Biker|Geek

This seems fitting on the eve of my 40th birthday. I know it’s made the rounds for a couple of years but so be it.
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When I was a kid, adults used to bore me to tears with their tedious diatribes about how hard things were when they were growing up; what with walking 25 miles to school every morning … uphill BOTH ways …yadda, yadda, yadda.

And I remember promising myself that when I grew up, there was no way in h#ll I was going to lay a bunch of crap like that on kids about how hard I had it and how easy they’ve got it!

But now that I’m over the ripe old age of thirty, I can’t help but look around and notice the youth of today. You’ve got it so easy! I mean, compared to my childhood, you live in a da#n Utopia! And I hate to say it but you kids today you don’t know how good you’ve got it!

1. When I was a kid we didn’t have The Internet.

If we wanted to know something, we had to go to the damn library and look it up ourselves, in the card catalog!

2. There was no email!!

We had to actually write somebody a letter … with a pen! Then you had to walk all the way across the street and put it in the mailbox and it would take like a week to get there!

3. There were no MP3′s or Napsters!

You wanted to steal music, you had to hitchhike to the damn record store and shoplift it yourself! Or you had to wait around all day to tape it off the radio and the DJ would usually talk over the beginning and #*% it all up!

4. We didn’t have fancy crap like Call Waiting!

If you were on the phone and somebody else called they got a busy signal, that’s it!

5. And we didn’t have fancy Caller ID Boxes either!

When the phone rang, you had no idea who it was! It could be your school, your mom, your boss, your bookie, your drug dealer, a collections agent, you just didn’t know!!! You had to pick it up and take your chances mister!

6. We didn’t have any fancy Sony Playstation video games with high-resolution 3­D graphics!

We had the Atari 2600! With games like “Space Invaders” and “Asteroids” and the graphics were horrible! Your guy was a little square! You actually had to use your imagination! And there were no multiple levels or screens, it was just one screen forever! And you could never win. The game just kept getting harder and harder and faster and faster until you died! Just like LIFE!

7. When you went to the movie theater there no such thing as stadium seating!

All the seats were the same height! If a tall guy or some old broad with big hair or a hat sat in front of you and you couldn’t see, you were just screwed!

8. Sure, we had cable television, but back then that was only like 15 channels and there was no on screen menu!

You had to use a little book called a TV Guide to find out what was on!

And there was no Cartoon Network either!

You could only get cartoons on Saturday Morning. Do you hear what I’m saying!?! We had to wait ALL WEEK for cartoons!

9. And we didn’t have microwaves…

If we wanted to heat something up, we had to use the stove or go build a fire…imagine that! If we wanted popcorn, we had to use that stupid Jiffy Pop thing or a pan with HOT oil and Real popcorn kernels and shake it all over the stove forever like an idiot.

10. When we were on the phone with our friends and our parents walked-in… we were stuck to the wall with a cord, a 7-foot cord that ran to the phone – not to the phone base, the actual phone. We barely had enough length to sit on the floor and still be able to twirl the phone cord in our fingers. If you suddenly had to go to the bathroom – guess what we had to do…..hang up and talk to them later.

That’s exactly what I’m talking about! You kids today have got it too easy. You’re spoiled. You guys wouldn’t have lasted five minutes back in 1980!

Regards,
“The Over 30 Crowd”

Let’s help the Shot Of JAQ podcast guys hit 1,000 Facebook fans by Thursday January 14, 2010.

I got an invite to Google Voice and so far I have to say it’s WAY COOL! You can get a local number to link all your phones to and the part I like the best is voice mails are transcribed and sent as a text message to your cell phone with the phone number that called, attached. I have just begun to explore the features of this service and so far I’m really liking it. Request an invite and check it out at: https://www.google.com/voice

Thanks to Kipkay for the video demo of the the new Google Nexus One. I really want one now.

http://laptoplogic.com/resources/top-50-linux-alternatives-to-popular-apps

Top 50 Linux Alternatives to Popular Apps

January 23, 2009 at 06:01:25 AM, by Blair Mathis Rating: 4 out of 5

Linux is quickly gaining popularity, but there are still many users afraid to convert as they are not familiar with the applications. Today our Linux guru Blair Mathis is back to introduce fifty of the most popular applications on this OS

ANIMATION SOFTWARE

Blender 3D: Blender 3D is a high-quality, robust animation program with a steep learning curve and the ability to create commercial-quality 3D animations. The software is completely free, with extensive documentation available online for free.

