Edit: Ok, this FF extension makes life just that much easier.

Yesterday I made a discovery of some new software that seems to have no one but me all excited. Go figure.

I was looking for a better way to handle my Gmail accounts since I don't really like having tabs open with email, calendar, and reader. It's also a pain if you are composing an email and want to use ALT+Tab to switch between email and the web. I started using Thunderbird to help keep Gmail in and my calendar in another window, but as most Gmail users with Thunderbird know, keeping the Calendar and Contacts synced is a pain. Of course wonderful Mozilla has already thought of another way to do things that I love.

Enter Prism.

Luckily for me, they have a download for Linux. So I downloaded Prism and had a look around. It's pretty easy to use right out of the box, but you can also download some of the extras that give you the links to Gmail, Calendar, Reader, etc. (See how Mozilla rocks by incorporating Google stuff?)

As for those of us using Google Apps, I just opened Prism and put in my webmail URL, gave it a name, and a desktop shortcut. Simple as that. I opened my Gmail by double-clicking on the desktop icon and signing in.

Now I have my email in a separate window. I did the same for my Calendar. I modified the shortcut icon to use the appropriate icons for the apps (the red M for Gmail) and then added them to my Cairo-Dock. Life is much easier now.

I was so excited about this yesterday, but Jer didn't really share my enthusiasm. I tried to explain to him how wonderful this would be for our kids' computers since we can limit where they go on the web as well as make things easier for them to find by setting up several of these shortcuts. We do use a firewall and monitoring system which doesn't let the kids to very much on the internet, but this would allow us to control the freedom just a tad bit more.

This would also be great for businesses where the employees are easily distracted by web surfing all day. Give them a few shortcuts and let them go. I'm sure that I could figure out a way to surf the web through this window, but it sure isn't easy.

Here is a screenshot of my Gmail in Prism. I've blurred out all the good stuff for fun. :)



So I know... You can't see anything different right? It's what you don't see that's so cool. If you look at the bottom, you will see a grey bar with a little icon on the right. You have a similar bar at the top which allows you to maximize/minimize/close the window and that's it. It's simple. It's not distracting. It's perfect.

The past few weeks I've been working hard to straighten out my data as well as my computer. It's not an easy task sometimes, but it really needs to be done to keep things organized and your data safe.

First, I maintain several sites and this one always seems to fall behind. It's that whole "last but not least" theory I suppose. Over the weekend I dusted off my SQL skills and cleaned up my comments. I had some where in the neighborhood of 50,000 spam comments and I really wish I were exaggerating. I didn't want to delete my older comments, so I had to use several SQL statements to pick out the junk and delete the items. I think I have it all gone, except for a few that are not published which can be deleted with a few clicks in my admin panel.

I also made a few graphical changes to my site, including the sheep thoughts and the extras on the right nav. I integrated Last.fm to show my latest tracks, as well as my shared items on Google Reader.

Next is organizing data on my computer. I have a pretty old machine as far as computers go these days. I purchased this computer in late 2003 and have only added a bit of memory and a better graphics card to keep it humming along. As I mentioned before, I got the bright idea to dual boot Windows and Ubuntu. When I did the partition, something failed and I lost the ability to boot to Windows at all.

No worries, I'm using Ubuntu (Hardy Heron version) and loving it. So far there isn't anything much that I'm missing. I've traded in PhotoShop for Gimp, iTunes for Banshee, Office for Open Office, Outlook for Thunderbird, and I was able to keep my wonderful Firefox just fine. I'm loving the ability to think boy I wish I had an application that would help me keep track of my notes and then I just Google it and find one for free. One big giant reason to switch to Linux is the cost. It runs on my computer so much better and faster than Windows, and using an appliction like Gimp over PhotoShop can save you around $600 (at least).

If you want to see some of the very much free applications you can install, just check out Appnr - which also makes installing these apps much easier for the less Linux saavy.

Anyway, I digress. My love for Ubuntu is known and I will work to switch everyone who ever complained about the expense and propritary nature of Macs and the numerous lock ups and slowness of Windows.

All that said, I'm ready to blow away my XP partition altogether. One of the reasons I've left it alone for now is so that I could back up my data before I rebuild. That's what I'm doing this week. Moving and organizing my data to our back up servers so I can do a fresh rebuild.

Even though I can't boot XP, I can access all the files over there and move them to the server for safe keeping. Once that's done, I'll back up my install of Ubuntu and then rebuild my entire computer using only Ubuntu. If I need XP (hahahaha!) I'll use a virtual box.

I know how hard it is to read an entire blog and not get to see any pretty pictures, so schooch on over to Flickr to see a screen shot of my desktop and read the notes about what's what.

I broke my site. Sorry, I'll get things working again soon.
That's a little better. I'd like to finish the updates I was working on, but meanwhile, enjoy the new "sheep thoughts".