This page contains all entries posted to Manufactured Environments in August 2006.

Rasputin, the Dwarf (Hamster)

Hello, Manufactured Environments readers. My name is Abby, and I am the most recent addition to the blogging team here at M.E. I recently returned to Iowa City from a summer internship in Washington, DC. Immediately upon returning to my tiny apartment, I felt a quietude and loneliness that was much unexpected. I tried to discern the reasons for the seeming void, when it dawned on me — my pet hamster was not here to keep me company. I have often remarked that I hate having roommates, primarily because of all the freaks I ended up being paired up with in college. But there is something special and comforting about having a hamster for a roommate that is very difficult to describe or explain.

For as many years as I can remember, I have always had a pet hamster at any given time. Because I would be living in a dormitory over the summer that did not allow pets, however, I decided to have my mother watch little Nicodemus. In trying to be a good grandmotherly caretaker to the little guy, she decided to buy him a new wheel. This was meant as a home warming gift of sorts. What she hadn’t bargained for, however, was how much the little rodent would like the wheel. She called me after the first day to tell me how much Little Nicky was exercising and how she had never seen a hamster run so much. Unfortunately, the next day she called to tell me she had never seen a hamster sleep so much; and that, my friends, was the beginning of the end for Nicodemus. Apparently Zach Braff was right in his inclusion of a plotline into Garden State that included a hamster funeral for the departure of a hamster who didn’t know when to stop running. At the time I saw the movie, I thought things like that never happened. I was dead wrong.

So, as I have always done in the past, I will persevere. I have to. Life goes on. And, after all, as my mother is fond of saying, there are other hamsters in the pet store. Well, actually, she has always said “other fish in the sea,” but it can be applicable to small rodents too. I need a new furry roommate. So, I will venture to Petland here in Iowa City soon to pick out a new friend. It is unfortunate that so many of my hamsters have died at such young ages. While they are supposed to be able to live up to 2 years, I can count on one paw the number who have lived past 6 months.

In my efforts to send good vibes toward my new pet hamster, I intend to name him Rasputin. I hope this name will be auspicious. The name, which is Russian, is very appropriate, because the hamsters I buy are Siberian Dwarves. Rasputin, as you may recall, was a Russian mystic who advised several important Russian rulers during the Romanov Dynasty. The interesting thing about him, though, is how difficult it was for his would-be assassins to kill him. Indeed, he survived being stabbed, poisoned, and shot three times. Ultimately, he was drowned to death. But, the point is, he persevered. I need a hamster who will do the same and not succumb so easily to death. So, I will name my next hamster Rasputin in the hopes that he can wear the name proudly and live up to his name-sake’s reputation. If you have other suggestions, though, for good Russian names to call my soon-to-be hamster-roommate, please let me know.

Tags: apartments · dc · hamster · petland · rasputin

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Taking Ubuntu to a Higher Power

Have you been feeling the blues lately? Been feeling like your life has no direction? Ask yourself this question: What OS would Jesus use? Why, Ubuntu Christian Edition! That’s right. If you think there isn’t enough spiritual firepower in your choice of desktop operating system, now you have an option. Well, you have an option if you happen to be Christian and have a favorable disposition towards Linux.

Find out more about Ubuntu CE at the What Would Jesus Download website. Ubuntu Christian Edition is based on Gnome, but for those fundamentalist KDE types there’s also Ichthux, Linux for Christians.

Hey, man, Jesus is open source! Who knew?

Okay, at this point you may be asking yourself, what makes a Christian Linux distribution Christian? Two things apparently. One is GnomeSword, which is an open source bible study app. And also DansGuardian, a type of web filtering software—gotta protect the kiddies from the nasty stuff!

