Adobe, Linux, Tech

Adobe Air for Linux?

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A friend forwarded the e-mail below to me. It looks like there is a beta or prerelease of the Linux version of Adobe Air available. However, poking around Adobe’s site I can’t any references to this release and Googling hasn’t turned up anything useful (except for doc from last year saying Air for Linux will be here in the 1.2 release). And the first Q/A in the e-mail say there isn’t a public announcement, yet. If anyone knows what procedure there is get access to a version, please leave a comment.

Wouldn’t you think they’d include a few links in the e-mail! I’m guessing that it’s somewhere on http://labs.adobe.com, maybe all I have to do is register? Nor is there anything on the Air Forums?

The announcement is below, the only changes I’ve made is masking any e-mail addresses (to help prevent unnecessary spam), and some minor formatting to improve the legibility. BTW Adobe, good job on working on providing Linux support. However, I’d suggest that if you provide support for Ubuntu, that you also consider providing packages for Debian which is what Ubuntu is based on.

Update: See Ashutosh‘s comment below.

Also, see Arstechnica’s Air Review.

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Different things that caught by eye today.

The worst foods to eat in America (via Boing-boing):

http://www.menshealth.com/20worst

The worst being fries with cheese and ranch dressing from a nation chain with 2,900 calories! That’s 900 more than is recommended for an average adult male should eat in a whole day! (Read the article to see more).

An Irish chef, living in Amerika, goes home to his family homestead in Donegal and shows some good places to eat:

http://www.foodandwine.com/articles/a-donegal-son-returns

So which pic looks better? I was trying to enhance some pics I took while home in Ireland in January, if you look here you can see the lastest enhancement, using a contrast-mask, the original, and a version using an equalisation filter:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/timony/2259172449/

The original:
The three Carrowkeel Cairns

Using a contrast mask:
The three Carrowkeel Cairns

And using the equalisation filter, which brings out more detail in the clouds and sky, but the landscape looks artifical:
The three Carrowkeel Cairns

Nature

Pollution in the World’s Oceans

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Amazing article about the extent of pollution in the world’s oceans:
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/oceans/la-me-ocean30jul30,0,6670018,full.story

The fireweed began each spring as tufts of hairy growth and spread across the seafloor fast enough to cover a football field in an hour.

When fishermen touched it, their skin broke out in searing welts. Their lips blistered and peeled. Their eyes burned and swelled shut. Water that splashed from their nets spread the inflammation to their legs and torsos.

Linux, Tech

Dell BIOS updates using Linux

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Dell provides Ubuntu support for updating the BIOS of Dell systems:

http://direct2dell.com/one2one/archive/2007/12/05/37446.aspx

… be sure the Universe section is enabled in /etc/apt/sources.list, then run as root:

wget -q -O – http://linux.dell.com/repo/firmware/bootstrap.cgi | bash
aptitude install firmware-addon-dell
aptitude install $(bootstrap_firmware -a)
update_firmware

Thanks Dell!

Nature

Waving frog waves for the last time

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Sad:

The Panamanian golden frog communicates with other frogs by semaphore in the form of gentle hand waves.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7219803.stm

What’s is amazing is that they took video of them in the wild before the last wild populations were destroyed by a fungi:

… after filming for the BBC One series Life In Cold Blood, the frogs had to be rescued from the wild, due to the threat of chytrid fungus.

More details on chytrid fungus and a possible cure:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7067613.stm

The blow that chytrid has dealt to the frog population is already immense.

The disease has probably accounted for one-third of all the losses in amphibian species to date, says Professor Rick Speare, an expert in amphibian diseases who works with the University of Otago’s frog research group.

Update:
Just found this video on YouTube that from the BBC documentary mentioned above:

kde, Linux, Tech

kde4 & debian!

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Works great! Following the instructions here:

http://pkg-kde.alioth.debian.org/experimental.html

However, if you install the KDE4 kdeartwork package, any remaining kde3 packages, such as k3b & amarok, will uninstalled and aren’t available for KDE4 on Debian yet.

See the screenshot that highlights transparency:

KDE4 on Debian

However, this does seems buggier than on my laptop running Ubuntu. For instance, whenever I type in the brower (such as writing an e-mail using gmail), the pager flickers off and on, and sometimes the whole bar on the bottom flickers on and off. I’ve tried setting KWIN_NVIDIA_HACK=1 and that didn’t help.

Tech

Confused about PSU’s?

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Confused about power supplies for motherboards? Me too. This will help:

http://www.theinquirer.net/en/inquirer/news/2003/08/30/power-supplies-become-increasingly-expensive

ATX = 20 pin plug, your Pentium III’s ATX connector and PS
ATX12V = 20 pin atx connector + 4-pin plug for “Additional 12V”
SSI = Intel spec, which, among other things, defines the “EPS” “enhanced” ATX specification
EPS12V= Power supply with 24-pin EPS12V connector, plus one 8-pin “additional 12v connector”.

Linux, Python, Boston, Donegal.