Since my switch to Ubuntu, I couldn’t find a good backup program that could compare to Cobian Backup until now, and I tried whatever I could find. The final solution: luckyBackup. It easily created incremental backup tasks for me, and I am amazed at how fast they run. If you need a way to back up your files in Ubuntu, try luckyBackup. Enjoy.

#!/bin/sh

/opt/google/chrome/google-chrome "https://mail.google.com/mail?view=cm&tf=0&to=`echo $1 | sed 's/mailto://'`"

And that should do it. Enjoy.

• sudo add-apt-repository ppa:dockbar-main/ppa
• sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install dockbarx

Then simply add it to your panel and have fun!

First of all, install Wine 1.1.24 from here. Then install Office via Wine.

Follow the instructions in this tutorial. Or for convenience, I’ll give a quick summary of the tutorial by mostly copying pieces straight from it. He says…

Run winecfg. Make sure that the Windows Version is set to Windows XP (Applications Tab). In the Libraries section, you need to add two overrides: “riched20″ and “usp10″. To do this, simply type the the names (no quotes) into the dropdown-looking textbox, and click “Add”. Repeat this for both of the overrides.

Run all these commands:

• wget http://www.kegel.com/wine/winetricks
• chmod +x winetricks
• ./winetricks vcrun2005
• ./winetricks corefonts
• ./winetricks wsh56js

That should do it! Office should run pretty well now. One final step, to enable font smoothing for Wine, run the following commands (as documented here by the author of the script) and select the RGB font smoothing option:

wget http://files.polosatus.ru/winefontssmoothing_en.sh
bash winefontssmoothing_en.sh

That’ll polish everything up nice and neat for you. Enjoy.

Note: If the font smoothing wget line doesn’t work for you, you can download the script from here.

After a fresh install of Ubuntu, I find myself doing much to make myself feel at home. Crack open a Mountain Dew and follow these steps to set up Ubuntu in one sitting.

To get easy access to the terminal, visit System -> Preferences -> Keyboard Shortcuts and add something like Ctrl+Alt+T to the Run a Terminal action.

To automatically mount the Windows partition, set up pysdm with the instructions here. To be able to install the application, you’ll need to ensure that most every software source you can check is checked in System -> Administration -> Software Sources and that it has reloaded everything. Now, following those instructions will easily allow access to all your infamous “My Documents” files on startup.

To set up your custom Compiz settings, install the simple-ccsm and compizconfig-settings-manager packages via Synaptic Package Manager or the crazy command line. Next, enable custom visual effects in System -> Preferences -> Appearance. And finally, have at it in System -> Preferences -> CompizConfig Settings Manager.

To install some fonts, do this: sudo apt-get install msttcorefonts (and see here for more about that). Also remember any other fonts you want to install go in the /home/you/.fonts/ directory.

Finish it up by customizing your panels and launchers and font preferences to make it all your own.

I finally figured it out (and/or found the thing I was too stupid to know). Use the command alsamixer to access those settings and turn down the PCM volume a bit. I set mine to about 88 or so.

Then listen to some rock.

-Zach

EDIT ——
Thanks to this post, now I know how to keep the PCM volume the same, so you only have to do things once. Check it out!

Basically, you have to run

sudo gedit /usr/share/pulseaudio/alsa-mixer/paths/analog-output.conf.common

And change the [Element PCM] section to contain volume = ignore instead of volume = merge and the settings in alsamixer will remain constant.

But it doesn’t work that way, I know. It is hard for me to stay here and stand still while you hurt or are going through a hard time. It might not make sense that someone would even be worried about you; maybe it’s really not that bad. But it is you – and I care so deeply I cannot help it. And there’s nothing I can do. There’s nothing you want me to do. There’s nothing you want me for.

But I can pray. I can pray as fiercely as my heart is tied to what I am praying for – and my heart is tied to it fiercely.

If you prick a finger, I’ll feel like I’ve lost a limb

If you happened to need a bandage, I’d need one just as big

If you ever cry, I’d feel as I’ve been torn apart

And I can’t imagine how I’d feel, if someone broke your heart

-Zach

But there’s a public aspect to it, too. There might be some good in writing for yourself, as some diaries and journals might be for, but it’s obvious that writing is, in the long run, because of something bigger than that. Journaling for private reasons can help us think through situations more clearly among other great things, but what if it could help others in the same way?

Enter blogging :)

-Zach

I read through some of my old Xanga posts; I read my old thoughts on a life I have forgotten and my accounts of memories I once lived. Back then, it seemed like these blogs were a popular thing to have. We would write about our lives, our little thoughts on things, and comment on other peoples’ posts. But why was it so attractive to us? I said I believe that it helped us develop and understand who we were, but how does it do that?

Back then, blogging was attractive. As a high schooler, I wanted to express myself and I wanted to be heard, I wanted to fit in and I wanted to have attention. I don’t care how wrong I was or how spiritually young I was back then; whatever the magnitude of those things, I was a different person from who I am now. I grew. I have grown. And to some extent, I think we understood somehow that blogging could result in growth. It was, of course, thought and reflection of ourselves in a way that was shared back and forth with friends, and in my case, friends from church. And it brought community because of this; it was simply an attractive thing.

Blogging helped us develop and understand who we were. And we didn’t even know it. It may have been understood that exploring our thoughts and sharing those with others really brings this about, but it wasn’t why we did it. Mostly we had selfish reasons for blogging back then. I just read through one of my favorite posts I had written on my Xanga blog. It was written the summer before I moved to college; it was full of honesty and reflection. And now, I can picture in my mind the exact moment that inspired me to write it. It’s important to me. It makes me wonder about the way life changes. Our friendships with certain people seem to come and go. As I moved on from that summer and into college, I changed a lot. Things hurt in my life as I figured out who I was. I realized I didn’t have deep friendships with the people I was close to. And, because of that, some friendships got better and deeper, others simply were forgotten, and still some are the same. The thing is the ones that are the same feel different now, because I’m different. I can really see how much I’ve changed now that I’m looking back on my old thoughts. Everything is different now.

It makes me wonder if this chapter in my life will become like one of the previous – forgotten, even regretted. But, that’s not the only way to look at it. Even if a chapter of my life is forgotten, it’s only because the one being written now is so much better. It’s regretted so much less. I’m living so much more. And I believe the more you live in a way you won’t regret, the more you live in a way you won’t forget, the more you’re really alive.

-Zach