Jon Stewart lambasted the Strong Museum of Play‘s Toy Hall of Fame on The Daily Show last night for taking 11 years to induct the ball. We Rochesterians evidently have our heads stuck in our Garbage Plates.
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| Windowless News Van for Kids – The Ball | ||||
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Gotta love The Daily Show!
One of our students in the lab mentioned today that Google Maps provides “driving” directions to Hawaii. My ADD kicked in and I, of course, had to try it out for myself. A search from Rochester to Honolulu gives me clear directions from somewhere on Main Street in Rochester to Beretania Street in Honolulu, by way of the Seatle, WA. The trip, it says, will take me a short 15 days, 22 hours.
Google Maps clearly shows that it is possible to drive from Rochester to Honolulu...or does it?
How is this possible? Last I checked, there was no bridge and I’m not aware of a ferry service, though I suppose there could be one—but it would be an awfully slow boat give the 16 day trip Google reports.
A closer look at the actual directions reveals the answer. Just drive to Puget Sound, then jump into your kayak and paddle a reasonable 200 miles a day for the next two weeks. That’s only a little more than 8 miles an hour if you paddle non-stop, 24/7.
So why is Google doing this? Is this some kind of Easter Egg or is there some other significance? And why Puget Sound? I sure there are much more direct routes to Hawaii than going north through the sound before turning south in the ocean. I’ve tried searching Google to find out more, but nothing seems to be coming up.
As I was doing some long-needed work on this blog, I noticed that the last post I made was number 99. So I decided I needed to post a celebratory 100th post.
The first post on this blog occurred on July 18, 2003. That means I’ve been blogging for just under 6 years. For the first year and a half of this blog I was using software I was developing myself, but I switched over to WordPress about 18 months later because it (even back then) was a million times better than what I had. Since then I haven’t looked back.
OK, I know you’re thinking it…100 posts in six years…that’s only 16-17 posts a year! Yep…I’m a pathetic blogger.
Since I started college, I’ve been a fan of Linux, at least for servers. The basic multiuser setup of the Unix environment (from which Linux is designed) has numerous advantages in a server environment and using Apache for web hosting allows for a lot more flexibility than most Windows-based hosting solutions.
When it comes to desktop OSes, however, Linux has traditionally fallen short. Driver incompatibilities, lack of professional-grade software, and a complicated setup have typically contributed to Linux’s shortcomings.
About a year ago I needed to begin using a utility for work that only runs in *nix environments. At the suggestion of my boss I started running a Ubuntu virtual machine in Sun’s Virtual Box. Prior to this, most of my Linux experience was with the Red Hat family, starting with the old Red Hat Linux and, more recently, with CentOS. I must say I was pleasantly surprised by Ubuntu—it has the smoothest running Gnome desktop implementation I’ve seen in a Linux distro and I now find myself doing more and more with my VM simply because it just works—sometimes better than the Windows XP host it runs in.
One thing, however, that bugs me about Ubuntu is its color scheme. Despite it also being my alma mater’s colors, I just can’t get over the orange and brown interface. Fortunately, as I’m about to show, that’s easy to change.
Default orange and brown Ubuntu desktop
First, we’ll start by installing some new wallpaper images and the Tango icon set. The Tango Desktop Project seeks to establish a consistent user-interface across free and Open Source software. I chose Tango because it is visually appealing, it is nearly complete (or at least more complete than other icon sers I’ve tried), and because it is available in the standard Ubuntu repos.
First, open a terminal window and use apt-get to install the required icon packages (you’ll need admin privileges to do this):
sudo apt-get install gnome-backgrounds tango-icon-theme tango-icon-theme-common tango-icon-theme-extras
Now that the packages are installed, go to the System > Preferences menu and select Appearance.
Select Appearance from the Preferences Menu
On the Appearance dialog Theme tab, choose any of the existing themes and click Customize. Don’t worry about colors, as we’ll change those in a minute. Personally, I prefer the Crux theme.
The appearance dialog, theme tab
In the Customize Theme dialog, click on “Colors.” Then click the background color chip for “Selected items.”
Chnge the selected item color
In the color picker “Color Name” field enter #3465a4. This is a shade of blue that is used extensively in Tango icons. Click “OK.”
Change the color of selected items in the UI.
Next, click on the “Icons” tab and find and select Tango in the list. When done, click “Close.”
Chose the Tango icon set
Now click on the Appearance dialog’s “Background” tab. You should now see several new wallpaper images to choose. Find one you like and select it. You can also select other images you have stored on the computer and use those as backgrounds, as well.
Select a new background image.
Once you’re done, click “Close” and enjoy your new orange- and brown-free UI.
New, customized Ubuntu desktop in tolerable colors
Several years ago I became connected with Tay House and, shortly after, found myself developing the troop’s website. At that time, we had the domain name tayhouse.org. Through my work, the troop was able to develop a new communications mechanism and gained highly favorable search engine placements rather quickly. We got lots of great comments from our scouts, parents, and alumni–and then one night it all disappeared.
Due to a number of snafus, we lost our tayhouse.org domain name. The story was about the same as every other “lost my domain name” story I’ve heard: I simply tried to make an update to the site one morning and the site wasn’t there. I knew the server was up because other sites on it were working fine. After exhausting my entire list of things to check, I did a whois lookup and found the name had expired. We never heard about it because, at the time, the name was registered to the business of a parent of a scout and the email address attached to it belonged to an employee that no longer worked for him.
Before we could rescue our name, the registrar dropped it and, of course, a squatter grabbed it right away. I eventually found that tayhouse.net was available and registered that (another cybersquatter had tayhouse.com already) and that became our new address. Eventually tayhouse.com became available and, when I noticed it, I registered that as well.
Old names die hard, and to this day I still find things that reference tayhouse.org and still refer to it erroneously myself—so I continued to feel a need to get it back. In March the name finally expired. As the expiration approached, I continuously checked the whois records hoping it would not be renewed. Then I watched as it sat in redemption for two months, checking daily to see if it had been dropped. Finally, yesterday afternoon, as I glanced at the Post-It note attached to my monitor and realized I hadn’t yet checked on it, I was greeted with the words I though I’d never see “tayhouse.org may be available for registration.” I immediately headed to my registrar’s site and grabbed it back and within 20 minutes had it resolving to our site once again.
I now feel as though I’ve found a long lost friend.
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