Just a quick website update: I just switched hosts this past week. If you noticed any downtime, please accept my apologies. If you see anything still not working, please let me know. I think I have it all back up.
If you are interested in the details, you can read about it here: Digital Eagle Blog: Switching Hosts Again!
I have wanted to play with using Java FX for some of my programs, but it hasn’t been easy to work with in either Eclipse or Linux. This time though, with the help of some other articles across the Internet, I was able to get a small sample Java FX program running from Eclipse. Here’s my notes from my explore:
I found this really great article at Hidden Clause called Writing an Eclipse Plug-in (Part 2): Creating a custom project in Eclipse – Adding to the New Project Wizard. My only problem with it is that I am using a newer version of Eclipse, and I really needed screenshots to understand what it was talking about. So, here’s my experience at walking through that tutorial…
I use Eclipse for my Java Development. So, here’s what I went through to install it
I ran across this article …
… and it made me wonder how many projects we have named Unity!
This Unity is the (relatively) new user interface for Ubuntu Linux. You can read more about it here:
For me, the biggest difference is the new menu. Instead of a traditional “start”-style menu, Unity introduces this new dash:
One of the things that I need to master as a blogger talking about the Unity interface is the lingo. Here’s a little article that shows what the different parts are called:
Ask Ubuntu: What’s the right terminology for Unity’s UI elements?
Just FYI, I discovered some nice information about Unity and some of the alternatives:
I have a friend and colleague that did some work with the Unity Gaming Engine. Since it is a 3D engine, I get it confused easily with the “Unity 3D” interface, but it’s completely different.
Just by looking at their website, you can see the quality of the graphics. I haven’t had a chance to work with it, but it looks very nice.
While looking around for other things called Unity, I came across this .Net project. I am not sure I have the bandwidth to try to understand it, but it’s yet another unrelated Unity project.
Codeplex: patterns & practices – Unity
I am not sure this distribution is still active. When I first searched this out, it was there, but now, the site doesn’t respond. The Wikipedia article describes it a little. A distribution with that name would be very confusing.
I ran across this article that mentioned removing the scrollbars on windows: Ubuntu 12.10 Quantal Quetzal Post Installation Guide. These scrollbars have annoyed me for a while. If you use a scroll wheel on your mouse, they’re great. They use less screen space. But, if you actually have to click on them, they elusive.
This article is a run through of installing Google Earth to view points from a hike. At first, it was as easy as installing the Deb package, but then, I had a graphics issue that I had to work through. So, below you’ll find the error messages and the command that I used to fix the crash.
One of the main driver things that I have to install is the video card. My laptop has a discrete video card. Without installing the driver, the graphics seem to work pretty well, but with the driver, I get a very noticeable improvement in power consumption. After installing the driver, the battery lasts significantly longer. Also, glxspheres does a nice job of showing the graphics performance difference with and without the acceleration.
The touchpad on my laptop (Dell Inspiron 17R) didn’t just work automatically. Thanks to alfc, I found out how to install the driver for it. The Ask Ubuntu answer is very well explained.
In any regard, here’s what I did…
I had a problem a while back with a Word document needs the Verdana font, and I didn’t have it installed on my machine. A quick search revealed an easy package to install for Ubuntu. I found some more complicated instructions for Fedora. It looks like they were repeated here, but I found a better solution futher on down.
For some reason, I could not figure out where the rpmbuild directory was supposed to come from. Then, I found this article that was very helpful:
Mauriat Miranda:Personal Fedora 15 Installation Guide — Install Microsoft Truetype Fonts
I just downloaded his msttcore-fonts-2.0-3.noarch.rpm and ran:
sudo rpm -ivh ~/Downloads/msttcore-fonts-2.0-3.noarch.rpm
Note: I just peaked in my currently installed Ubuntu, and I do see Verdana listed in LibreOffice Writer. So, I think it installs by default for Ubuntu.