Vim For Perl Developers Title pretty much says it all. random($foo) pointed out Vim for Perl developers with some good tips and tricks that apply pretty well to perl and other languages as well.

Desktop Tape This proposal made it onto one of the GNOME devel lists. It's for desktop tape, which is:

A desktop Tape would homogenise multiple desktops into one whole: rather than moving from screen to screen, you move smoothly along a long, 'infinite' horizontal space, like several screens glued on to eachother; or, like a long tape.

A simple idea, but still fundamentally different than it's nearby neighbors, the virtual desktops. I'd be interesting in giving this a try or seeing it implemented. I'd have to use it a bit before I'm sold though :)

I Need More Computers Reason #4,204 why you need more computers at home..... distcc for distributed builds. Now built in nicely to gentoo's build system. There is a nice article on optimizing it and for while it's slashdotted here's the article text. I set this up on my two gentoo systems in about 2 minutes, emerge distcc and ccache, put "distcc ccache" in the FEATURES in /etc/make.conf, then run distcc-config --set-hosts "localhost ip.of.other.host" and you're done.

Raising Humans For Birds My Human, My Slave is a book written by parrots, for parrots. A great new training book to teach you everything you need to know about living with humans. Including the details of bite aversion therapy, and how and when to apply it.

GIMP 2.0 Released Well dayum, I didn't even notice that GIMP - The GNU Image Manipulation Program version 2.0 was finally released. Of course, this isn't a huge impact on me, as I've been using the 1.3 series for ages. Still, it's nice to see it's finally out, and hopefully now they can start getting ahead with whatever 2.1-3.0 have in store.

Nifty vids of some of the new features here.

The graphics landscape has changed a bit since the 2.0 series started, and the wider acceptance of digital cameras and amateur photographers are showing a need for graphics applications aimed specifically at that market (ie: Adobe Elements, MS Digital Image whatever, and so on). Maybe GIMP could be spun off so that a different UI could take advantage of all the technology behind it, but be focused more on digital cameras and imaging than a full blown image program.

My Drives are Coooool Baby A bit of minor downtime today, planned but not announced, mostly because I'm a horrible, evil person. That and Fred put in a couple of hard drive fans which have moved the temperature of the SCSI drives from the mid 50s to a nice cool 26 degrees. All is back up, newest kernel, and all is joy happiness and rainbows.

Magnetoids - New Magnetic Geek Toys Magnetoids are basically just magnets, but their shape seems to make them more fun. Pics and videos at the linked site. Thanks Boing Boing.

Pirated and Stolen Websites An interesting site that tracks pirated, copied, or "looks real close" websites is Pirated Sites!! Aaarrgghh...

Linux Gamers' FAQ Never seen this before... the Linux Gamers' FAQ, which includes such topics as how to run games with a dual head setup.

CRM114 Spam Filter in Debian Joshua pointed out a good little howto on Using CRM114 in Debian. I've heard good things about CRM114, I can't wait to have a bit of extra time to try it out. My current Bogofilter setup seems to be missing more and more spam lately :(

Adopt a Penguin Another good one from Foot_Note, the Penguin Warehouse, where you can buy your pet penguin today!

Photo Management for GNOME Larry has released F-Spot 0.01, which looks like potentially a very nifty app that will fill the need for photo management software (a la adobe photoshop album) in Linux. Can't wait to try it out!

Safe Voting? Texas Safe Voting has been making the rounds... footage of the review of the e-voting machines, with some real gems picked out: allowing voting twice (or letting it go to court), machines that can add, and tallys that don't match (and people are ok with this) are some highlights. Go Technology!

Kazaa Cleaner Kazaa Cleaner will remove spyware bundled with the kazaa desktop. Personally I prefer kazaa lite, but hey, this would do well if you're like me and have a desktop machine where someone (else) has installed the "real" kazaa desktop and let spyware run free on their system.

Update: As BB notes (where I originally got the link) this may or may not be completely legit, and apparently gives your AV software a fit. I'm not using windows right now, so I neither can vouch for this. Anyone try it yet?

Caught On Tape I'm going to put this video in the "funny" section, simply because I love seeing polititians backpeddle and get caught in their own lies. Go Rummy! Kudos to Etan for the find.

GNOME 2.6 Release Party Locator A GNOME 2.6 Party Locator has been put up for those who wish to celebrate the release (next week) of the latest and greatest in the GNOME release series. Anyone in the Vancouver area going to have one?

UDev Primer From the latest gentoo newsletter is a pointer to Got udev working, now what?! which has some good stuff on setting up the new udev filesystem on your 2.6 gentoo system.

