Re: Name change

On 2007-04-07, Rowland McDonnell <real-address-in-sig@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Whiskers <catwheezel@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Rowland McDonnell <real-address-in-sig@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Whiskers <catwheezel@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

snip

Ye gods. 9 inches, eh? Well, well, well. That's `original Mac size',
that is - and they didn't have greyscale at all in standard trim, just
black and white. That's when I found out about the joys of overlapping
windows - you just don't have the room for anything else if you ask me.

One window 'maximised' was all I could manage on that thing. The office
desktops were text-only two-colour 80x25 character 13" displays at the
time (obviously, not running Windows).

You can do a lot with an 80x25 character display.

I often do.

snip

If you don't mind losing control and ownership of the images,
<http://tinypic.com/> hits the spot.

Hmm. `No nudity of offensive content allowed'. No `offensive' content?
Hmm. Terms and conditions, me no like. Nothing offensive means you can
get into trouble for perfectly innocent behaviour just on the basis of
someone complaining that you offended them.

What can they do if they don't like your picture? You aren't registered,
so the only sanctions they have are to remove the file and perhaps report
you to your ISP - or block your IP number if they're confident enough that
it's 'static'. The world is full of people quick to claim 'offence' about
all sorts of things, so businesses and law-enforcers usually take a
reasonably robust attitude to such complaints.

Tell you what, see that email? That's what it looks
like here. One pair of pics is `Each monitor is its natural state'; the
other pair of pics is `Each monitor after I've hit F9 to fire up Exposé
so I can see all the windows'.

Let's make it recursive <http://i18.tinypic.com/29mm0t2.png> <G>

<chuckle> Excellent! I could go for another step, but not tonight.

(I spy a real geek's OS at your end, mind - what's that down the right
hand side of your monitor?

GKrellM; basically a custom set of monitors and 'toys' with a launcher for
each of the apps I use most often.

Righto.

I have a self-hiding 'panel' as well,
which you an see in the latest screenshot.

Is that the thing along the top? It seems to be akin to the MacOS
`Dock' - an entity I consider to be a Really Big Mistake in the
implementation we have. The problem is that it's used for `everything':
launcher (app, file, folder, disc, server, and all other entities),
displays all running user apps, keeps icons of minimised windows, it's
where the trash is now kept, and it's also meant for information display
(application icons displayed on the dock often display information).

The panel I use can have such things included, or not; it's very
configurable. Some of the features, such as the 'iconbox' which shows an
icon for each window (either globally or on just the current virtual
desktop) can be used seperately from the panel, or not at all. I don't
have to have a panel at all, but it has its uses so I keep it 'hidden'
except when I 'mouse over' it, so it isn't intrusive. I can minimise or
close the GKrellM display too, of course, but on a 'widescreen' diplay
there usually seems to be room for 'something' lurking at one side.
Windows can cover it any time I want, anyway.

Thing is, as soon as you have more than a few icons, they get far too
small and it's just unmanagable. That's why I've got `DragThing' - much
more like the old-tyme Mac `Launcher'. Nice big friendly buttons,
switchable to different `panes' of launcher buttons, and you get a few
things on top of that - I have what's effectively a menu of all running
user apps with a GUI face, and *only* the running user apps with a GUI
face, so it's manageable. There's a separate one for discs, and
DragThing also gives me trash icons all over the place - on a couple of
the `magically appearing' menus, and on the desktop.

There's a 'desktop menu' for
launching less frequently used apps. I have no icons on my desktop, just
'post-it notes' as required.

Righto. A tidy desktop is the sign of a sick mind. My desktop is a
mess, for all that I try to keep it tidy. I collect junk, and drop it
on the desktop until I manage to work out what the hell to do with it,
which can sometimes take a while.

My computer 'desktop' is the only tidy thing in my life.

I do have a little toy on my desktop; it takes the form of a small
animated 'thing' which moves around the screen, along the top of the
active window or the bottom of the display, taking various forms which get
up to 'appropriate' antics - yesterday, a skating acrobatic penguin; today
a little white kitten (which is curled up atop this window, snoring, at
present). Is that sane enough? <G>

The current 'background' is a simple
graphic; sometimes I use a photo. There are some 'trick' backgrounds too,
such as news-tickers, transparent real-time syslog entries, animations,
etc, but mostly I think a background should not steal the scene.

Me too. I use a swoopy blue affair that's - well, just right. It
doesn't intrude on my thinking at all, but it's got enough visible
features to help with being aware of `how things are moving' when you
move stuff on screen.

System stats, eh? Who really needs that
sort of info when using a computer normally? Okay, in my case, I can
tell if I'm thrashing the CPUs for some reason 'cos the fans get faster
and a lot louder - but...)

