The Best Twitter App for the Eee PC

Day 91

I made a Twitter account a few years ago when it was a reletively unknown site. I gave up soon after though because I simply couldn't convince my friends that they needed another site (Myspace, Facebook, Blog, FriendFeed, Livejournal, Flickr, Etc...) to update.

But now all that has changed. A few weeks ago, curiosity got the better of me and I created a new Twitter account. I've been slowly adding friends - both personal buddies, and folks that seem to have common professional interests as myself. I'm quickly seeing how fast Twitter allows for the spread of information. As a teacher and technology enthusiast, this is important.

I was getting tired of stopping my regular browsing to update my account, so I decided to see what kinds of add-ons Firefox had to offer. I installed a few to try out (In the Firefox menu, tools-->add-ons), but many added an additional toolbar to the menu. Like I've mentioned before, I have a hard time giving up screen space on the Eee. I deleted those, and instead settled on TwitterBar.

TwitterBar adds a tiny icon at the end of the address bar in Firefox. While browsing, you can type your tweet into the address bar and then press the icon. It updates Twitter without ever leaving the page that is currently being displayed.


I think this is the best Twitter add-on for the Asus Eee PC because it adds functionality without taking up any space. Oh yeah - you can follow me on Twitter here.

How Not To Set Up Beryl on the Eee

Day 88

One of the things that originally hooked me on Linux was the eye candy of Compiz-Fusion. It didn't really make me more productive or the machine more capable of doing anything, but it sure was cool to show to friends and then mockingly compare to their lame Windows computers.

Today I decided to get Compiz working on the Eee. I checked Synaptic and Compiz was listed, so I installed. No errors, no dependency issues, no problems. Until I tried to configure it. In Ubuntu, Compiz-Fusion would install an advanced desktop settings panel, but this was missing in Xandros. I've already had to restore my Eee 3 times due to botched experiments, so I decided to play it safe and head to Eeeuser for some advice.

I found directions for Beryl that seemed pretty easy to follow. I'm not real clear on the difference between Beryl and Compiz, but I know that they are both a fancy windows manager and that was good enough for me.

I went through all of the instructions and ran into zero snags. The last step was to change a file to start Beryl instead of the regular X window manager. After I did that, I crossed my fingers and rebooted the machine.

I must have crossed the wrong ones because something went horribly awry. I saw the loading screen, but only caught a glimpse of my desktop before the entire screen went grey. I could still see and move my mouse, and it would change from an arrow to the hand when I moused over things, but I couldn't see them.

StEeevie Wonder.

My best guess is that there was a driver issue that wasn't cooperating with Beryl - I could see the screen for about a second before Beryl loaded. I didn't want to restore, but without the display there was no way for me to reverse the steps I had just taken to install Beryl.

Fortunately for me, I have a shortcut to the console on my desktop. I was able to blindly find it with my mouse and open it. I typed xkill and aimed at the Beryl icon in the task bar. The screen flashed and I thought for sure that I would be spending some time digging out the restore disk from under the bed. But then something interesting happened. The computer rebooted into easy mode.

I was able to open the console in easy and retrace my steps. The only thing remaining now is a angry pop up every time I start my computer. Something is still looking for Beryl, but this is better than nothing.

How to Install Fonts on the Asus Eee PC

Day 87

On day 15 I wrote about how easy it is to install fonts on the Eee, but tonight I ran into a little snag. After downloading about 15 zip files from 1001freefonts, I was faced with the arduous task of unzipping each and then manually right-clicking on each font file and installing. Each zip archive had several files (italic, condensed, sans serif, etc), so I was looking at probably close to 50 files that needed to be installed.

Here's how to install multiple fonts on the Eee PC in about 30 seconds.

First, unzip all font files. Mine were saved to the desktop, so my commands looked like this:

cd Desktop
unzip '*.zip'

At this point my desktop was covered with files. Instead of dealing with them, I opened the font installer:

kcmshell kcmfontinst

From there, all I had to do was click on "add fonts" and highlight the files from my desktop. Super easy.

Is Delicious down?

Day 84 @ 7:22pm

...Because it is for me. Is this a global issue, or an Eee PC issue?

The Pros and Cons of Galeon

Day 83

Bookmarks
Pro: Galeon is equipped with a favorites tool bar similar to IE and Firefox. I'm the type who checks blogs/social networks/email constantly during the day, so this is an essential requirement for the way I surf the web.

Con: I have grown accustomed to Firefox's keyboard shortcuts, particularly ctrl+click to open links in a new tab. Galeon can't do that, so I'm stuck right clicking and instructing it to open in a new tab.

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Full screen and size adjustment

Pro: Because of the Eee's limited screen real estate, every pixel needs to be put to good use. Galeon has a full screen button in the tool bar (F11 does the trick too) that let's you quickly remove unnecessary junk at the top and bottom of the screen. There is also a percentage indicator to quickly increase/decrease text size.

