However, Notify-OSD’s design specs very clearly state that their notifications are absolutely non-interactive. You can’t dismiss it and you can’t open the triggering program with it. All you can do is mouse-over to have to blur out to a translucent mess. It’s not themeable, you can’t change the time-out duration and you can’t disable them without removing the app altogether.

When did Shuttleworth start to like the idea of dictating behaviour and aesthetics to a group of users dedicated to freedom and choice?

</rant>

In case you aren’t familiar with Netflix, they started out as a mail-order DVD rental site. You log in and add movies or TV-on-dvd to a queue and Netflix would mail you the discs with a postage paid return envelope. Over the years though, Netflix started streaming their wares over the intertubes. It’s at least DVD quality (in some cases, HD) and will stream instantly through your browser, to your Mac, iPad, PS3, Wii, Xbox 360. Hell, even some phones are supported with plans to bring it to the Android and iPhone as well.

I am so excited for this, it’s not even funny. You can sign up for news of the release at Netflix.ca

According to the Google Translation of a Swedish newspaper website, the dog mysteriously appeared one day. It was recognised then publicised by local resident Petter Feltenstedt but no one seems to know who put it up. I’m just shocked that no one’s shot at it yet.

[via barometern.se]

Prep your steak however you’d normally prep it. Personally, I like top sirloins with a simple dry rub of sea salt and a smidge of garlic powder. It’s cheap, quick and tasty. Marinades and other cuts work well too, though you’ll want to limit the thickness of your steak to about an inch or an inch and a half. Let the steak warm up on the counter for a half hour to an hour.

Pre-heat your oven to ~400 degrees and throw a flat-bottomed cast iron pan onto your biggest, hottest element and crank it up to high. If you’ve got an especially thin steak, maybe lower it to medium-high. Let the pan get hot then toss the steak on. Allow it to sear for about 2 minutes then flip and repeat. Once both sides are seared, transfer your pan to the oven.

You’re aiming for an internal temp of about 125 to 145 degrees. If you don’t have a probe, 5 minutes will usually do for medium-rare.

Pull the pan out, remove the steak to a plate and cover with tin foil for 5-10 minutes. This is a great time to toss veg into a pre-heated steamer.

I really like this method because, more often than not, I’ll be roasting potatoes at the same time and they’ll be in there at about 400 for 20-30 minutes anyhow.

Just a couple of days ago, I set out to write a simple Android app to track my workout progress. I downloaded the SDK.. and Eclipse.. and the AVD.. and the JDK.. and the docs. By the end of it, I had lost interest and went back to job hunting. Eventually I came back to the docs and started reading. A Hello World app used to be simple. Even with MIDP Java programming for mobiles, a novice could have their mobile emulator spit out Hello World in five minutes flat. Android, not so much.

Android programming is not that complex, it just seems rather tedious. And tedium is a huge barrier to entry for a lot of people, especially tech savvy non-coders. This group has the enthusiasm but not the know-how. They’ve never coded before and so they don’t know their JDK from their XML and it all just blurs into one big messy grey blob of WTF right before they give up and walk away.

I’m hoping App Inventor will lower that barrier. Sure, the Android Market might see a sudden deluge of throwaway apps (hello iPhone Fart Button), but for every 1000 bits of trash, there’s bound to be one truly great app. iMovie, cheap DV cams and YouTube brought forth an incredible new generation of film makers and comedians filled with new ideas (relatively) free of stagnant echo-chamber thinking. Maybe coding will see a similar shift.

Moving all my documents/movies/pictures/everything into their own directories outside the C: drive made things infinitely easier too. In Win7, you can right click (for example, it works with any folder in your Home directory) My Documents, pick Properties. Up top there’s a new tab for Location. Click that, click Move and pick a new spot. It’ll helpfully ask you if you want to move all your existing stuff into the target directory. Since it was a fresh install, I skipped it. Very cool stuff though. It made getting my personal preferences back stupidly simple. I even transferred out my Desktop and Saved Games directories too, just for shits n’ giggles.

