Directory — Technology — Blog Details for "Penguin Pete's Blog"

Penguin Pete's Blog

Penguin Pete's Blog
Being an extraordinarily geeky site about Free and Open Source Software and the wonders thereof. Full site features include the hippest FOSS blog on the 'net, a gallery with over 400 wallpapers at this count free for download, source code, distro rev

RSS Feed Homepage

Articles: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7

Articles

My FOSS Graphic Application WishList
2008-10-11 02:42:00
Dear Santa/Fairy Godmother... There's a number of new graphics applications that I've been searching all over for. They may or may not have been invented yet. So I'm posting this little list, to the purpose of either... discovering through some reader's comment that such a creation exists, with link and recommendation, inspiring some development team out there to pick up the idea for their next project, or finding out that if I'm ever to see such a program, it's up to widdle old me to create it. #1 - An Isometric Image Editor We're close already. Gimp has an isometric grid and snap-to-grid feature in the GFig plug-in, and it's also possible to render isometric perspective with POVRay and Blender. But what I'm actually after is a drag-n-drop block editor. The closest thing to what I have in mind is a Windows program named "AnkerCAD", uncovered over at Rea Maor's. I tried it out, but it behaves funky. #2 - A combined POVRay/Flash Editor As anybody who's followed...
More About: Wishlist , Graphic , Application

Linux is the Klein Bottle of Economics
2008-10-03 05:10:00
I hear you inquire, "Wherefore, prithee proud blogger, doth thou make such claim?" Well, see Klein bottles are these mathematical objects that are really hard to grasp and explain. They make sense but don't seem like they do. Kind of like a Möbius strip, which is cool to write because it has a Heavy-Metal umlaut in it. The economy is on my mind this week, for some screwy reason. The fact that Wall Street this week is melting away like Belloq's face after Indy told him not to look in the Ark is just a passing coincidence. It is also entirely incidental that house values in the USA are currently so low that burglars will break into your house just to leave you their house. And it's a mere whiff of a happenstance that the dollar is getting so weak that it doesn't even make a good snot-rag anymore. No, I go around randomly thinking about the economy all the time. And thinking about the economy, I chanced upon the assertion that Linux is, in fact, developed by corporations. This ti...
More About: Economics , General , Bottle

Pumping Some More 1600x1200 Wallpapers to the Gallery
2008-09-30 17:35:00
Yep, more 1600x1200 wallpapers. Get 'em here. I miss the days when I could just mindlessly slap something together. These days, every project I do has to be this boundary-pushing exploration into new territory, whether it's blogging, graphics, or Flash. It's the kind of period where I'm just determined that it's better to do nothing at all than to do something I've done before. So this batch of wallpapers shows lots of experimentation. There's cellular automata... Typography... And this sketch-looking one... This last (full-size here) was rendered with POVRay making 3D objects with black-and-white striped textures and some reflection, then running Gimp filters on it of the sort you would use to turn a photo into a sketch, including some warping so the lines aren't so straight. I don't know what kind of wallpaper it makes, but it is definitely my most successful attempt at creating 3D art with the effect of a hand-drawn sketch. As always, CC-licensed, share '...
More About: Site News , Wallpapers , Gallery , The Gallery

Monty Python and the Quest For the Holy Programming Language
2008-09-21 21:43:00
There's room for a movie with that title. "We ride for Hackalot!" Cue epic journey across hill and dale, following many a wizened oracle squatting by a campfire tantalizing us with half-made-up legends. It exists! I've seen it! The Holy Programming Language ! It's right over that mountain, past the Valley of Dead Platforms, through the Forest of Disgruntled Bloggers, into the Maw of the Proprietary Swamps, and out across the Bridge of Design Paradigms. Hold on, wait a minute. Are we sure it's even out there? There is no programming language that is without detractors. Take, for instance, PHP. Here's yet another in a long history of musings as to what should be done about it. It is true, PHP sucks. Python sucks, Ruby sucks, C sucks, Bash sucks. HTML and Javascript and ActionScript and Java suck. Visual Anything sucks, as does Lisp and Haskell and COBOL. We'll never run out of it. Your favorite language sucks too - especially yours! Really, it seems that flaming about language...
More About: Monty Python , Quest

Yar! 'Tis Me Pirate-Day SearchBag Post!
2008-09-19 20:00:00
Ahoy there, my mateys! 'Tis the time to plunder baubles of randomness from the searchbag, which be the list o' terms o' searchin' that are charted by me bloggin' software. Here, I be lookin' fer the telltale signs of explorers who docked at my port o' call lookin' fer booty which wasn't stocked here, though the search engines marked the 'X' over my reef. And o' course, speakin' in the dialect o' sea dogs in observance o' th' day. geek insult - 'Tis not me custom to be postin' salty remarks against landlubbers. However, me matey Rea Maor has collected a catalog o' terms which the elite regularly hurl at the salt o' th' Earth, guaranteed to arm yer cannons aginst the bilge-suckin' rats who plague ye. is ubuntu bad for linux? - Aaaargh, no, ye stalwart seeker o' wisdom, yer got th' wrong idear. Ubuntu is a beckoning trade route for young salts expectin' to hoist sail for th' exotic ports o' Linux. It just isn't the rum o' choice for experienced old salts ...
More About: Pirate , Post