Tags: gnome · gnomesword · ichthux · kde · linux · open source · ubuntu · ubuntu christian edition

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Archive Check: The Top 20 on Manufactured Environments

Like Aprille, I was taking a look at the archives on Manufactured Environments and thought I’d point out the Top 20 posts this year, by traffic. It’s an eclectic mix, which of course reflects our diverse nature. I’ve been hitting Linux pretty often lately, but who’s to know what the coming months will bring? So here goes, a listing and links to the Top 20 posts on ManuEnvi:

1. HTML Entities
2. Internet2 under attack from RIAA
3. Celebrity Deathmatch: Windows XP vs SUSE Linux
4. Funnel Web Analyzer available for free
5. Mentos / Diet Coke Carbonic Geyser
6. Rio Baile Funk: Favela Booty Beats
7. Real Good Friend—A New Mix
8. Zeldman enters a new era
9. 54 ideas for increasing your blog traffic
10. Akismet in action and MT 3.3 due soon
11. Popular Baby Names
12. The Prodigal Son returns home
13. Mini Pixel Icons
14. The Past is Over
15. Do Not Resuscitate
16. spring into january.
17. Seasons Change…Ten at a Time
18. three weeks later.
19. Hubble Space Telescope Hall of Fame
20. SXSW Interactive (cont.)

Many of these are from April 2006 in which I blogged the most of any month since I started blogging in February 2000. April was a good month, and it’s nice for me to see that it’s driven a lot of traffic to the site.

One trend I notice amongst these 20 posts is that blogging thrives on the recent. Things get lost down there in the archives, and that was the whole point of this post. I think I will also have to do a post about my favorite blog posts over the past few years, but that’ll come another day. For now, enjoy these 20 blog posts that people found interesting.

Tags: archives · blog · blogging · top 20

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Podcasting & RSS 2.0: FeedBurner no more

Well, we’ve completely broken away from using FeedBurner for our RSS feeds here. The last remaining feed, Manufactured Podcasts, I brought back in house recently. The thing is that I knew FeedBurner had offered some capabilities for enhancing the RSS feed for podcasting. My goal was to do that myself without needing to use a service. I’m using the template-driven Movable Type, which worked perfectly for my aims. First, I took a look at the Apple iTunes podcast technical specs page. This had all the information I needed to get our podcast RSS feed burning brightly.

Once I had the details in hand, I set about tweaking the template for the RSS feed. We’re already using templates that I had heavily tweaked for my needs. The feeds even already had the enclosure tags necessary for podcasting. All in all, it was a fairly easy tweak. I wondered then why so many people use FeedBurner when it’s easy to do yourself. Here’s a look at our edited template:

<$MTHTTPContentType type=”application/rss+xml”$><?xml version=”1.0” encoding=”<$MTPublishCharset$>”?>
<rss version=”2.0” xmlns:dc=”http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/” xmlns:geo=”http://www.w3.org/2003/01/geo/wgs84_pos#” xmlns:itunes=”http://www.itunes.com/dtds/podcast-1.0.dtd”>
<channel>
<title><$MTBlogName remove_html=”1” encode_xml=”1”$></title>
<link><$MTBlogURL$></link>
<itunes:author>Dan Stout and Faust Gertz</itunes:author>
<itunes:summary>Podcasts on poetry, cocktails, music and more from the Manufactured Environments studios.</itunes:summary>
<itunes:subtitle><$MTBlogDescription remove_html=”1” encode_xml=”1”$></itunes:subtitle>
<description><$MTBlogDescription remove_html=”1” encode_xml=”1”$></description>
<language><$MTBlogLanguage ietf=”1”$></language>
<copyright>Copyright &#xA9; <$MTDate format=”%Y”$> Dan Stout</copyright>
<lastBuildDate><MTEntries lastn=”1”><$MTEntryDate format_name=”rfc822”$></MTEntries></lastBuildDate>
<generator>http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/?v=<$MTVersion$></generator>
<docs>http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss</docs>
<itunes:owner>
<itunes:name>Dan Stout</itunes:name>
<itunes:email>stoutdan@gmail.com</itunes:email>
</itunes:owner>
<itunes:image href=”http://manufacturedenvironments.com/media/manufacturedpodcasts.jpg” />
<itunes:category text=”Arts” />
<itunes:explicit>no</itunes:explicit>
<itunes:keywords>manufactured, environments, podcasts, poetry, poems, recitation, cocktails, stout, dan, daniel, faust, gertz</itunes:keywords>
<ttl>30</ttl>
<managingEditor>stoutdan@gmail.com</managingEditor>
<webMaster>stoutdan@gmail.com</webMaster>
<image>
<title><$MTBlogName encode_xml=”1”$></title>
<url>http://manufacturedenvironments.com/media/rss.jpg</url>
<link><$MTBlogURL$></link>
<width>88</width>
<height>31</height>
</image>
<geo:lat>41.658210</geo:lat>
<geo:long>-91.471313</geo:long>

