Using Dropbox with Xfce

Started working with my older laptop again, so I decided to install Xubuntu. Xubuntu is the Xfce edition of Ubuntu Linux. A big part of my computing experience is the portibility of applications like Dropbox or Box.net – easily being able to synch files on my various computers is of upmost importance. However, Dropbox is designed to work along with Nautilus which is the default file manager in GNOME…and the default window manager in Ubuntu. But not Xubuntu which uses Thunar as it’s file manager.

But, it’s no problem – by simply following the instructions below you can get Dropbox to work side-by-side with Xfce and Thunar. We will basically just be starting a no-frills instance of Nauilus which causes Dropbox to start. The explanation will mostly be relevant to Ubuntu/Xubuntu users, but can simply be modified to other distros.

Requirements:

• Nautilus file manager
• Dropbox for Linux
• Xfce (4.4+ works best)

1. Install dropbox from source, or using the packages provided on the Dropbox site.
2. Type the following into the terminal:

   nautilus --no-desktop --browser
   

   This will start Dropbox, and the icon should appear in your system tray.

3. Log in, or sign up with a new account.
4. Now, in order to have Dropbox running every time you use Xfce, you need it to autostart. Just go to:
   Menu -> Settings -> Settings Manager -> Autostarted apps -> Add
   and add the following
   

   /home/your_username/.dropbox-dist/dropboxd

And that’s it! Dropbox should work normally now, synching your files perfectly. Now you can more stuff done.

This tutorial is more-or-less a translation and expansion of a tutorial from Polish website blok.kangoor.

Air Force launches anti-blog campaign

Bloggers: If you suddenly find Air Force officers leaving barbed comments after one of your posts, don’t be surprised. They’re just following the service’s new “counter-blogging” flow chart. In a twelve-point plan, put together by the emerging technology division of the Air Force’s public affairs arm, airmen are given guidance on how to handle “trolls,” “ragers” — and even well-informed online writers, too. It’s all part of an Air Force push to “counter the people out there in the blogosphere who have negative opinions about the U.S. government and the Air Force,” Captain David Faggard says. […]

The flow chart lays out a range of possible responses to a blog post. Airmen can offer a “factual and well-cited response [that] is not factually erroneous, a rant or rage, bashing or negative in nature.” They can “let the post stand — no response.” Or they cancan “fix the facts,” offering up fresh perspective. No matter what, the chart says, airmen should “disclose your Air Force connection,” “respond in a tone that reflects high on the rich heritage of the Air Force,” and “focus on the most-used sites related to the Air Force.”

Original from Wired | via Technoccult

Drawdio – draw some sound!

This weekend, Amber Case and I assembled a very nifty device – the Drawdio. The Drawdio is a simple device that allows you to attach a very simple circuit-board to a pencil (or any other object) to make bizarre theremin-like sound on everyday objects. It works by using the graphite in the pencil and your touch to complete a circuit and generate the sound.

Here is a nifty video of all of us playing around with the nifty device:

It is very simple to construct from the kit we ordered – all we needed to get was a new soldering iron…my current iron had no tip or replacement screw. We assembled it pretty quickly and had a blast for days messing around with the little squealer. There is also an excellent flickr photoset of the project night – wearable computing, Drawdio, a magnifying glass, and popcorn…what a night!

The Drawdio was developed by Jay Silver of MIT’s Media Lab. The Media Lab is responsible for awesome projects like the MPEG-4 SA project which helped to standardize digital sound on personal computers, and eInk – the digital paper/ink replacement. Jay also developed the ok2touch, a jacket that encourages human touch by making noise when making contact with skin.

Amber has more coverage over at Nerdabout Portland. There is also some more information on the Drawdio over at the Makerlab blog.

Feeling Changes

…and that’s a good thing!

WordPress finally got around to releasing version 2.7 of their fabulous software. We upgraded the night it came out, and have so far been impressed with the new interface and speed increases. Also, being able to install plugins from the admin panel is an awesome idea. Glad they finally put some more convenience into the app.

So in the spirit of change, PinkOnBrown has remixed its design. The new design is based off of the Wpdesigner7 theme. It was heavily modified – all in Gedit. Can’t get enough of the plain-text editors. Another reason was the launch of the #CampfireReads page. But enough of that, just take a look at the beauty:

Part of the focus of this theme was to focus on the content while balancing speed, simplicity, and shiny bits! For this reason, we introduced a floating menu bar and page top link. All of our searches are now provided by Google for speed and accuracy. All comments run with IntenseDebate – as always – for speed, flexibility, and awesome. We are also now using Add to Any for our content sharing.  There are many more tweaks here and there, but kinks are still getting ironed out and functionality being carefully monitored.

This of course comes on the heels of our friends over at Technoccult getting a logo and branding redesign. Danny Chaoflux did excellent work. Hopefully our rebranding turns out as sucessfully as theirs did. Feel free to leave comments, advice, etc in the comment below. It would be appreciated.

Enjoy the fresh, new look!

Diebold Machines Have Been Dropping Votes for 10 Years – Whoops!

According to Chris Riggall, a spokesman for Premier Election Solutions (formerly known as Diebold). the company’s voting machines which are used in over 34 states have not been counting votes for…
…wait for it…

10 years.

Riggall said he was “confident” that elections officials through the years would have realized votes had been dropped when they crosschecked their tallies to certify final elections results and would have reloaded cards so as not to lose votes. Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner has said no Ohio votes were lost because the nine Ohio counties that found the problem caught it before primary results were finalized.
…
“We are indeed distressed that our previous analysis of this issue was in error,” Premier President Dave Byrd wrote Tuesday in a letter that was hand-delivered to Brunner. Premier and Brunner are in an ongoing court battle over the voting machines and whether Premier violated its contract with the state and warranties.

