I’ve been learning how to sew with a sewing machine and it’s been difficult sewing in curves. However, I really want to make a lot of things and that includes a penguin plushie. Fortunately there are patterns thanks to the Free Penguin Project.

I have a couple of penguin plushies but they were mostly given to me by my friends. When I learn how to make one, I hope I could replicate it and give them to other people. I was thinking that it will be awesome if I finish some and give them to the children of my co-workers. Yes, introduce Tux to their kids early enough is the plan.
The finished projects of those who have downloaded and modded the patterns are awesome. Some of the interesting things I saw:

• inflatable line laundry Tux
• Tux made from from fleece
• Txulhu - a Cthulhu Tux!
• Love Dilbert? Meet Tuxbert!
• Captain Tux! Yaarrr!

If I will make some for children I should make sure that the materials I will use are kid-friendly. The project team is really awesome for coming up with this. If you want to make pins, there are also images that you could use for it.

linuX-gamers.net announced its latest release linuX-gamers live 0.95. There are different versions available for download and it depends on your needs.

• Lite ISO: Small CD image (700MB)
  
  This has games suitable for children and older computers. You just burn it on a CD with your favorite CD-writing tool.
• Lite USB
  
  This has the same games as the Lite ISO version but it is made for USB keys and USB sticks (requires minimum of 1GB USB device).
  
  You could use:
  sudo dd bs=8M if=/path/to/lg-live-0.9.5-i686-lite.usb of=/dev/your_usb_device

  
  Or: use the Flashnul utility. You could also refer to this guide to using Flashnul.
• Big ISO
  
  Big DVD image (4.7GB) with the full games selection for adults and more recent computers.
• Big USB
  
  This has the same contents as the Big ISO but this is meant for USB drives. So yes, your USB drive must have as much capacity or you can’t write this on it. Writing method could be the same as the Lite USB version.

For the complete list of games, check this page.

I would probably get a copy of the lite versions so that I could give it to my co-workers who have children. Some of them do allow their children to use their computers but having the USB with a distro with games will probably limit their young ones so that they won’t be able to just click on anything just because it’s on the browser. I see that a lot of their children go online to play games so this will give them another option.

We all have different preferences so maybe this title seems to much of a bait. In any case, I’d still like to know what you think is the best dock for you. I personally am using Docker right now.

For me, Docker seems quick to load, light and simple. I like using Docker because it also acts like a system tray for me, especially because I want to see if my Dropbox is getting updated, what apps I am running that have icons on the tray. At the very least I am clued in.

The Berkeley LUG even listed down what they think are the best docks for Linux out there. They listed the following:

• Avant Window Navigator - This dock has a lot of plugins and it is configurable. I haven’t really been using this because my computer’s graphics card seemed to have issues with this dock.
• Kiba Dock - This dock seems to keep having reviews about how awesome the graphics is. I’ve never tried it so I think that’s a hint.
• Cairo Dock was with me for a short while but I was not comfortable with having a dock that has too many things on it. The fancy effects of hovering over the icons got a little too corny for me after a couple of days. But it’s true that it’s nifty in the sense that it has the list of apps I am using and those that I could easily run.
• Docky - This is Gnome-Do’s optional interface. So imagine Gnome-Do as a search bar and launcher. This would be something interesting to use and I haven’t tried it yet. Could this meet all my search and docking needs? I would suppose. However, I do encounter some problems with Gnome-Do crashing suddenly crashing sometimes.

What’s your take on this topic?

I’ve been playing “Brain Age” on my DSi and I’ve been having fun but it really is challenging sometimes. I just started and my brain age at the moment is still drifting between 36 and 40. The ideal brain age is 20 so I need some training! The game encourages daily training. Just some short games to help make your brain age younger. And guess what? A similar application exists on Linux! gBrainy is available to test your memory, logic and calculation.

Playing the game:
You could choose one category to start with or you could select the “All” option which gives you a mixture of all these categories. Some questions are of the multiple choice type but others require you to compute the values and give the answer directly on the space given. Just press the enter key when you’ve answered the question already. To get to the next item, press enter again. When you’re done, you will see a graph of how well or how poorly you did in the game.

There are also settings you could tweak for the game:

• Level of difficulty. Choose: Easy, Medium, Master. The default is Medium.
• Number of seconds for you to memorize the puzzle/problem in the memory game.
• Number of games to be saved.

You don’t have to get bored at work anymore. gBrainy will help you by challenging your brain to do some mental math or figure out some logic puzzles.

I’ve been having some difficulty using Pidgin these past how many days so I was looking for another messenger client to check out. Incidentally I stumbled upon a blog entry about CenterIM, a messenger client for the command line/terminal. Knowing that it’s available in the repositories made me get it right away.

Centerim

Pros:

• CenterIM consumes barely 1% of my memory. I am running it on an Acer Aspire One 150Bb with 1GB of RAM.
• Several IM protocols are supported: Jabber, Yahoo, MSN, AIM, LiveJournal. It also has an RSS Reader.
• You can have several conversations at the same time.
• The screen shows the keyboard shortcuts that help you navigate through the application.
• By default, the sound is on so you could hear the ‘ping’ sound when you receive a message.

Cons:

It’s interesting actually. So if you’re looking for a way to chat while you’re on the command line and you don’t want to use an IRC client connecting to a Bitlbee server, then CenterIM is more of a good fit for your needs.

To learn more about CenterIM, here’s the CenterIM website.

Who says introducing a particular distro has to be boring? There are ways to make things interesting. OS-tans, for one, seemed to work as a way for people to identify various operating systems, mainly the Windows variants but there are also Linux-OS-tans or Distro-tans too. Characteristics of various distros are made evident in the personification that they have made.

