Here’s what I tend to do:

• Look out for blogs that talk about open source especially in the context of my locale or region. There are quite a number of local bloggers and they have something to share about their experiences in the free and open source community. And they also share what they do or what theu plan to do. Whether it’s a release party or some kind of conference, they enjoy sharing it with their blogs. If I’ve been following their blog for quite some time now, I also have more reasons to join them.
• Read sites and blogs that cover technology. Sometimes they also post links to events. There are some events listed that could come up as a surprise and well, it could be quite good to figure out anyway. So if those events don’t conflict with my existing schedule, I’d actually plan to go.
• Follow some folks on Twitter. Every once in a while, I encounter people with interesting ideas. Like the thing about hacker spaces and open hardware. I ended up following some folks on Twitter and they do re-tweet information about niceh topics plus events too.

I know that social networking and social media could be quite overwhelming but certain keywords will tend to jump at you if you’re looking for them. In this case, events and the particular project/s you are concerned with. I guess it’s a matter of conditioning your mind to look for them? Some folks will be quite blatant about events they are promoting so those will be easy to remember. *laughs* But for the rest, just learn to skim through your headlines and something might actually show up.

The best way for me to learn about events is from people I know. If they say they’re going, chances are, I am going too. : ) And this December, there’s a DrupalCamp happening in Manila so I am going to be there to join the fun and learning.

I hope you find some events that you like too!

Post from: New Linux User

Hackathons are not uncommon in the free and open source software communities. This allows people to have a common time to finish features for the release, etc. This also makes it easier for people to collaborate real time. Although in some cases people still do that remotely especially if it’s involving softwre. It’s usually enough to have a common virtual space for such hackathons. Although the face to face hackathons will provide better relations with each other and a different level of the sense of what a team is.

But what inspires me about hackerspaces is that it’s usually open for a whole lot of kinds of people. Whether they’re DIY crafters, software developers or artists, they could get together and put something together. And the cross-pollination could actually be beneficial because of the different perspectives that will be brought out during such times. It could also lead to good potential projects because you might find a problem that could be solved differently.

Thankfully there’s a on the internet. You could find out if there’s already a hackerspace near you or maybe you should make one. ; ) Personally I am sad that there’s none in my area so I am now rousing up my friends so we could try building a hackerspace for us. It should be a good exercise in community building as well as creating projects. Another thing that made me go all for hackerspaces is the TED Talk about Tinkering School. Tinkering is not just for kids ; ) Adults could learn a whole lot from tinkering too. Want your own hackerspace now?  I sure do.

Post from: New Linux User

What do you get from Blob and Conquer?

This is the 3D version of Metal Blob Solid. You’re in for some adventure as well as action. You could use weapons like uzis, shotguns and grenades. If you’ve played Metal Blob Solid before you will see the familiar enemies like Assimilated Blobs, Eye Droids, Spider Blobs and Sentry Guns. There are also minigames aside from the 30 missions on this game.

As for the gameplay, Jun Auza points out:

The two most important actions in the game are easily controlled via the two mouse buttons: Left-click to shoot and right-click to jump. Gameplay is based on objectives that usually involve unlocking doors, collecting items, jumping over lava, and doing a lot of shooting. They must be completed before you can exit the level.

Sounds like your kind of fun? The graphics look ok from the screenshots but I suppose it depends on what really appeals to you. The gameplay sounds like even casual gamers can enjoy it too. I might take that recommendation and try it out too.

Quantz also looks interesting. It’s a game that has been ported to Linux but only the closed source version is available. Right now they’re actually looking for people to test the Linux version of Quantz. The files are in .deb, .rpm and .tar.gz. It looks interesting but for those who are not comfortable with non-free software or non-open source stuff, this might not be the game for you.

I have yet to download the deb but it’s been taking forever. I want to test it out on my machine too. Hopefully this weekend will be better.

Got games you want to share? : )

Post from: New Linux User

What’s the initial impression that I got from using Karmic Koala?

