Mixxx Accepted for Google Summer of Code

Mixxx has just been accepted by Google’s Summer of Code in which students are invited to contribute to various open source projects. Also Hercules was generous enough to donate a couple consoles (the MK2 like I have and another, simpler MP3 console) to the developers, so we should see more solid support for these Hercules consoles in the near future.

This is all great news for anyone interested in this great software. Expect more good news on the Mixxx development front coming up!

Here’s the Mixxx wiki page for brainstorming ideas.

Ubuntu Edgy Eft

Ubuntu Linux released a new version of their Linux distribution yesterday. As per their goofy naming scheme, it is dubbed “Edgy Eft,” and it can be downloaded for free, as always, on their website.

Edgy didn’t even include any sort of 3d capabilities by default (probably for good reasons), but I wasted no time in installing Beryl, the community fork of Novell’s Compiz window manager. It is a seriously nifty 3d environment for your linux desktop that makes OS X graphics look old. There are so many new effects and the gui configuration tools let you tweak nearly any aspect. I must say, I’m quite impressed with what is being done with Beryl, and I look forward to see what Novell themselves are doing with their Compiz version. This YouTube video will give you an idea of the eye candy we’re talking about.

I also wanted to link to this review I just found on osnews, with plenty of screenshots. Give up windows already!

RSS & Some Good Tools

I’ve just posted on our Blogs for Learning blog here at MSU about RSS: Web News Simplified. I list a good number of RSS readers, including some way nifty web ones.

Subversion HOWTO

Subversion is a really nice version control system that many people have migrated to from CVS. I’ve recently needed to set up my rails applications into subversion repositories so I can make use of the quite proper application deployment tool, Capistrano. I wanted to take a moment and post about generally how using Subversion works—for the reference of people stumbling upon my blog, and also my own.

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Blogging in TextMate

I’ve been getting more and more into using Textmate as my choice editor, despite continuing to need Zend for Quicken Loans as I need to work on remote files (over VPN) and the drawer update issue makes it simply unworkable. (One must wait minutes to bring TM to focus.)

Well, I wanted a nice way to blog without going into the Typo control panel. MarsEdit is cool, and so is ecto, but both are commercial software, and I already have a license for my beloved Textmate.

Actually, I would have tried blogging with Textmate much sooner, but there was some weird issue with it when connecting to my blog, despite the other two aforementioned editors working just fine. Someone in the #Textmate IRC channel suggested reloading my bundles (Bundles -> Bundle Editor -> Reload Bundles). And that seems to have solved whatever problem I was experiencing, because now Textmate blogging works just fine.

Wh00t.

Why TextMate is So Awesome

It seems TextMate has become quite a popular editor as of late. Some even say it is the best editor on any platform which is quite a bold statement, indeed. Cheat sheets such as this one might give you some idea of the breadth of features available at the tap of a key, but allow me to attempt a bulleted list of my favorites:

• Yes! There are hotkeys for everything! I almost don’t even miss vim at all! Hotkeys to navigate around and manipulate your text are essential, and TextMate doesn’t let you down.
• Moving around couldn’t be easier. Cmd+T brings up a dialog that intelligently figures out what file you’re looking for in your project from what you type. This lets you open up a file with the quickness. Cmd+Shift+T is similar, but you’re jumping to a symbol (class, function, etc) in the current file instead. Bookmarks let you cycle through important lines of code.
• Snippits are amazing. Type a snippit keyword and hit tab. It will be expanded to the full snippit with the first modifiable area selected. Type to replace it with something new, and hit tab to move to the next “hot” spot. With “smart typing” automatically closing my quotes and brackets, the code practically writes itself!
• You can execute a line of code as ruby and insert its result. You can commit code to versioning systems. You can …
• Extensibility. You can add third party bundles such as the that include new commands, macros, snippits, etc.
• It is a native cocoa application with predictable keybindings (Cmd+w closes, etc) and snazzy-clean mac-friendly interface.

People use this editor to maintain their todo lists and weblogs.

My biggest and nearly lonesome gripe with TextMate is how it freezes for a couple seconds when it comes to focus when you’re working on remote files (nfs, samba, etc). The upcoming version 2.0 will fix this issue as well as bring numerous exciting improvements.

Serious respect goes out to the mighty Allan Odgaard of Denmark for this incredible editor.

Flock is teh Cool!

Flock — The web browser for you and your friends

So I heard Flock came out—I had to try it again. Last time I tried it, it was a technology preview or something and it was buggy and would crash fairly often. I haven’t had much time using it just yet, but it seems pretty snazzy. Among its nifty “web 2.0” features is a nifty blog tool. It asked me my blog url. I simply inputted “http://threadbox.net/”. Next, it asked me my username and password. That was it! Now I can not only blog right to my website with a nifty interface, but I can right click on things select “Blog This” from the pop-up menu to start off my post with an image/link. Maybe I’ll actually start posting again :)

Planet Openbox Launches!

I’ve been invited by some friends involved with the Openbox community to participate in a new “planet” project (a la Planets Ubuntu, Gentoo, or Gnome) called Planet Openbox in the name of our favorite window manager.

Why do I still use and love openbox? Because its XML-based configuration file affords me pretty amazing flexibility in my keyboard & mouse bindings. My favorites include the ability to roll the mouse wheel on the desktop to cycle virtual desktops or on a title bar to shade/unshade. I also use openbox to bind the forward/back thumby buttons on my Logitech MX518 to move me around my history in Firefox quickly.

Ubuntu Dapper Drake Flight 5

It was a few days after I saw Ubuntu Dapper Drake Flight 5 featured on Digg that I realized I needed to try it out on my laptop, upgrading it from Breezy. Wow was that ever a good idea.

Now, not only does my laptop properly go into and out of suspend AND hibernate (where this would fail in Breezy), but I get to use the excellent Gnome 2.14 before it even comes out. (The final release is due out today, however.) Linux just keeps getting better.

Here’s How to do Podcasts

I like to listen to some podcasts… but I find myself getting behind simply because I have to constantly revisit the separate websites, click around, find the torrent link… No it’s not that hard, but it certainly could be a lot easier.

Somewhere in my digg reading today, I read that Azureus supports RSS feeds. “Wow,” I thought, “That would really be the easiest way to get my podcasts!” I consulted google, and found that this functionality is offered via an extension. I gave it the rss feeds for thisweekintech and a couple other podcasts I like to listen to, and it lists the episodes and lets me download them with the click of a button. It will also poll the feeds on an interval and download them automatically.

This is perfect. I just had to share it.