Getting Evolution Working With ShawMail Under Ubuntu 10.04

July 4th, 2010 Thomasso

This is a very bare-bones How-To guide for getting Shaw Mail to work with Evolution, the default email program that comes stock with Ubuntu. I am using Ubuntu 10.04, Lucid and Evolution 2.28.3 for this guide. I highly doubt that these settings are going to change that much between each version.

Before you begin you may need to find the long address of your server address with Shaw. This depends on what area you live in around Western Canada, and can be found at this link on the Shaw web site. Just find your city, and copy and paste it into the field as shown in this guide. Shaw Server Names.

If you are using the start-up wizard, or you are adding a new address, the steps are pretty much the same. Shaw uses the POP and SMTP for email. Evolution is just as basic as any other proprietary software is, so these steps should be easy follow.

Also, you should have your email account already set up with ShawMail through their online web mail support page, including your email name, password and address. Evolution will not do that for you; you can only set up what you have already with Shaw. If you have Evolution set up, say with another email account, then these settings can be found in Edit -> Preferences -> click, and highlight the email account that you want to edit, or start a new account, and choose Edit.

Step 1.

Your name is really what you want displayed by Evolution. This is not something that you have to have set-up with Shaw. However, your email address is critical, as that is what you should have set-up with Shaw.

Step 2.

Next, set up the POP settings, which is how you download your email from Shaw. Where you see the field called “Server,” that is where you will paste the long address from the link at the ShawMail web page. And for the User Name field, that is the first part of your email address before @shaw, in my example it is different from the Figure shown in Step #1.

Step 3.

This is optional. You can set this for however long each time Evolution checks for emails. You can even set up a wave file to go off when it downloads an email, alerting you that you just received an email.

Step 4.

Setting up the SMTP, for uploading emails that you are sending. Again, paste the long address that you got from the ShawMail Web Page. You need to check off the “Server Requires Authentication” check box, but you do not need to check off the “Remember Password,” unless you do not like typing in your password each time you start Evolution.

The User Name field under Authentication in this Figure is just the name of your account that you listed for Evolution, not ShawMail. This has nothing to do with what you entered with ShawMail, but this name should match what you have entered in “Account Information” field in Step #1.

And that should be it.

The most common mistake I see is when the incorrect information is written down from what was typed in on the Shaw Email Website during the creation of an email account. The user name, pass word and email address must be correct or you will not connect to the Shaw Server.

I really hope that this guide helps anyone out as I know getting good support from any ISP on Linux based operating systems is something less than perfect.

Posted in General, Linux, Photographs, Software | No Comments »

Drawing Tablet meets MyPaint In the Freedom of Open Source

May 22nd, 2010 Thomasso

I finally had some time to sit down and dabble with some of the art and graphics programs I download from a few weeks ago after upgrading to Ubuntu 10.04. I called up MyPaint, and it shocked me as it opened up. I used this program a few years ago when it was very young in its development, but I never got back to it until now–and what a surprise!

MyPaint is loaded with some very cool brushes and FX tools that you can paint with. It works very well with my drawing tablet, and seems very stable.It is one of the best open source programs that I have seen that has some good oil brushes. I also like the many different canvases that you choose that are defaulted in the start-up menu.

There was one little downer that I found: the brushes seem to be listed in Spanish, or some other language. I can live with it, but if you want to create or manage your brushes, well, you may want to find a translator as it could hard to remember which is which, even with the icons to help you . But hey, it has very good icons for each type of brush. I do not think anyone would find it that difficult to navigate through the different options.

I will be trying this program out more often.

This is one of the many time-laps video and tutorials from YouTube that you watch and get a feel for the program. It is amazing what you can do with a computer these days. Forget about buying paint and paper any more when you have it all–and no mess to clean upwards! It also seems to be for both LINUX and Window$.

Posted in Art, General, Linux, Photographs, Software, Video | Comments Off

The Power of Gogh, and My Drawing Tablet

May 10th, 2010 Thomasso

I like simple, and sometimes there is such a thing as having too many bells and whistles when all you want is pure simple. Gogh does this for me. Gogh is a ridiculously simple, yet beautiful drawing/sketching program that just gives you the basics: pen, pencil, smudge, colour and an eraser. It works great with Ubuntu 10.04, and is quite stable.

There is a bit of a trick to starting after you uncompress it – you must either start it up in terminal (the Gogh executable file),e.g., “./gogh,” or simply right click on it and choose run, or create a short-cut, but the folder must stay somewhere in your home directory. You can download it from here: GOGH.

Both of these sketches took only seconds to make.  They are not perfect, but I like the feel of the program, so any mistake you can either erase yourself out of trouble, or hit the undo.

