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Welcome
I'm Laura. I am female, 27, a codemonkey, a linux enthusiast, a gamer, a bookworm, a knitter, gothic, musical, pagan, vehemently geeky and occasionally ineptly artistic.
Hi!
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Desktop victory
Posted at 26 Jun 2010 10:50:25 AM |
My desktop finally looks normal again!
In previous versions of Ubuntu (8.04 a. k. a. Hardy) my embedded terminal was accomplished using a combination of devilspie and gnome-terminal 2.22. The specific version was necessary; any higher and it wouldn't obey devilspie's commands to remove the titlebar and remain stationary.
In the current version (9.10 a. k. a. Karmic), it's still accomplished using gnome-terminal because I like its transparency, but this time devilspie is the buggy one. I've got the system resources now to go All Compiz, All The Time, so that's what's controlling the embedded window.
Steps for an Embedded Terminal on Ubuntu 9.10:
1. Open up a new gnome-terminal. Right-click on the window and edit the profile to have the characteristics that you want -- transparency, font, font color, scrollback, etc -- and save the profile. Go ahead and save it as the default, since at this point it's important to note that as all of the ccsm settings reply on the application name, (rather than the title) you can't actually use gnome-terminal for anything except this one window.* My default terminal is actually xterm.
2. Fire up the CompizConfig Settings Manager (ccsm). You'll be customizing a few things here: Window Decoration, Place Windows, and Window Rules.
It may make things easier if you have a gnome-terminal actually running during this, as changes will be visible in realtime once you're done with each plugin and click the "Back" button.
Window Decoration: Enable this plugin, and change the "Decoration windows" box from the default "any" to "(any) & !(class=Gnome-terminal)". This ensures that every window except one of class Gnome-terminal will have a border around it.
Place Windows: Enable this plugin, switch to the "Fixed Window Placement" tab, and add a new entry under "Windows with fixed positions". For mine, the positioned window is "class=Gnome-terminal", the X and Y positions are 0 and 30, respectively. Note that in X Windows, your positions are relative to the upper-left corner of your screen.
Window Rules: My entries for Skip taskbar, Skip pager, Below, Sticky, Non movable windows & Non resizable windows are all "class=Gnome-terminal". This effectively renders the terminal pinned below all other windows, immobile and invisible to your pager & task switcher.
In the same plugin, switch to the "Size Rules" tab. Add a new entry. Sized Windows should be "class=Gnome-terminal", my width and height are set to 950 and 900, respectively. At my 1680x1050 resolution this takes up about half of my screen widthwise, and almost all of it lengthwise. Note that these aren't the same numbers you'd use were you to set the window's size via gnome-terminal's --geometry switch (for a window roughly the same size, I was using --geometry="140x70".)
3. Once you've the terminal looking like you want, close out of ccsm and add an entry to your System -> Preferences -> Startup Applications. What you name it is your business; the command should be simply "gnome-terminal".
* Technically a lie, as you could use "name=YourProfileName" instead of "class=Gnome-terminal" in all of the settings, which would mean that you can create a new gnome-terminal profile called "YourProfileName" just for this embedded window and keep using gnome-terminal as your default term. But I prefer xterm, so I didn't.
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I'm sure that I could be a movie star...
Posted at 26 Jun 2010 10:49:44 AM |
The paperwork is now signed, so it's official: I have a new job. No, I won't post the details here but suffice to say there won't be a gap between when my current contract ends and the new one begins.
Nevermind that I might like to have a bit of a gap, considering my extracurricular work load.
Of rather more immediate note, however: CoffeeMate's Hazlenut creamer is delicious.
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My brother and I took a trip last weekend to Kansas City, for the specific purpose of taking in the Billy Joel/Elton John Face2Face concert being held at the Sprint Center. As anticipated it was amazing and not an experience that I would ever regret having. It's the second time we've seen Billy, and the first for Elton, and both were just in fantastic form.
I couldn't help but notice some professional cameramen stationed at the edge of the state, and it makes me wonder whether it would be possible to obtain a recorded copy of the concert... note to self: look into this.
Emotionally speaking, I held it together for Italian Restaurant and Norma Jean, and then lost it completely at Piano Man. It wasn't unexpected... that song has always held particular significance for us.
As I said, I'm grateful for the experience.
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My Olympic project had its debut that same night, and I'm ridiculously happy with it:
Yarn: Kid Seta mohair, 3 25g balls
Needles: US #8 (5mm)
Pattern: My own, if it can be called a pattern, but I'm happy to share it if someone would like. ETA: Pattern link is in the sidebar!
Knitwise, I'm beginning to feel buried. This evening begins the Franklin Habit whirlwind, which hopefully I can get to in time owing to an unexpected mandatory drug test for the abovementioned new job. Tomorrow will be a slightly elongated Lace class, and then the Photography class, about both of which I am unreasonably excited.
