Sunday note

It's chilly--54 F°--but it's obviously Spring: every bird in town is trying to get laid. They're singing, flirting, chasing each other around, doing little dances in the air. Beautiful day.

I walked up to the Smelly Cat in the hopes maybe I could get some writing done; plus, it's just one of those days you don't want to be in the house, you know? Even if I fail to get anything done (unlikely), there's still the niceness of sipping a latte while listening to The Clash over the café speakers ("London Calling," proof you can write a kickass rock & roll song with, like, basically two notes, if they're the right notes; and now The Who's "My Generation" has come up on their speakers, an apt follow-up actually), looking up at every now and then at the art that's on sale on the walls.

I think I have the new Ubuntu installation mostly workable as a workspace. Here's what it looks like at the moment:



There's still miscellaneous issues--DigiKam is still not wanting to allow me to open .NEF photos directly into GIMP with a right click (there's somebody reading that line to whom it makes sense, trust me). Amarok doesn't want to start automatically at startup in the tray (I can run it as a starting service, but it fully opens instead of opening in the tray, which is where I want it); some of these are basically peeves. I can work around DigiKam acting funny or maybe even use Google's Picasa browser (which isn't bad, though it's clearly a WINE port and not a truly native app), and just starting Amarok even when I wasn't necessarily going to use it was just a waste of resources. And then there are some things that are just quirks. But we're up and running.

Hope everybody else is having a nice Sunday afternoon, wherever and whenever you are.