<MTEntries lastn=”15”>
<item>
<title><$MTEntryTitle remove_html=”1” encode_xml=”1”$></title>
<description>
<$MTEntryBody encode_xml=”1”$>
<MTEntryIfExtended><$MTEntryMore encode_xml=”1”$></MTEntryIfExtended>
<MTEntryIfTagged><![CDATA[<p class=”technorati”>Tags: <MTEntryTags glue=” “><a href=”http://manufacturedenvironments.com/podcasts/tag/<$MTTagName encode_url=”1”$>” rel=”tag”><$MTTagName$></a></MTEntryTags></p>]]></MTEntryIfTagged>
</description>
<link><$MTEntryPermalink encode_xml=”1”$></link>
<guid isPermaLink=”true”><$MTEntryPermalink encode_xml=”1”$></guid>
<category><$MTEntryCategory remove_html=”1” encode_xml=”1”$></category>
<pubDate><$MTEntryDate format_name=”rfc822”$></pubDate>
<$MTEntryEnclosures mime_exclude=”image”$>
<dc:creator><$MTEntryAuthor$></dc:creator>
<itunes:author><$MTEntryAuthor$></itunes:author>
<MTEntryIfTagged><itunes:keywords><MTEntryTags glue=”, “><$MTTagName$></MTEntryTags></itunes:keywords></MTEntryIfTagged>
</item>
</MTEntries>
</channel>
</rss>

Tags: apple · feedburner · feeds · itunes · movable type · podcasting · rss

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Champagne Cocktails at Fancy Pants

“Would you care for a glass of champagna?”

I had a great time serving free Champagne Cocktails, Miss Bondes, Kir Royals, and Bellinis at Fancy Pants on the final day of their week long grand opening extravaganza. To promote the event, I woke up early to mix cocktails for Johnny Marks on his KDEC-FM 100.5 morning show. If you missed it, the segment is available in an MP3 format. It was a lot of fun and I look forward to demonstrating mixology excellence for Jeni and her listeners soon.

Cocktail Tip

When adding sparkling wine to a cocktail, start with a tiny bit (an ounce or less). Let it foam up and wait for it to settle. Then pour another three to four ounces and stop. Do not fill the flute to the brim. It doesn’t matter if the flute is six or twelve ounces. No more than five to six ounces of fluid belong in a flute. It is far better to enjoy a couple of well chilled glasses of bubbly than a single super-sized one that ends up warm and flat.

Tags: champagne cocktails · fancy pants · johnny marks · KDEC · Radio

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The state of the 2006 Linux desktop

Interesting article over at DesktopLinux.com by Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols entitled The state of the 2006 Linux desktop. He notes a sudden rise of people running Linux on their laptops over the summer.

My unscientific survey revealed that about a third of those desktops were running the newest Ubuntu, another third were running either openSUSE or SLED (SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop), and the final third were Freespire or Linspire. I also saw a scattering of Xandros and other Linux distributions.

They all have one thing in common. These were all from the new generation of desktop Linuxes that has appeared over the course of this summer.

People are looking for alternatives to the WinMac monopoly. There’s never been a better time to try out desktop Linux. I prefer SUSE Linux 10.1, but a lot of people are also running Ubuntu. Where is Red Hat? They seem to have lost momentum. I tried out Fedora 4 last fall, but haven’t done anything with them since. Fedora 4 crashed a lot on me, but SUSE is very stable. [via E@zyVG]

Tags: desktop linux · fedora · freespire · linux · red hat · suse linux · ubuntu

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Linux is Beautiful, or Why Robert Scoble Needs to Take Another Look

Robert Scoble wrote an entry about what he sees as a reason Linux won’t be adopted by the masses as their desktop operating system: the fonts. I couldn’t disagree more with him. I’m looking at Gnome via SUSE Linux 10.1 on an LCD screen, and gosh, darn it, these fonts are crisp, with subpixel anti-aliasing. My, they’re beautiful. But I’ll let you in on a little secret, I needed Microsoft’s help to make it all work. This is, in the final analysis, why I paid for Linux instead of just downloading it off the internet. Okay, here goes.

I love smooth type on an LCD screen, and I’m sure you would too if you see what I see. Fonts, typography, design. It’s all good in my eyes. But here’s where I’m different: I also really love Linux.

