Christmas cards and Addressbooks and vCards

As of now, Jan 20 -- we still have not mailed a single Christmas card. But enough
about that -- let's talk address books!

Candy's fell into many pieces -- full of scratchouts. Her electronic Palm version
was corrupted N times, as was mine. The Palm has a propietary format, and even though I did successfully port it to linux using the Jpilot application, it just has not been the same.
I've abandoned the device itself, and only used the calendar addressbook.

But it didn't work -- because I have too many computers and I couldn't safely keep
the addressbooks synced between them all. I needed my contacts in a simple text form. Certainly I could go back to a text file like we all used to use on mainframes, but maybe I can do better?

I ended up using the .vCard format, which is a standard for address books that's been
around for more than a decade. It does not seem widely adopted -- but it's the only
standard that exists, and it has some support. Also, it is in pure text, with
keywords like ADDRESS: PHONE: etc.

The application I found is PyCoCuMa (Pythonic Contact and Customer Manager). It's
Alpha or Beta code, but it works adequately, is Python for gosh sake and does a
decent job reading vCards and generally being an address book. ALSO -- If I find
(or write) a better vCard reader, I am not locked in. My contacts are in plain text,
and they will still be readable in 50 years provided I update my storage media!
So now for the first time in five years our contacts are all organized in one place -- and now we can do our Christmas cards. Will we? Stay tuned!!

Sorting your album collection

Sorting an album collection was a fun thing to do in college. Now there are no albums and we are
too busy, but I know students still like to organize their MP3s. There are lots of tools for this -- but I
don't want any of them. Can't I just arrange my albums like files in directories? Of course I can, and
the Sansa Fuze allows this. Many other MP3 players (including the iPod) actually use the directory
structure on your hard drive to organize your music, but the Sansa does not insist on putting an overlay
on it. Yes -- it tries to sort your music based on ID3 tags, but those are very inconsistent. Do you really
have to edit them? Who has time??

The Fuse (and most programs, for example Rhythmbox) have a structure two levels deep.
The top level is assumed to be Genre or Artist or Band and the second level is album title.
In the second level directory are your song files.

There is nothing stopping you from arranging your two levels any way you want. For example, I made
my top level "Classical", then my second level, Composer_Conductor-Composition. Maybe it's not
the best, but it was easy -- and it met my need. My excuse was I wanted a directory of holiday music for coming festivities. I organized my collection with midnight commander
my favorite antique file management tool.

My Distro -- Debian Etch -- It just works + Now with "Backports"

If you are lurking and just "thinking about Linux", you must be very confused.

There are HUNDREDS of different distributions "distros" of Linux. What to do?
I started with Red Hat (now Fedora) then deflected through Gentoo and wound up where
I wanted to start, Debian. At first I avoided Debian because it was a "Linux Users Linux" -- not
necessarily newbie friendly.

But enough of that, newb ... Now Debian/Ubuntu is ABSOLUTELY the place to start. Debian has
always had the power and the stability, and with addition of Ubuntu and its very good forums, new users were taken care of.

So -- You are confused -- which is it -- Debian or Ubuntu? Well newb -- Ubuntu is flashier -- if you are under 30 and just assume your computer will play every flash game, video, java applet and iTune that comes along w/out trouble and that furthermore it will run on your laptop and let you take it to Starbucks or an airport, then you want Ubuntu.

If you actually might want to run your business on your computer(s) and your main concern is for what we over 40 types actually call "computing", then run Debian.

What about me? Well, on my Lenovo Thinkpad T61 laptop I run Ubuntu gutsy gibbon. I started with Debian Etch, but the wireless support for that laptop was just too much trouble.

On every other computer I use, from a 10-computer student lab I administer, to the several computers in my office/lab/home, to the numerous computers I am deploying as wirelessly-linked field instruments for lightning research, I run Debian "etch".

Why? Debian "etch" is the latest "stable" release. The next one is "Lenny" (older versions were Woody and Sarge -- and the latest -- always "unstable" version well ALWAYS be called "Sid". Presumably you get the (Toy Story) pattern by (Toy Story subliminal) now.). Anyway, when Debian says "stable" they mean stable. It is common for Debian machine to run a hundred days or more without a reboot. The price you pay for "stable" is that your packages can be two-three years behind. While that may sound like a problem, three years ago was 2006. Pretty much everything you need for serious work was well done by 2006!! But wait -- there's more.