I'm not sure why it's a dead link icon, but the full screen button is a welcome addition to Galeon.

Con: Depending on the site, Galeon sometimes gets confused and puts the cursor in the text adjustment box in the tool bar. Twice already I've tried to scroll down a page only to make the text become nearly invisible. Oops.

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Miscellaneous
Pro: One of my favorite things about Opera was its speed dialer. Galeon comes with a “My Portal” screen, which is a text-based equivalent.

Con: I can almost be single-handedly to blame for the occasional slowdown of my ISP, and that is because I tend to refresh each page I go to at least twice – double that if it's email. The reload icon is in the tool bar, but the familiar F5 refresh does not work. Of the disadvantages of Galeon I have spotted so far, this is of biggest concern to me. How am I suppose to participate in the next WootOff if I can't frantically press f5 every 6 seconds?

Choosing a Browser for the Eee

Day 83 - The Mini Experiment Begins

I have yet to find an ideal web browser for the Eee. The default is Firefox, and while it has some fantastic features, it seems to freeze far more often in Xandros than with Ubuntu or Windows. And that's Firefox 2.0 – the beta 3 is molasses slow. I spent some time this weekend exploring my options in search of the perfect web browser for the Asus Eee PC.

The choices


I ran into the Firefox 3 slowdown when I was running gOS, so I installed Opera. It was quite fast, but many sites that I use in my professional life don't support Opera. It did all kinds of weird things to cascading menus, login screens, email pages, ect. I found myself using Opera for general surfing, but resorting to the slow Firefox when checking my mail. It got the job done but wasn't ideal.

Last year I inherited an ancient Sony Vaio laptop that could barely run Windows 98. I restored it with a copy of Damn Small Linux, and the machine enjoyed a brief stint as my laptop of choice. DSL comes with Dillo – a tiny and lightning fast web browser. It worked, but I missed the added features of Firefox such as integrated spell check and tabbed browsing. Although Dillo is available in Synaptic, it's shortcomings removed it from the running to be my browser of choice on the Eee.

Before installing anything new, I looked into using the Eee file browser, Konqueror, for the web. This can either be run by typing the name into the console, or by opening the home folder and then typing the web address into the address bar (add this by going to view --> toolbars --> address bar). I played with Konqueror for about an hour before abandoning it.

(Begin Analogy)
Every year my family goes camping to the Thousand Islands region of the St. Lawrence Seaway for a week during the summer. We spend several days floating up and down the river in a tiny aluminum boat we rent from a retired lady named Mrs. Trevor. The boat is barely seaworthy, but she only charges 50 bucks a day and we are always game from an adventure. The rivets that hold the three parts of the hull together are so old it was not uncommon for one to spring a leak mid-boating. But we were always prepared – before renting from Mrs. Trevor we made a trip into town to buy a box of saltwater taffy. Not only was it delicious, it plugged the holes nicely. By the end of the week, our boat was covered in multicolored wads of the sticky treat.
(End Analogy)

Using Konqueror for web browsing is kind of like using taffy to plug holes in a boat. It gets the job done, but it was definitely designed for a more specific use.

There were no more browser choices in Synaptic, so I turned to the web. There I found whispers of something called Galeon that I thought might be worth trying. It took a bit of work locating a repository for it and all I could find was one for Debian, so I was hesitant about trying to install it on the Eee. But I held my breath, added the repository, and installed Galeon (directions for doing so are found here).

It's not much to look at – reminiscent of Internet Explorer 5 - but it has tabs and seems to have no effort loading the pages that gave Opera a run for its money. It's lacking the built in spell check, but I think I can live with Galeon as a primary browser. For now, anyway.

So for the next five days, I plan to only use Galeon for browsing. If it can handle flash videos without freezing (like Firefox) and can be customized with add-ons (like Firefox), I might just consider Galeon for the long haul.

Back to Xandros

Day 77

I have seriously trashed the eee in the past, and I really don't want to have to hit the F9 key at bootup ever again. It just takes too long to get things set up again.
- John MacGibbon

John posted that comment last Thursday, and I know his pain all too well. I have removed gOS from my Eee, and am once again using Xandros in advanced mode. This marks the second time I have abandoned another operating system and retreated back to the default OS for the Eee.

Here's the strange thing - every time I restore Xandros, I fail to reinstall a program that previously had no problem installing. I already lamented in several posts about the loss of kTorrent after I wiped the Eee while trying to install Ubuntu-Eee. I am now experiencing the same frustrations with video/audio player VLC.

I had it installed before, and I know I'm installing from the same source because I used my original post as a tutorial.

So John, consider yourself lucky.

This is what it looks like when I try to install VLC on my restored Eee.