Posted in Art, Featured Software, General, Linux, Photographs | 4 Comments »

Work’n Hard – Just an Update

May 5th, 2010 Thomasso

The Official Announcement: Yes, I’m at work, but I’m on my break – honest.

Now for the post:

If you are sensing a little “ick” in my writing in this post, it is because I am typing it on a Microsoft Window$ Machine, believe it or not, with XP as its OS. I know, why? But most businesses I know are still running this garbage. What can you do, it is their call.

I think everyone is eager to know how I did on my French exam-right? Well, I passed the course, barely, and albeit with an academic pass, I somehow managed to do this on my final. So I did something right. I thought with such a dismal effort on my last mid-term that doom was to be the only outcome I would see on my transcript. This means that I must have gotten somewhere around 70 to 80 percent on that exam. Seriously, this is huge if that happened. We never get to see the exact mark for our finals, and we never know the exact percentage when we finish the course, just a letter grade and GPA. So you can only guess. Perhaps I should email the prof and just check if this wasn’t a mistake?

As for Statistics – Well, my favorite letter was given for that course: an “A.” This is also a pleasant surprise because that should be the course from hell, not French.

A Note to My Mother: Mom, the disk, instructions, and the Monitor are in the mail and are on their way. I know you will probably not be reading this until your computer is sorted out, but I will try and make contact with you over the rest of the week to see what I can do until you are back on-line. Hang in there!

DianeOUtLoud: I will email you very soon for upgrade instructions. Next week I’m back in classes, so we will need to book this soon.

OK, I’m leaving the desk-enclosure and going home.

Posted in Bitching about work, General, Homework and deadlines, Humour, Linux | 6 Comments »

Everything is Upgraded – Now the Desktop

May 1st, 2010 Thomasso

Well, everything seems to be in order now. I have finished the major upgrade, and did some tinkering with the bios settings on this machine (my work station) and I think it working at optimal performance.

There were a few little surprises, like the download centre. That caught me off guard when I clicked on that. I saw that you can add both free and non-free software to this now. Open source is open for business now I guess? Also, this version now comes stock with the movie editor called PiTiVi. And they get rid of a ton of useless screen savers, which I think is a good thing because they had way to many to being with from the last four or five versions.

I’m sure I will be spending the next while tweaking everything up. Heck, this the fun part, finding all the cool stuff and working with it.  I’m happy – something new to look at. So far nothing froze or died on me, so the software looks good.  My DVD player/Burner is slowly on the road to death as it reads disks like they might as well be pieces of sandpaper.

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The Upgrade – 4 hours of Waiting

May 1st, 2010 Thomasso

I started the upgrading last night. I have four machine that I wanted kept current so I started the downloading of 10.04 around 5:00pm Thursday, April 29, 2010, just as the release of the Lucid Lynx was let loose. Overall I am very happy with 10.04, but I quickly found out that some of my hardware is rapidly dying from old age.

The first problem was my DVD burner. I tried two different types of ISO files from off of the web, and both seemed to have scores of errors on them. I tried an install right from the boot/start up on my second file I downloaded, and it went through about 40 percent, then displayed a bad DVD medium error. The first DVD I burnt, it did not even work. This was frustrating, but then I realized that my DVD burner was so full of dust and dirt that I switched over to my laptop to burn with. I had to start the download all over again because I didn’t have anymore DVD+ to burn with, and my laptop only takes the DVD- type disks. So, I fired up Ktorrent, and grabbed the next available bit-torrent to burn just for the laptop. That took 5 hours to download because my wireless is topped out at somewhere 1MB/s.

My second problem was setting up my encryption. Ubuntu 10.04 gives you the option of encrypting your user accounts, so I jumped on that. The problem there was my hard-drive, a LO-1 TB SATA drive. With so much space, and such a demanding encryption algorithm, this took a lot more time to do than if I just ran the regular option of a simple password. I take security very seriously, and LINUX systems seem to do a better job than the commercial product I have used on the market. So I hunkered down and waited while the upgrade took place. Hey, the encryption works good. I tried to scan with my Window$ machine, and it could not  even see the partitions and content – just a big empty disk that read full.

The Fresh Install versus the Upgrade debate. I learned that installing fresh is way better than upgrading. This dates back to my WIN95 to WIN98 days. I learned that boot problems just get passed along to each new upgrade without actually getting fixed. Things like rouge programs and third party software are rarely fixed, or never at all, and they seem to have more problems after each consecutive upgrade. So fresh is always better in my book. Also, I have noticed that if you just upgrade, you never really get the full benefit of the latest release. Your old configuration files always linger around on your hard-drive from one upgrade to another.

Once I get my main workstation back to user happiness, I will post my experiences, probably tonight when I things calm down around here. This, and my flat tire with the nail in it, are all that is on my agenda for today, so type to you then!

