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Posts Tagged ‘Linux’

My buddy Sung showed me some software today and I have to say – pretty dang cool.

Launchy

The first one is a Mac style program launcher, but for Windows and Linux systems. It’s called Launchy. Basically, you install it and when you need to run a program hit alt+space bar and it will pop up a load bar. Start typing the program you want to run and it will autocomplete – hit enter and it launches. No need to click around and find what you need.

www.launchy.net

Bumptop

The other one is pretty slick, called Bumptop. It’s hard to explain – basically it makes a drag and drop desktop experience … uh .. ok, watch this video:

As you can see, it’s awesome. Works fine on my laptop – though I personally  haven’t found tons of use yet – I’ll probably play later.

www.bumptop.com

RocketDock

The last one is a dock for launching your software:

RocketDock is a smoothly animated, alpha blended application launcher. It provides a nice clean interface to drop shortcuts on for easy access and organization. With each item completely customizable there is no end to what you can add and launch from the dock.

Now with added Taskbar support your minimized windows can appear as icons on the dock. This allows for better productivity and accessibility.

I use this a lot and I love it. It’s easy, smooth and uses a lot less power than it’s competition.

www.rocketdock.com

While people will argue that you can have most of this stuff on a Mac, I say .. this software is free and my laptop was way less expensive than a Mac. So I’ll stick with this thank you.

Enjoy!

I’ve been down and out of this thing called ‘blogging’ for a few weeks. It’s hard to be motivated when you have no job and things look bleak. However, God is good and in less than a month I’m back in the saddle working for a new company.

The job is good, the  people seem good and the work is pretty active. I’m the Jr. Web Developer, which basically means .. well, I’m not sure at this point. HAH! I know that I’m designing ads for their internet campaigns as well as developing the layouts for their email newsletters that they send out to around 100k people a week. I’ll also be doing some web work with them for mini-web sites for specific product lines. So, so far so good.

I just got a new laptop to help me be more productive on the writing front. I have plenty of ideas for writing, but for some reason the desk top never seemed very easy to stay motivated. A laptop just helps me with the writing.

So I’m typing this on the new hotness. It’s a Toshiba Satellite L395 running a dual core 2.16 Intel chip. 2gb ram, 250HD. So far it’s going well. Yes, it’s running Vista but from what I read that’s easy to change. The hardware is compatible with Linux and XP so .. if I get tired of Vista I can jump over and start running something else. Slick, eh?

So that’s that. I’m now working 8-4:30 Monday – Friday. Got this new lappy to work on, desktop for the design stuff (which yes, I still do mucho).

God is good. Can I get an amen up in the hizzle?

I’m totally geeking out about this program. I thought only Beryl on a Linux box could do this .. but dag. And I got me a copy and I say it works lovely!

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8yxmTyqCsg[/youtube]

DOWNLOAD LINK

Yodm 3D ()

Yod’m 3D maps four virtual desktops to a cube and allows the user to switch between them, similar to the cube plugin for the Compiz and Beryl window managers for the X Window System.It’s the first desktop manager that makes this feature available on Microsoft Windows. Yod’m 3D makes use of and requires DirectX 9 in contrast to most other virtual desktop managers that use OpenGL.

It does not require installation to run.

Ok, so I bought a new computer. Well, let me clarify – I bought several pieces that when put together will make a computer.

I’m no stranger to building computers. I’ve done it for years and I’ve generally enjoyed it. However, this system is presenting me with continual problems.

Let’s start with the worst. it’s a Quad Core Q6600 processor with an nForce 650i Ultra main board. I installed it all nicely, threw on a new GeForce 9600GT 512mb video card – sounds like it should scream, right? Well, it would if the processor didn’t keep over heating and shutting down the system. Going out and shelling $20 for some heavy duty thermal paste HELPED but the only thing that successfully allowed the system to run was setting the voltage to the processor to 1.05 rather than letting it automatically chose (which was usually about 1.27). No problem, got that fixed. Now I can’t find my copy of Windows XP Pro (I have the product code!) so I downloaded it from a torrent (like I said, I have the product code) and naturally it won’t work.

So I installed Ubuntu 8.04. Got it running no problem – only thing is they don’t make Linux drivers for my main board or video card.

I’m quite disappointed on what should be an awesome computer. Luckily I didn’t thrash the old system totally so I can use this to do some things – but dang it … this should be cake!!!

So, my faithful readers … any ideas?