Well – I’m glad that they’re at least “distressed” that they did not disclosure this known technical error when they discovered it. Of course, it doesn’t really matter now that the primaries have come and gone. This is almost as good as when the Chicago elections officials tricked voters into thinking they were voting with “invisible ink”.

This, of course, on the tail of a string of Premier Election Solutions/Diebold catastrophes; including the unveiling of the ease of vote flipping on national news, the company using already-hacked keys on current machines, Diebold officials caught trafficking in narcotics, or officals revealing that they regularly swapped out fake memory cards on the machines while the elections were still ongoing.

Hopefully people will realize the disgusting flaws in the current election system and question whether or not their vote really counts.

Proof of Concept to Enhance Video Using Static Images

Video as a medium has been evolving quickly in the high-speed internet era. Handheld cameras are becoming more affordable as technology becomes cheaper and more widespread. However, limitations still exist which make capturing the perfect video difficult. Bad lighting, stabilization issues, unexpected objects in the video, and other video troubles can ruin an amazing shot – unless you have the expensive editing equipment to fix it.

It seems that an inexpensive and simple way to fix common issues with video shots has been developed. A demo was given Eurographics Symposium on Rendering in 2007. By developing a rendering system that is able to scan the depth of video and images – the team was able to use still images to enhance different aspects of a video; such as increasing the high dynamic range, exposure, and removing entire objects from the video.

These capabilities are enabled by two technical contributions presented in this paper. First, we make several improvements to a state-of-the-art multiview stereo algorithm in order to compute view-dependent depths using video, photographs, and structure-from-motion data. Second, we present a novel image-based rendering algorithm that can re-render the input video using the appearance of the photographs while preserving certain temporal dynamics such as specularities and dynamic scene lighting.

They even offer the source-code on their website for tweaking yourself. Hopefully some programs come out soon for users to utilize this technology for their video. This could be a huge boost in video quality for amateur directors or film students.

Link: Using Photographs to Enhance Videos of a Static Scene

Muxtape Temporarily Shut Down by RIAA

It seems that Muxtape, the free online “mixtape”-creation service has temporarily shut their website down – thanks to pressure from the Recording Industry of America (RIAA). There was much speculation about this possibility after Muxtape’s launch, and now it seems that they’ve been caught up with.

Currently (as of 9:48pm PST) the website displays the following message under the logo:

Muxtape will be unavailable for a brief period while we sort out a problem with the RIAA.

However, the official Muxtape blog has a better (seeming) news.

No artists or labels have complained. The site is not closed indefinitely. Stay tuned.
Beta users of Muxtape For Bands: you are unaffected by this outage.

So – probably not down for good. And while the RIAA has a penchant for frivolous lawsuits, it seems that lately they have been losing. More users are standing up against their ridiculous claims and the EFF and bloggers everywhere are doing the best they can to fight the stupidity. Hopefully we’ll have our wondrous Muxtape back soon.

Story via c|net News

Related PoB content:
Eris Siva’s Muxtape
boogiepop’s Muxtape

Update on cut cables

So – now we’re up to 9 cables cut. Instead of boring you with the details, I’ll link you to the full rundown over at Signs of the Times.

Spore release date announced

And the magic happens – September 7th (the 5th in Europe).

Finally, the Spore release date was announced. For those of you who haven’t been initiated into the Awesome that is Spore, here’s the rundown.

Spore is a multi-platform simulation game that allows you to create and control the evolution of an entire universe. It’s kind of hard to explain. Basically, its SimCity times…a really big number. You start the game with a single floating organism that you evolve upwards into a developed creature, and then the creature’s society, then it’s world, then the galaxy that world is in and so on and so forth – upwards and onwards.

image via frz

One of the greatest parts of the game – and what initially drew me to it – was its practically infinite nature. The game uses procedural generation to fill the environment. This basically works like an electronic DNA code. Instead of a game having many objects rendered by artists beforehand, this instead allows the game to generate details on the fly based upon elements that have already occurred in the game. In Spore, this allows for a ridiculous amount of customization.

image via guspim

I cannot wait to get this and try it out for the Wii. The creator, Will Wright, has stated that they attempted to maximize the possibilities when it comes to the use of the controller in the game. You have to check out the demo videos and screenshots to get a tiny glimpse at this phenomenal game.

Numerous undersea communications being cut – deliberate sabotage, or Godzilla?

(image from Benjamin Dewhurst)

Recently a series of major transoceanic communications cables were found severed. This caused a major disruption of communications in Iran and Qatar. So far there are 5 cables reported to have been cut. Some researchers are saying as many as 8 have been severed. The cables carry data all throughout the Middle-East, Northern Africa, and Southern Asia. TeleGeography – a subsidiary of PriMetrica – a communications firm that provides communications analysis and statistics – seems to be very eager to write these events off as an accident.

But it seems that the causation of the interruption has still not been figured out. There are many theories going around, from anchor-dragging ships to sea monsters. However, ships have been ruled out and sea monsters…well – that would make a great movie, so we should keep that theory in the mix. A lot of conspiracies have cropped up, but not all of them can go away. One tactic that an invading force takes is to cut off communications to the country so that no one really knows what’s going on. But apparently there are still some communications going on as around 55% of operations have been rerouted.

And yet they still don’t know what’s happening. More cables keeping cropping up cut, and outages are moving around. Every time they start fixing everything…there’s loss again.

Well – I guess we’ll see. I try to keep this post updated with information as it comes out.