And Then He Use XScreenSaver

You know what else sucks about xubuntu? XScreenSaver. How do you even bork up a screen saver?

1: Like Thunar, it's just unbelievably ugly. Behold the default icon:

It's gigantic, and it's in your face whenever you unlock your computer. I laughed and thought it was some kind of bad joke. Unfortunately it's not, despite a quick google search revealing that there are masses of others that think it's ugly too. When people ask when will the year of Linux on the Desktop be, this is one of my favourite tidbits to point out, because it's included by default in many distros and it's an extremely noticeable feature of the system. Why does it matter? Because I think it's telling of the extreme lack of polish most Linux distros have. What kind of impression do you want to give a company or a person who is taking a serious look at Linux and one of the most noticeable dialogues has THAT icon on it?


2: It's unsecure.  When you let the computer idle and it switches off the monitor, if you move the mouse, no matter how long it's been idling, for about a second you can *see the complete desktop and all its windows* before everything fades to black and the login prompt comes up. And it gets better, if you put the computer to sleep, when it resumes, it doesn't ask for a password or anything. Dun doww. These are two issues that have arisen though daily use, I haven't even tried to play around with it.


3: It's difficult to get rid of. Just read this thread. I'm actually just going to leave it on my system because I can't be bothered

4: The developer is a total dick. Here's some choicest quotes from the XscreenSaver website:

"XScreenSaver is secure, stable, and mature; whereas gnome-screensaver is brand new, bug-ridden, unreliable, and a security disaster waiting to happen"

"They are, of course, welcome to shoot themselves in the foot in this way, but there's no reason you should. I don't support gnome-screensaver, and I encourage you to run xscreensaver instead"

"If that still brings you no joy, then I recommend switching to MacOS. I did."

and regarding the logo:

 "If you are looking in here because you're trying to figure out how to
   change the logo that xscreensaver displays on the splash screen and
   password dialog, please don't.  The logo is xscreensaver's identity.
   You wouldn't alter the name or copyright notice on a program that
   you didn't write; please don't alter its logo either."

how open source of him. The entire idea of open source is modifying and adding to programs that you didn't write.

I find the quotes about security hilarious given that I can see what's on a users desktop for a second before XscreenSaver kicks in, or how it apparently doesn't monitor when a machine is set to sleep. and that his solution to a known bug is to switch to MacOS. Nice.

And Then He Thought MyHub was Stupid

So despite transferring my eCAF form straight from B Psychology to my new B Engineering (Software), according to myhub I've applied for a FEE-HELP loan, Which isn't even possible because I'm in a CSP degree. This is after double checking that I did indeed receive a CSP offer through UAC and that I've been deferring my tuition fees through HECS-HELP for my B Psyc the whole time. So now I've sent frantic emails to the fees department at Newcastle university, hoping that somehow some trollop hasn't fucked up and put me into a fee paying placement.  It could be human error, but probably not. It's probably MyHub, which is the online software that handles this kind of student administration minutiae. And now I'm probably going to spend the next few days waiting for it to be fixed, or having to call them or something. Urghh.

And Then He Was Home

So after avoiding going home for two years, I am now back on the south coast.

I avoid going home because:

1) My Aunt and cousins who I can't stand live here, and being here usually means the obligatory visit and false happy faces and gushiness that comes with that.

2) It's boring. My high school friends moved away long ago. There's nothing to do. It's a small coastal town

3) It's expensive to get down here, a V6 camry isn't the most economical car to run, especially for 500 kms. Not to mention how boring it is to be in a car for hours on end.

On the plus side, it's good to see my family. But after a week I've had enough.

Yesterday at 9pm, UAC released their offers:

Tadaa. I'm no longer a psychology student, but officially an engineering one. I think I've finally settled on getting a Mac laptop and then a linux/windows desktop. I was nearly sold on the Thinkpad X1 carbon as my laptop, but when I added some upgrades that didn't make it horribly slow, it ended up at the same price as a Macbook Pro Retina. Dun doww, guess which one most people would rather have? So I'll get that, and some sort of barebones i7 thing off eBay, which I'll add better parts to as I can afford them. Starting with dual monitors >=D

And besides, the Macbook Pro Retina has dual thunderbolt which means it too can take advantage of the dual monitors.

Anyway, I should go buy my textbooks off fishpond.com.au now or something ;)

And Then He Melted

Shit is hot.

That's a 102 degrees in Fahrenheit. The outside is radiating with heat, even the birds are being quiet, and in the few moments it took me to dump some plastic into our recycling bin outside, I was instantly convinced that I was not leaving the house today while the sun was up. Navicular is basically panting the whole time, even though I've rescued him from downstairs and he's laying on my bed with the air conditioner on.

Anyway guess what arrived today?

That's the Ducky wrist rest I ordered, because this keyboard is too damn high to comfortably type on for long periods of time. At least for me, because I'm used to the aluminium Mac keyboard, which despite being mushy and gross to type on, was more ergonomic than this super dooper mechanical keyboard, by virtue that it's incredibly flatness meant you could basically use the surface it was on as a wrist rest.