• It’s shiny!
  Seriously. I found the new GNOME quite shiny. It’s a whole lot more polished compared to the older GNOME releases. It really looks clean and whoever passed by my desk would comment at how clean and professional looking it is. Tsk, them of little faith~! But I also like the choices of desktop backgrounds that came with it because they looked great even with an extended monitor. The stretched versions look decent.
• It’s pretty fast. In terms of boot-up time and going to a virtual terminal. It feels like it’s so instantaneous. Which is neat when I need the virtual terminal — this happens to me when my desktop hangs and I want to look for the processes that might be causing that.
• Hardware support is much better. I used to have so many issues on this machine. It used to be that wifi and sound would always come up as issues. Well, bluetooth too. I’ve been using it again and everything seems to be better supported. The driver for the Broadcom wifi card to work had to be downloaded first but that was fine. That seems to be the only driver that I had to get somewhere else. Sound was working perfectly fine when I tried it. That for me is awesome as I cannot work without music.

Now I don’t regret installing Karmic Koala on this baby. It doesn’t feel so old using Karmic Koala. At the same time, I really think that the release good overall. Well, I still have time to evaluate it but it does leave a good first impression on me.

Post from: New Linux User

I could not answer the question right away. Part of me was thinking that he could have answeed that quite easily. But not really. One of the first things he asked is: “Is WordPress a light enough solution?”

It is indeed worth noting that WordPress is fairly light. The download from the website is never bloated. Just several MB. Here’s the catch though: It runs on Apache and you need MySQL and PHP as well. For those who are using Apache, MySQL and PHP to test applications locally on their machines, this is fine. But for those who don’t, then I don’t see the reason to download something like WordPress. And my co-worker pointed that out too.

What are possible solutions?

On Linux, there are several. If you’re using Ubuntu, you could get Tomboy by default. Each note could have the date of the day as a title and then you could file everything together. One downside of Tomboy is that the notes are saved as text files but with mark-up that might not be friendly to read.

There’s also ZimWiki. I know I wrote about how to use ZimWiki to write your masterpiece. But seriously though, you could also use this in a different way. Like blogging on your very own laptop. You could treat local blogging like writing your own novel and you could customize the organization of your notes. And it should be fairly easy enough to have a bunch of links on your pane because you could make the name of the month as a section and put a summary when the month is over. Then you could still have each page as a day in that month.

And then there’s always Emacs Planner-el. Not everyone is comfortable with Emacs, but for me, this is still one of the best ways to record what happened during the day.

These are just three tools I could think of at the moment. If you’ve got other ideas, then let me know. I am sure others would also want to learn about this topic.

Post from: New Linux User

So yeah, everybody seems to have Ubuntu 9.10 or Karmic Koala already. Well, except for me. Tsk. Next time I will check my things before leaving a building, just to be sure this doesn’t happen again.

Back to business.

And everyone but me has Karmic Koala. By this time it’s more practical for me to start looking for the rest of the world’s blog entries and screenshots. The Debian Admin blog has a 37 screenshots. You get to see the different aspects of Karmic so this is a good set. It also gives you a better idea of how things work in Karmic now, at least have a general idea. Also there are chances that other loco’s have probably pushed through with their release parties for Karmic already. Yes, I am envious that almost everyone has the latest Ubuntu release.

Because of that forgotten charger everything else could gloat to me about not having Ubuntu Karmic yet. Thankfully not everyone in the community thinks that way so I don’t feel so bad.

Others have given tips on what should be done first to your machine after installing Karmic Koala. One of them is to select download mirrors and set them up for your future needs. After all, you never know when these things will be handy. There’s also setting up folder sharing. This is especially for those who rely on shared files within the office network. One more thing you should do: synchronize time with atomic clocks. Just so you won’t find yourself in a different timezone all of a sudden. Great right?

Enjoy Ubuntu Karmic Koala!

Post from: New Linux User

What’s in store for us in ‘Eclair’ or Android 2.0?

Those who work in companies whose emails are managed by Microsoft
Exchange servers will be happy to note that Eclair is said to ship
with support for MS Exchange. Probably a good enough reason for some
to consider getting a new Android 2.0 powered smartphone.

Some of the features are said to be corporate friendly. Anyhow here’s a list of some features:

• Multiple email accounts. If you’re like me, then you probably have at least two email accounts. This feature sounds practical to me.
• Combined inboxes. Well, after all you have multiple accounts. It is possible to view them all as if they’re just in one inbox. No need to keep switching from one inbox to another, apparently.
• They also put a virtual keyboard where you could use two fingers to type faster. The multitouch surface should make it fine for you to use this on smartphones which are supported.
• Interestingly enough, there will be HTML 5 support on the browser on Android 2.0 so that sounds cool.

Developers might want to take a look at their improved API too. Includes changes in handling contacts, especially because of the multiple account feature. There is also a centralized acount manager for storing and accessing auth tokens/passwords.