Enter Ubunchu - a manga specifically made to introduce Ubuntu to new

Ubunchu -- a manga about Ubuntu by Hiroshi Seo

users. It’s set in a high school where you have a club with three members: a Linux user, a Windows user and a Mac user. Interestingly enough, it’s through the Mac user that the other two end up trying Ubuntu.

It might not appear to be serious but still, it’s still amusing and others might find themselves relating in one way or another. Also, there are translations of the manga available now and if you find out that there’s no available translation for your language yet, then maybe you could try making one. It would be awesome if you could directly translate it from its original language.

Thanks to Hiroshi Seo for sharing his work with us!:)  I hope this manga will be updated often so there’s something new Ubuntu users could look forward to, especially those who love manga.

If you’ve been wondering when we could have multi-touch support for gestures and other actions, well, it could be sooner than you think. There is a team with a proof of concept that native multi-touch with gestures is indeed possible on Linux. This would work on Linux kernel 2.6.30. If you’ve got Compiz and you’ve been wanting more awesome funkiness then their proof of concept video would probably get you excited over this development.

Video from: Laboratoire d’informatique interactive

Right now the team from ENAC is still working on a better implementation of multi-touch support, you could already check it out if you are interested.

Requirements:

• Linux kernel 2.6.30
• a computer with any of the following: a Broadcom 5974, Stantum, NTrig or DiamondTouch surface (the HP TouchSmart tx2 has a Ntrig surface — get the appropriate firmware from the NTrig site)
• the ENAC driver for NTrig, Stantum, or DiamondTouch, or the Broadcom 5974 driver from Henrik Rydberg
• the ENAC team’s demo code for multi-touch support
• Compiz with the DBus plugin
• freewins

Now I wish I knew someone with a computer with such surfaces so I could test the code too. I don’t need so much funkiness on my own computer but it would sure be neat to demo to people who love these things. And if someone else asks me about it, at least I could share something, right?

Who says Linux cannot have fancy stuff? This is proof it could!

I didn’t realize it until after it stopped fetching updates from people I shared files with. One day the icon didn’t ‘move’ — it didn’t have the ’syncing’ motion which I’d usually see when it’s updating. I never wondered why until this weekend, when I had all the time in the world to care about it.

So yeah, if you’re using Dropbox download the updates so you could continue sharing files without much fuss. It’s simple and it works well whether you’re far from your other computer (like in another city) or you’re sharing files with a computer within the local network, be it Linux or Windows-based. It doesn’t matter as long as you both have Dropbox.

Dropbox at work

Packages of the latest version of Dropbox are available for Fedora Core 9 and 10, in x86 and AMD 64 architectures, as well as Ubuntu 7.10, 8.04, 8.10, 9.04 in x86 and AMD 64 as well. If you’re not using either distribution you could download the source and follow the instructions in the readme file.

Pre-requisites of Dropbox:

• GTK 2.12 or higher
• GLib 2.14 or higher
• Nautilus 2.16 or higher
• Libnotify 0.4.4 or higher

Unfortunately, for KDE users, it has no daemon for them yet. Well, there’s the text-based way of using Dropbox, in case you’re interested. The instruction has specific notes for Debian/Ubuntu users, Red Hat/Fedora users as well as Gentoo users.

Yes, even Linux geeks must go get some exercise! But of course, we’re not talking about your regular exercises here. Carla Shroeder has suggested several exercises in her blog entry: Practical Exercise Tips For Busy Linux Geeks. I couldn’t help but chuckle upon reading them because the way she wrote it was simply amusing. But she does have valid points.

My favorite suggestion from the list:

Network file transfers are like plastering bacon grease to your arteries. Using the good old-fashioned Sneakernet protocol adds more tens of feet of healthy walking to your day.

My co-workers and I often tell each other just use your USB drive to transfer files. Why bother with trying to set up Samba when transferring using a USB external hard drive or flashdrive is way quicker and it’s exercise. This is especially if you’re talking about sharing files with someone several feet away or in the floor below yours. If you get to take the stairs, then all the more exercise for you.
In addition, I guess that one could give help to someone personally by going to his/her respective area and teach him/her whatever commands is needed. Some users might ping you for some Linux help and you could type the help right away on the IM window. But going to his/her desk and showing the person how to figure out things might help both of you in the long run. Aside from having some face to face conversations, you transfer knowledge and get some exercise.
Got some exercise tips you might want to share? We still have to keep fit, right?

I wanted to convert some of my files to mp4 so I could watch them on the iPod. Fortunately it was possible using Handbrake. Handbrake lets me convert files easily because I only need to point it to the source file and then select the output type — if it will be for the iPod, a gaming console like a PSP or something else. You could also have custom settings.

Handbrake http://handbrake.fr

So yes, Handbrake. What does it really do? It’s basically a transcoder of video files. It doesn’t rip DVDs but it converts files to other file formats. But as the makers of Handbrake points out in their wiki, if you want a super tool you could check out mencoder instead.

The latest version of Handbrake is said to have better H.264 encoding so picture quality is better now. I already saw that the video I converted was clear and it didn’t have any pixelations whatsoever and it didn’t slow down at any moment either. At least on my iPod.

This is what handbrake really looks like when you launch it.

I think that the Presets from the menu also helps new users of Handbrake a lot because it’s quick for us to choose any one that suits our needs especially if we are not familiar with the settings for conversion too.

I am not sure how quick other transcoders can convert files, so far, it seems as that the conversion time is almost as long as the video’s playback time. More or less, that is. I can’t say it’s slow or quick because I have nothing to compare it with. But at least it seems good enough for me.