Posted in Events, General, Linux, Software | 6 Comments »

Playing Around With Ubuntu 10.04, Alpha-3. Code Name: Lucid Lynx.

March 26th, 2010 Thomasso

Yay! It looks like Ubuntu 10,04 LTS (Long Term Support) will be a “hopeful” success. I took some time to play around with the early, bleeding edge build, to see how it is shaping up, and took it out for a test drive. With the predicable bugs and hick-ups, it went very well. There are some surprises that caught me off guard, like my tablet still worked, after reading all bugs that were causing that device to brick. My Lexmark E210 laser printer still worked, and my Nvidia card still pumped out the 3D desktop and eye candy that I love so much.

The final release with April 29th, 2010. I strongly recommend that you do not install on your main machine! The Alpha 3 is still bug ridden, so you might as well save yourself the headache and wait the 30 to 40 days for the final release. The Ubuntu Web Site “Alpha 3 Page,” strongly says this.

Although at first there didn’t seem to be that much of a change from 9.10 Karmic, once I started to poke around, the subtle yet drastic changes started to pop up. I would also strongly recommend a total install, not a upgrade due to all the configuration issues most people will have, like with certain peripherals and PCI cards. I lost all of my MIDI functions from my Audiophile 24 x 2 sound card, and along with it my digital audio out.

Oh, the look and feel are great with a fresh install. Way faster than 9.10. I can honestly say that this blows the door off of Windsow$7, both in performance and time. Window$ still has way too much “stuff” to load while 10.04 only takes what it need to boot-up. Window$ 7 = 1.24 sec., Ubuntu 10.04 = 0.21 sec., from boot-up to desktop. This is using a PhenonII X4 965 Quad Core CPU with 4 Ghz of DDR2 Ram, and a 1TB SATA 32M Hard drive Seagate, 7200PRM, SATA2, with 32MB Buffer. Note too that I have always had this USB issue with Window$7 that I cannot get rid of.

Here is the release schedual, if you are interested in this: Ubuntu Release Schedual – 10.04.

Below are two YouTube clips, the first is from mark Shuttleworth, the brainchild of Ubuntu, and the last one is a short demo of the boot-up sequence for 10.04, and what to expect while installing.

Note: this guy below is using virtual machine to load and use 10.04 and he is suffering from a slow boot up while running virtual box. The jumping and skipping on the video is him using a time-laps fast forward speed while going through the start-up and installation process. It is quite funny. And it didn’t work, I got Alpha 3 to run in Virtual machine.

So, I’m looking forward to installing Ubuntu 10.04, LTS,  the Lucid Lynx out in April 29, 2010!

Posted in General, Humour, Linux, Software, Video | Comments Off

Woo-Hoo, First Post for 2010 & Drawing Cherries With InkScape!

January 1st, 2010 Thomasso

Now, …what should I type? Awh, later.

OK, I am back. Today I am going to talk about InkScape, becuase I am getting a lot of emails from my friends about some of the images I have being posting on my blog. First of all, if you are the unfortunate who is running Window$, and  feel for you, you are still in luck becuase InkScape does run on it, but I have noticed that it is not completely stable in my experiences on the OS. With that out of the way, Vector image programs are completely different from those programs that manipulate images. InkScape does work with photographs, but not in the same way that programs like the GIMP do.

Think of Vector images as drawing with Math, in other words, every shape or element of the image you create is just a bunch of numbers that represents what you are seeing. This means two things. First, you can increase, or decrease the size of the image without compromising any loss of detail. Second, you must render the finished product into a image so that your audience can see your lovely creation.

I have created these cherries.

Each cherry has six elements, or components in it. The two basic shapes, or primitives, are a circle and a rectangle. The stems are made of two rectangles, twisted to curve into the shape and each shape also is shaded with a different colour, darker colour on the bottom, and the lighter on the top layer. The cherry is just one big circle with red colour fill, and three smaller circles, with different sizes, each with lighter colours, with the effects of transparency and blur added to give the reflective look from the light in the virtual room the cherries are in.

If you want to see the SVG file for yourself, click here, “Cherries01.svg” to down load it, and then run it with InkScape. Also note that this was created on  version 0.47 at the time of this writing. Enjoy the file.

Posted in Art, Events, General, Humour, Linux, Photographs, Software | 2 Comments »

Arrrrrr, Lookie at the all Ye Window$ Pirates Out There Maties!

October 24th, 2009 Thomasso

As a 100 percent Linux user myself, I get great amusement out of these numbers of pirated downloads of the latest Wondiw$ El número siete. Firing up my open-source bit-torrent tracker program, I decided to search the P2P (peer to peer) world and to see for myself just what activity lurks out there among the file sharing population; you know, the group of people who every right-wing government, corporation and self-centred capitalist all hate, aka as the “Free World,” by some, cheap by others. And before you think that the open-source community fits this definition, then I need to remind you of all the licence agreements that you are breaking before you give me the spiel. I can hear Mr Gates groaning in his office just across the border as the 78,000 leechers, and the 55,000 seeders (that is just on PiratesBay alone) making copies of the closed source money making software, sharing it all—for free.

