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In other words, I got nothin’ today. A few ideas, but not the energy nor motivation to follow through quite yet. I’m blaming the Super Bowl, the outcome of which is unknown as I write this. I’m thinking the world will continue to whirl around real nice like, whichever way it goes. But I did find a few minutes to give my aging behemoth home PC a bit of a makeover. Really all I did was to change the wallpaper to a nice new Debian logo-ed 3D thing. Shiny! I’d been using this old one for a few years I think, and it was just getting boring I guess.

Some of you may recall that I use Linux, Debian Stable (Wheezy!) to be exact, and the hard core savant types may recall that I also use, and love, KDE. Nobody knows what the K stands for - maybe Kool?, but the rest is desktop environment. One of the things that KDE allows idiots like me to do is to easily enable Desktop Effects. Eye candy. Things that wobble and spin and get all pretty like. I’m a sucker for this crap, and have even convinced myself that some of it is useful, even an aid to efficiency. Not that slothful inefficiency isn’t also charming under certain circumstances.

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Anyway, because of the nature of my favorite desktop effect, the awesome and ever so pretty and downright adorable Desktop Cube, changing the wallpaper requires a few additional steps to get that same-wallpaper-on-every-side-of-the-cube-as-well-as-behind-it loveliness that my obsessive nature craves so cravenly. The first step, the behind the cube part, is simple. Just point to your chosen wallpaper file in one of the deeper recesses (Desktop Effects/Desktop Cube/All Effects/Wallpaper) of the handy System Settings thingumabob. Getting the wallpaper on the top and bottom is the hard part.

So, for the absolutely nobody that will try this at home, ever, I’ll meticulously detail each step in the process required to make the top and bottom of the cube as perfect as mine. It’s really pretty easy. There’s one file, called cubecap.png, hidden deeply within your /usr/share/ folder. It varies by distribution (version of Linux), but under Debian it’s in /usr/share/kde4/apps/kwin. You can use your file manager (the profoundly awesome and configurable Dolphin, one of KDE’s best bits of usefulness) to search for it rather than flailing around willy nilly. All you need to do is copy your chosen wallpaper file into that folder (first making sure that it’s really a .png file), then rename it to cubecap.png. They say it’s best if it’s a certain size, but I never bother to change it and it works just fine.

But wait! You can’t do that as yourself, a lowly (but safe!) user. You’ll need to elevate yourself to super-user, or “root” status, always an ego boost. Again, how to do this will vary by distribution. I like to have a root account to log into for situations like this, as opposed to the Ubuntu way of having to sudo into rootiness. I know. Who cares? Just following through with the instructions here. Have a cocktail or a snack or something.

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What I like to do is to press alt-F2, which brings up the almost as cool as Dolphin KRunner thingie. Here you type in “kdesu dolphin”. Hit enter, type in your industrial strength password, and let ‘er rip. That’ll open up a whole new instance of Dolphin, now with full root privileges. Feel the power! But beware… An errant keystroke or three could blow away important bits of your system here. In the words of fictional Presidential candidate George Papoon, “Not Responsible, Not Insane.”

Anyway, once you’re in that scary root instance of Dolphin, it’s a piece o’ cake to simply copy your wallpaper over to wherever that cubecap.png file was. I’d then rename the original cubecap.png to something else, just in case. Now you can simply rename your copied over wallpaper file to cubecap.png, and Bob’s your uncle. To make sure it takes, go into the Desktop Effects section of System Settings once more and change anything, then change it back, then hit “Apply”. Now you’ll see your fully tricked out Desktop Cube in all its six-sided glory, each side festooned with whatever artwork or nude photo you’ve chosen.

Here’s what it looks like for me. That’s KSnapshot at work there taking all the screen-shots, by the way. Almost everything in KDE starts with a K. K is inherently funny. It’s science.

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So that’s the cube, in all its magnificence. You can make it into a cylinder or sphere as well, but the cube is my preference, and there are dozens of other adjustable parameters. Configurability! I have my desktop set up so that when I slide my cursor into the top right corner, the cube appears and I can get to movin’ it around with the mouse. Hours of fun for a simpleton like yours truly, but also mildly useful, as you can stop it on whatever side you want. I usually have one cube face with Firefox Iceweasel and Dolphin, another with my big ol’ text file in KWrite (the one I’m typing into right now and that also houses the entirety of the big list of Buck-isms and all kinds of other minutiae), and another with a media player, either VLC or Clementine, the latter the rare KDE app with no K. The fourth face is for work, so typically free of clutter after a certain point in the day. It’s more efficient however to just use ctrl-F1 or ctrl-F2, etc. to get to each desktop real quick like, and still with the cool spinning motion, the speed of which is, like every last little detail in KDE, configurable.

And the cube’s not all you get. There’s more! For only an additional handling fee… The other real fun one that’ll impress the easily impressionable (me) is Wobbly Windows. It’s exactly what it sounds like. You drag a window and it becomes translucent and rubbery. As always you can specify exactly how wobbly you want your windows to be. I enjoy a high degree of wobbliness. I’m not gonna lie, this one’s completely useless. But fun!

