Thank You Mr. Mint

I just learned today that my review of Mint 5 “Elyssa” got noticed by the creator and main developer of the hottest distro in town himself, Clem Lefebvre. I thank him for taking the time to write about my Elyssa review on The Linux Mint Blog.

I really appreciate it when my articles got feedbacks be it positive or negative. Hence, I’m very grateful about this latest comment from Mr. Mint. Here are some key excerpts from his review of my review of Mint 5:

As you can see, it’s not the first date and it won’t be last, and Jun’s wife Beth seems to be OK with it. The codenames encourage the personification of Mint releases and if you’ve been reading Jun before or the Mint Cafe/House in the forums you’re probably used to call them “her” by now… not to mention that it annoys a few people, so even better :)

My wife is OK with it just as long as she won’t catch me saying those names while I'm asleep (hehe). I think the use of women codenames is a brilliant idea. It made Mint really unique.

- Jun said: “Unlike Ubuntu, Mint utilizes a single panel with its very own MintMenu –a python-coded menu that allows for fully customizable text, icons, and colors. Some may like this setup but I still prefer the two-panel and classic GNOME-menu combination.”

–> People usually love it or hate it, and they’re quite passionate about this. I guess this is the kind of choice that should make its way into mintDesktop or mintAssistant.

You are right; you should consider adding it as an option in mintAssistant on the next release. Anyway, GNOME is highly customizable and I know how to tweak it to my fancy so it was never a big issue on my part.

I really enjoyed reading this review. The style was very nice to read and the part about the panels gave me an idea for the upcoming Mint 6. I keep note of what’s coming up here by the way: http://www.linuxmint.com/wiki/index.php?title=Felicia_RoadMap

Many thanks to Jun for this review and I look forward to reading about his date with Felicia.

Thank you Clem for the kind words, but most importantly, thank you for creating and sharing to us this excellent Linux distribution. The Free and Open source software community is lucky to have a dynamic and passionate developer like you. I look forward to meeting Felicia soon. --Best of luck to you and to all those who are part of Linux Mint.

Linus Torvalds: World’s Greatest Geek Daddy?

Though considered by many as the world’s greatest computer programmer, Linus Torvalds is not afraid to show everyone his softer side. Some of the photographs that I’m going to show to you should speak for themselves.

The little girls on the photos are Linus' daughters.

Happy Father’s Day!

Smart Wireless Broadband Kit vs. Globe iPhone 3G

I’m on a short vacation at the moment together with my family, and I have been strictly prohibited to touch any electronic device by my wife and child. But, they are already sleeping tight right now so I’m about to make a quick post to keep you all updated on what’s been going on.

I’m using this wireless broadband kit that I got recently from Smart (the leading wireless services provider here in the Philippines) to be able to connect to the Internet anytime anywhere. The connection speed is pretty decent. However, the device installer is only available for Windows and Mac. So for now, I’m stuck with Windows XP running as guest OS on VMWare. When I get this thing to work directly on my Linux box, I will keep you all updated.

Speaking of wireless internet, I just read today that the 3G iPhone has been finally introduced by Steve Jobs with a new smoking hot design and at a very affordable introductory price. The addition of 3G capability made the iPhone an even better internet device. It is said that it will arrive here in the Philippines real soon with Globe (second largest telecommunications company/Smart’s main rival) as the official network carrier.


I know that the title of this post sounds a little funny. But, I’m just wondering whether hi-tech Filipinos who want to get connected on the web all the time will still care about these wireless broadband kits when the 3G iPhones will be made available here in our country.

That’s all for now.

A Satellite View of My Home Town, etc.

We are about to celebrate our town fiesta so I'm not doing much today. In case you are wondering where on earth do I live, I have a satellite view of my home province of Bohol below courtesy of Google Maps. The one with the green arrow and is labeled Talibon (not Taliban) is my hometown. Zooming in will not give you many details because there's not much photographic data yet for our part of the globe, hence what can be seen for now are mostly grasses.

View Larger Map

In other news... I miss distro hopping, that's why I'm writing a "to-try" list here:
-Deli Linux
-openSUSE
-Epidemic GNU/Linux
-TinyMe
-Linux Mint

I also miss playing Linux games; here is my "to-play" list:
-World of Padman
-Alien Arena 2008
-Sauerbraten
-ManiaDrive
-Warzone 2100 RP

In other news yet again... We are about to end the month of May, so tomorrow I will be posting here the "Geek of the Month". You might be interested to find out who will get the most prestigious honor a geek could ever receive (hehe).

