obso1337.org

New for some and re-post for others:

Full steam ahead for Linux in Munich, an update about the city’s efforts to migrate 80% of their workstations to Debian Linux and KDE 3.5.

I am not a computer geek, but I must admit that it was easy to switch to the new software, (Christine Strobel)

… their computers still perform their tasks just as well — and in some cases even better — and are still user-friendly. (Jens Barth)

seele :: Oct.30.2006 :: Asides, KDE/Kubuntu, Usability :: Comments Off

This is from Bill, who was passing around some Friday afternoon office humor: European Commission Enlargement. I could see what the joke was as soon as I clicked on the link and the page began to load. If you clicked on the link, keep in mind I have decent DSL, so imagine what it would be like on a slow or lazy network.

Here is a screenshot of the original site. As you can see it is pretty graphical, with a soft gradient in the background and rasterized text as links:

Now, here is the same page with the images “turned off” via the Web Developer extension in Firefox:

Pretty scarey, eh? Now how about some document properties:

That’s right kids, there are 549 separate image files on that single page. This is a pretty good example when designers get a little scalpel-happy in Adobe ImageReady. Oi vey.

seele :: Oct.27.2006 :: Design, General, Humor :: 6 Comments »

It finally arrived, my 12.1 inch, 4 pound, Lenovo v100. Its a small little thing (although not nearly as small as my old Fujitsu) with a nice bit of power.

I easily installed Kubuntu (Dapper) and everything works out of the box (this includes X.org, sound, bluetooth, wireless, function buttons, and suspend/resume). There is also a 5-in-1 media card reader which is recognized and supposedly supported as of 2.6.17, but I have not tested it yet. I did have an issue upgrading to the latest kernel which renders my wireless card useless. This is a known problem, but I haven’t gotten around to fixing it, instead I just reverted back to my last known working kernel (2.6.15).

Have I named it yet? Of course! Say こんにちは (kon’nichiwa) to Takochi (photo 1, photo 2, screenshot). This is the first time I have given a female name to any of my computers. It comes from the name of the subject in a cyberpunk graphic I found a lot time ago and did some photoshop work on (the original site I found it on is long gone, and I have failed to find out who the original author is).

There really isn’t much else to write, Kubuntu Linux works out of the box with 0 tweaking. For those of you who want hardware specs, here are the basics:

• Intel Core Duo T2300 1.66GHz/2M L2 cache 667MHz/1024MB RAM
• RealTek 10/100 Ethernet (use RTL8139)
• Intel Pro/Wireless ABG (use ipw3945)
• Intel Graphics Media Accelorator 950 (use Intel i810)
• Intel HD Audio Controller (use ALSA emulation)
• Ricoh R5C822 Media Card Reader (not tested)
• USB, Bluetooth, Firewire (standard drivers)

Hurrah!

seele :: Oct.24.2006 :: Geek, General, Open Source :: 7 Comments »

I have lots of stuff to talk about once I finish up a few things for work and a design project: the second round of KDE4 HIG testing, last nights HFES meeting and Shneiderman’s creating creativity focus, my new laptop which UPS should be dropping off any hour, celebrating the beginning of the end of the semester, excitement about upcoming meetings and hanging out with peoples, new and interesting projects.. whew. I haven’t gamed in almost 2 weeks.

The end of the week is sooooo close.

seele :: Oct.19.2006 :: Asides, Life :: Comments Off

Yesterday was the first of three days of testing of IA and content for the new KDE4 HIG. By the end of the night, I got some great feedback, however not without mishap.

For some reason I couldn’t get the portable lab to work at all. No computer monitor, no voice recording, no video — *sigh*. So I had to go old school and take as many notes as possible. Personally, I don’t like taking notes during user testing because I feel it can distract the user. Usually, I do user testing in a team and one person facilitates while another takes notes behind the glass. It wasn’t too bad last night, both participants were very friendly and interested in providing feedback.

A lot of good stuff came out of last night, hopefully tonight will go as well (this time with video!). I would also like to thank the NoVa LUG developers who kindly participated in the usabitliy activity last night!

seele :: Oct.17.2006 :: Asides, KDE/Kubuntu, Usability :: Comments Off