Tonight I implemented "backports". I'd heard about it, but not done anything about it. Here's a link:
http://www.backports.org/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=instructions. What is backports for? It is "backward ports" of the latest versions of various programs. If you don't want to upgrade your entire Debian Etch computer to Lenny or Syd (as in, what part of "testing" and "unstable" don't you understand) you can still get isolated pieces of advanced code -- the ones you care about. This code is from testing (Lenny), not from Syd, so, in the Debian world, it's actually pretty good (about like a Windows app ... grin).

How to do it?
Add one line to /etc/apt/sources.list
deb http://www.backports.org/debian etch-backports main contrib non-free

Having done that:
apt-get -t etch-backports -s install gnucash

Install any programs you want the latest versions of -- and ONLY those. The "-s" is a practice
option. Take it out when you actually mean it. So I was hurting for the latest gnucash -- and now I'm not.

Teaching College Physics with Open Office

Not entirely clear who all is reading -- but I should not forget to state the obvious.
You just don't need to buy Microsoft Office.

OpenOffice (or ooffice) has been around for years, is up to version 2.3, and has all the capability you
are likely to need. I just finished teaching a freshman physics course to a large section
that gave me a need to project my lectures with an LCD projector. I prepared all my
lectures in ooimpress, the Powerpoint function-alike part of Open Office.

It's not exactly alike. Some parts are better. For example, I need formulae, integrals, subscripts, and greek letters to teach physics. OpenOffice has a built in equation editor that you don't have to purchase separetely and that also allows you to type your equations rather than pointing and clicking. It is similar to LaTeX, but not identical. Too bad it's not identical, but any way it's easy to use and gets very fast after you get used to it.

Of course I do all my scientific presentations for conferences in ooimpress as well, and .pdf export is also built in.

Sandisk Fuze Linux Compatible MP3 Player

I have grown to love my iPod, but it died and I thought about replacing it. As ever, Apple gets a premium price for their hardware, there are much cheaper MP3 players out there.

More importantly, there are players that are less committed to DRM, the god-forsaken digital copy
protection scheme that makes it hard to listen to your own music. After poking around I found the Sandisk Fuze. I have been buying SanDisk flash for years, so I figured their core technology had to be OK. I bought an 8 GByte model for $80. It comes with a radio too -- and can record off the radio!

When you mount it on your computer, it just looks like a harddrive, or a thumb drive. You just drag songs on and off of it. Easy -- no special, complicated, Windows only software like iTunes. It also supports the
ogg-vorbis format, an open source music format.

Linux photo printing gqview

I was reading that Linux photo printing is not very mature, but I found that gqview does a fine job.

Teddy had 10 pictures for a photography class, and I wanted to print them two up on photo paper.
Will gqview has a print option. You then select "Print All" and "Print Proof Page". Now proof
page sounds like it is a bunch of small prints, but you can also select the size of the proofs. So if it's
2x2, will it does put a lot of pics on the page, but if you select 4x6, then you get two up.

The only trick is that "Print All" wants to print ALL the pictures in a directory at once, and if it's a lot
it can blow up the print spool (too large). So I organized the pictures into a bunch of subdirectories,
and had gqview just print one subdirectory at a time. For two up, I just put two files in the subdirectory.
It gave me maximum control.

Music and More Games

So back in Windows days I used iTunes. No more. First I used Rhythmbox. It works, but seems
to have trouble finding decoders for a lot of the mp4 type files. I have switched to Amarok.
Works really VERY nicely, despite rumors that it is a system hog. Of course, I have read in my whole
CD collection (using Soundjuicer) and store everything in .ogg-vorbis format. (.mp3 might be a better
choice because I can't keep ogg on my iPod. I may change at some point.) I completely
avoid all the proprietary iTunes formats. I buy any mp3s I want from Amazon because there is no
copy protection.

Continuing to procrastinate from the work I should be doing -- tonight I tried gravity wars.
It's an oldy but goody. You fly a space ship with arrow keys to collect treasure w/o crashing.
Good fun. It does not seem to have sound -- so you can play it while listening to music.

I also tried Neverball. Don't bother. It is such a processor hog that it does not run. I have a reasonably
modern machine. It's not top of the line. If the game won't run -- heck with it.

All games I've tried so far are just part of the standard Debian etch distro.