Why I Hate User Interface Debates
2008-09-18 18:38:00
Ah, it's another post about UI Aesthetics! Quick, let's everybody get in line to kiss up to Apple and Microsoft for giving us shiny shiny pretty. And then we'll find a couple of stray dogs and name them "Linux" and "BSD" and then we can kick them until they cower, for not having as much shiny shiny pretty. Yeah, sure, I like pretty UI as much as anybody else. Right here at my desktop guide, I show each desktop interface dolled up to its most charming. I even got some good looks out of TWM, for the luvva Mike! I draw a whole gallery of wallpapers, just because I like pretty, too. Also, because I don't know how to do more important things. Yet. But in the whole UI-debate, there's a point many people are missing out on. All computers have a finite amount of resources. All of them. Got that? This applies to every digital device from your watch to the LHC at CERN and IBM's Blue Gene. All computers have an upper limit to how much processing per time unit they can do. If this lim...
More About: Debates , Hate , User , Interface , User Interface

Explaining That Computers are Science, not Magic
2008-09-16 14:40:00
I while ago when I was talking about the San Francisco rogue admin story, I mentioned that IT workers and upper management are often at odds in their world-view and that this seemed to be coloring the accuser's attitudes towards their former employee in that case. Now comes a Slashdot story asking about that same Tech vs Business front. Briefly, managers and techies just don't seem to see eye to eye very much in the business world. Note those first two comments on the Slashdot thread, where they say it for me: "I've found this to be true in almost every company that I've worked for. tech workers are looked down upon, because people only ever come to us when things go badly..." ...and... "I've often considered tech to be like plumbing. The users of both have no idea how it works, basic knowledge of how to use it, and only care when it stops working. Users expect it to work like magic all the time..." And of course, the issue begs comparison to the famous Dilbert comic s...
More About: Science , Computers , Magic

The Top Six Stupid Things People Have Said About Google Chrome
2008-09-09 02:11:00
I have to conclude that the best way to make an idiot of yourself in public, besides actually getting naked and setting yourself on fire, is to become a tech blogger. The world of computing technology news is 90% made-up, with everything being rumors, vaporware, over-reactions, over-corrections to over-reactions, FUD, speculation, and completely blind guessing. And of course, as a blogger masochistically bent on self-humiliation, you will have endless opportunity to post first and think later. Witness the train wreck that is the reporting of the release of Blogger Chrome . Now, when I saw the news, I checked it out, downloaded the Windows version and tried to run it on Wine (failed), then investigated for the Linux version (fail). Then I shrugged and figured I'd wait until I actually had something to say about it before blogging about it. For those of you wondering why I don't post more often, this is why. For every day that I don't post, there's a time when I could have said so...
More About: Google , People , Stupid , Things

New Flash drawing toy - DrawDemon
2008-09-06 22:52:00
DrawDemon, down there in the sidebar to your right. As if yesterday's demo weren't pointless enough, I took the same idea and ran with it to produce the next step. This time, in addition to mousing over the black square to draw and clicking to clear it, you hit "L" (on the keyboard... keep up with me) to turn Lines on and off, "C" for Circles, and "S" for Squares. Thanks again to SWFTools. It's going to save the world. It makes pictures. Like There's no way to save images directly. Your screenshot program is your friend. Get the source code here, GPL licensed. Turn it loose! I have no idea what I'm doing, but it's making things that keep me occupied. This is KBilly's Super Sounds of the Seventies Weekend.
More About: Flash , Drawing

New Flash toy - Circlerama
2008-09-05 15:56:00
Holy smoke - it's been four months since I put up a new SWFTools Flash example. This is inexcusable. From now on, readers, you'll have to nag me when I go that long. This time it's a toy, as opposed to a game, because you just mouse over it and it makes pretty pictures and you click anywhere to clear it and draw some more. It's called Circlerama, follow the link or scroll down to the bottom of the blog sidebar where the Flash BlogSquares usually are, and look for a mysterious black square. It makes images like this. Or this. Or even this. The source code is too small to bother with a tarball, so I'll just post it here. # # GNU GPL license blah blah blah # .flash bbox=240x240 fps=60 background=black .action: function Draw_Circle(CX, CY, RAD) { this.moveTo(CX+RAD,CY); for(l=0;l Compile with: "swfc -o Circlerama.swf ./source.sc" ...assuming you saved it as 'source.sc' of course. Note that it's pure ActionScript through and through. And hiding withi...

Argh! Microsoft Notepad CRLF! Argh!
2008-08-26 03:27:00
GNU/Linux/Unix users, and even Mac users, hate Microsoft Notepad . If you must use Windows, could you at least replace it with - I don't know - anything else at all? Because Microsoft Notepad is to text what Internet Explorer is to HTML. See, Notepad has the line-break formatting bug. If you write a text file on anything but Windows and send it to a Microsoft user and they open it in Notepad, all your paragraph line breaks (where you hit the 'return/enter' key) will not show up, resulting in a great big blob of text, or, if they're viewing with word-wrap turned off, a single loooooong line of text where you have to keep scrolling sideways. Microsoft Wordpad? Doesn't have that bug. It's fine with Mac/Unix standard line breaks. Microsoft Word? Also doesn't have that bug. It can handle standard line breaks, too. The dozens of FOSS or proprietary third-party text editors out there for Windows? Also don't have that bug. Even DOS-bloody-EDIT doesn't have that bug, and it has mor...

