#!CrunchBang Linux

I'm going to give #!CrunchBang a try and see how I like it in VirtualBox first of course. Once it finishes downloading... Grrr been spoiled lately.

• Download CrunchBang Linux
• Read about CrunchBang Linux

I have tried out #!CrunchBang for a while now. It is great if you really like minimalism on your desktop. The keyboard shortcuts are easy to learn for the most part. There are some spots that could use some polish but it's mostly aesthetic. Other than that it's a pretty solid distribution with some nice default software choices.

Beautiful Simplicity.

Normally my interests are tech related but this is very different. I love the asthetics of this simply constructed home. It reminds me of a Hobbit style home from Lord of the Rings. As a younger man I visited Frank Lloyd Wright's "House on the Rock" Which is an architectural wonder and a museum of oddities. Visiting it gave me an appreciation for buildings that incorporated their natural surroundings into the structure. The site has sort of "how to" and there is a bit of tree hugging hippy rhetoric. To be honest though I would love to live in a house like this as long as it has major utilities water, electricity(solar/wind a plus), and High-speed internet.

"A Low Impact Woodland Home"

My Google Voice Invite Arrived!

I finally got my invite to Google Voice. In a word it is amazing, there is so much that it can do. The most impressive feature to me is it's main feature having voice mail sent to e-mail including a transcription. I hate voice mail dialing numbers, going through menus, and having to listen to a ten minute message to hear the phone number at the very end. This will help me stay on top of my message so much better. Setup is easy and intuitive and only takes seconds. The only tricky part now is getting everyone to start using this number. I think I'll stop answering direct calls and have them call this number instead if they want me to take the call.

Here are some of the basic features. Call forwarding one number can be forwarded up to six phones right now. Call connections, I can initiate a call on the Google Voice website and it will connect me free (in the US) to that number. Now when receiving a call there are some goodies here too.

When you answer a call, they tell you who's on the line. Then, they present you with four ways to handle the call:

• Accept it (press 1)
• Send it to voicemail (press 2)
• ListenIn^TM on the voicemail (press 3)
• Accept and record the call (press 4)

I'm going to start using the "Accept and record the call" option mostly with my wife. so when she tells me to do something I have it written down(transcribed) and if she tells me to do the wrong thing I'll have proof. I love technology.

Avant Window Navigator vs. Gnome-Do's Docky vs. Cairo Dock.

I have been using AWN for a couple years now with Ubuntu and have been really happy with it. It's a pretty solid dock and has all the features you would expect. I thought that are other things out there and that I should try them out.
I started with Docky since well... I already had Gnome-Do installed so it was next. Docky is a very minimal dock it looks nice if not a little plain. I started adding icons which was pretty neat you just use the search feature and there is a little plus symbol to add it to the dock. Yup and that's where the fun ended I couldn't figure out how to add a custom icon to an app. which I'm really picky about. The solutions I found were convoluted and very indirect. I continued with it for a couple days and kept it simple. I liked the window grouping and being able to use the scroll wheel to change window focus. I know a lot of people think but "Gnome-Do uses Mono and Mono is the devil" lately but big deal it's not a problem right now so forget about it already.

I Moved on to Cairo Dock.

All I can say is WTF! What a mess. Don't get me wrong there are some nice features like the app grouping and the icon themes are pretty cool but also very incomplete. Applying the themes seemed a bit buggy at times too. It had about as many features as AWN just a bit disorganized.

In Conclusion I'm back to AWN for now and I'm glad to be back. They all have their strengths and weaknesses. AWN gets my choice for two reasons, features and the simple configuration tool (AWN Mangaer).

Quick Update 7/21/09:

I have been unable to use AWN for a couple weeks now due to some bug in Ubuntu Karmics GTK 2.0. Details here. So I tried using Docky again to find out it was out of date the new V.82 is much nicer than what I was running and it has some windows 7 looks about it but it's pretty nice. It may be hard to switch back that is if I try to.

First blog post for Indirect Tech.

Disclaimer...
Most posts will be pro Linux especially Debian based distros.
Most will be about Desktop Eye candy and usability.
Some scripting and Command line stuff too

Whatever I get caught up on or anything I have to pull together from too many sources to be useful I will be put together and re-post here in a friendlier format.