Day: January 13, 2009

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Weblog Awards and Other Stuff

I only partake in such as friends or blogs I appreciate are nominated (heck, I’ve even scrubbed technorati and TTLB from twc). Angel’s a participant(go on, y’all, give her some votes, ‘K?), and I’ve tried to faithfully, daily vote for her (sorry for a coupla misses, gal). Another worthy nominee, in the category of Best Comic Strip, is Medium-Large, and here’s one reason why:

2009-start

And here’s another (h.t. Lovely Daughter):

Good stuff, Maynard.

Oh, OK, since I said it, I may as well post the thing. Some of y’all are old enough that this pretty much passed you by, unless your children mentioned it to you (I never saw it when it aired–was too busy working, but it percolated into my set of 80s memes anyway).

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A Few of My Favorite Things… (1)

…about Ubuntu 8.04.

Ripping media. Need to archive a DVD? Right-click, Rip. Need to archive a CD/convert wav to mp3 for portability, etc.? Right-click>open (I select one of two apps, usually Rhythmbox)>Add to Library. I’ve set my preference to mp3 with a decent bit level–128, only because with the tiny earbuds of an mp3 player, it’s difficult to tell the difference, especially given where I use my player: mowing the lawn, driving, etc.–so it automagically just does its thing,

Windows? Notsomuch. With all the DRM crap Microsoft insists on shackling folks with, and the fact that most folks just use “what came on the computer” I don’t know how many folks I’ve had come to me with complaints about Windows Media Player ripping their CDs into DRM-“protected” formats they can’t use anywhere else (at least not easily). WMAs? Hate ’em. WVMs? Ditto. Oh, there are ways to make WMP play more nicely, and there are even some nice lil freebie apps to convert those nasty WMA files to mp3s, but in a native Ubuntu session, I don’t have to mess with any of that.

One thing that’s easier, more friendly, just plain nicer about Ubuntu.