That's all for now. I'm out!

12 Essential Exercises for Geeks

Sitting all day in front of the computer is not exactly a healthy habit. However, if your job demands you to be at your desk all day long, then perhaps you should try some of these simple exercises that could help save your life in the long run.

1. Try to stand up every hour to stretch or walk around a bit.

2. Give your eyes a break from focusing on your computer screen. Stretch your calves as this will help prevent blood clots from developing in your legs -- very common among middle-aged computer users.

3. From time to time, stretch your neck. Flex your head forward/backward, side to side and look right and left.

4. If you spend a lot of time typing, roll your wrists regularly to help prevent carpal tunnel syndrome.

5. To help improve blood circulation, roll your ankles regularly.

6. If you tend to hunch in front of the keyboard, you can counter this by performing this exercise: open your arms wide as if you are going to hug someone, rotate your wrists externally (thumbs going up and back) and pull your shoulders back.

7. Contract your abdominal and gluteus muscles, hold them there for a few seconds, then release. Repeat this for every few minutes all day long while you are working at your desk.

8. Stretch your arms, legs, neck and torso while sitting. This will help prevent you from feeling stiff.

9. Purchase a hand gripper. They are cheap, small and light. When you have to read something on the screen, you probably won't be using your hands very often so squeeze your gripper. It is an excellent forearm workout.

10. Get an elastic band (also cheap, small and light) and use it to do the actions mentioned in #6. As you are stretching, you are also working the muscles to some extent.

11. While sitting, lift up your legs on the balls of your feet and set them down. Repeat these until your legs are comfortably tired. Then repeat it again about 10 minutes later. Do this whole routine for about an hour or so. This will exercise your calves.

12. If you have a long downtime, like when rebooting after a program installation in Windows Vista/XP ☺, take advantage of it to get up and try something more ambitious such as doing a few push-ups, sit-ups, and/or jumping jacks.

Although the exercises above can contribute to a healthy and balanced lifestyle, our body needs a more active and stressful workout at least 3 times a week. I'm no health expert, but I strive each day to follow these simple geek-saving tips. As they say, a healthy mind requires a healthy body, and vice versa.

You might also want to check out 15 Healthy Snacks for Linux Gurus.

Upcoming Linux Game Reviews

I will not be posting some tech stuff today because we are celebrating the fiesta of Tagbilaran City, my second home. We Filipinos, even those who are abroad will always find time to celebrate and honor the feast day of our patron saint. So, I would like to greet everyone from Tagbilaran, Bohol a Happy Fiesta!

I will also take this opportunity to announce my upcoming game reviews - I haven't done it for a while now. Anyway, I still can't decide which to try out first among these first person shooter games for Linux:

*World of Padman
*Alien Arena 2008
*Warsow
*Sauerbraten

Any suggestions?

That's all for now. Cheers!

Keep Growing

Be Positive

Love for the Poor

A Time to Feed the Soul

To our regular readers, I will not be posting any technology related stuff starting tomorrow. I will observe the last days of Lent through prayers.

I may be gone for a couple of days, but I won't leave this blog empty. I'm testing this new scheduled post feature that can be implemented in Blogger.

If all goes out according to plan, videos of Bo Sanchez's talks will be posted here. Bo Sanchez is kind of my spiritual mentor. His preachings are really inspiring and at the same time filled with humor. So, I hope some of you will take time to watch those videos.

Regular tech posting will resume on Monday. Peace!

"Prayer is not asking. It is a longing of the soul. It is daily admission of one's weakness. It is better in prayer to have a heart without words than words without a heart."
-Mahatma Gandhi-

www.junauza.com

I finally got my very own and my very first domain name today. This blog can now be easily accessed by just typing www.junauza.com without the blogspot extension anymore. I’m losing my PR4 with this new domain name, but as they say, the advantages of having your own domain name are plenty. So, I hope I made the right decision.

Right now, I’m still working on a few issues. Also, the site is still in transition so everything will be polished at most 3 days from today. Maybe I’ll just update this post by Monday; or maybe not.

So again, to my millions of loyal followers from around the world (hehe), it’s now www.junauza.com :)

Blogger Problem, Again

Yesterday, Blogger emailed and informed me that one of my blog/site is a potential spam blog. Here is the full content of their email:

Dear Blogger user,

This is a message from the Blogger team.

