A Random Pattern

Everyone else is doing it, I figured I’ll throw my hat in the ring too. Of course, I don’t have much to add other than what I think is obvious. If you want the low-down on rumors, sites like TUAW writeup will fill you up.

So here’s the skinny: This is a developer conference. Yes, Apple may role out some new hardware. Everyone wants them to, but no one’s got any real idea whether they will or won’t. What we do know is that the main focus here is on Developers, and on the next version of OS X.

Here’s my predictions – they fall in line with one of my favorite bloggers, John Gruber from Daring Fireball:
-Leopard out soon, probably before Window’s Vista.
-Improved Spotlight and Metadata features (thanks Ars for making me dream!)
-New eye candy, major graphics cleanup.
-Next step for resolution independence?
-New Mac Pro. Yes, I think they’ll probably introduce it. No, I don’t have any good reason for thinking so, other than aggregate opinion (which is a really bad indicator, historically).

Thanks to someone’s quick camera, we know Apple’s expecting to wow us with the next version of OS X. And that, my friends, can only be good for computer users everywhere.

My wife’s grandma regularly enters all kinds of contests and sweepstakes. Recently she won a brand-spankin-new 60 GB iPod. It’s a generation newer than mine (about 1 year), so it’s half the size and plays video.

I helped Sara’s dad rip his CD collection onto our Mac, since they’re still running an old HP with Win 98 (gah!). Once his iPod was set up, we gave it a test run in my Hi-Fi.

Sweeeeet!

 

Don’t worry, I’m aiming for a Nano sometime soon so I can run with it. Grandma won’t be joining me.

arc90 labs released this cool bit of javascript. You may have noticed me trying it out – I’m still trying to get it right, but seeing how often I segue into little sidenotes I could probably use something like this.

I got Kubuntu installed. I first made the mistake of just installing KDE-desktop and some other important-looking KDE packages. Then, once I figured out how to log into a KDE session (log off, go to “Options” in the lower left corner, select “Session” then “KDE”) I got into IRC chat and learned that the easy way would have been to install Kubuntu-desktop. I did that, and KDE looked much better, had things in the right place, etc.

However, I still couldn’t get Remote Desktop working. For one thing, it was called “Sharing” instead of “Remote Desktop” (as it is under Gnome). For another, as I eventually discovered, I had left the firewall (Firestarter) running. Even though it hadn’t blocked my other PC the night previously, once I disconnected it started blocking that incoming connection (makes sense since I hadn’t made it an exception). For a third, I finally discovered my KDE session was 20, so trying “ipaddress:0″ or “:1″ or without colon obviously wasn’t going to work.

I still don’t have desktop sharing / remote desktop working for KDE, but I can remote into Gnome anytime I please. I think the VNC viewer and/or server might not allow sharing up to 20, maybe it only allows the first 5 or something. I haven’t looked into it yet, so if you know please tell me. I also don’t know why KDE starts at 20, instead of something much lower (the Gnome session is 0). One thing left to try is making KDE default – so far I’ve kept Gnome as default and just temporarily logged into KDE. This whole ‘session’ concept is still a little foggy for me. There are workspaces, displays, screens, sessions….I know there are differences, I just haven’t figured them all quite out yet. I’ll probably blog more on this.

One other item that was frustrating me until someone on the Kubuntu IRC channel pointed out the obvious: My display was just a few pixels wider than my actual monitor’s screen, and it was bugging me. I was looking for a software adjustment, when someone suggested I use the buttons on my monitor. Duh! The guys on #Ubuntu and on #Kubuntu have helped me out a few times, and I appreciate the community support. Sometimes the only solution is to figure it out yourself, but at least they’ll give you moral support.

Quick link to pictures:  Granite counter top web album

Well, I made that harder than it had to be. Instead of installing VNC stuff, I could have just looked in the System Menu, for the “Remote Desktop” option under “Preferences”. (By the way, I’m using it now to verify the wording of everything.)

Then I just use a VNC Viewer, and there we go, I’m seeing and using my Ubuntu desktop from my Win XP laptop. Of course, quality’s a little low, but I think that’s b/c my wireless signal is weak this far from my router. I need to get the ethernet run and set back up, and this will give me the motivation to do that. I’ll report on how it looks after that.

Also, I found “ALE”, the Atlanta Linux Enthusiasts. Lucky me, there are other geeks around!

Quick link: Check out our new granite (Tan-Brown) countertops, just installed.

Now if we can just get the sink hooked up….

Ok, not really old. But Google has just announced some exciting new features being rolled out to Google Talk users. This follows nicely on my last few posts.

IM and collaborative technologies are important to me, because I’m a “tele-worker” – that is, I live and work a few states away from my old office.

Now, if they’d just get a nice “whiteboard” going…

Finally! Google Maps offers a new feature – they’ll save addresses you search for, and you can even label them. The first one I’ll be putting in is “home” – the address I use as a starting point for 90% of my direction searches!

One of the most common requests we’ve received is for the ability to store a list of personal addresses on Google Maps — and now you can.

Oh, and for all you people still using Mapquest: Please, STOP! Try Google Maps, Yahoo Maps, anything but Mapquest!!! You have NO IDEA what you’re missing! (If you’ve tried the others, and went back to Mapquest, comment or email me – I’d really like to know why.)

I set up VNC from my work PC to my Ubuntu box last night.  It was actually really easy, went much smoother than I had expected.  For one thing, Ubuntu gave me no hassle about changing to a static IP, and neither did my Linksys router.  I did have to look around for a minute or two to find how to set it up, but that’s no different than in Windows.  Not to mention it was actually easier than Windows, no rebooting or anything.

It did take a while to figure out how what to use to do remote desktop.  I just want to go over my intranet for now, I’m not (yet) trying to open it up to access from the internet.  I decided to just pick VNC and go with it, since I’m somewhat familiar with that on Windows boxes.  From there, I just used the package manager to find vnc4server, and a few quick downloads, installs, and command-line checks later I thought I might have it setup.

The longest part of the setup was actually picking which VNC viewer I wanted on my Win XP installation.  Someone I respect (Tony A) had recommended UltraVNC, but when I looked at it it wasn’t what I remembered.  I’d also seen TightVNC referred to a lot, and decided to go with that as it looked open-source and ‘linux-friendly’.  The install was again quick.

One tricky part was that I needed to not just specify the server ip address, but also the x-display (like this: 192.168.1.100:1).  That’s an example using default numbers, btw, which no one should ever use (but most people do).  Once I figured that out, BAM!  I was in!

Now for the surprise – it wasn’t quite what I expected.  I didn’t get my whole linux graphical desktop, instead I got a terminal (or command line).  I could type in and run some graphical programs (somewhat slowly), but definitely not what I expected.

Things left to do:

1. See if I can put TightVNC server on Ubuntu, which might give me more what I want.

2. See if VNC is the right path, or if there’s some other type of Remote Desktop option.

3. Start looking into configuring my Ubuntu box as a server, with all the attendant benefits.

4. Help my dad get his old HP (running Win 98!) updated to Ubuntu.  Hopefully this goes well.

Anyone with questions on how I did what I did, or looking for more information / screenshots on what was accomplished?

Anyone have more information on how to set up some sort of Remote Desktop thing?  I’d love to learn, and I’ll point at any blog or resource you send me that is helpful.