I seem to have started a pair of Leyburns with the Fiber Optic sock yarn I'd bought from TLE a bit ago. It's a screamingly bright purple mixed with black and while it looked neat in plain stockinette, I decided after the cuff & a few inches that I really wasn't happy with it. The Leyburn pattern came to mind, and it seemed to me that it would help with the blotchiness.
Thus far, I'm pleased with it:
Snowflakes is on Chart J (there is no spoon Chart I). I made a bit of a goof in chart H wherein I merrily knitted along the top of some trees without noticing that I was simultaneously supposed to be starting the bottoms of some others. Rather than frog it or rework all thirty some repeats, I decided that the next set of trees would just be a bit short and non-overlapping. It's not a bug; it's a feature.
Evenstar is on a bit of a hiatus. The pattern is lovely but I didn't really like how the reeled silk was knitting up, to be honest. It's not particularly hard to work with; it just knits up like a ribbon yarn and ends up feeling coarse and inflexible. I just don't see the point in continuing only to get something which I don't really like. It's in time out for the time being, and when I start again I'm going to knit the silk along with a strand of black Baruffa Cashwool. Either the wool will tame the silk, or the silk will corrupt the wool - only time will tell. But I AM dreading starting this shawl for the fourth time...center-out beginnings drive me straight up the wall.
I've chosen a pattern to make for my nieces as a part of the New Baby package that I'll be giving their parents (no link to preserve the surprise (and also in case I end up disliking it)), and also a pattern for my parents for Christmas (ditto). I picked up some Cascade Elite Premiere on sale at the yarn shop in KC which I plan to make into a collared shrug. The yarn for my surprise gift as well as the Christmas gift is on order, and I think that both of them will be lovely even as I'm starting to panic about the number of things to which I'm "committed" in 2010.
( Click for the rest )
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Rare finds
Posted at 26 Jun 2010 10:49:19 AM |
I never did get around to sharing what I found at Kirkwood Knittery a week or two ago:
And as if that wasn't exciting enough...!
and
I don't know whether I'll be able to knit from them in the near future; my queue is pretty loaded (how awkward is that? It's only February, and I'm booked until Christmas). Still, a girl can dream.
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Gold medal, please!
Posted at 24 Feb 2010 10:05:10 AM |
My Olympic knitting project has been started, worked, and is finished. Pictures to come!
Snowflakes - still not done. It was put on a two week hiatus for the Olympics.
Evenstar Clue 1: Also not done; same reason.
I have, however, successfully grown one thing: my queue (/facepalm). I've decided on my parents' Christmas present, which true to form is enormous, and also on a wedding present for a good friend. The latter involves a custom dye job from Laura at The Unique Sheep, who was responsible for the amazing gradience colorways used by many people in the Evenstar group.
My knitwear design classes at Kirkwood Knittery continue apace; I'm loving the class, but longing for the return of lazy Saturdays. It won't be for a while, though: my brother and I are going to Kansas City this weekend for the Billy Joel/Elton John Face2Face concert (I still cannot believe that he was able to get tickets! Dan, if it involved selling a kidney... just don't tell me) and Franklin Habit (fangirl *squee!*) is coming to St Louis the first weekend in March.
He's both doing a talk & book signing, and teaching classes on Saturday. I've signed up for both the lace intro class and the photography class. I wouldn't have taken the lace one if I hadn't been assured that there is going to be adequate space and I won't be taking a spot from someone who really needs the "Intro" part; mostly it's that I greatly admire his knitting, and for however much I know about lace I am sure that he knows more!
The Blues' Sticks & Stitches game is 3/21, and I need to get a hat or something knit up for that.
Gabe and Tycho from Penny Arcade are going to be here on 3/31, and I've got to get their crocheted Fruit Fucker in the works.
I'm still going to MD Sheep & Wool in May, so if anyone reading this has anything they want from the festival, let me know beforehand! I'm planning to drive there, so there's no worry of not being able to transport things.
P. S: Little Big Planet, with the little knitted sackboys? Fantastic game. I'm thrilled that not only does there exist a recent game which is third person perspective'd, I have friends with a PS3! And after years of WoW, I find myself getting bored with single player games; having to play at someone else's house means co-op!
P. P. S. My sackboy is a tiny knitted penguin.
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I need a snow day.
Posted at 26 Jun 2010 10:49:55 AM |
Lest ye think that I've fallen off the face of the earth, I haven't.
My hard drive died a few days ago, which slowed me down a bit, and the weekends have been hectic lately. Dan's birthday was last week (we had a lovely time, thank you!), I've had a class every Saturday that I'm not doing something else, and the Superbowl was yesterday ... suffice to say, we're swamped.
Nevertheless, here are some distinctly unflattering pictures of my progress:
Snowflakes... Not done.
Selkie socks ... Distinctly not done. In fact, I ripped them back to the ribbing tonight, because reverse stockinette for an entire pair of socks was not going to happen. I'll do regular stockinette instead; the chart won't care.
Twist Cardigan. This is my third try with the Berroco Lustra, and I think that I like it in this format. Of course, I would like it more if I could do the #)%(@! cables correctly. This had a dozen rows ripped out tonight, too.
