Spontaneous Derivation

Farewell, Vita.

You were a good theme, even if I did hack you to pieces in the end.

And hello Simple Balance!

I’ll be making styles for you soon.

When I was in University, I was a total Linux geek. What’s worse, I was a total Linux X11 window manager geek. That’s fancy talk for someone who likes to tweak with, basically, desktop themes.¹

Anyways, so I would usually save screenshots of my desktops. Usually I had something like 9 active desktops (that’s workspaces for you Mac OS X fans), although I recall in FVWM I once had 24 (icons in pagers rock). Just sort of to preserve their prettiness. Of course, that all went to hell with the rest of my life a while back. And I switched over to Mac OS X.

Ahem. So. Today, because I’m obviously high on Halloween candy, I’m going to put up some desktops praising the apps, wallpapers, and such that I’m using. Also you can see some of my insanity here, and why I tend to need to use so many desktops. I contain myriad worlds inside me. Or else the medication is finally working. It’s hard to tell right now.

So! without further ado, let me introduce you to My Macbook Pro, which is one of those 15″ widescreen things, glossy screen (love the glossy screen; it is extremely clear and actually doesn’t reflect badly). Just two desktops, the busiest ones right now, because I’m busy hacking S∂’s theme (sssshh).

A bit picture-spammy, so I’m putting the rest of this article behind the cut.

Continue reading “Currently on My Desktop 20081101″

1. To my geek audience, I know I’m grossly oversimplifying things. I’ll have you know I had an FVWM2 configuration that was hundreds of lines long and involved its own hand-made theming solution, was a Blackbox-derivative hardass for a while, and then was converted to the love of tabbed window bars in TVWM. Also, I really miss the ultra flexibility of sawfish, may it rest in peace. [↩]

The Daily Show and the Colbert Report don’t just have a following on YouTube (which clips and displays and shares and loves them both), but Comedy Central also provides online videos themselves—embeddable and all that. I’ll share with you four of my favorite clips:

Daily Show: McCain Returns to Washington

Jon Stewart covers the days before and the days after John McCain stood up David Letterman, revealing more behind the story than most of the “real media” would dare to say. As per the usual.

Favorite quote:

By the way, we’ve just heard about 10 minutes ago that the [bailout] is falling apart. So in between them accepting the deal and the deal falling apart… Senator John McCain came back to Washington.

The Daily Show: 10,000 McCainiacs

Remember all the fanatical and scary rallies that the McCain campaign encouraged and, at least on McCain’s part, seriously regretting? Oh, right, those haven’t gone away yet. I’m not sure when they’ll go away. Anyways, Jon Stewart’s got the goods:

Favorite bit:

If you’ve raised the monster to fear and despise fire, it’s awfully hard to convince the monster that fire can also be used in cooking…. [cuts to the aftermath of McCain telling his rally that Obama is a decent man, which is not pretty]

Colbert Report: The Word - Fantasyland

Not to be outdone (indeed, never to be outdone, at least not for very long), Stephen Colbert, in one of his best “The Word” segments, dissects the threat of ACORN:

Favorite:

McCain clip: We need to know the extent of Senator Obama’s relationship with ACORN…

Colbert: And we need to know it soon. Because if there’s nothing there, we’d like another week and a half to find something good.

Second-favorite:

And we all know that the fabric of democracy is very fragile. Because it is made out of the founding fathers’ pantyhose.

Really, there’s so much to like about this particular Word. Colbert covers the Help America Vote Act, what ACORN does, what actually counts as voter fraud, and also that John McCain was keynote speaker at one of ACORN’s conventions.

Colbert Report: John McCain’s Big Prank

Oh, and remember the time he picked Sarah Palin?

Really, it’s hard to quote from Steward and especially Colbert, because the delivery (not just body, but voice) is very much a part of both the information and the humor. (Of course, humor is information, so…)

Sometimes you need to go to the fake media to get the real news.