Does Anroid 2.0 or Eclair look like a sweet deal to you? Then it might be worth waiting for. Well, there’s also Maemo so it should be interesting to see devices powered with Android Eclair and Maemo and compare them. Smartphones and Linux could be the future of computing for all we know. ; )

Thanks to Linux Insider for the heads up!

Post from: New Linux User

Well, games could be an interesting substitute to traveling back in time for a Western adventure or two. In this case, you could check out “Smokin’ Guns” – an open source game that lets you play with different modes of play as well as use various weapons in that match the theme. : D If you want to play in a network, you also have the option as with Counterstrike and Quake. First person shooter fans will find it a different experience in terms of the period, and the terrain too. Don’t forget the matching background music. Wild West, here comes gamers robbing banks or outsmarting each other. *lol* I read about this on Unixmen’s blog entry about Smokin’ Guns. For more details, check out the Smokin’ Guns website.

In other news, you could now buy the game World of Goo for any price you like. Yes! Name the price and it’s yours. The famous game which is available not only for Windows, but on Linux as well, is celebrating its first birthday! As a way to celebrate World of Goo’s birthday, 2Boy studios has a promo that you could get it for the price of your choice. Isn’t that a big birthday blowout or what? If you want to give the developers way more than 20 USD, no one’s stopping you either. And this is one very interesting game and I do think we should encourage its developers to keep coming up with more fun and interesting challenges that will keep us hooked!

Post from: New Linux User

Anyhow, I haven’t been using GIMP much and I’ve mainly been taking pictures with my toy cameras (plastic film cameras: fisheye 2, brandless camera with panoramic mode, etc.) these days and what’s scanned is what I get. Especially the lomo look and feel because of the funky colors when using certain kinds of film and having them cross-processed.

an unedited picture. just to show the 'before' and 'after' look of using GIMP plugins and scripts

this has been edited with the lomo plugins and watermark script

So yeah, there are some basic things that we could do with GIMP. Thanks to Dmitri Popov’s blog entry. I must say that those are nifty things. Red eye correction is a must, after all. Because sometimes we take photos and end up with people who have red eyes. Ack. That won’t do! And the automatic correction of colors are great too. I am guilty of taking pictures that are underexposed.

I know that GIMP has plugins and scripts but I haven’t actively searched for them until recently. Because I am fond of the look and feel of pictures taken using lomo cameras and other such film cameras, I searched for plugins and found some thanks to the GIMP registry which has an article about a lomo script with old style colors. If you are also fond of having vignettes and a dramatic look on your pictures, you could try it out too. Download the scripts and plugins as stated in the article and give them a try.

Scripts and plugins are easy to use, so far. When you download them, save them into the scripts and plugins directory of GIMP in your computer. You could find them in your home directory. Look for /home/(your login name)/.gimp-2.x/ : ) I just wrote 2.x here but you should really use the version number of GIMP that you have installed. When you run GIMP, you should be able to see them in the Filters menu. This has better instructions on installing scripts for GIMP.

One more thing: for simple watermarking needs, you could use this watermark script. To use it, just select it under the script-fu menu and then you will be asked to enter the watermark you want to use, as well as the size of the font, the typeface of your choice and the position of your watermark.

I hope you have fun editing pictures!

Post from: New Linux User

New Chromium themes

Another eyecandy is the wallpaper clocks you could install. If you are familiar with Screenlets already then that’s good for you because you need them for this. If not, the Ubuntu Guide has an instruction for those running Ubuntu on their computers. This guide gives the step by step process of installing it. It also gives you an idea where to get wallpaper clocks, which happens to be Vladstudio.  The moment you close your many application windows you will most likely be surprised to see the time.  It’s either time flies fast because you’re  having fun, or you would be relieved to see that it’s the end of the day and that means it’s time to go home. ; )

In mobile news, there’s a blog which compares the Nokia N900 with the iPhone and Android phones. Developers are interested in these mobile devices because they could create applications for these phones. Even one of my friends wants the Nokia N900 because of the possibilities for development as well as the features of the phone, its form and style. Looks like this blog is similar to my friend’s sentiments as he is holding out for an N900 when it becomes available in Manila (or when the price becomes lower, or both actually). Oh and yes, this is the Maemo-powered Nokia phone so you might want to check it out. ; ) I will be back for more with other guides and/or reviews later.

Post from: New Linux User