jmoiron.net

Gnome 2.4 came out yesterday, and although I compiled it myself, I found out today that it had been compiled by a Patrick volderking a few hours prior to me finishing. Either or, I have been using 2.4 for a day now, and its time to write a short expose here about the ways that it both flows like a gentle river and pounds your skull to dust like niagra falls. Without shit like this, my life: meaningless.

2.4 is like a revalation, its something that comes upon you by the force of its own pand seens right by virtue of its existence. Its not that there are a lot of improvements, because there are, but that is not what is necessarily improving the platform. Its the polish; its the little things, its the speed enhancement, the HIG, the increased support for network and system tools, the better clock and the most attractive calendar in the history of man. Its Variance, ApeDosMil, its those two broken icons that don't seem to work no matter what the fuck I do, and last but not least it's definitely epiphany

Its nice to see GNOME shipping with a capable web-browser again, although gecko still writhes within the grasps of a full install of mozilla, its demonic clenches ceasing not in their ability to spread their icy tendrils accross my dropdown's and text-boxes, its still an extremely capable rendering engine, and soon with the mozilla parts initiative, Epiphany should be well on its way to being packed on its own. There are 2 problems with it as I see now:

1. You cannot alt/ctrl enter to open up a URL in a new tab
2. The documentation just isn't done

When are we Linux hax0rz going to learn? You don't call something 1.0 if there are help sections with absolutely 0 help. You don't call something 1.0 that is chock full of undocumented features; 1.0 is the promised land of projects that is reserved for those that don't mind waiting to get off their ass and do the crap shit. So until then, Marco Paulerelli or whoever the hell your name is, you can sit back and bask in the warm endearing glow of beta stage.

On a related note, I've been playing quite a bit of ping pong of late. It's a fairly fun game that is easy to progress towards an intermediate level, and neigh impossible to progress any farther. There are a few notable players in the house; first off Pranay, my multi-armed curry god of ping pong, Krause, who's fluid German style, ballanced as the swastika, bites you as it mesmorizes you with its beauty, Alex, the beast of china whose communist spins bring pleasure to the mind and whose forehand brings pain to the body, and last and probably least George, who gets pissed off every time I pound his unworthy ass into the ground and gloats over his victories in the lower rungs of Alpha Sig ping pong society. I'd say I'm probably in the top 5, and although I find a way to win around 50% of the time, I can't place myself among the other's in skill.

But because of this recent ping pong row, and because Alex and Jin kept talking about it, I decided to watch ping pong the movie, a Japanese film about this kid, his friend, and good old ping pong. Its odd, because I recognize the main character from a number of his other works; most notably the "smart kid" from GTO and the "cool guy" from SOS. Ping pong, like most other Japanese movies I've seen that don't involve the senseless slaughtering of kids, was a feel good movie about heroism, hard work, determination, being fucking cool, and playing ping pong. It's a lot like my life at the present time, actually.