We already concluded in my previous guide (from April) that we think that Ubuntu might be the greatest OS in the world. But that doesn’t change the fact that the desktop looks very dull out of the box.

But now we are going to change that and I will now let you know how to turn your desktop into this fantastic colourful desktop in no time.

If you like this green desktop, just keep reading, but if you rather like the below dark desktop I have a guide for that as well right here.

Edit: Several steps in this guide will probably work very well also on other Linux distributions as well but due to lack of own experience I won’t guarantee that.

To make the perfect desktop, it is NOT enough just changing into a cool background and apply a nice theme. The secret, which I will guide you through consists in my guide of 9 steps:

1. Change background picture
2. Change GTK2 theme with window border and controls
3. Change icon set
4. Change Fonts
5. Configure the top bar
6. Install a cool mac-like dock (AWN)
7. Install and get conky up and running to get that geeky text information about RAM usage, processes etc
8. Change login theme
9. Change the ugly orange color which is between the login screen and your fully loaded desktop

Note: In order to get that transparent look you need to get compiz up and running. You can activate compiz on Ubuntu 7.10 or higher: right click in the desktop, click “change desktop background”, click the tab “visual effects” and click “normal” or higher. It requires that your computer is equipped with a 3d graphics card with correct drivers.

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Example of major sites that are down

piratebay.org was recently taken down, all other torrent sites I tested works

sourceforge.net, China has amazingly taken down the other of open source

wordpress.com, all blogs hosted on wordpress are blocked including results on dashboard from wordpress stats plugin

livejournal.com doesn’t work

99% of all porn sites are down

Note that

most blogs hosted at blogspot.com works. Any coincidence that blogspot is owned by Google which also has the Google Reader which amazingly works. I guess that Google has the right connections.

wikipedia.org, youtube.com and the dangerous site slashdot.org which were blocked for the longest time, are now up and kicking.

Some workarounds

read sites with rss easily, open the rss feed in Google Reader which works perfectly with text and pictures. You wont be able to read the comments though.

use translation sites hich translates the complete webpage such as this Excite site which translates sites between Japanese and English.

For whatever reason China is now blocking the centre of open source, sourceforge.net .

I wonder why and can find no reason.

Recently I have noticed that the Great Firewall of China seems to be blocking Piratebay. Damn, that is my favourite torrent site. Oh well, all other torrent sites seems to work perfectly still though.

But what is happening?

Before was all blogs on blogspot.com and wikipedia.org down but now they seem to work.

The dangerous site Slashdot.org is still down. :/

Hint, if a site is down and it has rss feed. Start a google account and use Google Reader to read the content. Same as a proxy. It is strange that they let Google Reader pass the firewall.

Today the EEE PC 900 was available for sale in an electric market in Shanghai.

They offered both versions, 20 Gb with Linux or 12 Gb with Windows. The price for both versions were 3999 Yuan (about USD 570). They did not seem to be willing to do anything on that price and that is also the same experience I have from when the 701 was released back in November.

On this (crappy) photo, you can see both the 701 and the 900.

I didn’t have time to stay long but I they quickly let me know that they offered a copy of English XP together with the Lunux version for free

Tomorrow I will go back again. Any request for what I should check?

I have a Sony Ericsson P1i and this is tested on that phone. But most can be applied also to the other phones using Symbian UIQ 3 operating system. Phones which have UIQ 3 includes:

• Sony Ericsson P1, P1i, P1c, M600i, M600c, P990i, P990c, W950i, W950c, W960i, W960c, G700 and G900
• Motorola Z8, Z10

What I will bring up in this guide are

1. Short introduction to UIQ 3 and Symbian
2. Web browser and installing Opera Mini
3. How to manage email with UIQ 3
4. Google maps
5. iSkoot to use Skype
6. Worldmate
7. Swiss Manager
8. Adding new programs as icons on your start page
9. Download and installing new desktop themes
10. Installing GDesk
11. Rss reader
12. Top blogs and websites about UIQ 3
13. Sites for downloading games and applications
14. Bonus: Walkman 3.0 (for SE P1i only)

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For about a year now these oxygen bottles have been for sale in 7-eleven in Japan.

They come in several choices such as melon, coffea or like the in the photo below, “forest”.

Exactly what to do with these bottles including how, when and why to use them remains unknown. But a competing convenience store chain has answered by offering oxygen-rich water on bottle.

The new Ubuntu release 8.04 Hardy Heron will be released tomorrow.

If you can’t wait, upgrade to the release candidate, available now, and then upgrade to the final version again tomorrow. Note that its not recommendable to install the release candidate on working machines but what the heck, you only live once. It was released just a few days ago and so many bugs can not have been solved since then, could it?

To upgrade Hardy Heron release candidate:

Alt+F2
Enter following command: upgrade manager -d
Click on upgrade to 8.04 lts and follow the instructions.

Tomorrow after the release you can upgrade again doing following:
Alt+F2
Enter following command: upgrade manager -c
Click on upgrade to 8.04 lts and follow the instructions.

Shot in Roppongi, Tokyo, Japan. Where else?

300 Yen is about 3 USD.

When it starts to rain hard in a western country, people start to run. When it starts to rain in Japan, everybody by magic brings up an umbrella (only the few westerners start to run).

When I checked the dashboard recently I found that James Dimick has released a brand new Wordpress plugin for changing the admin colors called Easy Admin Color Schemes.

After you install the plugin you can change admin color themes in the settings and you can make your own theme by changing CSS.

it seems to be a bug in the “Last modified” column

The plugin comes with a new theme which was not really adorable and it looks like this.

Anyway, if you have some basic skills in CSS and have enough time you can easily make your own theme. I believe it is a pretty nice job altogether by James Dimick and I hope the Wordpress community soon will create and share some nice admin themes. You can share your creation by simply copy the CSS code on the settings page.

Btw, I bet you can make a really nice admin theme from the nice colors used on my blog theme “Smashing theme“. If someone want to try it, please send me a copy of the result to me as well df9517@gmail.com.

Edit: This morning I found a new admin theme plugin, Baltic Amber Admin Themes. It comes with several nice color themes and also option of small rearrangement of the dashboard.