Oh, yes, Chromium browser is nice...

They seem to have learned a few things from (not cloned) Firefox, plus it picked up the cookies, bookmarks etc from FF flawlessly.

Chromium is generally smoother & faster than FF, except for actually scrolling the page contents up & down.

The visual design is excellent... nothing too jarring, but a few logical changes like enclosing both of the Back/Forward buttons within a single rounded-rectangle border-line (which looks pretty much like the rounded-rectangles enclosing each of Reload, Home & the URL field) & overflowing excess bookmarks into a right-aligned Other Bookmarks folder. Oh, & making the tabs look a bit more like individual objects (angled sides etc) which makes them easier to rapidly distinguish.

This is Chromium 4.0.256.0 (32803) running under Mandrive 2009.1; to install it on that (or 2010.0), run this as root:

urpmi.addmedia --mirrorlist http://eugeni.dodonov.net/rpm eugeni 586

...then...

urpmi chrome

...which is a few seconds’ work over Virgin Mobile Internet in Albany (typically about 1-2 megabits), so should be about two eyeblinks under a decent ADSL2 link...

Comments

new life for an old (FTX) PSU, improved life for one human

the LEDs on this 5m strip happen to emit light centred on a red that does unexpectedly helpful things to (and surprisingly deeply within) a human routinely exposed to it. it has been soldered to a Molex connector, plugged into a TFX power supply from a (retired: the MoBo is cactus) Small Form Factor PC, the assorted PSU connectors (and loose end from the strip) have been taped over. the LED strip cost $10.24 including postage, the rest cost $0, the PSU is running at 12½% of capacity, consumes less power than a laptop plug-pack despite running a fan. trial runs begin today.

every-application-is-part-of-a-toolkit at work

I have a LibreOffice Impress slideshow that I wish to turn into a narrated video. 1. export the slideshow as PNG images (if that is partially broken — as at now — at higher resolutions, Export Directly as PDF then use ‘pdftoppm’ (from the poppler-utils package) to do the same). 2. write a small C program (63 lines including comments) to display those images one at a time, writing a config file entry for Imagination (default transition: ‘cross fade’) based on when the image-viewer application (‘display,’ from the GraphicsMagick suite) is closed on each one; run that, read each image aloud, then close each image in turn. 3. run ‘Imagination’ over the config file to produce a silent MP4 video with the correct timings. 4. run ‘Audacity’ to record speech while using ‘SMPlayer’ to display the silent video, then export that recording as a WAV file. 4a. optionally, use ‘TiMIDIty’ to convert a non-copyright-encumbered MIDI tune to WAV, then import that and blend it with the speech (as a quiet b...

boundaries

pushing the actual boundaries of the physical (not extremes, the boundaries themselves) can often remove barriers not otherwise perceived. one can then often resolve an issue itself, rather than merely stonewalling at the physical consequences of the issue.

Plantagenet Penguinista

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