Uncanny X-Men

Staying in South Africa it is very difficult to get hold of comic books, DC as well as Marvel, but I decided to take a leap of faith and buy a year's subscription directly from Marvel and DC of Uncanny X-Men, Superman and Batman.

Now Marvel and DC warned me that the first issue might take up to 10 weeks to reach me. Today was the exact 10th week from when I ordered my Uncanny X-Men and I received my first two issues in the mail today.

Now I am just waiting for my DC shipment.

Mono and 3D Games

I stumbled upon this interesting blog article regarding Mono and the Microsoft deal. It seems there is actually a company called Unity that is using Mono to create cross platform 3D engines.

It seems they only support Windows and Mac currently, which is strange but maybe it has something to do with the state the 3D drivers on Linux are in currently.

Vista Analyzed

I use Ubuntu as my exclusive desktop OS to get things done, but I am actually a C#.NET developer by profession. It is a weird combination but I prefer GNU/Linux over Windows because of the F/OSS philosophy.

Anyway back to Windows Vista, I am not planning on switching from Ubuntu to Windows Vista but I am planning on developing software for Windows Vista using C#.NET and this article just made me more excited. The new .NET Framework 3.0, previously known as WinFX is not just an add-on to the OS anymore but actually part of the OS.

The article is a bit long but worth the read I think.

WebmailCompose

At long last I found the Firefox plug-in I was searching for, the plug-in is called WebmailCompose but sadly it does not work in Firefox 2.x.

There is a hacked version available from Soaked & Soaped however that does work in Firefox 2.x. I installed it and it seems to work as I remembered.

Gmail Filesystem

I vaguely remember having a Firefox plug-in that allow me to send email via Gmail whenever I click on a mailto: link on any web page. In my search for this plug-in I stumbled across this site. Nothing spectacular about it until you read about the Gmail FS.

Now the Gmail FS allows any Linux system to mount the free space on your Gmail account as another filesystem. Now there is a Firefox plug-in called Gspace that also allows you to use your free Gmail storage but this to me makes more sense since I am using Ubuntu and I do love my console.

I haven't tried it yet, but maybe soon I will give it spin. I still haven't found the Gmail mailto: plug-in, maybe I dreamed it.

Tilda console

One thing of Linux in general I like and prefer is my console. For me the console is really not a nightmarish thing to fear, as a matter of fact I always had one console window open in Windows XP. I also installed Launchy on my Windows XP box because I find that typing what I want to do is faster than clicking the "Start" menu etc.

I recently subscribed to the Debian Package of the Day RSS feed and I was pointed to this amazing little application. It is called Tilda and it works a lot like the Quake console when you press the "~" key.






This is definitely a very nice application if you like consoles like I do.

FreeProxy

I decided to use only Ubuntu at office and home even if my VPN does not work in Ubuntu. The VPN problem was solved with a Windows XP vm that just connects to my office to get email etc.

My internet browsing was still a problem, I could not connect to the company via VPN to allow my Ubuntu notebook to connect to the company's proxy server. This I solved now by installing FreeProxy on a Windows XP box.

So my Ubuntu box uses the Windows XP box's proxy server and in turn the Windows XP box uses the company's proxy server via the VPN. So now I can surf the Internet using Firefox / Ubuntu.

As soon as bandwidth costs come down in good old SA, I will not need this proxy chaining anymore but until then, this approach really keeps my bandwidth costs down.