Rowland.

Well, you seem to have the system or CPU temperature, and the time, and
various launchers, displayed across the top of your screen.

Umm, ish, okay, so I do have a temperature displayed. Not sure why,
mind, and I'm not sure which temperature it is (there are many
temperature sensors). Aside from the rest of it - well the menubar is
the place to keep controls, so that's what I've got there.

Judging by the temperature indicated, I'd say it's the CPU itself (or one
of them, or the hottest, or something). I have a 'hyperthreading' P4 CPU
so the two CPUs shown by the monitor are not quite two independent things;
hence only one CPU temperature display.

Actual launchers - well, while I could use *one* of those things as a
launcher, I mainly use it for finding folders.

I generally launch a terminal (RXvt) and run mc (Midnight Commander) a
very nice text-based file manager (and editor and ftp client etc), for
'finding stuff'.

Anyway, to explain: the temperature probably ought to go, 'cos I don't
have any need to see it. It's displayed by the Temperature Monitor app,
which I keep running 'cos it keeps a log and I've been interested in
what the hell goes on at times (some software doesn't play nice and
sometimes uses 100% of a CPU - with four CPUs, this can happen even with
a pre-emptive multitasking OS).

Yes. That's one of the things I use GKrellM to tell me about. CPU and
disc activity, LAN traffic, a sort of 'mini top display', etc.

But the rest of it? Okay: the green icon to the right of the
temperature is SMARTreporter, which will tell me if either of my
internal HDDs fails its self-check. Then we've got the `dial up my ISP'
icon (and yes I do have a modem connected as well as the broadband
router), the `Classic' icon (for the backwards compatibility OS) because
it's a good idea to turn it off if you're not using it.

The union flag is the `UK keyboard layout' sign, and there are a couple
of character related palettes available that way which I've never used
much but probably would if I did much wysiwyg text stuff. Volume knob
is obviousl. Time and date - handy reference material. The small
parrot is `my login icon' - the menu there lets you switch between
different users on the fly.

I remember key-strokes for 'switching users', but it's rare for me to have
more than one human using my computers - and when I do they're usually all
me.

And then the small filing cabinet is XMenu:
a configurable pull-down menu of files and folders so you can `just get
to whatever' in the file system without hassle. And the small blue
magnifying glass is the bloody, bloody Spotlight (system search) icon
and the sooner Spotlight is shot, the better.

Is that one of these new-fangled 'index everything' things? They've
infiltrated the Linux world too; my distro, Mandriva, had 'kat' included
in the default installation for a while - and then made it optional in
response to the shrieks of agony as it hogged CPU clicks and disc access
apparently making some peoples systems almost unusable while the initial
index database was constructed. Presumably someone thinks they're a good
idea, but I can't see why.

I like to see
what my machine is doing;

I know the feeling - but I find I'd rather not be distracted by that
sort of thing. I mean, I've often got `Activity Monitor' running (think
of a GUI version of top, and then add brass knobs and all the other
monitoring in that line you can think of), and I can't help keeping an
eye on things when I have. Waste of flippin' time, that's what.

I'm very good at ignoring things.

Except
that sometime they will be some process got itself messed up - usually
Classic - and needing a bit of a prod (aka kill -9, or `Force quit' in
MacOS X terms).

'Runaway process'. We get those in Linux sometimes too. Lots of ways to
stop them, fortunately.

Mind you, it's quite entertaining to see a process thrashing away and
chewing up (say) 60-80% of one CPU - with the overall %CPU /idle/
indicator floating around the 75% mark.

Which reminds me: I've got a song called `kill -9', by a British space
rock band called `Born to go'. The rest of the lyrics are Unix commands
too, apparently. I've not checked carefully, but I reckon the claim is
near enough true. Mind you, the fact that Unix has commands like
`whoami' helps.

Unix commands and tools seem to have been given 'interesting' names as a
matter of course. I think the geeks of old got a kick out of log entries
such as 'creating child' and 'terminating parent' and 'executing killall'.

when the scanners are out on force it's fun for
a little while to watch the router 'status' and logs too - rather like
being indoors and watching the sleet and gale doing their worst out there.

Fair enough.

I've long taken the line that I really don't want to know what it's
doing behind the scenes - but while that's what I'd *like*, here in the
real world one does have to pay attention and yes of course you've got a
point about the entertainment value. Not that I'd know how to interpret
what's going on by looking at any indication of network traffic.

Rowland.

My knowledge tends to stop at the point of "I didn't make it do that so
what's going on?". That's when I sometimes start learning more stuff.

--
-- ^^^^^^^^^^
-- Whiskers
-- ~~~~~~~~~~
.