LOVE the new krunner! Can’t wait until #KDE 5 / Plasma 5 lands in Fedora!

On the guest computer I updated to Kubuntu Vivid Alpha so I could check out KDE 5. Looks awesome - lots of polish over KDE 4. Sad that I’ll lose my current settings, but a chance to recreate with a new desktop.

When I first installed my new hard drive with btrfs I was happy with how fast things were running because the hard drive was a SATA3 and the old one was SATA2. But recently two things were bugging the heck out of me - using either Chrome or Firefox was painfully slow. It wasn’t worth browsing the web on my Linux computer. Also, Amarok was running horribly - taking forever to go from song to song.

Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

So, we have book one: satire of reality TV, book two: propaganda, and now book three: the reality of revolution and civil war. This trilogy is a perfect example of how YA and children’s literature is often subversive - this is why there are so many book burnings and book censorships.

The first book is an entertaining satire of the 2000s-2010s told through a futuristic hellscape. But taken together the trilogy is somewhat of a primer for the YA reader to begin to question ideas of propaganda - is everything I see on TV real even if it’s the news? It also is a good introduction to a very hard idea - often both sides of a revolution contain despicable people. To tie it back with the first point, there are no guarantees that the freedom fighters will treat people any better than the “evil” government.

What If?: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions by Randall Munroe

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

My undergraduate degree is Electrical Engineering, but the most important thing I learned was not anything about Maxwell’s Equations or electrons and holes - it was how to view the world in order to ask questions about it. That’s what Munroe does so brilliantly on his blog, What If? This book is a collection of posts from What If? and a few extra questions. The negative compared to the website is that there aren’t mouse-over jokes (although sometimes he puts that in there as a caption). The positive is that if you have the book, you have it forever. The website may or may not exist in a few years. I recommend for any scientific types in your life and anyone who likes to explore.

Love Hina, Vol. 12 by Ken Akamatsu

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

The book continues where the last one left off: with Kanako desperate to get intimate (physically and emotionally) with her adopted brother. While not biological incest, I still am not completely comfortable with it. Of course, coupled with the fact that she’s constantly doing what would be considered rapist behavior - impersonating others to get in bed/kiss/etc with him, tying him up, refusing to take “no” as an answer - it’s a bit much.

Wordpress sent me my Jetpack stats email for 2014. Here’s what they said:

• Post with Most Views in one Day 2014:  Using Digikam from the Point of View of a Lightroom User (10 Sept - 216 views)
• 76 New Posts
• 13 day streak - best streak
• Day of week with most posts? Wednesday (15 posts)
• Top 5 Posts: 1. Using Digikam from the Point of View of a Lightroom User 2. Visiting Disney with a 2 year old 3. Virtualbox vs KVM 4. Teenagers, Sex, School Sex Ed, and The Church 5. Leaving Crunchbang for Lubuntu
• Top referrers: lifehacker.com, distrowatch.com, popehat.com, wordpress.org, and facebook.com

This year I did not play as many new games as in previous years. I was deep in my graduate degree and most of my free time was during work travel. Since I don’t have a powerful laptop (and Steam on Linux was just taking off early on this year anyway), most of that time was spent reading. Still, I did play some great games and still managed to log in quite a few hours.

Once again Scarlett had a hand in determining the year’s winners. However, sometime around June she stopped requesting Disney music all the time, allowing others a chance at the spotlight. Still, while other artists were able to take the top artist spots, I didn’t listen to any one song often enough to undermine the Disney songs taking the top spots there.

Artists

1. Alan Menken (450 listens) - THE Disney songwriter 2. Mandy Moore (332 listens) - 100% all of these are from the Tangled soundtrack 2. Five Iron Frenzy (332 listens) - I just enjoyed the heck out of FIF music this year. 4. The Beatles (329 listens) - As usual, this is a mix of me picking something different when the family’s together and just enjoying listening to it myself. 5. Anberlin (247 listens) - I had Google Music load all the albums to my phone in preparation for the concert. This means when I listen to music in the car, Anberlin is very likely to come up. 6 .I Fight Dragons (207 listens) - As I mentioned in the Q4 post, most of this is due to the new album coming out this year. 7. Donna Murphy (139 listens) - A great performance on the Tangled soundtrack. 8. Chance the Rapper (116 listens) - Many of these are from early in the year. I still really enjoy Acid Rap, but am also ready for something new. 9. “Weird Al” Yankovic (115 listens) - A new album produced most of these scrobbles. It’d be slightly higher if the Android app didn’t have a problem with the quotation marks in the artist name. 10. Childish Gambino (113 listens) - I went through as part of listening to my music in alphabetical order. It reinforced that I probably am done with him for now. Lyrically my wife can’t stand it and I shouldn’t listen to it in front of the toddler. 11. Celia Cruz (100 listens) - The Queen of Salsa. 12. Brad Kane (97 listens) - From the Aladdin soundtrack. 13. The Beach Boys (96 listens) - I continue to love Pet Sounds. 14. Billie Holiday (93 listens) - She’s so great it’s too bad she isn’t really played on many radio stations anymore. 15. Jonathan Coulton (92 listens) - Wow, didn’t realize I listened to so much JoCo.

1. Five Iron Frenzy (147 listens) - Many of these came from me continuing to go through my collection in alphabetical order. 2. I Fight Dragons (102 listens) - IFD’s Kickstarter album finally came out. I really like it a lot. I’ve been listening to the B side more than the song cycle, but that’s mostly because those are more easily listened to here and there while the song cycle is best heard all at once. 3. Anberlin (98 listens) - Tried to listen to a bunch of Anberlin to get ready for their farewell concert. 4. Fantastic Plastic Machine (71 listens) - Also from the alphabetical listen. 5. Fall Out Boy (63 listens) - Partly from the alphabetical listen and partly from Scrobbles from Spotify of their new singles. 6. Final Fantasy (Soundtracks) (50 listens) - from the alphabetical listens. 7. Edith Piaf (44 listens) - from the alphabetical listens. I’d completely forgotten we had a bunch of her music. We used to listen to it more often. 7. Doctor Octoroc (44 listens) - from the alphabetical listens. I really don’t like the albums anymore. 9. Willy Chirino (43 listens) - Mostly from listening to his great Christmas album. The only Spanish-language Christmas album I have. 10. Relient K (41 listens) - I felt nostalgic for some Relient K. Still love the earlier stuff. 11. DC Talk (40 listens) - While I still like some of the songs, others have not aged well. 12. Dj CUTMAN (39 listens) - I just love these remixes. 13. Celia Cruz (38 listens) - Put on some Celia because Scarlett really likes to dance to salsa. 14. Elvis Presley (35 listens) - Going through my collection of #1s. 15. Taylor Swift (32 listens) - Danielle got the new album and, unsurprisingly for Ms Swift, it’s quite catchy.