This is the only project which is behaving itself. Plain stockinette socks, BMFA StR in the Doctors Without Borders colorway. I'm going back to a heel flap; it's more annoying to knit and doesn't look as smooth as a short row heel, but I think it fits better and slouches less.
The first swatch for the Evenstar Mystery Shawl KAL; I'm using 100% reeled silk from an eBay vendor in India. It took me three days to wind the first skein (around a toilet paper tube) and it lives in its very own ziploc baggie for fear that something will touch it and mess up the concentric wraps. It's rather like knitting with supremely slippery ribbon yarn, oddly enough. After a couple of swatches, I feel like I've got a better grasp of the tension needed; what's pictured above is knitted abysmally and blocked worse. (The second, better-knitted swatch was done with an older erroneous chart, so the first swatch picture is still a better representation of just why it's called the "Evenstar Shawl".)
And that's all for now. We're supposed to get a big snowstorm overnight; I may get that snow day after all.
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Progress report on Snowflakes
Posted at 28 Apr 2010 04:47:07 PM |
I figured that after nearly four months, it was about time that I put up some kind of actual progress report on my Snowflakes in Cedar Woods project.
It's gone from a few tiny rows:
To a dinner plate cozy:
To its current form, which I have titled fondly "Bag of Ramen Noodles":
Owing to a superhuman feat of awesomeness by Dan, I did two entire charts yesterday. Today I am off of work, and so far have done the 6 completely plain rows that start Chart G - something along the lines of 4,272 knit sts and 24 corner yarnovers. While I would love to start the actual interesting part of the chart now, my wrists are protesting, my stomach would like lunch, and I have errands to run.
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Google Chrome
Posted at 26 Jun 2010 10:49:31 AM |
Now that this browser is finally workable - for me at least - I thought that I'd start with a mini-review of it.
Chrome is fast. You already know that; it's been Google's main plug for the browser since the beginning. We'll take its speed as read.
Although it's taking some time to break the Firefox-induced habit of making a new tab and immediately hitting Ctrl+K to get to a search bar, I think I'm going to like Chrome's multi-use location/search/bookmarking bar. It's certainly handy to be able to create a new tab and immediately start typing search terms without having to worry about which input box has focus.
I think it's interesting how new browsers just hitting the landscape have to not be as good as their predecessors, but better. Most of us won't look at a new browser unless it encompasses all functions for which we depend on our existing browser of choice AND offers us something more. Just good browsing isn't enough; it's got to have a truly enormous variety of extensions before we're even remotely interested.
For instance: I wouldn't touch Chrome (much less use it as a daily browser) until it had a viable mouse gestures plugin. I checked back regularly for progress on Google's own version of the plugin; it consistently failed to work, so I kept passing on the browser. And apparently, I sat on that particular high horse just a bit too long; Google's own plugin is still rocky*, yes, but Smooth Gestures is up and doing its thing reasonably well. It's not perfect, mind you - the comments regarding issues with https pages and occasional extension crashes are accurate - but it's good enough.
*And by "rocky" I mean "back and forward work, everything else is a complete wash-out."
There are several viable AdBlock extensions now. I don't use any of them except FlashBlock, but I know that this was a deal-breaker for some of you.
Beautify Facebook is nifty, if purely cosmetic.
I'm using Google Wave Notifier to save me from having to have my iGoogle page and gWave pages open all the time. There's a similar gadget for your gMail account, but I prefer the toys and widgets of my complete iGoogle page.
There's a Del.icio.us plugin, which works as expected.
Send from Gmail (no button) is still untried, but if it saves me from having an Outlook mail window pop up every time I click on a mailto: link, it'll be worth it.
Since I see that Chrome is available for Linux now as well (tiny cheer!), I'll be updating my computers at home and seeing how many of these extensions are cross-platform. (Hint: they'd better all be).
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Lookie!
Posted at 26 Jun 2010 10:49:07 AM |
Oh hey, what's that?
Yes, it's Wollmeise! Courtesy of Chanala @ Rav, it's 510 yards of Sockenwolle 100% in the colorway Terra di Siena to be precise. I don't know what it wants to be when it grows up, yet, but I'm fighting the urge to cast on for something and figure it out on the way!
There was more yarn and yarn-related goodies for Christmas, which I haven't posted yet for the rather terrible reason that I haven't finished photographing them yet. This week filled up stunningly fast, but I will get there.
Tonight we've friends coming over for dinner, and I'm taking the opportunity to roast the leg of lamb which I've been saving in the deep freezer. It will be my first lamb roast; wish me luck! Tomorrow is Knit Night (weather permitting) and bowling league resumes on Friday.
Despite having a full week I've made progress on my gloves from Vogue Knitting and on the Snowflakes shawl. Isn't it nice how I wait until it's 10* to start on a pair of warm gloves?
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Well hello there, 2010
Posted at 04 Jan 2010 09:48:12 AM |
A very Happy New Year to all of you, and may this year be even better than the last!
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