Your blog, at http://philippineboardexamresults.blogspot.com/, has been identified as a potential spam blog. For an explanation of what spam blogs are, please see Blogger Help: http://help.blogger.com/bin/answer.py?answer=42577

You will not be able to publish posts to your blog until we review your site and confirm that it is not a spam blog. To request a review, please fill out the form found here: http://www.blogger.com/unlock-blog.g?lockedBlogID=4489518223709782159

We will take a look at your blog and unlock it within four business days. Please note that if we do not hear from you within 20 days, we will remove your blog. If this blog does not belong to you, then you do not have to do anything. Any other blogs you may have will not be affected.

Since you are an actual person reading this, your blog is probably not spam. We find spam by using an automated classifier. Automatic spam detection is inherently fuzzy, and occasionally a blog is flagged incorrectly. We sincerely apologize for this erroneous result. By using this kind of system, however, we can dedicate more storage, bandwidth, and engineering resources to users like you instead of to spammers.

Thank you for your understanding and for your help in our spam-fighting efforts.

Sincerely,

The Blogger Team
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

How can a blog that has already 9000+ subscribers and thousands of unique visitors per day be considered a spam blog?

I thought it was only my blog that got locked, until a fellow Blogger publisher/friend informed me that his main blog was also affected. His site, “Jehzlau Concepts” is one of the top blogs in the country and has been online for almost 2 years already. Only Blogger or their so-called "automated spam detector" knew why they suspected our site and probably others as spam blogs.

As of today, I’m not really that disappointed, and just thought of this whole thing as a standard procedure. And, I truly want to cooperate or help “Blogger” in their spam-fighting efforts. But, I still hope that they will continue to work hard on improving their spam detection method because it really is flawed.

According to Blogger, it will only take about 2-4 days to review the affected blogs. So, I assume that my locked blog will be back to normal on or after the said time span. However, others have reported on Blogger help forum that theirs took about a month to get activated. If the same thing will happen to me, I’m going to be really pissed off.

For now, I’m keeping my fingers crossed. I will just update this post soon regarding the outcome.

UPDATE 1: BLOGGER FINALLY RESTORED MY BLOG AFTER 11 DAYS.

UPDATE 2: I JUST WROTE AN OPEN LETTER TO BLOGGER/BLOGSPOT. I NEED SUPPORT FROM BLOGGER PUBLISHERS.

Upcoming TORCS Review and Google Pages Bandwidth Limit

Today, I’m supposed to write a review of an open-source game called TORCS. However, something came up that took away most of my time.

Earlier, I also experienced a little problem with my background images and javascripts on this blog. The cause was my other site eating too much bandwidth due to very high traffic. You see, I hosted or uploaded all of my image files and scripts for the two sites in one Google Page Creator account. I didn’t know or haven’t heard that there was such a bandwidth limit in sites hosted by Google.

When I tried to access my uploaded files, I received this message:

The bandwidth or page view limit for this site has been exceeded and the page cannot be viewed at this time. Once the site is below the limit, it will once again begin serving as normal.

A quick advice for those who are using Google Pages to host files for their websites or blogs: Make a separate Google Page Creator account for separate websites to avoid bandwidth issues. I already did, although a little bit late.

I guess that’s about it for now. Chow!
***

Happy Valentine’s Day!

I won’t be spending much time with my computer today. I will be going out with my wife. I want to let her know that, I love her more than any other electronic gadgets in this world.

To my fellow geeks, I hope that you will be doing the same. I urge you to spend most of this day with your love ones. If you don’t have a wife or girlfriend, spend this day with your mom or grandma, or anyone who can love you in return.

I’m staying away from my computer today, ‘cause I know that it can’t love me back. I’m out.

Blogger Header Image Problem

Blogger has changed the format of their ‘header widget’ without notice resulting to such problem that I had recently. Before the alteration: Using the Blogger editor, when you upload an image for the header with a size of let’s say 100 x 100px, then place it ‘instead of title and description’, the header image that will appear on your page will have the same size as the uploaded image. After the alteration: When you upload an image for the header, then place it ‘instead of title and description’, the ‘header image’ that will appear on the page will now depend on the size or the area of the ‘header’ resulting in pixilated or incorrect image value.

