No, no, not in a professional journal or anything.

But, my blog post was picked up on The Independent Geek.  See here.

Awesome.

I've been following all of the concerns surrounding the Ubuntu and Banshee profit-sharing "kerfuffle", as Greg puts it here.  Craig Maloney (aka snap-l) responds here.  Mark Shuttleworth responds to everyone here.  Also, I can't forget about Jono's post about it as well. So, I guess this is my response: I think the whole thing is embarrassing.  Canonical shouldn't have suggested what they did, nor should they have backpedaled in the manner they did. Banshee is an awesome application.  I use it every day to manage and listen to my music and download new tracks from Amazon (mostly free individual tracks and album samplers).  I have never used the Ubuntu Music Store, but I think it's a great idea.  (Note: I get most of my new music from actual CDs or through Jamendo or other CC-music websites.) Now, I've been a part of the Ubuntu community since about 2006 (yes, I'm old) and seeing something like this pains me.  It makes me feel like I should be embarrassed to use Ubuntu and Banshee.  The Amazon store should never have been an issue; Canonical should never have offered to mess with it, instead offering their own store with a choice of stores (even enabling both!) at the startup of Banshee. I understand that Canonical needs to make money.  All businesses need to make money.  If UbuntuOne was available for Windows and was a comparable price to Dropbox, I would probably be using UbuntuOne instead of Dropbox.  Selling cloud services is a great idea for Canonical.  Same with selling merchandise through their store, and CDs with Ubuntu on them.  Heck, I've bought stuff from them. I guess my question is, couldn't Canonical come up with a better way to deal with this profit-sharing or whatever?  What about offering 85/15 (85% to Gnome, 15% to Canonical)?  Heck, even 50/50 would have been more fair.  25/75 for doing no work whatsoever doesn't seem kosher.

I decided to take the plunge and try out pinboard.in. At the time I signed up it was something like $9.17, but it's gone up to $9.22 (due to go up with more subscribers). Well, I did an import of all my delicious bookmarks, and found that it was a much faster process than importing into diigo. After importing, I noticed that my private bookmarks were kept (very important to me) private. The look of pinboard.in is very similar to delicious, but it's cleaner. I love the way it integrates with my Shareaholic extension for Chrome/ium. To save to Pinboard is the first link in my drop-down menu. Anyway, how about a picture?

The default Pinboard.in look. Very similar to delicious.

It's almost easier and faster to send to Pinboard than it is to send to delicious. First off, there's really nobody to share with, so you don't have to pick who you send links to. Second, it doesn't have automatic twitter integration, so you don't have to deal with that (I have twitter integration though Twitterfeed and my #pinboard hashtag). It's simple, quick, bookmarking with tags and privacy options. Nothing else.

The navigation is really, really simple. A picture says a thousand words, so here's a picture: As you can see, there's a way to choose what kind of tags you want, a search box, and a way to get to popular places in your account. I haven't tried the note-taking functionality yet, because I have tomboy notes on all of the computers I use, so I don't really need them. I guess if I got a Cr-48, I'd need the note functionality. You'll also notice that there's "recent" and "popular" links up top. I'll go over there sometimes to see what's been bookmarked, just like I used to when I was on delicoius. Sometimes there's some cool stuff in there, and if you explore other popular tags, you'll find even more websites that tailor to your interests. There's also a networking aspect to pinboard.in that I really haven't had a chance to explore. I've added a couple of people who seem to post linux-related sites, but I'm not sure exactly what the networking will amount to. Pinboard sells itself as "antisocial bookmarking" and to an extent that's fine. I'm using it as a repository of my favorite links, and I'm sharing through twitterfeed. The actual bookmark list is very clean and easy to follow. How about another picture?

The bookmarks themselves.

