Just a few minutes ago however, I had a *lightbulb* moment, I realised that I should just stick with Ubuntu, why? because I don’t have to sign the contributor agreement, I don’t have to let my membership expire, I don’t need to switch distro’s, I realised that I am happy right where I am, I am happy with Ubuntu. I realised that I don’t actually contribute to Ubuntu itself much, I write my own code, which isn’t included in Ubuntu. I write documentation that isn’t included directly in Ubuntu, I don’t actually contribute anything *directly* to Ubuntu.

So why did i feel this way? why did I feel as if I wasnt doing enough? as if I didnt fit in? I realised that I *do* fit in, I realised that I had no obligation to work my way up to contributing directly to Ubuntu, i already contribute to it in my own unique way. I also now understand that I don’t need to disagree with anything canonical do, since Ubuntu will still be able to use plain old GNOME, it will still be as flexible as before, I realised that I didnt have to accept the default stuff, I could do whatever I wanted, it is Linux after all.

Have you ever felt this way? If yes, what did you do about it?

https://github.com/nisshh/dotfiles

Enjoy!

First of all, I have irssi running inside screen (mostly because I use nicklist.pl), plus screen is useful in a bunch of other ways. The scripts I currently use are:

• nicklist.pl
• lastfm.pl
• scriptassist.pl
• hilightwin.pl
• usercount.pl
• adv_windowlist.pl
• calc.pl
• anames.pl
• shortenurl.pl

The theme I use is a modification of the madcow theme called 88_madcows by Aaron Toponce.

Here is a screenshot of my current irssi window:

My irssi window...

I really like the 88_madcows theme and like Aaron, I also used to use the madcows theme, although at the time I didnt know any Perl or anything, so didn’t consider modifying the theme.

If your reading this post and you don’t use irssi, I highly recommend you check it out, it is an excellent IRC client and the only one I have been able to tolerate using for the past couple of years. If you use irssi, please go ahead and share your setup in the comments.

DDG (DuckDuckGo) is great for a number of reasons:

• DDG doesn’t track your searches (Google does)
• Uses a cool !bang syntax to make searching faster (example: ‘!w linux’ will take you directly to the Wikipedia page for linux, hundreds of !bang shortcuts are available for many popular sites and topics)
• Almost as good search results as Google, there have only been a tiny handful of searches that havent been very good
• Fast and minimal
• The API is open source

Blekko is also very cool, it uses a neat concept where users search using slashes which are designed to give more relevant results. Blekko is also nice and fast and the search results are very good.

I encourage everyone to give these search engines a go, you might just be surprised at what you find.

At the end of last year I created a big list of things I wanted to do in 2011, some of you may be thinking “how could this bloke possibly have the motivation for all these things!?”, my answer to that? I am motivated because of the great community around Ubuntu, FOSS and around the interwebs.

Now, I do not wish to share the list with you all, simply because it has many things on it that I do not wish to share with everyone.

Some of the cool things I did last year:

• Joined the Ubuntu Manual project and helped to drive it forward I am still active within the project, although have a reduced role due to commitment to other projects.
• Received Ubuntu Membership
• Joined the Bugsquad
• Joined the Ubuntu Developer Manual project
• Joined the Ubuntu Youth Team
• Greatly increased my activity on IRC and other sites like Identi.ca and Diaspora.
• Started my own project called Pytask
• Joined in on Ubuntu Opportunistic Developer Week and ran a session.

I am planning on making 2011 the year that I really put an effort in. To help with this, I have finally got enough money together to buy new hardware.

Also, many people have been asking me when the next release of Pytask will be coming, I have been working hard over Christmas to get the next release out. There are many useful improvements that have been made and Pytask will be available in over 10 languages as of next release, so hold on to your hats!

The new features in this release include:

• Pytask is now translated into Arabic, Brazilian Portuguese, French, German, Hindi and Spanish
• Pytask now has an indicator applet *with* a mono icon
• The filter introduced in 10.06.1 has been further improved
• You can now report bugs against Pytask using apport

You can get Pytask from my PPA here: https://launchpad.net/~nisshh/+archive/pytask-releases

Enjoy!

So normally to initialize your application indicator, you would have something like this:

ind = appindicator.Indicator("MyApp", "my-app-icon", appindicator.CATEGORY_APPLICATION_STATUS)


But that will only allow you to use icons in the current icon theme, not your own, so to fix this you just need to specify the path like so:

ind = appindicator.Indicator("MyApp", "/usr/share/myapp/media/my-app-icon.png", appindicator.CATEGORY_APPLICATION_STATUS)


The above code assumes that your app is a Quickly application (/usr/share/myapp/ is where Quickly applications install themselves to). If your application is not a Quickly application then you just need to point the path where your icon is when the application is installed.

Enjoy!

Why?

I am just sick of my GNOME desktop running so darn sluggishly (my hardware’s fault, not Ubuntu’s), so I am asking you (the community), which applications do you use that are a) lightweight and b) simple but powerful?

I am specifically looking for replacements for the following applications:

• web browser (I currently use Chromium, but it is very resource hungry)
• mail client (on the desktop, I want to move away from the gmail web interface)
• feed reader (I currently use Google Reader, which is nice, but can be slow at times)

I am willing to consider command-line versions of applications, with the exception of the web browser.

I also have some very good news, the application that I have been working very, very hard on since earlier this year, called Pytask, is very close to the next release now (literally days away if all goes to plan) and it brings some very cool improvements as well as some requested and unexpected improvements too. I don’t want to give away the juicy detail’s until release time, so you will have to wait until then.

Choice

I love the sheer amount of choice I have when using Ubuntu, I can choose from many web browsers, heaps of music and media players, I can choose to use the Terminal over a GUI when I want (I tend to be doing this more and more), I love being able to get sick of an application only to find a better application for the same job and I thoroughly enjoy trying new alternative applications.

Freedom

I love having full control over my whole desktop, it is a great feeling when I can install/remove applications with a single command. I love actually having a useful Terminal, when I need to use Windows 7 at college I suddenly remember that I can no longer do anything useful with it (which results in a *sigh* followed by a *facepalm*).

Usability

This is such a huge benefit of Ubuntu (and Linux in general), it is for this very reason that I now do all my college assignments at home, simply because I get them all done way faster. I find it so much faster to multi-task on Ubuntu, although this is limited somewhat because I have a very old computer (Pentium 4 from 2003), but Ubuntu solves this by not frustrating me, it doesn’t throw error dialogs at me, it doesn’t waste precious CPU cycles telling me that there is a serious problem, it just quietly works through it and return’s to normal.

Rest assured though, as soon as I have the cash lying around, I am planning on buying some new hardware.

Conclusion

I could write so much more about this topic, but I won’t, because I don’t want you to read an essay. To conclude, here is a screenshot of my current Ubuntu 10.10 desktop: