Linux still not a good desktop

So I figured I would bite the bullet and give Kubuntu another go as my desktop. The install was easy, it supported all my hardware out of the box and I was happy. I even spent a bunch of time getting Beryl to work and that was sweet, but then the bugs started. A list of tasks I needed to be able to accoplish

• I wanted to connect to Exchange and Evolution is pretty good at that now.
• I can get to the file server at work fine, but I can't open anything in openoffice directly, ouch.
• Firefox locked up and crashed many times.
• Wireless configuration is painful for a roaming laptop.
• Dual monitors are a must but getting xorg to work with both, good luck.

The more I tried to do the harder it got and the more buggy. Will Linux ever be stable enough or be able to exist in a Windows network, not for a while. *UPDATE: I have switched to Ubuntu and gnome, much better experience, I don't care what Linus says LOL. Anyway, there are still a lot of bugs. What will make it better: -Better and faster drivers from hardware vendors -More OSS developers to help with apps so they are tested and stable before release -Corporate support, money talks.

Asterisk 1.4

With asterisk 1.4 finally out of beta I figured I would give it a whirl. They have now stepped up to the "distro" market to compete with trixbox and probably do a better job. You do have to register on the asterisk site to download it but oh well. The wizard is easy to use and the asterisk web GUI is very very nice. Things that are missing is voicemail, call recording, a reception module and phone provisioning. Hopefully I can get that intergrated sooner rather then later. Trixbox is still using an old version of asterisk 1.2.13 I think. That is not going to work with the amount of changes that have been done for 1.4.0. Trixbox just doesn't make things much easier if you know what you are doing.

Windows Home Server will live in your closet, simplify your life | Jesse D. Lewin | Microsoft 10

Check out the new windows home server. This will finally will make having multiple computers at home convenient. Check out the backup feature, that alone makes it worth it. M$ is doing things right for once. Link

Video Editing and Jump Cut

I saw this new site/service on techtv looks pretty sweet, it is called Jumpcut. I will be trying it out over the next while and post how it is. Over the years I have made a few highlight tapes for people I play football with and have coached. This on is of my brother from 2002. I usually use Ulead Media Studio pro, it makes it really easy.

Terrible Terry Tate

What every company needs as their COO. Some quotes:

• You can't come into my kitchen, kick my do, and take a box full of ballpoints. Your ass must be crazy.
• You can't come tippy toe'n up in this hump bumpy
• The only pain I got time for is the pain I inflict on fools that don't know what time it is
• Check Razer, check razer, its the pain train, the pain train is coming WOOO WOOO, WOOO WOOO

Adding digg to blogger

So I wanted to add the dig buttons you see around to my blog, not that anyone is going to even read mine but I though I would add it anyway. I found this post which pretty much says to make an html file with only this javascript and add it as an iframe. I looked at the source of the javascript and all it does is add and iframe so why would you add and iframe of an iframe? The other stupid thing is digg requires you to input the url of the digg story not the url of what you are digging. This makes it a pain in the ass and requires you to digg the story or the button wont even show up, you just get an error. The reddit button is makes much more sense and the url is the url of the story so you can easily add it to your blogger template like so.

<script>reddit_url='<$BlogItemPermalinkURL$>'</script> <script language="javascript" src="http://reddit.com/button.js?t=1"></script>

The digg buttons I add to the blog post not the template like this:

<iframe src="http://digg.com/api/diggthis.php?u=[digurl]" frameborder="0" height="82" scrolling="no" width="55"></iframe>

Ever need a math tutor

This was just on reddit nothing new but remeber Winnie from the Wonder years. Check out her July 2005 photos from stuff http://thegrumpiest.com/?p=2215. But take a look at here wikipedia page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danica_McKellar she published a paper on "Percolation and Gibbs states multiplicity for ferromagnetic Ashkin–Teller models on Z2" and offers free math tutoring to her fans. The other cool thing is her and Natalie Portman are the only two real actors with an Erdős–Bacon number

Asterisk Developers Kit

I received a marketing email from Digium yesterday found here. For anyone that does asterisk hacking, or uses it as a product, the asterisk developers kit looks like a very worth while investment. To summarize it:

• An Asterisk Appliance with 64MB RAM, 8MB on board flash, 5 Ethernet ports (4 LAN, WAN), Craft (serial) port, support for 8 analog (FXS/FXO) ports, Universal power supply.

• Quad FXS analog card and Quad FXO analog card

• Multi-media add-on flash cards

• Cables for all supported port types

• Polycom (TM) IP-430 SIP Phone

• CD with software

• Documentation and specifications

• How to manuals

• Access to the Digium AADK Wiki

And there are 3 packages:

• AADK Professional Bundle - for the asterisk hackers
• AADK Administrator Bundle - if you want some support and trainning
• AADK Standard - if you are cheap

Wengo Phone

Wengo phone releases a flash based SIP phone. Being the voip guy that I am figured I would try it out and see if there is any possiblity of intergrating it into asterisk or the project that I am helping out with Web MeetMe. *Edit: Wengo phone requires you to be logged in on you blog with the flash app. Logging in to the chat software does not work, booo. Kinda cool but useless, waiting for a sip flash phone. Did a quick google search for one but couldn't find anything.