Author: jcberthon

Head of Earth Observation and Science dept at CGI. Free/libre advocate, traveller, curious and cyclist. Views are my own. https://www.berthon.eu/
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Definitively two different styles

Video MIME Type by TangoRecently San Francisco was the location of the Macworld 2007 event. Steve Jobs, Apple Inc. CEO, performed a remarkable keynote and presented the iPhone, which is buzzing all around the internet now.

Even though, that’s only a few month that we got our first Macintosh computer, I fell in love with the look and the use of those devices long before when once – around 15 years ago – there was one of those machines for a few days at home (my father brought it to work on it a couple of days). Since then, I long for having one.

Fifteen years ago PC (DOS+Windows) based computers were clearly ugly. From the hardware design to the Graphical User Interface (GUI), PCs were no comparison to Apple Macintosh and their Operating System (OS). Nowadays, the look of PC (Windows XP or Vista) is clearly improved, both hardware and software. But oddly enough and for my own taste, I consider Apple design still more recherché (sought-after).

The funny part of all this, and which is what triggered this post, is the difference in keynotes from both Microsoft and Apple. Get the full article to know more…

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Tidal-like wave observed from Earth

Sunquake animation and its resulting

A major solar flare triggered off a sort of tidal wave on the visible face of the Sun. The event was detected by the new solar patrol telescope in New Mexico on the 6th of December. This phenomenon is impressive and you can see it quickly covering a large distance (a few hundreds thousand kilometers here) in a matter of minutes (around 8 minutes).
This phenomenon, known since the sixties, is called moreton wave, which is named after the astronomer Gay Moreton.

Source: National Solar Observatory & Wikipedia
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Translating Software

TranslationTranslating a software is not a piece of cake. I have started doing some translation for the Ubuntu project, from English to French. And sometimes it is requiring a lot of effort to translate a single word just because usually the text you are reviewing is seen raw: out of the context, and thus many translation could apply but only one is correct. I did not give too much thought on this, and I move on.

But today I have found a particularly interesting post on translation. After reading it, I had the feeling that if a part of an application is not easily translatable in another language, perhaps the original version is not clear enough neither for the native speakers. Then, one could think that one tool to measure partially a GUI ergonomics could be the translation process.

So what now? As Alan Horkan says in his article, there is a need for more interactions between the translation teams and the software designer (or sometimes also the developer). Perhaps, this has to be think further by each Open Source project.

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Enhancing Ubuntu’s network experience

NetworkManager LogoUbuntu is ready for network operations just after install. But what about easy configuration when you are on the go, like being able to select your wireless network, handling its security or viewing in real time its quality?
Even though Ubuntu do not provide this facility with the default installation, it is at a distance of a few clicks before you can get all those enhancements. A user simply needs to install NetworkManager, a small/neat applet for Gnome.

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Drivel, a Blog Editor

I am discovering Drivel, a small but neat application that allow me to edit my Blog off-line. Actually, this article is being written with Drivel.
Drivel is compatible with MovableType, Typepad, LiveJournal and Blogger. So as I am using WordPress, it is using the MovableType compatible XML-RPC. However, it is a bit disappointing because not all possibilities provided by WordPress are offered by Drivel. Besides writing rich text within Drivel, the only other option is to assign a single category to an article. This is yet a bit limiting, especially when compared to what drivel can offer when connecting to a LiveJournal Blog.
In addition and even though there is a way to split the article in two, in the “read more” manner (accessible via the menu Format->Insert link…), it is not compatible with WordPress and the article is displayed as one single block. Another concern is that once you have updated an article with Drivel, and if you want to re-modify it, Drivel has still in memory the original version of the article.
Still, Drivel is a neat application to have when you’re working off-line, but has room for improvement to better support existing possibilities in other Blog system than LiveJournal.

Update: The new version of Drivel (2.0.3) shipped with Ubuntu 6.10 does not bring visible changes when using WordPress apart that now after updating an article, Drivel will re-download the list of recent entries. Thus correcting the annoying bug that Drivel would still show the content of the original article before it was modified. The Drivel 2.0.3 complete change log is accessible on SourceForge. However, Drivel is still not capable to retrieve the currently assigned category of an existing post.

One can find another interesting review of Drivel on Linux.com.

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Inkscape: The Free Vector Graphics Editor

Inkscape LogoInkscape is an Open Source software dedicated to Vector Graphics edition. It is using the standard SVG natively to store the creations. A couple of days ago, a new version of Inkscape was release, the version 0.44. Do not mistake the “0.xx”, this software is already usable and stable.

This article will try to explain what are Vector Graphics and what Inksape can do for you. In addition, we will summarise the new enhancement of Inkscape latest version and finally see how to install it on your Ubuntu distribution.

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Neat Computer Temperature Applet (Gnome)

Computer Temperature Monitor (Gnome Applet)I have found a little tiny utility that simply and neatly displays the CPU and hard disk temperatures: the Computer Temperature Monitor (ex-Laptop Temperature Monitor)

This is a Gnome Panel applet written in Python. There are packages for various Ubuntu releases and other Linux distribution.

Tips & hints

After installing the package, it worked out of the box for the CPU temperature. Regarding the hard disk temperature, one has to install the package ‘hddtemp’ (it is in the Ubuntu Universe repository).

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Trying to reduce the hard disk noise – no luck yet

This is a current problem for Dapper, Breezy and Hoary whatever desktop you are using (KDE, GNOME or XFCE).

On some hardware – like my Dell Latitude D600 – you get constant disk access and noise. This does not allow your disk to spin down to save energy (especially annoying when running on battery). This problem is reported in this forum: Frequent HDD activity

So far I have manage to activate the laptop mode, but it does not seem to solve the problem for me. Anyway, if you want to activate laptop mode this is not straight forward, and this is why I am writing today.

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Administrator privilege phylosophy (sudo vs. root)

If you are a Windows 9x or Me user, I guess you are wondering what this article is all about. If you moved to Windows XP, you start guessing what it might be. But I guess when you had the opportunity during the Windows user creation to select “Limited Account” or “Administrative Account”, you have selected the latest. Not only the name “Limited Account” sounds pejorative, but you will not able to use a lot of your application then because of insufficient privilege (it is getting better, and if you have the luck to have the latest version of all your software, it might work), so you are using your Windows with administrative privilege.

This is not only a bad idea because if during your normal desktop use, you or one of your program fiddles with an important file, you might get your system to an unstable state. It can become tremendously bad when you get infected, as your whole system is then compromised (no need to find a privilege escalation security breach somewhere)

The Linux/UNIX users are surely all laughing at this. Because, they all know that you should have a root account for any administrative tasks, and a user account (see it is not a limited account in this philosophy) for all desktop use. However, there are two doctrines: the root or sudo doctrines.

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Sharing files and folders with the Windows world

Today, I wanted to retrieve an ISO image from my Windows desktop and burn it on my Linux laptop. I thought this would be pretty much straight forward. But computers like to make you sweat and work hard for simple tasks… :-( I wish I had a Mac!

Anyway, Windows was bugging me and not properly sharing my folder (not all the files and folders in a share were visible from the networks!). So I decided to share a directory under my Linux laptop. Then, from Windows, I was going to copy the file to Linux.

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