How to make Metacity borders blurry w/ Compiz

Setting Blur Windows in CompizConfig Settings Manager is easy. However, it does not blur the window borders which can look very wrong like this:

However, there is a way to make Metacity blurry like the rest of the window.
Here is what you need to do:

1) Go to the Blur Windows settings in the CompizConfig Settings Manager.
- Set which windows you want this to apply to in the "Alpha blur windows" section. I just copy/pasted all the windows from the "Focus blur windows" box. I then disabled Focus blur and enabled Alpha blur. Tweak other settings to your liking.

2) Run gconf-editor (either from terminal or from app launcher).
- Navigate to /apps/gwd/blur_type and set it either "titlebar" or "all". From what I understand, either only the titlebar will be blurred, or all the window borders.

Now the window borders should be nicely blurry, like this:



Source: UbuntuForums

The Hidden Annoyances of Linux + Solutions

New Linux users are often repelled from the operating system, by some things that are not directly noticeable, yet they cause a weird feeling that something is wrong. Here are some of such things I've discovered after using Linux (Kubuntu and Ubuntu) for a year:

1. Fitt's Law Violations
Fitt's Law is one of the things that Windows is very good at. It's an ergonomics law that requires the system to allow its users rapid movements - particularly the cursor movement. For example, when you want to close a full-screen window, and you shoot your mouse cursor into the upper-right corner of the screen, you would expect that it would now be located on the window-closing X button. This is not the case in many KDE window decoration themes. Instead, you have to move the mouse slightly to the lower-left and aim for the X. What happens in some cases is the cursor actually misses the X button and you lose window focus. But more often you hit the window border, and the cursor changes into a resizing cursor. A nice example for this is CompizFusion/Beryl. In KDE you can use the Crystal window decorator theme (with Vista-style buttons), but for Emerald (Compiz's default window decorator), I think there's just no solution. This is causing a great annoyance, but it not really noticeable at first.
On some Gnome-based systems like Ubuntu Linux (without Compiz) it's even worse: You always have to aim carefully when closing windows, otherwise you can hit the system shutdown button, that is just a few pixels above. I always remove that button. It's still a Fitt's Law violation, but at least you don't power off your computer instead of just closing a window. Here's a screenshot of the upper-right corner of the screen to show what I am talking about:
Another Fitt's Law violation is the way full-screen window scrollbars behave like, though in this case it's more of a KDE-specific problem. Again, by thrusting your mouse to the very edge of the right border, you often cannot grab the scrollbar. You have to move your mouse a bit to the left, or you will just hit a blank, unused edge that is one or more pixels wide. I have found that some Window Styles (in a combination with a proper Window Decorator Theme) do not have this problem, but sadly, most do:

(notice the pointless border on the utmost right side)

2. Delayed Application Start-ups
People say Linux is fast, Faster than Windows in fact. They are somehow correct, BUT, Windows is MUCH faster when it comes to loading applications. Why does it take Linux to fully run Firefox (not counting loading the webpage) about 3 seconds, while in Windows, the same thing happens in less than half a second?!
Some people have suggested a method called prebinding (similar terms: preloading , prelinking, prefetching). I myself have tried a program called preload (*ubuntu users can install it by running:

sudo apt-get install preload

in the terminal). I noticed a slight performance increase (Firefox loads in about 2.5 seconds), but it is FAR from the speed I get in Windows. I really hope this issue gets addressed more seriously soon, because it is causing a feeling of irresponsiveness and slowness. This again, is repelling new users from accepting Linux as a primary operating system.

3. Inaccurate Mouse Movement
I have a MX1000 Laser mouse. A _laser_ mouse. That means it should be VERY accurate, right? Well that was not the case. When I tried moving it only a few pixels it seemed to be a bit jumpy. It drove me mad when I tried to play Minesweeper. Once again, this is not something everybody will even notice, but it will annoy them subconsciously.
Luckily there is a solution. Change the rate at which Linux polls your mouse. Here are the instructions for *ubuntu users: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=392494
For those who want to know more about mouse-polling I suggest you read the Gentoo-Wiki.

That's it for now. I plan to add more, because we need a good list of these things.

Cisco Networking Academy

Today I've passed the final exam for CCNA1 (Cisco Certified Network Associate). For those who don't know much about Cisco's certificates I suggest you visit this or this site. Anyway, It means I'm getting a certificate by postal mail tomorrow. I also plan to continue the Networking Academy next year with CCNA2. No.1 was all about networking theory which is pretty boring actually, but No.2 is supposed to be a lot more interesting, because it's about Cisco's devices.

New 10Mbit Line

Today I got a new Internet Line. Well, actually I should've had it 1 week ago, but there was a huge problem with the old house wiring (Our telecommunication provider - Telekom Slovenije - gave us 2 pairs of copper wires, but only one wire from each pair was used, making cancellation impossible and probably doubling the attenuation...) Anyway, we were lucky as we know somebody who works at Telekom. He came and sorted things out. Now my new VDSL line (provided by T-2) works great! Previously I had a 4/0.384 ADSL line, but now I have 10Mb/s (megabits) of download and 2Mb/s of upload speed (for about $45/month = €35.5/month)! Oh, this is not an ad! I'm just extremely happy to finally see some competition in telecommunications here in Slovenia.

4D Cube

I figured that if I had a cube that was somehow 4D (a tesseract), its diagonal (d_4) would be 2-times the length of its base side (a), and its volume would be a^4. It partly shows that dr. Michio Kaku's affirmation about formulas becoming simpler on higher dimensions is true. A tesseract to a cube is like what a cube is to a square. The thing is, that we can't really imagine something like a "4D volume", though it can be expressed mathematically (even for n-th dimension).

3D Cube:

V_3 = a*a*a = a^3 (a 3D cube has 3 dimensions)
P_3 = 6*a*a = 6*a^2 (6 faces, each with a 2D surface of a^2)
d_3 = sqrt((a*sqrt(2))^2+a^2) = a*sqrt(3) (Pythagorean theorem)

4D Cube (Tesseract):

V_4 = a*a*a*a = a^4 (a 4D cube would have 4 "sides")
P_4 = 24*a^2 = 4*P_3 (count faces of a cube made from 8 cubes)
d_4 = sqrt((a*sqrt(3))^2+a^2) = 2*a (Pythagorean theorem again)

This means that a N-dimensional "cube" (the object should have its own name for each dimension) would have a diagonal: a*sqrt(N). And here is a proof that I'm not wrong.

Linux script: wa

I've created this simple and potentially useful Linux script and named it "wa"
Here it is:

#!/bin/sh
while [ $1 ]
do
clear
$1
if `test $2`
then
sleep $2
else
sleep 1
fi
done

It can be used for example for printing out different statuses, for example if you are waiting for somebody to login to the Linux box, you could use ./wa w 1
It will run a "w" command on a clean screen every second, so you don't have to constantly keep pressing w [enter] w [enter] ...
I think it's simple but convenient - the one thing Linux is missing ^^

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