For those who have wondered what was going on, why hadn't I posted, etc. It is because I have been busy working and setting up my new website. My new site is Code GNU . All my pictures, programmes, and most of all my blog will be based from there. I may occationally post a blog here ever now and then, but for the most part it will be from my new site. So, if you would like to follow my thoughts, etc that's were to look.

I have been using Mandriva 2009 since Friday. This release is a huge step for all computer users out there. Mandriva 2009 comes with KDE 4.1, Open Office 3, and Firefox 3. It is not the last two that have me raving about this release, it is in fact the 4.1 release. For those not following the KDE development the heart of the changes for KDE 4 is a technology called Plasma. Plasma replaces the traditional separation between your desktop and your computer. Everything in the desktop is a widget. My favourite is the folder views. It is a widget that allows you have the contents of any folder displayed at all times on your desktop. I use Konqueror for most of my browsing and I'm ecstatic to report that Konqueror 4.1 is just unbelievable. It is even faster than it was in KDE 3.5 and it's integration with the folder views is so much fun. Dragging a file from the browser directly into the folder you want is just perfect. IT really makes you wonder why computers didn't work this way from the start. :D This is just boring functionality stuff.The really sweet thing that will get most peoples attention is the eye candy you can turn on in KDE 4. I've gone full out with it, and turned on everything. Switching desktops is the familiar cube transition, wobbly windows when you move them, pretty gradients, and pop-ups when you hover over buttons. The candy is fairly traditional for those who've used CompFuzion. The key difference is, my low speced laptop is the machine running the eye candy. This is what has me excited.

For people already running Mandriva 2008.1 there is the coolest feature introduced in the 2009.0 release. The ability to upgrade to the next distribution without having to download and install the applications you like to use. This feature was back ported to 2008.1, and it is this method that I used to upgrade my laptop to 2009.0. Foolishly I did this without even reading anything about it. I just clicked on the pop-up and upgraded my laptop. As the upgrade took place, I continued to work and chat with my friends. When it let me know it was done, I finished what I was doing and restarted my laptop. I booted into KDE 3.5.10, and it's just as good as the 3.5.9 release with the co-responding bug fixes. At first I was confused, but then it made sense. It upgraded only what I already installed and nothing more. This is nice, I don't have to remove any of the programmes I don't use. Wanting to try KDE 4, I opened up the Mandriva Control Centre and installed task-kde4. After the install I logged into KDE 4 and fell in love with KDE all over again.

If you've never tried GNU/Linux or Mandriva before, there has certainly never been a better time!

A friend of mine just E-mail me this link. A US senator is actually stepping up and is going to challenge the authority of this administration. However, he does need our help. We, as a citizenry, need to stand up, defend the rights and freedoms that we have enjoyed in the past. These same rights and freedoms that have been stripped away from us little by little. We have stood by for far too long. The day has come and the time has drawn near. It is time for us to act. It is time to be counted. Is is time to join the petition that Kucinich will present to the judiciary committee. It is not a great burden of our time, nor a significant sacrifice we must make. True honour and courage do not come from doing nothing. It comes from doing something, anything. If a perdition is what it takes to get justice, then we must join. As a great philosopher once said:

Injustice is happening now; suffering is happening now. We have choices to make now. To insist on absolute certainty before starting to apply ethics to life decisions is a way of choosing to be amoral.

So, let us not be amoral, let us stand by the morals that we espouse and exercise our right to petition. Lest the day come that that too is taken away.

Yes, my friends and dear readers it has finally happened. What happened you ask? Oh, well the great release of KardsGT 0.7.0 of course. For those who haven't been paying attention, the conversion of KardsGT to QT 4 took a lot longer than I had anticipated. This release marks the first time that KardsGT can be compiled on any system that supports QT, basically any system that you would want to use. Does this mean I'll compile a version for everyone, of course not, how else would I get any programming done then?! :D You can find the source and the binaries I've created at the KardsGT website. Currently there is not a Debian package available as the current stable version of Debian only has QT 4.2, and I need QT 4.3. Happy playing. ;)

The day to release KardsGT 0.7 has come and went. There have been some last minute bugs that needed to be squashed. The critical bugs have all been fixed. The last big hurtle? My computer. The hard drive gave out in it, and I lost everything. I have to setup all my account information again. :'( Once that's done, there will be a release of KardsGT 0.7.

