd (I yelled Freebird…) TL sang Dirty Old Town. This was so cool and the last thing I thought he would do (and apparently he doesn’t do this often because I checked youtube for videos and couldn’t find any).
The ride home was pretty sweet too, basically reliving the whole concert over again between my buddy and I (oh and the huge thunderstorm we had to ride through kinda sucked).
So yeah, I probably should have been studying for exams rather than driving all over the midwest going to a concert but I can’t say I regret going to one of the best shows I’ve ever seen.
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