Pencil (2D): Pencil is a free 2D animation program intended to make traditional hand-drawn animations possible. Animations are drawn on individual ‘pages’, and then compiled together in a digital flipbook of sorts.

KPovModeler: KPovModeler is a composition/modeling program for making POV-Ray scenes: an excellent addition to Blender 3D, and intended KDE.

Stopmotion: Stopmotion is a program that allows you to capture and/or combine photos together to create a smooth stopmotion animation video. Not only works well for claymation and similar, but can also be used to create timelapse videos.

Synfig (2D): Synfig is a free 2D animation software package that states “two-dimensional animation has long been the domain of proprietary software…Synfig, a free software/open source tool for producing feature-film quality animation with fewer people and resources.”

Anime Studio 5 (2D)($199.99): Anime Studio 5 is a powerful commercial application for creating 2D animations with the ability to import/export OBJ files, special effects scripting, layered animation, vector animation, and advanced timeline controls.

AUDIO SOFTWARE

Audio CD Extractor (ripper): Available through Add/Remove Applications, Audio CD Extractor (previously known as Sound Juicer) is an easy to use CD ripper, intended to make copying music CDs fast, simple, and straight-forward.

Audacity (recorder): Audacity is an excellent, free digital audio recorder/editor for nearly all audio types. It can record multiple channels, split channels, merge audio, and a wide array of other features. Supports recording from both line-in and sound card.

Sound Converter: This is an application for GNOME that accepts a wide array of different audio formats and converts them to mp3, wav, flac, or ogg.

Last Exit (player): Last Exit is a standalone player for Last.fm that allows you to add specific stations, search for stations, choose a neighbors station, or browse. You can set preferences, password protect it, and save changes.

Hipo iPod Management Tool: If you have an Apple iPod, the Hipo iPod Management Tool is an invaluable program that allows users to manage their device.

Utube-Ripper: Have you every come across a video on YouTube you wanted to save to your hard drive? With Utube Ripper, you can download and save either the entire video, or the audio only. Very sleek and easy to use.

Freqtweak: According to Add/Remove Applications, “FreqTweak is a tool for real time audio spectral manipulation and display. It provides several algorithms for processing audio data in the frequency domain and a highly interactive GUI to manipulate the associated filters for each. It also provides high resolution spectral displays.”

VIDEO SOFTWARE

VLC: VLC is arguably the most popular video player on any operating system. It supports nearly every video type available, offers the ability to change audio settings, choose audio channels (headphones, full bass, etc.), change video aspect ratio and more. The program is lightweight and easy to use.

AcidRip: AcidRip is a simple, straightforward tool for copying a DVD to a digital video file, with codecs such as XviD, x264, MPEG, and more available. It allows you to control file size, audio settings, quality, cropping, etc.

Avidemux: Avidemux is an excellent video editing application. You can add filters, meticulously manipulate audio and video, combine VOBs, combine videos, and much more.

DVD::RIP: While AcidRip is the best tool to use if you want to create a video straight from a DVD, DVD::RIP is ideal if you want to convert an ISO or VOB files. Simply start the program, load the file, and then choose the video settings and transcode to an AVI or other file format.

Gnome Subtitles: Edit, add, and manipulate subtitles on a video using this free program.

iriverter: iriverter is a frontend for mencoder that makes it simple to convert videos for a wide array of portable video devices, including the Creative Vision M and iRiver players. Single and batch conversions can be done.

Wink: Wink is a free video program for creating video screencasts; an excellent program for creating video tutorials and presentations, with the ability to add explanation boxes to the video.

XBMC Media Center: XBMC is an award-winning media center for multiple platforms, and is fully supported on Ubuntu. The program is sophisticated and high-quality, and is a top-notch media player that can organize and play videos, music, and photos, including previews and album covers.

