release time came, and i balked.  my normal rush to install the latest fedora on my personal laptop didn’t happen.  i was very apprehensive.  i did manage to install it on my netbook and worked well with in that environment.   to me, it seemed better fit for that platform anyway.  ok, let’s be honest:  i was just too used to my compiz and transparent terminals and rotating cube and wobbly windows to give them up.  of course, a change like this on my work laptop would mean slower productivity while i unlearned what i had learned.

that’s the boring stuff.  i finally installed on personal lappy and work lappy.  correction:  i finally logged into gnome 3 on both.  i found that a few things in gnome 3 had been smoothed over.

what i like:

• integrated messaging (using pidgin and the shell extension rather than empathy). this works like it was designed and for me functions just as efficiently.
• suspend vs. shutdown. i have seen people suspend their laptops, shove it their bags, and go home.  i thought this was dumb since the battery would fade faster than if it had been completely shutdown.  but as i have been adopting this behavior, i like it much better.  there’s a time for shutting down and a time for suspending.  most of the time, i’ve discovered, it’s the latter.  and for a desktop, who shuts those down anymore unless you have to unplug it or open it up for maintenance.  more often than not, those are the exceptions.  what is great is pulling my lappy out of my timbuktu and having it ready to go.  a couple of seconds to find a network connection, and i ‘m back in business.

what i am getting used to:

• vertical desktop layout vs. horizontal (or in my case, cube). the auto-adding of the screens/desktops when needed is nice.  my one dislike of this is the auto-removing when the screen/desktop is cleared of windows.  i like things in a certain order.  crashed or closed window can rearrange that order.
• maximize and tiling of windows. i am still adjusting to this.  i would say i like it, but i still find myself accidentally max-ing a window then trying to line it up at the top of the screen.

what i don’t like:

• the lack of transparency of my terminals! i read through my term windows rather than alt+tabbing (or alt+accenting) among them, so the transparency is key to me.  i do understand this is a side effect of how they did the transparency effect and will be corrected in gnome 3.2.  i really want this back.  (yes, i know you get your transparency with maximized windows, but i don’t open every single one of my terminals in max size work.)
• the message pop-up bar at the bottom. i am still getting used to this.  i feel that it’s clunky and needs a change, but i don’t have a good suggestion for a way to change it.  i’m not even sure why i have a problem with it.  it just doesn’t feel like it works efficiently.
• no battery indicator on the top bar. really?  seems kinda backwards when they want a more suspend-able mindset only to not show you how much juice you have left.  someone wasn’t thinking on this point.  i know some themes have it, but this should have been out-of-the-box included.

i’m stoked to see what version three point two will look and feel like.  and with a few adjusted themes, i’m happy with the experience.  bonus points to all those who have contributed the shell extensions allowing for modification.

the adjustment wasn’t as painful as i imagined.  i used xfce for a while before jumping into gnome 3.  i even toyed around with fluxbox as an alternative.  in the end, i gave it a shot.  i mean, c’mon!  it’s not like it’s kde or os x.

the f15 media was shipped to us but hadn’t made it to the hotel by friday.  a few of us started burning media to hand out on saturday.  we made a dent in the stack of dvds by the time it was over.  i cashed out a little earlier than the others as i don’t do late very well anymore.

when i made it down to the table the next morning, i found the official f15 media on the table.  fedex had moved it from salt lake city to spartanburg by 9:15a.  the media is nice, the crowning achievement being the live media which makes it possible to boot into any of four desktops on either 32- or 64-bit.  (thanks to spot for that work.)

check out a few pics:

i recently saw alex albrecht’s take on facebook events, which coincides with this philosophy, and i totally agree with him.  the clip from the episode is below, but be warned that as is typical with every diggnation episode there is some offensive language.

Bearish on Google & How to Secure Your Facebook

should you stop using facebook?  no.  should you not message me via facebook?  no.  if you do message me via facebook, should you expect a timely answer?  no.  i have missed events because people assumed i would see it in facebook.  that’s why email will always win over facebook.  (also, facebook is not the internet either.)

my concern was making sure i had supported video since my last purchase proved to be an epic fail. i took a copy of fedora on a usb key into best buy and booted the sony laptop up to verify the video drivers. my testing was a definite win.

as with all my computers, i swiftly removed windows from the hard drive and replaced with linux, fedora flavored. i got my laptop up to speed rather quickly and was happy.

then one day, i was interacting with some people in the #fedora-social channel on irc and someone asked me if sound was working. i told him that i wasn’t sure. when i got home, i checked. it was not working. i never thought to check the sound as there’s not been problems with the sound working in the past. (at least, i’ve not had any difficulties.)

when i reported back that my sound was silent, i was given a few suggestions to try. after jumping through those hoops, what finally worked was to grab a koji kernel and install it. at the time, it was in release candidate 1 status, but it gave me sound. since then, that kernel was stabilized, and i am currently running 2.6.34.6-54.fc13.x86_64.)

since that’s been resolved, this laptop is has all the desired items on my list.

since they release updates several times a day, i wrote a small bash script to grab the latest version released and set it up as my default browser.  (of course, this is for linux.)  and this is specifically for the 64-bit linux platform.  swap out the CHROMIUM_URL values in the script for your appropriate architecture.