Here is an illustration (true image size is 100 x 100px):

Before

After

Now here is a very simple fix:

1. Go to your blogger template editor, then Edit HTML
2. Check the 'Expand Widget Templates' checkbox
3. Go to the 'header widget' section and find this code:

expr:height='data:height' expr:id='data:widget.instanceId + "_headerimg"' expr:src='data:sourceUrl' expr:width='data:width' style='display: block'/>

4. Now change the colored part to this:
height='100'
width='100'

*Change the value of height and width depending on the size that you want your image to appear

5. Save your template and you are done.
---

PS. I now have my ‘monkey’ logo back with a number 8 for this new year and for good luck :)

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***

Distro Review and Blogger Bug

I’m supposed to post a Linux distro review today, but an unfortunate problem with my Blogger template took most of my supposed to be review writing time. As some of you may have noticed, we don’t have our usual “Tech Source from Bohol” logo. I tried changing the header image file using the Blogger template editor but it didn't turn out the way it should have been. I have not experienced something like this before and the possible suspect is a Blogger header bug of some sort. I hope this setback will be fixed as soon as possible. I really want my “monkey logo” back because I have been using it since the beginning of time. As of the moment, I’m still trying to find ways to help remedy the situation.

In the meantime, I have here a list of soon to be tested and reviewed Linux distributions. I would also like to take this opportunity to thank those who emailed me and recommended some distros that they would like to be reviewed. As much as I can and as much as time will allow, I will check them out. So here’s the list already:

* Damn Small Linux 4.2
* Zenwalk Linux 5.0
* Fluxbuntu 7.10
* SAM Linux Desktop 2008
* Pardus Linux 2007
* Feather Linux 0.7

Tomorrow, I will try to finish writing my review on Fedora 8 and hopefully post it here immediately right after.

*Update: I fixed it already. Click HERE on how I did it.

CES Dreaming

The International Consumer Electronic Show(CES) is only 3 days away. Like many tech geeks, I'm excited about what new products will be unveiled on that said event. As most of us may know, the CES is a trade show sponsored by the Consumer Electronics Association held each January in Las Vegas, Nevada. It is now considered as one of the major technology-related trade shows, after the cancellation of Comdex.

Here are some CES facts courtesy of Wikipedia:

The first CES was held in June, 1967 in New York City.

From 1978 to 1994, CES was held twice each year: once in January in Las Vegas known as Winter Consumer Electronics Show (WCES) and once in June in Chicago, Illinois known as Summer Consumer Electronics Show (SCES).

In 1995, the show changed to a once a year format with Las Vegas as the location. In Vegas, the show is one of the largest, the other being CONEXPO-CON/AGG, taking up to 18 days to set up, run and break down.

Products and technologies introduced at CES include:

* Microsoft Xbox, 2001
* Digital Video Recorder (DVR), 1999
* HDTV, 1998
* DVD, 1996
* Virtual Boy, 1995
* CD-i, 1991
* Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), 1985
* Commodore 64, 1982
* Compact Disc (CD) player, 1981
* Camcorder, 1981
* Pong home console by Atari, 1975
* Laserdisc player, 1974
* Video Cassette Recorder (VCR), 1970

I may be located here in this little island province of Bohol, which is thousands of miles away from where the event will unfold this January 7, but I will be keeping a close watch via the internet. In the meantime, I can dream and hope to witness the CES live real soon.

Happy New Year 2008!

Have a blessed and prosperous New Year!

TSFB Best of 2K7

Since we are about to end the year and we already have 100+ posts, it’s about right that we will recap and give importance to what we humbly think as our best Tech Source from Bohol (TSFB) posts of 2007. So without delay, here they are:

* Software Review/Post of the Year
23 Most Valuable Free Software

* Geek of the Year
Geek of the Month: Linus Torvalds

* Programming How-To of the Year
How to Rescue Windows Files Using Linux and Python

* Distro Review of the Year
Is CentOS 5.0 Worth Every Penny?

* Silliest Post of the Year
Computer User Profiling

* Distrowar of the Year
Battle of the Elite: openSUSE vs. Mandriva

* Gadget Review of the Year
All I Want for Christmas is World Peace and Asus Eee PC

* Weekly 10 Story of the Year
Weekly Ten (11-13-2007): Calling all developers: $10M Android challenge

* Computer Hardware How-To/Tip of the Year
Choosing the Right Laptop/Notebook Computer Today

* Tech Source from Bohol Post of the Year
A Date with Cassandra
***

Christmas 2007

I just came from a rather long Christmas break. I feel tired, but here I am still posting just to let all of you know that I’m still alive despite all the bad cholesterol consumed during the holidays. I will just share to you some of the photos taken during the eating spree using our very reliable Sony T9 Cyber-shot digital camera. Enjoy!

We stayed at the Waterfront Hotel in Cebu City. There were Wi-Fi hotspots almost all throughout the place, but you have to pay in order to get connected.