I have been irritated at the fact that the various links I find and wish to share wind up in various silos (my Google Reader shared items, my StumbleUpon favorites, links in various tweets and dents, Facebook posts, and Dugg items, to name a few). I have tried using various social bookmarking services, but these all wind up as another blasted silo I am stuck in. I am going to start linking to stuff I really like using my blog. I will still like stuff on the services I find it on, but if you want to see my absolute favorite links, make sure you are following my feed.

HTML5 presentation

There are some misconceptions that shell scripts are only for a CLI environment. You can easily use various tools to write GUI and/or network socket scripts under KDE or Gnome desktops. Shell scripts can make use of some of the GUI widget menus, warning boxs, progress bars etc. You can always control the final output, cursor position on screen, various output effects, and so on. With the following tools you can build powerful, interactive, user friendly UNIX / Linux bash shell scripts.Creating GUI application is not just expensive task but task that takes time and patience. Luckily, both UNIX and Linux ships with plenty of tools to write beautiful GUI scripts.

via 10 Tools To Add Some Spice To Your UNIX Shell Scripts.

But instead I got carried away sending updates to identi.ca. I put the small things in there as they happen, and since most of my blog entries are a bunch of small things put together that kills most of the point of posting.

Sorry.

However, I have something large enough to be worth an entire entry… the wife and I moved! We are now living in Saginaw, not too far from where I work. Her sister had been living with us, and sharing a car with us. We lived 18 kilometers from work, and since we both work in the same building, but different shifts, this wound up being two or three round trips a day. Needless to say, gas was financially killing us. She got her own apartment a couple of weeks ago, walking distance from work. The wife and I got our own apartment a week later (last Friday) 5 km away. We are still in the precess of getting all our crap moved over here (we drive a Kia Rio and can’t afford a moving truck yet) and are surrounded by boxen, but we love it.

My wife says I make the best iced tea she has ever tasted. I thought that I’d post my “secret” for everyone, as in hot weather (and living in Texas, it’s hot weather nine months of the year) a refreshing glass of iced tea is great.

First, make an average size mug of herbal tea. Mint is really refreshing, but berry flavors work well too. For a winter taste a gingerbread tea is good. Put the bag in a full glass of water and microwave two minutes.

While that is going, put a couple of Lipton cold brew tea bags in a two quart pitcher. Fill with water to 1 and a half quarts. Let it seep until the microwave is done, then dunk the bags for about thirty seconds. Stir in between 2/3 and 3/4 cup of sugar. You can adjust to taste, but less makes the tea a bit bitter and more is overpoweringly sweet. Once you have the sugar dissolved, pour the mug of herbal tea in. Stir again, then top off the pitcher with water if there is room left. Leave in the freezer for a couple of hours, and enjoy!

Anyway, the kids aren’t with us any more. A couple of weeks ago, they went over to their dad’s for his weekend with them. Instead of bringing them back, we were delivered a paper from his lawyer that he is fighting for custody of them. We went to a preliminary hearing, where we were told that until the courts can hear our case he will be keeping them. The wife and I are obviously hiring a lawyer, as we feel that we are the best thing for them. At the very least want visitation so we can get to see them.

The problem is that I make too much money to use Legal Aid or any of the other financial assistance legal services I have found, but do not make enough to hire any of the lawyers we have talked too. Does anyone know a good family lawyer around Ft. Worth, Texas, who would work on a sliding scale or pro bono?

I just said goodbye to them.

Last.fm is a music tracking service. After you create an account, you can install a scrobbler. This is a small program that tells their site what music you are listening to as you listen to it. They keep track of what you like, and can recommend music that you may like based on what you have already listened to. They also have streaming radio stations of music that you may like, or that your friends are listening to. In short, they let you find stuff to listen to that you otherwise might not have heard of.

In February, TechCrunch ran an article claiming that last.fm handed over scrobbled data to the Recording Industry Association of America. The RIAA is a conglomeration of music labels that try to find people who are pirating music and sue them. In theory. In practice, they have sued people who don’t own computers, children, and people exercising what copyright laws consider fair use, claiming that each downloaded song costs the industry several thousand dollars each. The article claims that the RIAA wanted to know who had listened to the unreleased U2 album that had been leaked, and last.fm gave information to them. last.fm denied these allegations.

Obviously, if this were true, it would be against last.fm’s privacy policy.

A couple of days ago, TechCrunch claimed to have a new source, saying that while last.fm didn’t know about the leak, CBS — their parent company — was responsible. last.fm denied this too. I am not quite sure who to believe — honestly, until TechCrunch reveals their sources, I would be more inclined to think that last.fm was telling the truth. Just the fact that there is doubt in my mind, however, and that I don’t trust large corporations such as CBS, is enough that I am no longer comfortable having my listening data their servers.

I have closed my account and moved to libre.fm, which is an open source effort, run by volunteers, that supports openly licensed music. They are to last.fm what identi.ca is to Twitter. While my music player, Rhythmbox, doesn’t support scrobbling to anyone but last.fm, Michael Gratton has written a plugin (download) that lets you scrobble to wherever you want.

Feel free to follow my new libre.fm account, and to follow me to greener pastures. You can even import your scrobbled tracks from last.fm.

Related article that I like: Piracy Sucks (from a free culture perspective)

Before we went to the aquarium, we took a side trip to Linda Spurlock park, where the kids played a while and ate lunch. Then they all boarded a bus and we headed to Dallas. I normally can’t stand Dallas, and refuse to go there even to see a good show (I do plan on making an exception for when the Nekromantix play with the Reverend Horton Heat on 25 July) but was willing to do so to hang out with the wife and kid.

When we got there, we hit a slight snag; parking was $5 and for some reason the parking lot was one of the ones where you have to stuff bills in a box. We rarely if ever carry cash, and this is the first place I have seen in several years where I couldn’t use plastic. Fortunantally, one of the other parents had some extra money and gave it to us. It would normally be embarrassing to have to even ask, but I refuse to feel like a fool when they are the ones who won’t take my Visa.

Jennifer took the camera I got her for X-Mas, and took several pictures. She created a gallery of her favorites; I just uploaded the entite mess to flickr. Feel free to browse and enjoy.

My wife’s friend Michael isn’t quite computer literate. He was complaining to my wife about how he always got viruses. She told him how we don’t since we use Linux instead of Windoze. He didn’t understand how you can use a computer without Windoze on it. She told him we would give him an install disk so he can try it out. I handed him the disk and told him to follow instructions.

About an hour later he called, asking where all his stuff was. He had successfully installed Linux without any help, but was confused by the default empty desktop, since the installer told him it had imported all his crap. I pointed him over the phone to the “Places” menu, and he got it. He wasn’t online last I heard because he had to find out what his grandpa’s router’s WPA key was, but other than those tiny hitches, someone who didn’t even know you could replace Windoze managed to install Ubuntu with no help!

If you have a good connection and a burner, why not download Ubuntu yourself, and give it a try too? If you don’t have broadband or a burner, Ubuntu will even send you a free install CD! You can run it side by side with Windoze, and delete it if you don’t like it after a week or two, so you have nothing to lose, but a great deal of frustration.