Then I got to poking around with dual monitors: a TV attached via 30′ HDMI the other being the monitor on my desk. Windows 7′s Media Centre is awesome and I highly recommend it to everyone (as long as they install the Shark007 codecs with it) but I tire of software easily and decided to give Ubuntu a stab at my home system again. After a little trouble with a leftover Windows Boot Manager on a different drive taking priority, things got sorted and installed without much of a hitch. Nvidia drivers installed fine, the dual monitor and video settings config went much more easily than it did even on Windows. The folks at Canonical seem to be trimming out a lot of the Linux fat and slimming down the number of controls significantly. Their effort is much appreciated.

The first (and so far only) snag came with sound over HDMI. Not only did it require the ALSA sound system but it also needed to be a very specific version that had to be compiled from source. This is something I refuse to do with ALSA. That’s one setup that can go sideways much to easily. I like my blood pressure where it is. Luckily, someone on the Ubuntu forums wrote a handy script that downloads all of the prereqs, configs, compiles and installs the whole job. When that finished, all I had to do was set a Profile type in Sound Preferences (in Gnome: System menu > Preferences > Sound; the Hardware tab) by picking my device then picking the setup I wanted. Digital Stereo (IEC958) Output + Analog Stereo Input in this case. I think most people in my situation would be looking for this same option.

After a little trial and error, I found this setup to work best:

• Nvidia: Used Separate X Screens instead of TwinView.
  • TwinView takes your two desktops and stitches them together for form one BIG desktop. That means your resolution stops being two screens at 1920×1080 and starts being 3840×1080 or 1920×2160. This really dicks with a lot of apps. XBMC in particular can’t go to a reasonable fullscreen in this mode. Separate X Screens takes a reboot to put into practice but trust me, it’ll be worth saving you the headaches later.
• XMBC: Scripted to work with a package called wmctrl.
  • Even with Separate X Screens, XBMC still has some issues with fullscreen on dual monitor setups. Namely, it likes to trap all input so your mouse/kb can’t be used outside XBMC when its in full screen. wmctrl (install via apt-get) lets you control a lot of little window manager settings. Below is a script I use to launch then fullscreen XBMC to my TV.

$ cat .xbmc-fs
#!/bin/bash
# Launches XBMC then uses wmctrl to full-screen it without taking away control
# Display:0.1 == my TV
# Display:0.0 == my Monitor
DISPLAY=:0.1

# start XBMC and continue script when ready
xbmc &

# wait for it...
status=0
while [ $status -eq 0 ]; do
sleep 1
status=`wmctrl -x -l | grep "XBMC Media Center" | wc -l | awk '{print $1}'`
done

# enable pseudo fullscreen
wmctrl -x -r XBMC Media Center.XBMC Media Center -b toggle,fullscreen

Anyways, got GNOME-Do, Chrome, Pidgin and Transmission installed. Remapped most of my home directory links to the right spots on my hard drives. It’s 100% usable now. All down to the nice-to-haves now: Steam, Skype, Office and possibly KDE4.

EDIT: The Archives are back online. A crash during the upgrade to WordPress 3.0 nearly killed all my past entries. Luckily, with some quick MySQL hackery and some intelligent design on WordPress’ part, everything was saved. Comments, categories, posts, pages, everything. I <3 you WordPress.

One thing that surprised me: Apparently the privacy commissioner’s office in Saskatchewan can only investigate the concerns of public sector workers, not private sector workers. With so many things – from simple customer rewards memberships to online shops – requiring addresses, credit information, SINs and drivers license numbers nowadays, everyone deserves protection from anyone who might abuse all of that personal information.

Games on Demand – You can now download full Xbox 360 games over Xbox LIVE. You can purchase games using Microsoft® Points or a credit card, and download them directly to your console hard drive. No physical disc is required to play these games.

Wewts! Sign me up bitches.