Fiddlings for the Day

1.) I calibrated my monitor. I'm really not sure whether it's better or not, as I started when it was still light out and was getting some goddawful glare and it's been so long that I can't really remember how it used to be. Believe it is, though. Used to be on 9300K; I've since switched it to 6500K and adjusted accordingly. When I switched it, though, the old setting was obviously irritatingly blue.

2.) Switched from XMMS to Beep Media Player, which is basically a gtk2 fork of XMMS. It's really pretty spiff, and blends a lot better than the boxy gtk1 of XMMS. Looks slick in the same WinAmp5 clone skin that I was using on XMMS. My only complaint so far is it doesn't seem to play CDs as well as XMMS, or at least I haven't figured out how to fix the sound yet. (Okay, this was actually a few days ago.)

3.) Installed both AbiWord and Gnumeric (and so far am pleased). While OpenOffice.org's got a whole host of functionality, it's clunky, slow, and also doesn't use gtk2, so it doesn't go with everything else. While hopefully things will improve down the road with the 2.0 release, I'm thinking that AbiWord will prove a better program to use for homework assignments, at least for the time being. I rarely use most of the OpenOffice stuff, though I'm still keeping it around.

4.) Fiddled with Gimp, to produce something known in the Gnome world as a hackergotchi. Not a hacker, but it was kind of fun. The result:

Image: Hackergotchi

5.) Poked my head back into my other home, actually logging on for more than 15 minutes at a time for the first time this week. Been busy. Smote e-mail backlog.

6.) Boycotted St. Patrick's Day, even going to the extent to agree to wear red on Victoria day with other Canadian and semi-Canadian (or Canadian-wannabe) non-Irish friends. The accidental green sweatshirt was tossed after I found out what day it was. Of course I manage to wear like the only green top I own by complete coincidence. Luckily it wasn't too cold, for the grey Santa Cruz t-shirt underneath (suprising).

Sure I forgot something; suppose I can always add it later.