GRAPHICS

GIMP: GIMP is the Linux alternative to Adobe Photoshop. It is an advanced image authoring/editing program with an animation engine and a wide array of plugins/filters/brushes. It can do nearly everything Photoshop can do, but does require one to learn it proficiently in order to exploit it’s features.

Hugin: Hugin is a high-quality panorama maker. It combines two or more photos and combines them into one panorama. It blends colors to make seams between photos unnoticeable, allows you to choose a lens style for the pano (fisheyes, etc.), and to manually choose connection points.

Comix: Comix is a comic book viewer for Linux. It is high-quality, works smoothly, and offers all the necessary components for viewing digital comics, including double-page support, zoom, rotation, mirroring, fullscreen mode, fit-to-screen mode, image enhancement, image quality toggle, and bookmarks.

FlickrUploader: Flickr Uploader is a desktop program that makes it easy to instantly upload your images to your Flickr account.

Inkscape: Inkscape is a sophisticated vector graphics program similar to Adobe Illustrator.

Phatch Photo Batch Processor: Phatch is a batch processor for photos, making it easy to resize, crop, rotate, add rounded corners, change perspective, or a wide array of other features in just a few minutes.

QCaD: QCaD is as close to autoCAD as you can get on Ubuntu. It offers the ability to create and files, with support for autoCADR and similar files

OFFICE

xPDF: xPDF is a suite of PDF tools, including a lightweight viewer with support for standard, Truetype, and Type 1 fonts, conversion tools for converting PDFs into different formats, and support for multiple languages.

AbiWord: Abiword is a popular, lightweight and yet sophisticated word processor that works very well on Linux. It is best for those who need to create documents, but don’t require a massive amount of features

OpenOffice Writer: OpenOffice Writer is a large, high-end word processor. It works well on Linux, and has all the features you could possibly need. If you’re looking for a complete alternative to MS Word, Writer is your best option.

OpenOffice Spreadsheet: Very similar to MS Excel.

OpenOffice Presentation: Alternative to MS PowerPoint.

OpenOffice Impress: Alternative to MS Publisher.

KAddressBook: KAddress is a personal contacts/address manager.
KOrganizer: KOrganizer is a calendar and scheduling app with the ability to track important dates, add notes, and export to industry standard files.

GnuCash: GnuCash a finance management software suitable for both personal and business use. It can support major file types, such as Quickbooks files, and tracks multiple accounts, constantly calculating new balances and tracking everything needed, including investments and expenses.

xCHM: xCHM is a CHM HTML file viewer, suitable for viewing large HTML ebooks and files saved in the CHM file type.

UTILITIES

GPSDrive: A navigation system designed to work with a GPS receiver. Offers the ability to zoom and display maps downloaded or generated as needed via OpenStreetMap.

Gnome Partition Editor: The Partition Editor allows you to easily manipulate partitions with support for multiple file structures.

Virtual Box OSE: Virtual Box is a virtual machine application, allowing you to run different OS’s inside your Linux machine.

ClamAV: Clam AV is an anti-virus software app for Linux, and works very well.

Gmount-ISO: Gmount is a frontend for a Terminal command that allows you to easily mount a DVD or CD ISO image.

INTERNET

Opera: Opera is a lightweight browser with wide support and a customizable launch page.

Mozilla Firefox: Firefox is the most popular Internet browser for Linux, offering stability, wide support, and a massive amount of plugins.

Thunderbird: Thunderbird a popular email client from the Mozilla line of Internet applications. It offers multiple account access, IMAP and SMTP, password protection, address books, and more.

SeaMonkey: SeaMonkey is based on Firefox Internet browser, but is more stable.

Evolution:Evolution is another email client, but appears very similar to Microsoft’s Outlook.

Pidgin IM: An instant messaging client that support AIM, ICQ, Yahoo! IRC, Zephyr, Gadu, Groupwise, SIMPLE, SILC, Sametime, Napster, MSN, and Jabber.

gFTP: gFTP is a file transfer protocol app for Linux offering support for a wide array of uploads and downloads.