Linux

I like to post neat tricks and solutions here, which I find worthy of sharing. This time, I'd like to share a failure, since there are a few interesting details I came across, which should not be relegated to the file-drawer. It's about the limitations of S3 as direct online storage for music.

Since I became a regular Linux user around 2003 I was a KDE user. I stuck with it on half a dozen distros along the way. On a whim, two weeks ago, I switched to Gnome and haven't been sorry, yet. This post specifically focuses on KDE within Kubuntu, compared to Gnome in Ubuntu.

Many of these are personal observations which have lead to my switch. It's a rant at times but I want to say very clearly that these comments concern the software and I appreciate the effort of all the volunteers on KDE and Kubuntu very much.

In the first part we created a list of things we want to block on occasion. The point of this part is to make it easy to switch from full access to limited access. Enter, OpenWrt.

The dilemma

This semester I had a handful of exams rather late in the year, weeks after classes ended. Now, the Internets are a pretty interesting place and I find it extremely difficult to not glance at the feed reader and all the other gizmos rather often, when in front of the screen. I saw three possible solutions:

a) Work analog. (Pretty unrealistic, and think of the poor trees…)

b) Force yourself to not get distracted. (Sounds as likely as most New Year's resolutions.)

c) Turn off only the distractions, or at least minimize them.

If you have an amplifier (or something similar) with a remote and your computer attached to it, there are probably several buttons that don't do anything in this configuration. In my case, it's the buttons available to control a CD or tape deck. Wouldn't it be neat to repurpose those?