KODA

A while ago, I wrote a howto, “Compiz, XGL on Ubuntu for the morbidly lazy,” about installing Compiz on a standard Ubuntu Dapper setup. This worked great for the packaged 0.0.2 version in the Dapper repositories, but while Ubuntu started freezing and preparing for their release, Compiz development blazed ahead and many beautiful new features and improvements came with it. Because of this, I switched over to the cvs version of Compiz and ran it for a long time. Unfortunately, my love of the bleeding-edge caught up to me, as about a month ago it seems that Ubuntu’s also not-updated version of Xgl and the Mesa libraries fell out of compatibility with cvs Compiz.

After several unsuccessful attempts to revert to an older version, I resigned back to normal Metacity until I had the time to look deeper into the problem and find what changes were needed. Long story short, after coming back to it today, I stumbled upon the excellent compiz.net forums, and subsequently RacerII’s howto. RacerII points to another forum member reggaemanu’s (mostly undocumented) repository over at xgl.compiz.info, which contains patched Xgl and Mesa packages. I tried them out today, and they work like a charm!

…for an attractive PHP gallery app has begun. Polishing up the theme and design for the blog here has gone so well that I think I’m going to call it mostly complete for now. I also took some time today to write up a custom 404 (and other) error handler for chromakode.com. I’m not sure if the devil truly is in the details… it sure is fun to dive into a little detail every now and then.

It’s time to start filling in the other sections of this site. I’ve been hoping to tackle an art gallery next, but it seems that every open source gallery system I check out turns out looking less than my hopes. I don’t know if I’ve becomed spoiled over at deviantART, but the demos and interfaces I’ve seen all seem to be based around the same clunky forum-ish page layout. Thumbnails are painfully small, the user interfaces are cluttered, distracting, and based on ugly web forms. And if you’re looking for a serious gallery layout, the standard white is about the worst color to choose for a background - dark gray and black can bring out so much more color in your images!

Just more updates, more design, more cold. I’ve been knocking it out, though.

Things are getting a little bit busy in this blog design here… though I don’t feel it’s yet busy to the point of being cluttered. More like busy to the point of being mature.

FreeSerif == Beautiful.

I’m pretty jazzed about these fancy half-cut date headings, though if they get too annoying, I’ll have to figure something else out. Next in line is that boring mess of a sidebar on the right… we’ll see how much of it remains tomorrow.

Today I did a lot more work on the front page and wordpress theme… lots of very fun, engrossing design work. I’ve been taking a bit of time to learn the wordpress theme structure so that I can effectively port my old design over to it.

In the process, I’ve been learning a lot of useful php and css tricks. It’s so fulfilling to see things falling into place as I find out more of what needs to change to achieve what I’m looking for. Or to find out what I’m looking for. In a few days, time willing, I figure I should have the blog themed to my satisfaction. I’ve been holding off major announcements until I have something compelling here - so that the blog here doesn’t look like a downgrade rather than the huge upgrade I hope it is.

Slowly but surely, slowly but surely…
More style changes tomorrow!

This is a test of Custom Smileys 2.3

Well, fate would have it that I’ve been getting tied up in all sorts of expected and unexpected work over the past two days, and thus have found little time in terms of improving the site. Sorry for not much happening right now - believe me - if I could, I’d be working on this every minute. Here’s to hoping I’ll find more time on the weekend to get a real theme up here on the blog, and get some anouncements out!

Until then,
–Chromakode

Today was awesome. After a lot of thought and planning, I’ve finally bit the bullet and switched things over to the wonderful NearlyFreeSpeech.Net. It’s amazing. I don’t have a lot of time to write about the experience now, but so far it has been excellent. Oh, and I have a domain now!

In the next few days I’ll be tweaking things to my liking and setting up the sections on the front page. Oh, and I’ll get rid of Kubrick. Promise.

Anyway, I’ve gotta run now. I will be working continuously on this new site, and seeing where the new possibilities take me. I’m excited.

And now for something completely different… free music!

Over the past week I’ve been working on a four minute piano piece. It’s part of continuning composition projects working with my piano teacher. This week, I finally got my act together and wrote something I feel is whole, and recorded it well enough that I’ll let myself get away with it.

In my opinion the song is about that experience when the weather can’t decide whether or not to be sunny. This is the first jazzy piece that I feel this satisfied with… so it’s a bit of a happy thing to get it out there. Oh, and everything was recorded and edited using Open Source software.

If you’d like to check out this piece of music, it is available for streaming and download on the Internet Archive.

Yeah, it drags in some places and occasionally I hit extra notes, but hey - it was a joy to create. Isn’t that what counts?