It's ok as far as wrist rests go. my biggest annoyance with wrist rests in the past is that they slip all over the place and make you a strange combination of sad and angry inside. This Ducky wrist rest, supposedly made by a company that specialises in keyboards, slips all over the place. It's annoying. When I type, I now have to push it a little bit right up against the bottom of the keyboard to prevent it going anywhere.

It's also not the right height:

I don't know that much about ergonomics, but I think the wrist rest should be a little higher then that, I'm still having to bend my hands up a little bit to type on it, and that sure aint ergonomic.

I guess overall to improve the Ducky wrist rest I would make it higher, and make the bottom less slip prone. I do like the leather though, despite being ridiculously hot, it's not sweaty and gross to type on, and like its matching keyboard, it definitely has a quality feel to it.

At least it has a cool Ducky logo on it to match my keyboard.

You know what else arrived?

Raspberry Pi. My poor housemate thought I had literally ordered, a raspberry pie. He's not particularly tech savvy.

I have the model B revision 2, which means it has a whopping 512 Mb of RAM. I know, not that impressive, but given this thing is the size of a phone and costs $35, I think that's pretty good.

I'm going to play around with it now. So far, there appears to be a serious lack of decent documentation on the internet, but I would like to install the Raspian version of Debian, which apparently includes the LXDE interface and some multimedia support. Because the only monitor I have is my television, it's going to look weird ;)

And Then he Bought a Ducky

I needed a new keyboard. After spending years typing on rubber dome keyboards (I reckon my 2006 Macbook Pro had the worst keyboard I have ever encountered), I finally decided to shell out some money on a decent one, my reasoning being that I would be spending a considerable amount of time typing on it in software engineering, and buying a decent one will last much longer than a cheap rubber dome one.

After some research, I decided the chosen one:
- Would be good quality
- Would have Cherry MX blue switches. Apparently the best ones for typing (I dont really game that much)
- Didn't have useless gaming or macro keys
- worked on a mac
- had a detachable USB cable on both ends incase the cable got frayed or damaged
- Have rubber feet on the bottom that weren't going to peel off
- Be reasonable looking, but didn't have to be too flashy.

I used my friends blackwidow keyboard which I kinda liked, but it had a whole bunch of macro crap on the side, and it had a shiny finish on the keys that was greasy and kinda unpleasant to use, so I decided against it. I also had a good look at the Filcos, but every Filco owner on Geekhack.org seemed to be a pretentious wanker (I know I'm shallow, but shit like that puts me off things). The Das Keyboard put me off because it had an ugly hump on the right hand side (I dont need a useless USB hub on my keyboard), and the newer ones are made in China and some members on Geekhack.org felt that there was a decline in quality, and the SteelSeries didn't have any keyboards that used Cherry Blue switches.

Finally I decided on one. And before I start I have to say what great service I got from pccasegear.com. Relax I'm not getting paid (because I'm a nobody) but they responded to my email inquiry in 11 minutes, and their shipping from Melbourne to here (Newcastle) only took a day!

I purchased the Ducky DK9008 Shine II for $149.00 AUD. When it arrived, I was struck at how minimalistic the packaging was. I guess the reasoning is that most high end keyboards aren't going to be sold in stores but rather online, and if you know what you want, there's no point in flashing advertising on the box. Either way the box had a nice professional look to it.

Inside you get the keyboard, a detachable mini (not micro) USB to normal USB cable, a key puller and red WASD caps, velcro cable tie, and a very poorly written "guide"

The model I chose has Cherry MX Blue switches with blue backlighting. The keyboard is extremely heavy, and feels very high quality.

What I like:

- It sounds like a real keyboard. Very clicky
- the Cherry Blue switches are nice and clicky. maybe I'd prefer something that is a touch lighter to depress, like a Cherry MX brown, but overall I still think the Blues were the best choice
- Nice and heavy
- the surfaces are super shiny like the BlackWidow, so they shouldn't attract as much grease
- a very attractive keyboard, it looks like a solid panel of keys which is the look I'm after
- fulfils all of the criteria I layed out earlier such as good quality, MX blue switches, no useless keys, works on OS X, has detachable cable, has solid rubber feet that wont peel off, and it good looking.

The only issues I have with the keyboard are:

- the name is stupid
- the caps, numLk and scrLk have the same coloured backlighting as the rest of the keyboard, so it's difficult to tell when these keys are engaged, furthermore, they are almost impossible to tell if they're engaged when the normal keyboard backlighting is on. Having the key LED a different colour, such as bright green is a much better solution
- the spacebar and other larger keys use Cherry black stabilisers, this results in those keys feeling slightly mushier than the other keys (It could be my imagination but they seem to be getting more springy and clicky now that I've been typing on them for a day. Or perhaps my fingers are getting stronger ;] )
- I've just had to buy a wrist rest. Because the keyboard is so solid and high off the ground, you can't use the desk as a wrist rest like you can on a flat, low Apple aluminium keyboard.
- The vast majority of the LED lighting options are useless.
- The main function of the keycap is indicated on top, and the secondary function indicated below. This is the reverse to every other keyboard on the planet, and for the rare occasion when I actually need to look at the keyboard (I'm bad at touch typing characters such as <>?":{}_+| etc, it confuses the hell outta me

So overall, I'm very happy with the keyboard. Minor issues aside, it's very solid and by far the best keyboard I've ever typed on.