Easy to see tags, when you posted the link, the link itself, and in light grey, you can make out "edit" and "delete" links. I seem to have a lot of GTD stuff in this screenshot. Ahem. Onto tagging! I've gotten used to tagging my bookmarks, photos, blog posts, and pretty much everything else. I like the idea of tagging as opposed to folders. I can assign more than one tag to something and that something will show up in both of those categories; for instance, I have many links that deal with Ubuntu, Gnome, KDE, and Linux. I can assign the general tag of Linux, and have everything Linux-related show up, but if I want to narrow things down, I can go Linux -> Ubuntu -> KDE and get all the KDE links relating to Ubuntu. Simple. Anyway, here's what the tags look like:

Tags, oh, how I love thee.

So, pinboard.in is a great service to replace delicious. I'm sure Yahoo is regretting the decision to have that slide show up. I think they've lost a lot of their userbase. It might put some people off to purchase the initial login, but it's well worth the $9-ish for it.

I've been meaning to put together a tech bag/urban assault bag/art bag for awhile now, and I found the perfect bag for it: a Swiss Gear small messenger bag. I can't seem to find any pictures on the web for it, so I suspect that it's a discontinued model, which is fine because I got it at Meijer for about $25. This bag has padding in both of its sections, and the main compartment is expandable with a zipper to accommodate the extra room. I can easily carry my netbook, a regular book or my Nook, my sketchbook, and other things. So, let's see what I might carry for what applications. Always Carried:

• cell phone
• pen
• wallet
• misc. bag (contains some meds, tissues, my dues cards for OES and Nile, chapstick, etc)
• my version of the "hipster PDA": a moleskine calendar and a moleskine small lined book, held together with the stretchy cord of the calendar
• Walkman MP3 player
• keys
• book I'm reading

Art Bag:

• sketchbook
• pencils
• pastel crayons
• drawing ink pen
• small canvases if they fit

Tech Bag:

• netbook
• usb key (holds some of my most important files)
• charger for my netbook (if I'm going to be out or travelling)
• Ubuntu LiveCD (for fixing other people's computers; happens more than you think!)
• moleskine cashier for notes, even though I use Tomboy Notes for most everything

Other Applications:

• library bag, with Nook and library books
• bag to hold my stuff for Nile; actually this will work; as it holds everything but the charitable giving notebook, but I can carry that in my hands

I don't know. This bag is very versatile, and I'm hoping to use it for one of these applications. I'm almost keen on replacing my purse with it, but I feel that it'd be too heavy for regular purse use. Also, I have a tendency to load up my bags with too much stuff; this is why I carry a relatively small purse. If I didn't have a small purse, I'd probably load it up with everything but the kitchen sink and have major back pain as a result.

I've been listening to Partition36's Inside the Beat on and off since I recieved it in the mail several weeks ago. This album is great on many levels.  I'm no musician, but I guess I know good music when I hear it, and this is complex.  I like the way everything is layered.  Anyway, that's the way things sound to me; the sound seems layered, one on top of the other, with a really nice build.  I'll pick out a few of my favorite tracks to highlight... The first track, Crystallis, is a nice introduction to the sound on the whole album.  While listening, if you close your eyes and relax, you're almost taken away to a different place.  The beat can be sort of repetitive, but it is relaxing in a way. The third track, Inside the Beat, is my favorite off of the CD.  I love how the song is about being inside the music and now nothing bad can happen when Partition36 is inside the beat.  The beat is almost like a safe house where the evils of the world can't hurt anyone.  Also, it's about concentration and working on something that you want to.  Great song, great message. After track two and three being upbeat, Hirakatashi (track 4) is kind of relaxing and puts you in a neat trance.  I don't know exactly how to describe it, but I really like it. Cyberpunks (track 8) is my second favorite song.  Kind of political, and very relevant to today's laws regarding the digital world. The whole album is one of those that really flows together.  It's almost like Partition36 created this to be a whole experience.  If you listen to each track on it's own, they're great.  If you listen to the whole album together and take it as a continuous piece of art, then it's incredible. For the record, Partition36 is the artist that got me into electronic music.  I wouldn't think I'd like it, but I've listened to several different albums, and it's a genre I've really gotten into recently. This album can be downloaded via the website, or you can purchase the album.  I really recommend purchasing a physical CD.  The album art is great too.