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Recently I tried to repair my (not so) old Acer Aspire One A150 netbook, which battery died unexpectedly from night to day. To my very surprise, it was just a BIOS error preventing the computer to charge it. After following some easy instructions, it's now up and running for more than two hours without recharge.
Last but not least. It had Ubuntu installed, and since last updates it was unbearably slow. I never liked Ubuntu too much, due to its trend to make whatever radical change from update to update, with the target put in convincing hesitant people coming from other platforms.
At this stage even apt-get stopped working, with raising conflicts impossible to solve that finally I got sick of. So I decided to put something small, minimum but enough, quick and cute, a combination that already went well in other old PC that I use at the studio to run the Hammond organ emulation software: Debian with Window Maker. Here it goes a screenshot:
Beautiful, isn't it? Irresistible in its imitation of the classical NeXTSTEP user interface, it is a very comfortable and fast window manager. The netbook is flying now, it has never worked so fluid, specially useful and fast is workspace switching, amazing.
Nevertheless, there is a price to pay: it lacks many of the functionalities you'd expect to have in a modern desktop, but… are they really necessary? Since the mass spread of devices such as smartphones and tablets, I have the impression that the concept of Desktop is getting outdated, and even more in a netbook. And these enormous icons and simple concepts like the Dock provide the adequate immediacy for this kind of devices.
Additionally, not the credit for Window Maker in this case, tweaking a bit X-Window configuration multitouch works great now, I would never had thought from this old netbook…
I was looking for one traditional bota bag, and had the opportunity to purchase one in a recent craft market. Very nice and also cheap (26€ for a 2 litre skin) considering it is 100% handmade and lasts a full life (planned obsolescence did not reach the small wineskin market…). Crafted by Fresneda, the one and only wineskin craftsman in Valdepeñas, and one of the two remaining in all the region of Castilla-La Mancha, Spain.
It is comprehensible but sad that nowadays these objects are no longer part of daily life, except for some farmers and in traditional fair dates. In my case there is no better container to carry in my trekking routes, and its aesthetics, smell and feel are very evocative.
Reviewing photos taken this year I found this weird thing… It was April 2011 when I flew into a rage to buy Apple's brand new 13” Mac Book Pro. My other laptop was about to die, it was my longest lasting computer, more than 6 years of hard work.
And suddenly I put them on the table, in order to compare the sizes. I put also the netbook and, being such a geek scene, also both plu computers I own, the Slug and the SheevaPlug.
Well then… There it is the family picture: all my owned working computers, one with Mac OS X, the rest with GNU/Linux (Ubuntu in the laptops, Debian in the plug computers). An image if UNIX/UNIX Like Victory!!
And due to the fact that all three laptops had X-Window System, I couldn't resist to launch xeyes, and try to make it seem that older ones were looking jealously to the new kid in town… (Oh, my God… This is certainly alarming…)
I got aware of this initiative thanks to my friend Jorge. At first I thought Nokia was seeking for a brand new tune, and I clearly imagined myself uploading one of the songs I have around my head these days.
But not, the thing is to go around the most listened tune daily in the world that by the way, and as César clarified us with this article, is an excerpt from ”Gran Vals”, a work by Spanish musician Francisco Tárrega, yep, the same one that composed the extremely beautiful ”Recuerdos de la Alhambra”, versioned by Mike Oldfield in an indigenous fashion for “The killing fields” OST, and also known in Spain as the hymn of a wiener maker company.
Well, here you have the 18 seconds tune: NonStopNokia.
The tune has its own history: lead tune is held by organ. It consists on the original one form Nokia, doubling the number of notes by repeating each two, a sort of echo effect, with the goal of creating more counterpoint and making it more rhythmical, more suitable for dancing.
Now that I'm a Mac OS X user, I created the tune with Garageband. Appart from the drum sample, I also put bass, strings and electric piano tracks. I played all of them with my MIDI keyboard. I did not follow the original chords, gave my own style to get a different feeling.
Did you like it?… If so… why don't you vote for me? The contest is due at the beginning of October '11. But, well.. I´m not hopeful at all, I'm just glad for having enjoyed so much and how proud I am with the result.
At last, after several tests and tricks, I publish my brand new personal web page using DokuWiki.
Tumblr, Wordpress… Why making life more complicated? Well, first due to a sort of personal and professional challenge. Also to not to depend on an external service, yet have to admit that Tumblr is really beautiful.
Other reason is that I wanted something more than a blog: a lightweight multilingual CMS in order to implement a kind of bliki (I love this term).
I also didn't want to run it on a database, I wanted to use file storage, so that I can now keep a Mercurial repository with all the website so that I can edit it offline (either using web interface or other editor) and then comfortably incorporate changes to the website, and viceversa, I can synchronize changes with just a click or two.
Offline editing is becoming specially delightful for photo albums and big size files: I create them quickly locally and once they are ready, just sync repositories. For the moment it is working pretty well.
Did you like it?