WordPress, SOPA, and My Terrible Timing

Today, I had something amusing happen to me today.  I decided to install the Opera browser on my newly installed Linux Mint operating system, and the first place I logged into was WordPress.  I immediately thought I had done something wrong when I adjusted the settings on my Opera browser because all I saw was this: My first reaction was that Opera had a funny censored setting or something, so I browsed through the settings again to figure out how to turn it off.  I really didn’t think WordPress was highlighting a bunch of stuff that was censored anyway, so I figured the browser was screwing up.  After about ten minutes of looking, I could not figure out how to turn off the setting or even if there was one.  I just sat at my desk trying to figure out what had happened.  I decided to do a couple of Google searches to see if there were any writings on the Internet that discussed Opera censoring stuff.  No luck, so I decided to move on and not worry about it.

An hour later, I came back to WordPress to see if I still had the same problem because I had not experienced it again.  Once again, I saw the same thing, and I could not figure out what was going on.  I decided to look through Opera’s online documentation to figure out what had happened.  Once again, no luck.  I came back to WordPress again to start a blog post about my frustration when I noticed the censored images were linked.  I looked down at the bottom bar to see what the address was, and I saw:  http://sopastrike.com/strike

That is when it hit me that WordPress was participating in the online protest against SOPA and PIPA.  When you click on the censored link, you get taken to a page that looks like this: I am just glad I finally figured out what was going on.  I would probably have figured it out sooner had I not just installed Opera on my computer then tried to go to WordPress.  My troubleshooting mind immediately targeted the new Web browser as the culprit because everything worked just fine the last time I visited WordPress in Firefox.  Of course, this was before the protest began.

I am sure I will laugh about this for a few days.

Related articles

• 4 Decent Anti SOPA Plugins for WordPress (wpjedi.com)
• Fellowship is joining the protest against Internet censorship (fellowshipofminds.wordpress.com)
• Who, besides Wikipedia, is going dark and why (zdnet.com)
• SOPA protest swells as Google, Scribd, and WordPress join (arstechnica.com)
• Using Opera Unite to defeat SOPA? (decisionstats.com)

VirtualBox Not Exactly What I Need

I mentioned in an earlier post that I had an interest in experimenting with VirtualBox and running Linux Mint as a virtual desktop on my Windows 7 machine.  I had fun setting up the program, installing the OS, and running it for a bit.  However, I decided today that I would go back to a dual-boot computer.  While running a virtual desktop of Linux Mint was fun, I enjoy having Linux in full control of the system rather than running on emulated hardware via VirtualBox.  I also noticed a few bugs between the way VirtualBox loaded the OS and the way I would try to use it.  It came down to the little problems that made it more annoying to me to run anyway.

The funny thing is, I decided to give it a try, so I could run a few Windows programs in the background while I enjoyed Linux.  Unfortunately, I never ran those Windows programs.  I would just hop into my virtual desktop and do most of my computing there, so I realized that going back to what I had made a little more sense because Linux Mint would have full access to the system and system resources.

I am happy I gave VirtualBox a try because I enjoy experiencing different things when it comes to using my computer.  There may be a time down the road when I use it again.  I am thinking of purchasing a copy of Windows 7 to run in VirtualBox.  If I do that, I can completely wipe the OEM version of Windows 7 off of my computer, install Linux Mint as my main OS, and run Windows 7 in a virtual environment using VirtualBox.  I would rather do it that way anyway because I do most of my computing in Linux Mint.

Related articles

• Playing with a Virtual OS (velkrokronicles.wordpress.com)
• Finished My Operating Systems Class (velkrokronicles.wordpress.com)
• Messing with my computer again (velkrokronicles.wordpress.com)

Finished My Operating Systems Class

Today marks the end of my Operating Systems class at school, and I must say that I really enjoyed the class.  The downside to the class was the material was a little dated.  I was kind of sad by that aspect of it, but we made up for it by researching and writing papers on current operating systems.  Some of the class discussions confused me considering we were asked about stuff that occurred six years ago or sometimes even ten years ago.  In computer terms, six years is a very long time.

I felt that I knew quite a bit about operating systems considering I have been using them since MS-DOS all the way up to Windows 7.  During the last two years I have played around with Ubuntu, openSUSE, Linux Mint, Puppy Linux, and Fedora.  I never considered how major of a role the operating system plays in managing system resources like the processor, memory, and other types of hardware.  I was fascinated in learning how operating system development has changed over the years to take full advantage of processor use and improve memory management.  Those are things we don’t really think about as we open programs and play around on Facebook, so it was nice to understand how that stuff works and what works better than others.

One aspect of the class that I really enjoyed was learning about virtual environments.  I vaguely knew what a virtual desktop was, but I didn’t really understand it fully or had any reason to think about it and consider the possibilities of using virtual environments.  That is one reason why I decided to install Linux Mint on Windows 7 using VirtualBox.  I wanted to see what it was like to run my own virtual desktop.  More importantly, it allowed me to understand how sandbox mode works in some antivirus and antispyware programs to keep the computer safe using a virtual desktop.