Last year I read Introduction to Design Patterns. This is a wonderful book. It doesn't teach you how to programme if you never have. Rather, if you are familiar with a programming language already, it is a perfect book to teach you how to programme in C++. The doesn't stop there though, it even teaches you how to use the wonderful cross platform library QT. Going one step further this book even teaches you some commonly used design patterns. The authors spend the first third covering how to programme in C++. In their teaching they don't just cover the material, but the go into some of the detail that every programmer will need to know if they are going to actually code. The remainder of the book teaches how to use QT 4 and design patterns to achieve practical goals. This is one of the aspects of this book I like. It gives the theory and an example you would actually use in real life. This is certainly a must read for anyone who wants to learn to programme in C++ and develop GUI applications. So, by now you're probably wonder why I'm reviewing a book that I read over a year ago? Well, the book was recently released under the OPL licence. Click the link above, and get your compilers going. :D

Some months seem like no progress is made, and the world has become stagnate. Then you arrive to weeks like this, and you get not just one, but four announcements to major projects. I know not everyone keeps up with the latest news, so I'll give you a look at what I'm thinking about them.

We have the largest announcement for many people, and that is the release of Mozilla Firefox 3. Has a lot of new features, it seems more innovative than the 1.0 to 2.0 jump. Though I will continue to use Konqueror, I'm still excited about it. The more standard compliant browsers, the greater the the web is for us all. :)

The event I'm excited about is the complete free release of Java. I was reading the announcement , and it has finally happened. The Java trap is gone, and everyone is happy about that. Now, anyone can develop free software and don't have to depend on proprietary software to run it. Who knows, now that Java is freed, maybe I'll start a project with it as a form of celebration. :D

I have used Nvidia video cards for ages, and about once a year I check on the progress of the ATI drivers. A good review on the status at this time. The report is very promising, and it seems my next video card is going to be an ATI one. I am a free sourced user who puts his money where is belief is, and since ATI was bought by AMD they have proven their commitment to GNU/Linux. How high has there commitment gone? They have merged there code base together so that drivers for Windows, OS X, and GNU/Linux all come out around the same time. By around the same time, I'm actually talking about a few weeks of each other, and not months. This is something all users have been looking forward to. The largest announcement is that the future drivers are going to be feature parity with their Windows counterparts. This is a very large step forward for the GNU/Linux gaming and multimedia users. Another step ATI made, that Nvidia has not done yet, is to package their GNU/Linux drivers with their CDs they sell in stores! As AMD continues this advancement for ATI, my next and possible future video cards will be and ATI.

Lastly, we come to a project that I have mixed feelings about. That is the Wine project. For those who don't know, Wine's goal is to fully implement the Windows API so that you can run the Windows applications under GNU/Linux. The Wine project has released their first stable release 1.0. I have not had the opportunity to test it, but it's great that they made a stable release. Let me address my mixed feelings about this project. I love this project because I can play games using it, or it's derivative projects. That is exciting, but also displays my worries about the project. If Wine were to truly accomplish their goals, what would be the point for developers to develop code for other operating systems, when they can develop for Windows, and everyone else can use Wine to run the same code. Which then only would increase the Microsoft monopoly. Ideally developers should use a toolkit that is cross-platform capable, like QT, GTK, etc. Wine as a project, I hope, is one that will one day no longer be necessary. With the rise of GNU/Linux, GNU/Solaris, OS X, etc I hope that more and more developers will choose to develop using tool-kits, and not the native widget code.

For those who have been patiently waiting for the next release of KardsGT, your patients is being rewarded. I have finally finished most of the conversion of the code. The only bit left is the documentation, and some final testing. There are still some glaring bugs, that actually might be released with the 0.7 release. Mostly because it would take a lot more time to track down the cause of the bug on my own, and it doesn't completely detract from the playing of the games. So, those bugs might have to wait until the 0.8 release to be fixed. Which wont take as long as the 0.7 release. LOL If you want to start the testing of the 0.7 release the latest code is on the CVS. As always the easiest way to compile the code is to use the images from the previous release, this way you don't have to convert each of the image files to png format. Although in this release you will need to rename the 10 cards to t. You should be able to look for the official release of 0.7 around the 29th of June.

If I hear, "I love my Mac because it's so much better than a PC." I just might go on a rampage. Here are some facts. All Macs made in the past two years are made using Intel hardware. All PCs are made with either Intel or Intel-compatible hardware. A PC is a Personal Computer. The Personal Computer was a type of computer created by IBM using Intel hardware in the 1980s. It was very popular in businesses, and soon many other manufacturers started to make IBM PC compatible hardware. Eventually, the term simply was shortened to PC Compatible, and finally PC. The only difference between a Mac and a "PC" is the operating system on them. I personally am writing this on a PC running GNU/Linux. So, the next time you hear someone speak about how much better their Mac is compared to the PC, do the world a favour and remove them from the gene pool. :D

Everyone needs to watch this documentary. It explains what is at stake with the way music and art is heading for the future. Let me hear your thoughts. Everyone already knows where I stand.