Black Balls Flash Game Chris points out yet another horribly addictive game. I didn't find it as much fun as the last one, but it's got the potential for goodness.

Last Day for Sunrun Registration! Just a reminder for everyone who is going to sign ujp for the sunrun, today is the last day to sign up for 10km of leg, foot and brain pain, in the potential cold and rain, along with 10,000 other people!

So head over and register now (look for the 'team members: click here' a bit down). The team to join is "Userfriendly the comic strip".

Old Cell Numbers Derek points to a great piece on what happens when you get a famous persons old phone number. Great read.

Blocking Mail Liars Good thread on the postfix-user email list on How to ban spam pretending to be from my domain. Some good configuration options for the postfix users out there.

Gnome 2.8 Roadmap Cool, Breakmygentoo.net has a link to the GNOME Community Road Map, with details of what is planned for both developers and users in the next 6 months or so of gnome testing (2.7) and release (2.8). Cool stuff!

Political Cartoons Found some amusing stuff in The Cartoons of Clay Bennett. Political cartoons from the US, but funny/scary/funny-cause-it's-true regardless.

Working Jabber Config Because sgr asked me via IM, the config files I use for a working jabber server under gentoo linux (they are the default files, only customized with the needed urls) have been posted at: http://jabber.ufies.org/config/ Maybe it'll help someone.

No Bagles Thanks Kasia and her readers have some good info on blocking w32.beagle.j with postfix, procmail and spamassassin.

Day After Tomorrow Trailer The Day After Tomorrow has it's full trailer up now. If you recall, this is a movie that I talked about a while back. It could still totally suck of course, but who knows :)

Spirit and Opportunity Weblogs on LiveJournal Eclecticism has a pointer to eclecticism >the real story from Mars, a pair of livejournals from the Spirit and Opportunity rovers. Funny stuff!

Why RealPlayer Sucks Jogin.com has a nice post on why realplayer sucks.

UDEV Quickstart A short but decent (and untested by me) guide to setting up udev in a hurry has been written by slarti. It's got a gentoo slant on it, but might be useful to other distros as well.

Comic Book Movies Upcoming LMB has a list of upcoming comic book movies from Marvel stretching into 2007. X-Men 3, Hulk 2, Spiderman 2 and 3 and the Fantastic 4 are in the mix. I'm not sure if the fad will last that long, but it might, if the movies don't completely and totally suck. I do notice there's no Daredevil 2 in there.....

Request for Generous UFies Via my dear friend Iambe:

A VERY SPECIAL REQUEST

A very dear UFie I know (who will have to remain anonymous because he doesn?t know I am doing this) informed me earlier than he is shy a CD burner because his conked out on him in a cruel twist of fate. Normally when this happens we would just head on out to yon nearest webstore or brickstore and pick up a new one (funds providing) ? however our friend is unable to do so because of not only limited income (disability income) but because of a disability (mobility).

If you happen to have an extra CD burner (say you just recently upgraded to a DVD burner) that is hanging around and wouldn?t mind shipping it to a US address on a random act of kindness, please get in touch with me at iambe at userfriendly d-o*t org(an) and will see if we can?t match your spare hardware with this kind soul.

Thank you,

Iambe

Bubbles Addiction This game is just evil. 22,000+ here...

Damn you JWZ!

Link fixed, thanks Randy.

Letters About the Boobage Ah, I love the wacko concervatives in the US. The smoking gun has a nice collection of letters to the FCC about the Janet Jackson Boobage "incident". It notes that most of the email flooded in not on the day of the boob viewing, but later on after concervative groups started screaming for their nipples to be drawn, quartered and put on a pike in town square that the letters came in. Some asking for the singers' (and all news media) imprisonment.

Ah, gotta love it. Read a few of the letters and you'll see everything from an analysis of the nipple decoration and why it's not something that's worn every day to likening the viewing of a nipple to the end of days. One letter linked above notes that "just a few years ago the word homosexual was an outrage (it was?), and now half the country wants to sanction gay marriage", then matches this up with a nipple today, everyone walking around naked tomorrow. Isn't this the "slippery slope" argument that the fundamentalists are always talking about? Or is that the lefties? Or both? It's a pretty flawed argument anyway. I think that this guy should really take a look at what else is on TV before getting up in an outrage over something he probably only heard about after the fact (my guess). Luckily there are voices of reason in there too: "send [me] the money/resources & I will give it to some poor children who won't be able to eat tonight."

Erhm... so yea, read the funny letters. Thanks Fark.

HyperThreading on Linux A nifty article on hyperthreading on linux has some benchmarks and explanations of what it is and why you want it. Anyone who wants to see the UFies.org box running on a HyperThreading processor feel free to click on the little donate button to the right :)