Return of the Rock-n-Roll DOSBox Freak Show
2008-08-20 19:25:00
Summer's going too fast, man. The kids are almost back in school, already, which makes this the perfect time for the grown-ups to huddle back to their simulated DOS directory and play at some goofy, childish fun. So once again, we crank up DOSBox and grab random stuff off the abandonware buffet. Sometimes for nostalgia, sometimes for thrills, and most of the time just for the endorphin rush from the masochism. Secret Agent A little-known and hard-to-find Apogee classic, this game sports harsh Windows 3.1-era colors, buzzy 8-note beeps, and is doggone hard to play. This game is pretty low-quality for an Apogee title, and you get the feeling that they wrote it more to test an engine or fill time between blockbusters than for the game itself. The splash screen is the best part. But it still beats working. Because there's a man who leads a life of danger, and to everyone he meets he stays a stranger. With every move he makes another chance he takes. And something about odds. Get i...
More About: Linux Gaming , Rock , Show , Rock N Roll , Roll

Why Social Bookmarking Will Always Suck
2008-08-16 20:37:00
You see it over and over again. You find out about this new social site that's just starting up. You join it. And it's so unbelievably cool! It's down-home and quirky and attracts that great eclectic mix of oddballs just like you, and you all chat it up and love it. Then time passes. And what always happens? It gets more popular, more people join. And then, as if it were manifest destiny, the social network goes to hell. One day you look up - who are all these people? When did your progressive hipster site suddenly become the domain of asstroturfers? What happened to moderation? Why is college_horny_18 and casino_pokerroom_2384 spamming you and why doesn't anybody care? When did the front page become a mirror copy of the exact same stories on every other social bookmark site's front page? You're saying to yourself right now, "Hey, I thought I was the only one who saw that!" I used to think that, too. But recently I've been hearing it from all around me as well. Which is my ...
More About: Social , Social Bookmarking , Bookmarking , Suck

LinuxWorld Expo Installfest a Roaring Success!
2008-08-08 11:29:00
http://www.thevarguy.com/2008/08/07/untan gle-ubuntu-linux-save-750-pcs-from-landfi lls/ It just does my heart good to see the groups that really put their heart and effort into things making the world a better place. The link in the title goes to the final tally of LinuxWorld's install-fest, sponsored by Untangle and Ubuntu, taking an amazing 750 computers that would have been thrown away and turning them into Ubuntu machines ready to send out to kids in low-income areas. A big part of why I use Linux and Free and Open Source software in general is that it's easier on computer requirements. The partnership of PC manufacturers and proprietary software has led to a situation we call an "upgrade treadmill", where you have to keep buying new hardware to run your software and then buy new software to support your hardware. The thing is, most people out there have no idea that computers aren't disposable. Aside from things like video cards keeping up with games, the average desktop PC...
More About: Expo , Success

Of Kids and Linux
2008-08-06 06:50:00
LinuxWorld is planning a good old-fashioned install-fest for their San Francisco conference. And if you have an old PC or can bluff your way through an Ubuntu install, you're invited to participate. More information at Untangle's site, who is sponsoring the event. Oh, and this event is being run by sensible professionals, so it isn't organized like a hippie carnival where they have to shake people down for money and start fights with everybody. Unlike certain other parties ("Ah-lindepen-choo! Ah-dence08-choo! 'scuze me") whom I won't mention. The minimum requirements for hardware are a Pentium 3, 256MB RAM, and 20GB hard drive, so really any hunk of circuit boards you've acquired in the past decade should work - although speaking from my own experience I'd recommend a beefier system for Ubuntu. After the install, the machines will be donated to school kids. Ah, the kids! God bless the younger generation. That is the hope for Free and Open Source Software. Those of you who ...
More About: Linux , Kids

Are the Changes of the Information Age Really That Drastic?
2008-08-04 00:09:00
Today's "food for thought" post comes to us courtesy of ZDNet, where the "Googling Google" blog asks, "Is Google changing how our brains physically work?". Every now and then, we should ask if the constant access to easily accessible information is changing the way we think. Good, healthy thing to do. A while back, I pondered in a similar vein, explaining (or attempting to explain) why we use Google the way we do. After all, remembering the information may not be so important as remembering how to look up the information. You might just think that all this reliance on easy search would make our brains soft and lazy, the way the invention of the cheap electric calculator kind of wiped out our math skills. Except it doesn't really. I see calculators as filling in for the trivial, monotonous work that we shouldn't have to do anyway. I used to pride myself on being able to perform complex calculations in my head. I'm talking up to four figure long division and figuring square roo...
More About: Information , General

More articles from this author:
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7