What is interesting is that so many people are hoping that this will be the version to take MS Window$ from the most hated OS, to the best because of the last reincarnation called Vista was so bad. Even the word “Vista” has negative connotations now among the less fortunate who are stuck with it because they bought a pre-loaded lap-top or PC with it. I cannot tell you how many machines I have wiped it off with Linux just to correct some basic problems like the user being able to use to it? And I highly doubt it that the Spam and Virus problem will be fixed either, in fact, I predict that it will get worse now.

But before I leave my soup-box I want to say one last thing about what is happening with all the illegal copies of Window$ being sent across cybor space. You are reason why governments, like Canada, want to take control of the Internet. The criminals, and terrorist are just an excuses for the push to legislate laws to control the Intranet. It is the file sharing of copy-right and licensed protected marital that is at the root of this drive for ultimate control by governments. In Canada, we have the oligopoly of ISPs who serve the majority of the online users, mainly the broad-band connections, while only a small fraction are still using private, ghost and dial-up server providers. The new legislation will make it law to open these service providers up to the authorities and demand all records of your online activities. This legislation will catch anyone using their broadband connection for illegal uses, and will greatly increase the likelihood of prosecution.

Did I make you feel guilty? For more reading about Canada’s policies and possible future on the Internet and file sharing, please read some of these links:

• Michael Geist’s weblog post called:  Time To Slay the File Sharing Myths. Or just visit his blog at: http://www.michaelgeist.ca/
• Samuelson-Glushko Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic.: http://www.cippic.ca/en/.
• File Sharing – Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_sharing.

Posted in General, Humour, Linux, Photographs, Software | Comments Off

Lots Going on – Packed into Three Days of Goodness

October 11th, 2009 Thomasso

Besides the homework and other daily chores, I have got my fingers in a lot of pies right at the moment. Some of my things to do went well, while others did not. But in all, so far, at the halfway mark of the holiday weekend, things are getting checked off and competed which is nice.

Computer Happiness: Probably the most tenuous and life altering plan for this weekend is Beta testing the new upcoming Ubuntu 9.10, code named, Karmic Koala. So far it is showing great promises, like the super fast boot  up time and shut-down. I was a little nervy dealing with the new to log on to my user account, now you must click on your user name and then type in your password. I guess it is better being that you had to type in your user name than your password, but for living with typing for so long, almost six years now, it has become a serious habit. I could easily write a whole post on it, but I’m still finding little bugs, so maybe later on next week. For now, I can say that it looks very promising. And yes, I am submitting my bug reports.

Cram Them Berries: Fort Langley just had its Cranberry Festival yesterday. I was not in attendance because of other commitments like homework and some letters that needed to by sent via email, but I sure heard it. The one time I went over to the market, I saw hundreds of people lining the streets walking around the vendors table that packed the main drag. The town was packed. I think is was a success, so I will wait an see when I talk to my friends who have shops along Glover Road.

Another B&E: My friends house, where I am storing some of my things, was broken into on Friday. They did take some of my things, like some tools, a box full of old vinyl-records, and 500′ of LXR microphone cable, but my friend lost way more than I did. Probably the total value of my loss would be around $400.00, but I have had that stuff for so long so it is hard to say if it is really worth anything any more. I am mad, somewhat, but completely taken back by it. These were things that I have had in storage for well over eight or nine years, so missing them is highly unlikely. But the funny thing is my buddy decided not to bother with phoning the police. Because breaking and enterings are so common in this area the last time this happened the police gave him the story about how they are powerless to deal with it, and that he should take it up with his insurance company. Well, he decide that it was not worth his time dealing with the police, and “if they are not going to fight crime, I will have to.”

This is a common thing I hear as a criminologist, when people get frustrated with high crime rates. I warned him about the usual points of law, mainly that he cannot commit a crime by preventing one. So I had advised him on taking other measures like a fence, lighting, alarms and a dog.

The Power of the Pen: I’ve being asked to take part in a letter writing campaign about taxation and government spending. A group of students from various universities and academic facilities have joined forces to start a three month long letter writing campaign to all levels of governments to fight the decline in services for middle and poor class people, and the sudden hike in funding losses and increased taxation. This should be fun. I have never written letters in this fashion before. I was told that these letters should not be in the form of a protest letter, but rather as from the point of view as a  concerned citizen as part of a larger interest group. Apparently there are over twelve thousand of us?

So, off to get my list of things done. Enjoy the long weekend everyone and happy Thanks Giving!

Posted in Criminology, General, Linux, University classes | Comments Off