Not only did I further my knowledge and understanding of operating systems, but I have also found myself using this information at work to help out my customers even better, which I found to be very rewarding.  We are told all the time that what we learn in school should be applied to our lives, and I find myself doing that almost every day.

Like I mentioned in an earlier post, I do plan to use this blog to help further my understanding as I continue with my classes at school, so expect to see some blog posts where I basically think with my fingers and write out my thoughts on what I am reading and learning.  As always, I look forward to comments from those who read my posts because some of you may help me understand my material even more.

Tomorrow, I start my database concepts class.  I look forward to this class because I have been wanting to learn more about databases recently.

Cinnamon

Recently, I spotted the following tweet by @Linux_Mint:

Introducing Cinnamon: blog.linuxmint.com/?p=1910—
Linux Mint (@Linux_Mint) January 02, 2012

Since I use Linux Mint, I decided to see what Cinnamon was.  The link goes to the Linux Mint Blog and discusses the introduction of a new desktop environment for Linux Mint known as Cinnamon.  The screenshots of the desktop environment looked great, so I decided to check it out.  Once installed, I quickly fell in love with Cinnamon, and I am glad that I could add it to my Linux Mint installation.  According to Clem, Cinnamon takes advantage of new technology, uses a traditional layout, and has the same goals of the Linux Mint development team.  That last part makes a lot of sense since Clem is also in charge of the development of Cinnamon.

The new environment is not limited to Linux Mint.  If you use one of the following operating systems:  Ubuntu 11.10, Fedora 16, OpenSUSE 12.1 and Arch Linux then you can also install and use Cinnamon as your desktop.  I think it looks neat and works very well.  At least it does for me.  I was using MATE, but I kept having problems with it.  Cinnamon works much better for me and I think it looks even better.  Check out these two screenshots of my desktop:

Cinnamon uses just one panel on the bottom of the screen that can be set to hide itself when not in use.  On the top left of the screen is a little symbol for infinity that you can hover your mouse over or click to reveal the Windows screen (second screenshot) and see all the programs currently open on your workspace.  It also includes the ability to look at other workspaces in use and see the programs open on them.  The menu follows the same look as mintMenu, which I like, and you can add applications to your favorites list, on the bottom panel, or right on the desktop.  According to the blog post, Cinnamon’s main appeal will be customization.  While it isn’t fully customizable yet, I look forward to the ability to adjust the layout to fit exactly what works well for me.

Cinnamon has quickly become my favorite desktop and confirms once again why I enjoy projects like Linux Mint.  I would love to hear what others think about Cinnamon.  If you have tried it, let me know what you think by adding a comment to this post.  Do you like it?  Do you hate it?  I am curious what you think and why.

Playing with a Virtual OS

In my recent post, I mentioned that I had removed my Linux partitions and planned to install Linux Mint 12 on Windows 7 using VirtualBox.  I finished getting everything installed and updated, and I am now playing on my virtual Linux Mint 12 OS.  I am actually enjoying it.  I must admit I had my reservations on how difficult the setup process might be and how well my virtual OS would run.  I am about an hour into using my virtual OS, and I am enjoying it just fine.

I think I like the idea of using Linux or Windows as I need without having to reboot the computer from one OS into the other.  I wish I had thought about trying this before because it does make it a little more convenient for me.  Now I can keep a few Windows programs running while still playing around in Linux.  One of these days, I need to go purchase a copy of Windows 7 and install it within a Linux environment since I prefer to use Linux more than I do Windows, but this will work just fine for me for now.

I may just keep this setup on my main computer while running Linux only on my remaining computers.  I wiped the Window OS on all my older computers about six months ago and never looked back.  Speaking of which, I need to go update those computers to the latest Linux Mint version as well since I am still running Linux Mint 11 on them.

Messing with my computer again

I recently installed Ubuntu on my computer after I upgraded my Linux Mint 11 installation to Linux Mint 12.  I immediately encountered some problems with the display that would glitch and make the OS unusable, which forced me to reboot the computer to continue to using the machine.  After putting up with that for about a week, I decided to give the latest version of Ubuntu a try until some additional bugs could be worked out in Linux Mint 12.  I have had the latest Ubuntu installation on my computer since, but today I decided to go a different route.

I have been dual-booting my computer for some time now.  I mainly run Linux on my machine until I need to work on school.  Since I am required to do most of my work on Microsoft Office programs such as Word and PowerPoint, I also boot into Windows 7 as needed.  Recently, I have been in Windows 7 a lot more because I have been playing games on Steam quite a bit, so I have not been using Linux as much.  I was trying to think of a way to play the games and still run Linux when I wanted without rebooting the computer over and over again.  That was when I decided to try something different.  Instead of dual-booting my machine, maybe I could set up a virtual environment on my Windows 7 OS that I can run Linux Mint or Ubuntu in.

That is what I am working on right now.  I just restored my Windows MBR and removed my Linux partitions.  The next step is installing VirtualBox and then installing Linux on that.  I will probably load Linux Mint 12 again because I really liked the interface.  I will try to remember to update my blog and let everyone know what I think about running a virtual OS after I get it all working.