#!/bin/bash
##  get_latest_build.sh
##  this assumes you've set up sudo
##  if not, then change the sudos to "su -c"

CHROME_DIR=/usr/local/bin/chrome
SNAPSHOTS_URL=http://build.chromium.org/buildbot/snapshots
CHROMIUM_URL=$SNAPSHOTS_URL/chromium-rel-linux-64
#CHROMIUM_URL=$SNAPSHOTS_URL/chromium-rel-linux
PLUGINS_DIR=~/.mozilla/plugins

if [ ! -d $CHROME_DIR ]; then
  echo "creating $CHROME_DIR..."
  sudo mkdir $CHROME_DIR
fi

echo "get latest version number..."
wget -nv -O "/tmp/LATEST" "$CHROMIUM_URL/LATEST"
LATEST=`cat /tmp/LATEST`
echo "LATEST = $LATEST"

echo "download latest..."
wget -O "$CHROME_DIR/chrome-linux.zip" \
        "$CHROMIUM_URL/$LATEST/chrome-linux.zip"

echo "unzip latest..."
unzip "$CHROME_DIR/chrome-linux.zip" -d "$CHROME_DIR"

echo "rename the directory with build number..."
mv "$CHROME_DIR/chrome-linux" "$CHROME_DIR/chrome-linux-$LATEST"

echo "reset soft link..."
rm "$CHROME_DIR/chrome_linux"
ln -s "$CHROME_DIR/chrome-linux-$LATEST" "$CHROME_DIR/chrome_linux"

if [ -d $PLUGINS_DIR ]; then
  echo "copy plugins directory into new chrome dir..."
  cp -r $PLUGINS_DIR $CHROME_DIR/chrome_linux/
fi

echo "setting permissions on directory..."
chmod ug+rx "$CHROME_DIR/chrome_linux"

echo "done!"

i updated my phone on friday last week to android 2.1.  this was a significant and long-awaited upgrade from version 1.5 i had been running for a long time.

hp g26t

i purchased the laptop with money from tax return, and it shipped to me.  i picked it up on friday and unboxed it immediately only to find the keyboard wasn’t what i thought it was going to b (first unmet expectation).  i took it home, ran the dvd backup software first, then shoved my fedora 12 (64-bit) dvd into the player for the reboot.  the installation went smoothly.  i ran the upgrade next (since i hadn’t previously downloaded a f12 respin image and didn’t want to wait for it).

when it rebooted, i noticed the resolution was still stuck on 1024×768.  this thing does better, i reasoned.  i copied the xorg.conf file to my home directory and rebooted.  when it restarted, i had no screen.  i rebooted again.  same deal.  i tried to ctrl+alt+f2 to a straight up text login.  nothing.  all the f-keys gave me nothing.

i tried rebooting into vesa mode, nomodeset, noacpi…all the same blank nothingness.  i set my init to 3 and booted to a command line.  checked intel hardware, looked on the google for any hope of someone posting a solution or even a sympathetic blog post of the same problem.  nothing out there about it.  this machine is too new for that.

after asking for more advice in the #fedora channel on freenode (irc), i realized i’d found an intel video driver the linux kernel didn’t support.  i decided it was best to send it back.  which i did.

now, i’m back to where i was just before i found this laptop.  my second interest laptop isn’t a strong enough want to just simply purchase it.  maybe if i wait, i’ll find something i want when they put out some new laptops.

i have to admit that i have a real dislike/never-use-again mentality for at&t. but this has bought them a little bit of respect from me. don’t get me wrong. i’m still never going to use them again, but i will admire them from my reliable internet connections way over here.

the bigger of the two problems was my battery life. it showed significant drains after half a day of average use. patch now shows accurate power level which means my phone won’t shut down with a half loaded battery.

other people made references to the gps eating up battery cycles, and i’d noticed it appearing to struggle to get a signal whenever i had it active. now, it doesn’t continuously probe for satellite signals anymore and seems to pinpoint my location promptly.

the battery fix is why i upgraded and has made my experience with the moment so much better. and i was hoping this patch added over the air (ota) abilities for future upgrades.  brighthand posts that if i want to get upgraded early, i can take it into the store.  ota upgrades will come a couple of weeks later.  if i can get the upgrade this coming week, i’d spend some time in the sprint store.