Month: May 2010

Office wars are back

It’s been a while since I heard something from the office applications front lines.  And today, while catching with news in my Google Reader, here is what I saw (or almost what I saw, since I am reading in Expanded mode, and not in List):

Three articles in a row, and all are about the office applications.  Either it’s an unlikely coincidence, or TechMeme is doing something wrong, or … the office wars are back and that’s the most exciting and hyped about topic in the tech industry right now.  Which one do you think it is?

P.S.: Here are the links to the articles: one, two, three.

How old are you, son?

Olga and I are having a blast over this for a few weeks now.  Maxim seems to be going through an age comparison stage when at his kindergarten.  Kids tell each other how old they are, and all of them want to be of the same age as someone else.  Maxim has this friend Sasha, who is “five and three quarters”.   We haven’t covered quarters with Maxim yet (only halves), so he is exploring the math on his own.  That results in this joke that runs in our home for some time now:

– Maxim, how old are you?

– I am five and cree waters.

– How? How old?

– Five and cree waters!

– Five and what?

– Five and cree waters, I said!

Of course, we tell him that it’s “three quarters” not “cree waters”, and that he isn’t actually “three quarters” yet.  But as with everything you learn on your own rather than being taught, it takes more time to get used to the new knowledge.

Video games podcasts

I have to agree with OnThisIsland.com on this one:

Podcasts are not very popular in Cyprus. It probably has a lot to do with the fact that there is no puplic transport to provide someone with a great opportunity to use any means possible to shut everything and everyone out while you are using it. Unfortunately this means missing out on some great videogame related podcasts out there.

All I can do from my side is to point to more video games podcasts.  I’ve mentioned earlier that Miro is the best application for watching online video that I ever came across.  Not only it makes downloading, watching, and organizing podcasts easy, but also it provides an excellent resource to find more content – Miro Guide.  You can browse most popular podcasts, newest ones, HD videos, and more.  As part of it, of course, you can browse by category.  For example, Video Games category lists a number of excellent shows, and Total Rad Show, which was recommend by OnThisIsland and of which I am a big fan, is also in that list.

The Hurt Locker

The other day I went to see “The Hurt Locker“.  There was plenty of hype around this movie – 6 Oscars, 73 other award wins, and 47 nominations for more awards.  Not to mention that the director is Kathryn Bigelow, who is, among other things, an ex-wife of James Cameron.  (And as we know, in many cases, you are who you are married to, and if so, it’s extremely helpful in this case).

Anyways.  Obviously, with all that noise, I’ve heard quite a bit about the film, and I saw the trailer, and I had a slight idea on what it was and how it was.  I went prepared. Or so I thought…

The film turned out to be totally different from what I was expecting.  Actually, I think it turned out totally different from what anybody were expecting.  And that’s a good thing.  Surprise!  Somehow this film is very different from pretty much everything.  It has action, but it’s not an action.  It has drama, but it’s not a drama.  It’s supposedly has documentary, but it’s not documentary.  The storyline is very vague and doesn’t seem to stand out or lead anywhere, but on the other hand the film is rather long and I didn’t get tired of it at all. It’s very natural.

The way it works, I guess, is that this film is using atmosphere to tell the story, rather than dialogs, powerful music, and impressive shots.  As I said, at times you don’t really know where it goes and if it goes anywhere at all.  But yet somehow it all makes sense.  Also, one other thing that I really enjoyed, and which I thought was a cornerstone of this film is simplicity.  The whole situation in Iraq is not simple.  There are many sides to it and many points of views.   But this film drops down to a very simplistic view of the whole picture from the eyes of a few American soldiers.   There is no propaganda, there are no high-flying ideas.  It’s just that simple – a few guys at war.   It’s not about why they are there.  It’s about them actually being there.

The film is not very entertaining, even though it has a few hilarious bits and quite a few action sequences.  It’s simple, and yet deep.  It doesn’t force ideas upon thee, but it does make you think.  And as I said, it’s different from most films I’ve seen, and yet very similar somehow.

Overall, I’ll give it a 4 out of 5, and I would highly recommend it.

Missing main menu bar in Gnome applications

I had this problem for quite some time now.  It’s been haunting me from computer to computer and from account to account.   I went through all configuration options I could find.  I started my Gnome and GTK profiles from scratch a few times.  And nothing seemed to help.  I even abandoned Gnome over this and switched to KDE and other desktop managers for some time – that’s how annoying it was.  And the worst thing, whenever I tried to Google for a solution – a totally different problem was coming up in the search results.

The problem was that in all of my Gnome applications main menu was missing.  The menu bar, which has File, Edit, View, Help, and such – never showed up.  Be that a video player or GnuCash or anything else.   Today I finally found a solution to this major annoyance.  Just in case the original will disappear, I quote for generations to come:

The problem was not in the .gnome or .gtk sub-directories, as I suspected.  Instead two packages installed were the problem.  gnome-globalmenu-common    and   gnome-applet-globalmenu were the culprits. There are two options if these are installed.  The first is to use the applet on one of the Gnome panels either top or bottom of hte screen.  This interesting applet will insert the ‘missing’ menu bar from the currently focused application into the bar the applet is a part of.  This will be VERY handy on the netbook, where real estate is an issue. The other option is to remove them.

Thank you, Daniel and mutk from #fedora IRC channel.  You sirs have saved my sanity.