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Then there’s the Present Windows thingie. This one’s pretty useful actually. I have it set up on the top left corner, so when I mouse to there I get a picture of all my windows from all four sides of the cube, or “workspaces”, whether they’re minimized or not. Quick access to everything you have open with the slide of a mouse! I like it, but it’s not quite as pretty or spinny or wobbly as the other stuff here.

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Finally, we have a few different ways you can set up alt-tab behavior, to tab through windows on a per workspace (cube face) basis (or you can tell it to do All Workspaces - configurability!). There’s Flip Switch, which looks like this and is what I’ve gotten used to. Pretty spiffy.

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Or you can go with Cover Switch, which is similar to the cube in a way I guess. Less fancy.

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Or you can use the Present Windows thing here, where it’ll be limited to the single workspace (or not - configurability!). You’ve seen that already. There’s also Layout based switcher, which they don’t even bother to fully capitalize, and is sorta like what Windows does, so that’s off the table right off the bat.

KDE really is a thing of beauty, at least for a geek like me. It’s hard to even put into words the degree to which every little thing is configurable, right down to the smallest, most inconsequential (but maybe pleasing to the OCD type person - like me!) detail. You want a different wallpaper on each face of the cube? You can do that. You want to use some bizarre font for window titles only? No problem. You want Homer Simpson’s “D'oh!” as one or more of the many different alert sounds? Easy! Some of this stuff is even useful, like fine grained control of font sizes or assigning keyboard shortcuts to a dizzying array of actions. Windows doesn’t come even close to this level of subservience to the most ridiculous or minutely trivial whims of the user.

My goodness. All this verbiage just to show off my newly spiffed up desktop! Can there be any doubt as to my excessive and annoying tendency towards excess and annoyance? In my fantasy world, each and every one of you is so impressed with all this that you’ll immediately eschew Windows or the Mac and install Linux, just so you can start spinning and wobbling things. It’s a lonely and bizarre fantasy. I’m gonna shut up now.

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Today in Baseball History 2/2

1876 - The National League is officially formed with teams located in Boston, Chicago, Cincinnati, Hartford, Louisville, New York, Philadelphia and St. Louis.

1936 - The Baseball Writers Association of America announces the results of the first Hall of Fame vote. Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb, Walter Johnson, Christy Mathewson and Honus Wagner comprise the inaugural class of Hall of Fame members. Several other stars like Cy Young fail to make the grade, but will enter the Hall in later elections.

1989 - Former All-Star first baseman Bill White is elected president of the National League. White succeeds Chub Feeney, becoming the first African-American to be named president of either league and the highest-ranking black executive in the four major sports.

1993 - Marge Schott is suspended for one year by major league baseball for bringing “disrepute and embarrassment” to the national pastime. The Cincinnati Reds owner has repeatedly caused an uproar with her racial and ethnic remarks.

2001 - It will take approximately seven more feet to hit a home run at Camden Yards this season as a result of the Orioles moving home plate. The new alignment of the field will also cut down the amount of foul territory available with the foul poles being almost flush against the left- and right-field corners.

2005 - SkyDome is renamed the “Rogers Centre” several days after Rogers Communications completed its purchase of the Toronto Blue Jays’ stadium. Fans react to the naming with derision.

2005 - The trade that sent Sammy Sosa to the Baltimore Orioles from the Chicago Cubs is finalized after Commissioner Bud Selig approves the deal and the slugger passes his physical. Chicago receives second baseman Jerry Hairston, Jr. and two minor leaguers, then signs Jeromy Burnitz as a free agent to replace Sosa in right field.

2006 - Ramón Hernandez hits for the cycle and drives in five runs, leading the Caracas Lions of Venezuela to a 17 - 1 rout of Mexico’s Mazatlan Reindeer in the Caribbean Series opener. Alex Cabrera also hits a home run with four RBI, and starter Jeremi Gonzalez strikes out seven in seven innings. According to Caribbean Series historians, Ramón Hernandez’s feat is the first in Caribbean Series play, dating back to 1949.

2014 - In the 2014 Caribbean Series, the Naranjeros de Hermosillo improve to 2-0 by beating the Indios de Mayagüez, with two two-run jacks from Zelous Wheeler powering a 6 - 3 win. Juan Delgadillo tosses 7 shutout innings but closer Oliver Perez nearly blows it, giving up all 3 Puerto Rican runs in the 9th. In the other contest, the Navegantes del Magallanes top Villa Clara, 8 - 5, with 3 RBI from Ramón Hernández.

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Happy Groundhog’s Day! I bet they make cards for that, don’t they. What a world…

“I thought I had an appetite for destruction… but all I wanted was a club sandwich.”

Link to past posts, faster than the top-right icon thingie: https://disqus.com/home/forum/claudecatsplace/recent/