tumblr Android App

Tumblr has just released an Android app. This post confirms that it works well! Grab it from the Marketplace.

GIMP Development Version 2.7.2

The PPA for the development version of Gimp 2.8 has finally been updated to 2.7.2 after spending a very, very long time at version 2.7.1. The release hasn’t been mentioned on the main Gimp website yet so the release notes aren’t yet available. I can tell you a few annoying bugs have been fixed in 2.7.2 such as the spacebar panning flakiness and the toolbar tooltips not showing up on mouseover (with the relevant keyboard shortcuts) among others. If you haven’t yet upgraded to the development version and are feeling adventurous add the following PPA to your sources in Ubuntu. I’m on 10.04 (Lucid) so replace your Ubuntu release name with the one below.

sudo sh -c "echo 'deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/matthaeus123/mrw-gimp-svn/ubuntu lucid main' >> /etc/apt/sources.list"

and then

sudo apt-key adv --recv-keys --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com 405A15CB

lastly

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade

iPhone Mistake

Okay I bought an iPhone a little over a year ago. I should be gushing over just how great of an experience it has been right? Wrong! If you’re tired of iPhone rants then read no further.

First of all everyone knows just how bad the reception is for some iPhone users and this has been chalked up to AT&T having a poor network infrastructure. I don’t think that is the full story. My feeling is that the reception issue lies partially with the design of the iPhone itself. A friend of mine has a Palm Pre and at my home he has full reception with a tower much further away than mine. I live about a half mile from a large AT&T tower and can barely make a call isolated in a far corner of my house. Most of my home has no reception at all. Even other phones on AT&T get good reception in my area. Something is definitely wrong with the iPhone underneath its’ beautiful design.

Secondly, there is the issue of text messaging. Mine seem to go astray both sending and receiving. Often I’ll get a text message from a friend or family member the next next day, hours later, or not at all. Sometime it works just fine. I’ll chalk that one up to the AT&T network. Humph!

Lastly, I’m a Linux user and have grown tired of the hoops I need to jump through to get my phone to work and sync content. I should have known better but at the time the only Android phone available was the HTC G1. I tried it for a week and it was possibly the worse design for a phone I’ve ever used. If you want to know how not to make a phone look no further than the G1. So the alternative was to get an iPhone and deal with the issues of syncing and updating or get a Blackberry and just have a phone that works well but does media poorly. I considered the Nokia N900 for a long time but it is unsubsidized in the US so it was a tad out of reach cost-wise. In retrospect the N900 would have been the way to go but I went with the iPhone because I wanted something that would be my ONE mobile and media device. Phone, media player, email, apps, GPS, etc.

Now I look at all the wonderful Android phone coming out on the various carriers with envy. I try to think ahead to when I’m free to move on to another carrier and get a phone that plays nice with Linux and “just works”.

Beautiful 8bit Art

I discovered this beautiful 8bit piece at a blog I regularly follow - tiny cartridge. Be sure to click through for a detailed story on its’ origins and a larger view.

Hirokazu “Hip” Tanaka Live Performance

Legendary Japanese game composer and musician Hirokazu “Hip” Tanaka laid down an awesome performance at Cheapbeats. He is responsible for the music of Mario Brothers, Metroid, Duck Hunt…the list goes on. He is also a gifted Chiptune performer as seen in this 22 minute video.

Hip Tanaka @ Cheapbeats from Cyril Despontin on Vimeo.

Coming Soon

 I’ll be up and  running shortly……