Scoble mentions that when he sees Linux users at conferences that the fonts on their screens look nasty. That’s probably true, as I’ve seen the same. Just like Windows XP has ClearType and any anti-aliasing turned off by default, so too Linux doesn’t force users to adopt to a cleaner lifestyle. A lot of people are slumming off with dirty fonts because they don’t know that life could be better. The typography on Linux can be very beautiful, and I’ll tell you how I achieved it.

The first was to turn on subpixel anti-aliasing. You can do this in both Gnome and KDE. I think all you KDE users should give it up and switch to Gnome. I used KDE for a while, and it is too similar to Windows. If you want to run Windows, you should just run Windows and forget about KDE. Gnome on the other hand is beautifully designed and a much more humane approach to windows managment. Okay, so start with Gnome and turn on subpixel anti-aliasing (go to the Gnome Control Center and click on Fonts).

Now here’s a little secret that most people don’t know: if you buy the boxed version of SUSE Linux as opposed to downloading the free version off the internet, you get a special installer that will download the Microsoft Core Web Fonts for you. This installer doesn’t come with the free version, which is what most people use. So if you pay for SUSE Linux, you’ll get fonts like Arial, Georgia, Times New Roman, Verdana, etc., which is what most of the internet uses for rendering websites. The cool thing is those fonts get used not just in the browser, but in other places in the operating system. So if you have the paid version of SUSE Linux, it just looks better. In fact, it looks beautiful.

Now if you’re thinking, I’m not going to pay $60 for every version of SUSE just to run some damn fonts, I understand. The cool thing is that you don’t have to. I bought SUSE 10.0 on DVD. Then when 10.1 was released, I simply downloaded the DVD image from the web and upgraded my Linux install(s) to 10.1. It worked wonderfully and best of all, it kept all of my fonts.

So in my opinion, Scoble, you got it wrong. Linux can be and is beautiful. It’s simply a matter of knowing what to do (just like in Windows XP). But you are definitely right when you say that the best fonts aren’t free. I paid to get SUSE Linux ($50.99 on Amazon), but it was the fonts that came with it that made it really valuable. The difference on the screen between the default free fonts and the fonts that come with a boxed version of SUSE Linux are huge.

My friends all thought I was crazy for paying for Linux, but my system looks and feels stellar. There is an advantage to paying for software. At least, sometimes. The cool thing about SUSE Linux and other distributions is that it comes with thousands of apps you can install for free. In fact, SUSE will install a nice selection of apps to get you browsing the web, doing email, watching video, and word processing. All the basic tasks you use your Windows machine for can be done on Linux plus a whole lot more (think: development).

I suppose you’re running a Vista beta, Robert, and I would hope the fonts look pretty on that. It took a gazillion developers 5 years and 50 million lines of code to get that thing to sail. But personally, I’d rather see the world from the cockpit of a lean Eclipse 500 6-seat jet than lumber through the skies with the Goodyear Blimp.

Update: Okay, so I’ve been told that you can get the Microsoft Core Web Fonts for Linux from this site on Sourceforge. And it’s a package in Ubuntu that you can simply install. Go grab it, if you don’t have it.

Update #2: If you’re using Linux, you can download this RPM file and install it. It contains most of the Microsoft Core fonts that you’ll want. I installed it, and it didn’t appear to contain Georgia. You can install Georgia, which is a great font by the way, by going to a Windows system and copying the four files named georgia*.ttf in C:\Windows\Fonts to your Linux system. You’ll want to copy them to /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/truetype. Make sure you’re logged in as root when you do that. Also, if you’re interested in more about fonts in Linux, check out this excellent page that has a lot of information.

Tags: fonts · gnome · linux · microsoft · open source · open suse · robert scoble · scoble · suse · suse linux · typography · vista · windows

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Skipping across the tag cloud

I started using tags on Manufactured Environments last November, and now there’s quite a list of different tags. The popular way to display a list of tags is the tag cloud. You can view the ManuEnvi tag cloud by clicking on any of the tag links at the end of a blog posting, and then scroll down. The tag cloud is pretty mammoth—reflecting my desire to highlight the uniqueness of each post, rather than commonalities. Just to get you started, here’s a tag link that you can click on to view the tag cloud:

http://manufacturedenvironments.com/tag/tag+cloud

In other news, congrats to T+T on the arrival of their twins. I got to see them this weekend, and one word sums it up: Cute!

