I tried out a zillion live-CDs over the past week and the most appealing and uncluttered distro has to be lubuntu. Not only does it not assume that I am an idiot and need a million applications cluttering my operating system, its default browser is Chromium and not Firefox. These two things alone make it super-attractive.

EDIT: I hate lubuntu. It's clunky and quite awful when it comes to remembering any settings. I have switched to WattOS for now.

EDIT2: WattOS was okay but it had its own set of troubles... foremost being lack of activity in its support forums. Just one person supports that distro and that is a surefire recipe for very-long-wait-times and even more frustration. So I switched to Peppermint Ice (runs on LXDE/Openbox desktop environment on top of a Maverick 10.10 kernel). It's very fast compared to ubuntu and has no application bloat because everything is cloud-based. It's almost like a pre-release functioning Chrome OS.

EDIT3: Peppermint Ice was an unstable error-popping joke. I think the whole idea was to have the user install and use the OS for a day or so before unleashing an update from hell on their computers and have it boot to some inane terminal instead of the GUI so that windoze-converts will have an seismic what-do-I-do-NOW panic-attack. I had to google the "startx" command. Peppermint, you are ditched. I am now on Linux Mint on one laptop, Fedora on another (both gnome) and a stripped-down heavily-modified and patched WinXP (I know. I know.) on my oldest laptop.

BodhiLinux came close in terms of minimalism but I just could not figure out how to change simple display options under the Enlightenment GUI. Dual monitor setup was a nightmare. Changing the brightness of the screen required me to learn command line linux. Changing the display resolution was a complicated 1 hour google-hunt without a definite answer. The disappointment list just goes on lengthening.

Deskop Ubuntu has some unwieldy application-bloat. I liked the spiffy-looking Ubuntu-Netbook version but it has bloatware as well. Xubuntu was very display-tweak unfriendly. I am not competent enough yet to build linux from scratch. Someday, I will. Till then, I am settling for a semi-permanent lubuntu install on my Toshiba U305 S7467. I will miss the extremely light version of XP I used to run on the U305. It was just 0.7GB, took 12s to boot, ran just 12 background processes and took up less than 2% of system resources at any given time.

I don't know if and when I will reach that level of hacking comfort with lubuntu. It took me quite sometime to reach that state in XP. I never transitioned to Vista and it's newer evil cousins simply because their bloat was unbearable. I don't think any OS should occupy more than 2GB at the most and take up less than 3% of system resources when it's running.

Or maybe Chrome OS will come out before I get too comfortable with linux. Who knows...

I tried around 12 times to do a baby freeze on my left side. Here's a breakdown statistic of the results:

• Crash-landed on my head - (2)
• Crash-landed on my left hip - (2)
• Flopped around like a dying fish - (3)
• Leaned too far and felt my elbows give way under me - (2)
• Stopped and stared at the floor in disgust for 10 seconds - (1)
• Acquired a nasty 5-minute-cramp on my left upper arm - (1)
• Acquired a bruise on my left temple - (1)

It's impossible. My body just doesn't want to rotate on my right forearm and my left elbow just doesn't stay put on my left waist and slips off the minute I try to stabilize it.

On the other hand, baby-freezing to my right is a happier state of affairs. I managed to stretch the time I could hold the freeze to a whole 30 seconds today. And so I celebrated with another 1/4 lb of Justin's Chocolate Hazelnut Butter. I am dangerously close to a nut butter overload and opening the 2nd bottle. Thankfully, the 3rd bottle belongs to (e:Paul).

Don't you want to bash your head in when Linux GUI is dense and so extremely useless? No? Well, I do. So I am thrilled to have found a site that throws a command line bash 24/7:

ss64.com/bash

And I have lot of admiration for William E. Shotts because he wrote this



and put the PDF online for free:

I do have two hairy left feet.

It reminds me of you, (e:imk2).

I really like your shoes!

Those worn out suede-soles say so much about you! :-)

Verve Studio is starting up some really interesting classes in March including a hip hop class with Micheal Burton, a popping class and a hatha yoga class with T. J. Veith in addition to the breakdancing classes with Shane "Depree" Fry.

I am pretty interested in taking the hip hop with Michael Burton because I really want to incorporate some hip hop flavour to my stick-like salsa.

The current schedule is for Thursdays. They need 3 more people to offer a class on Mondays... Who's up for hip-hopping with me?

in breakdancing class with Shane "b-boy Depree" Fry today.



I was in suspended animation floating in an orbit around Uranus. That, and I have somewhat sore elbows.

First there was the Cuban on1
Then there was the NYC on2
And now, there is the one and only Buffalo onPMT...

I can't hold this pose for more than 3 seconds rooted on my right foot but I can hold it for 2 minutes or more rooted on my left.


And, in a rinse-and-repeat of old news, I am still super-clumsy in the intermediate salsa class. I am just not fierce enough. Anyone know of extreme bare-hands/knife street-fighting classes in the city? I vaguely remember seeing a small sign quietly saying "extreme"-something between the Chinese eatery and the tattoo place on the west-sidewalk in the block between Utica and Bryant on Elmwood. Wonder what it was...