Banshee 2.0

Ah, the beautiful sound of music! You might not notice, but you're pretty much surrounded by it wherever you go - even if your MP3 player is not a well-established part of your body. The car, the cab, the train, the mall, the office, the pub, the annoying douchebag listening to douchebaggery on his phone's speaker, the elevator, MUSIC EVERYWHERE!

Whenever asked what kind of tunes I enjoy, I used to say "eh, I don't really listen to music". Then it hit me. O, well.

Some of my friends possess music collections that would put many radio stations to shame. I, on the other hand, have a handful of favorites which follow me from the Ubuntu One cloud up above. Today, I summoned them to help me form an opinion about the Banshee Media Player 2.0, now the default multimedia app in Ubuntu 11.04.

Posting via Blogger for Android

You just can't ask for a simpler way of quickly posting articles on your blog while on the road. The drawback is that you can only edit mobile posts.
But look, you can directly insert pictures from your camera! Enjoy the ceiling!
Oh, you can also activate the location service to ease the lives of your stalkers.
To get the app, go to Android Market, search for blogger and install the Google-produced one. I have yet to try the unofficial bloggerdroid app. I heard it's a tad better. Kbyeee!

GNOME 3 Double Fail

So GNOME 3 was released. I don't know why, but my excitement levels were quite low, until today when I pushed myself into trying it out. Rather than installing the new version on top of some other distro running GNOME 2, I decided to get the intended experience by downloading one of the "official" systems on the GNOME 3 webpage. There were two options: openSUSE and Fedora. As I haven't checked on openSUSE for quite a while now, I chose it. 

I burnt it on a blank CD and fired it up. Result? See below!

The Android Chronicles

Inception

Good morning, fine people and welcome! I hope you are ready, as you will witness the incredible journey of a man inside his first Android device; actually scratch that, his very first smartphone! Whoaaa, duuuude! But why so late, Danny? Simple and complete answer: price tag. I seriously don't want to pay for a phone the money I could buy a netbook with. Up until now, every Android device was followed by ridiculous price tags, or reasonable price tags, but compensated by tens of euros added to the monthly plan. 

No more! As I was browsing the Internet, I thought I'd check my carrier's page and see what's new in their "Best Deal" category. And there it was, folks, the Samsung Galaxy Mini, singing its mermaid song, luring me into its "More details" page. I opened it and couldn't believe my eyes: I actually had enough fidelity points to buy it for almost no extra cash, with no extra options to buff up my bills. But what got me really hooked? Wi-Fi, GPS and, obviously, a rather recent version of Android - 2.2 or Froyo. Who cares about the ridiculously low resolution (320x240) for a 3.14 screen?  Who cares about the crappy 3ish MP camera with no flash? Who cares about the modest 600 MhZ processor? I certainly didn't! Of course, I did some research (I purpled all the "samsung galaxy mini" links through the first 4 google search pages :D) and, other than the low-res screen, everybody seemed to be pretty excited about the performance and capabilities of this entry-level smartphone. 



I ordered the phone on Thursday, April 7th, and I just missed second-day delivery so I am waiting today, April 11th, for it to be delivered at my door in about 3 or 4 hours. 

Also, with the occasion of this rare non-distro-hoppin` piece, I would like to experiment with constantly updating the article, rather than writing a new post every time I discover something worth sharing. So, expect everything from one-line to one-page additions. Thus, if you're interested, be sure to check back every once in a while. 

And, as I don't want to make my blog's homepage a LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONG one, I will use the jump break right after this. Be sure to click the title or "continue reading" to get access to the full material.

Distro Hoppin`: Saline OS 1.3

Iiiii've been working at the saaaline aaaall the live looong daaaay. Actually, that's a lie, as this Debian-based operating system is quite easy to install, setup and, once that is done, it lets you run about your daily computing routine.

But first of all, you will need a blank DVD or an USB stick with at least 1 GB of space, as the ~900 MBs of data won't fit on a trusty old CD. Well, at least we're still far from BluRay-size distros. :D

As pretty much the de facto nowadays, Saline comes with a live environment with which you can play around and see if you like it and if it likes you and your machine. Just like a blind date; no obligation to meet for a second time.

Everything went well, so I invited Saline OS into my hard drive. I did that by double clicking "Remastersys Installer" on the desktop. I think renaming it to "Installer" would've been a good idea, since Xfce only shows the first 8 letters of each shortcut, leading to a confusing "Remaster..." title, which can be a bit newbie unfriendly. Sure enough, once the user gets curious enough and highlights the icon, it will all be revealed. Moreover, there is also a link to the installer inside the "System" category within the Applications menu.

On the ease of use scale, I would rate the installation process at about 3.5 out of 5. But, if you are ready to step on your pride and actually open the UserManual.pdf, (come on, no one's looking) the process will go on much more smoothly and less trial-and-error-ish. Don't worry, there are no terminal thingies involved. :D

The installation didn't take too long and off I went to test out the now "resident" distro. The booting stage gets you to the desktop in about 20 seconds, which is quite fast in my experience.