Friday, October 15, 2010

Gnome Theme Engine Installation

I'm really proud of myself right now for figuring out how to install the latest murrine engine in Linux Mint Debian Edition (LMDE), which I'm running on my home desktop.

My previous Linux experience has been almost entirely with Ubuntu-based distros (including the standard version of Mint). In those distros, you don't have to figure out what to do with Debian packages (.deb files). You have a Debian package installer (or in Ubuntu 10.10 the standard Software Center) that does all the work for you. However, in Debian and LMDE, you usually have to do some stuff in the terminal to install from a .deb.

After 3-4 tries, I finally managed to get the dance of ./configure, make, and  make install right. It took me forever to figure out that I needed to be logged in as root for the make install command to work. The single hardest part of working with the terminal is picking through the line after line of feedback the program gives you to try to figure out what went wrong. I don't know how many times I've been frustrated by things not working because I typed in the next command without noticing the error message immediately above the prompt.

Anyway, I want to show off after this quantum leap in my Linux skills. Here's a screenshot of the Ambiance Mint theme, complete with correct murrine engine and Faenza Mint icons

 

Wednesday, October 13, 2010

Cleaning My Room

No, I didn't get the whole thing cleaned up, though I got more than I ever thought was possible in only two hours.

It all started when I had a set of D&D dice out, rolling up random stat arrays. I had my dice lying on top of my  Pathfinder core book, which was also serving as a surface for the die-rolling. Unfortunately, I managed to move in just such a way as to tilt the book, spilling the dice onto the floor--or, more accurately, onto the pile of sheets and clothes that covered that area of the floor.

I managed to recover all the dice except the d4. Thinking that I'd better find that little caltrop before I stepped on it, I started pulling stuff off the pile to check under it. As I stumbled upon old, worn-out socks with holes in them, I threw them away while I was there. I kept any socks that were in reasonably good shape, giving them a provisional reprieve until I could confirm whether or not they had a mate in decent shape.

After I'd cleared all the socks off the floor, I saw that there was a decent-sized bare spot. In fact, it was big enough to fit a hardcover roleplaying rulebook in. It occurred to me that I could open up a lot more floor space by putting all my RPG books in a stable stack on the floor (as opposed to on top of a shifting mound of old socks). So I rounded up my books and put all the current ones in one big stack, putting books from obsolete games like D&D 3.0 and Gurps 3e in a separate pile, to be taken to the Bookery or some similar place and sold. By the time that was done, I'd cleared up even more space. I actually had a lane of clear floor stretching halfway around my bed! All that from just a couple of little organizational tasks. If I can get such dividends from so (relatively) little investment of energy, I may be able to clean the whole mess out eventually.