Tags: movable type · tag cloud · tags

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Time to up that Ubuntu installation

linux today is reporting that Ubuntu has updated it’s 6.06 version called dapper drake to 6.06.1. You can get a new CD for free from ShipIt. If you’re like Faust and using the tiny Xubuntu distribution, you can grab that here. One theorizes that it fixes some of the problems Mr. Gertz was encountering, well, one hopes anyway. I’m going to download the main Ubuntu 6.06.1 and see what it does on my desktop. I had tried to install Ubuntu 6.06 on my desktop machine, but it had some incompatibility. So checkout Ubuntu and have a groovy, groovy time with it.

Tags: dapper drake · linux · ubuntu · xubuntu

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Newspapers using the internet? No way!

The Bivings Report has a new study out on the internet usage of the top 100 newspapers in the U.S. (by circulation). They looked at what each newspaper’s website offered in terms of RSS, video, registration, reporter blogs, and more. Some of the findings include:

• While RSS penetration is deep (76 out of 100), in all cases the RSS feed was excerpts only and none of the feeds contained advertising.
• Reporter blogs had even farther reach with 80 of the newspapers having them. With 63 of the newspapers, reader comments were also allowed on the reporter blogs.
• Only 23 of the newspapers required registration on their site, which highlights the controversial and debatable nature of reader registration.
• And 61 of the newspaper websites had video.

Interesting to see how traditional media are using new media. Here is the PDF of the report. You can also read more on the Bivings Report blog. [via BM]

Tags: bivings report · newspapers · research · study · top 100

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Six Apart: Movable Type is now free (Again!)

Anil Dash posted some big news on the Six Apart corporate blog today: Movable Type is now free for personal bloggers. That’s awesome news of course and hopefully will spur more people to try out Movable Type. Six Apart has decided that corporate bloggers are where the money is at for blogging tools and released an enterprise version of Movable Type. If the success of WordPress is any indication, personal bloggers don’t eff’ing want to pay for blogging tools. For our money, Movable Type is still the best blogging software out there.

Movable Type was free once upon a time, and free it is again. For personal users, you can have unlimited numbers of blogs in your install and an unlimited number of authors. This is such great news. To be honest, I hope it’s not too late. A lot of Movable Type’s thunder has been stolen by WordPress since they started charging with version 3.0. Movable Type has beefier web host requirements, but to Six Apart’s credit, they’ve simplified the install process quite a bit, which will help win over users.

The prior version 3.2 was a huge upgrade and should have been called 4.0. This new update called 3.3 is more of an incremental upgrade, but it’s got some great stuff in there, especially for the lighter, less technical blogger. I still love being able to hand code my own templates, and I will probably keep doing that for as long as I care to. But now people using Movable Type have the option of using the StyleCatcher, which works like Themes in WordPress. You can grab a bunch of templates that have been packaged together, drop them in, and your blog is automagically styled.

Go download it now and try it out! If you want support, you can pay $50/year to get unlimited professional support. If you have questions about whether you qualify as a personal blogger, check out the frequently asked questions.

Tags: free · movable type · six apart · stylecatcher · wordpress

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Planet SUSE: Keeping up with the geeks

You all know my love for SUSE Linux. It’s my platform of choice. I’m glad too that Novell has switched the default install to Gnome from KDE. As I’ve said before, KDE is like running a Windows clone. Why run KDE when you can run Windows? Gnome on the other hand is superior. It’s a great interface and much more human-friendly than KDE.

At some point, I’m going to have to do a list of links for SUSE-related websites, but there’s one I wanted to point out today. It’s a site called Planet SUSE. Planet SUSE is an aggregator of all the top SUSE developers’ blogs. Planet SUSE pulls all the dev blogs together into one place. You can even subscribe to the Planet SUSE feed. If you look over on the right side, you’ll see a list of all the blogs that the site pulls from. It’s a long list, simply because there are a lot of people working on SUSE Linux. Of course it’s cool to hear about new features before they’re released. Planet SUSE is where you can find out about the stuff going on with the distribution and hear about all the latest developments.

Congratulations go out to my blogmate Faust who is currently trying out Ubuntu. Good luck with that!

Tags: developers · linux · open source · planet suse · suse · suse linux

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