Semi Bad News

I don't think I will make the December deadline. As my apology to you all, I will have these three themes available for download along with the other themes inside of a theme pack. Please let me know if you have any issues.

Snags

Just for a quick update. I wanted to let you all know that I have received permission from Bisigi Projets, François Vogelweith to include his themes in the MIE Live CD, and I have also received permission from Camille Le Roux to use her background in a new theme. I thought I was all set to go with the live CD, and I ran into something i never thought would be an issue, Album art will not load. I thought it might have something to do with Elisa so I upgraded to Moovida, but nothing. I then tried updating the deb files, but that had no effect either. I then tried following the install instructions on my Ubuntu 9.10 desktop, and everything worked just fine. So the only thing that I can think of is that there is some package included in the ubuntu-desktop that Harbour-Launcher depends on. In case anyone has input on this, the error I'm getting says
"Elisa: No Album cover found". I don't think it's a really big deal, but i wanted to try and make this Live CD as close to the real thing as possible. I also have finished theming "Wild Shine", "Showtime", and "Balanza". I haven't taken screen shots because I want to load them all at once. Hopefully I can keep up the pace and have it out before "Giftsmas". And since "Giftsmas" is on different days for different people, I mean the Christian "Giftsmas" for no other reason than it's the last one of the year. That's it for now hopefully i hear back from someone.

Now What?

The creation of a Live CD with MIE interface was not enough for me. I don't like the way that openbox and gnome seem to clash with one another. So I decided to do something about it. Currently remastersys has problems with Ubuntu 9.10, so I had to use the Ubuntu 9.04 mini cd. This thing is sweet, I wish I had found it before. I was able to install a basic command line system, and add whatever bits and pieces I wanted. So the result was a Live CD with bare minimum packages to get an Internet connection, Harbour Launcher, and Elisa working. The iso comes in at 440MB as opposed to the 600 MB it was before. I also wanted to mention that I have contacted Francois from Bisigi Project to ask his permission to pre-install his themes on the disk. As soon as i hear back from him, I will start adding the files necessary to make his themes MIE ready. I will also be featuring another theme for the pink HP Mini. I was up late last night and saw one on QVC that was being sold as Windows 7 although it had the MIE interface clearly on it. Oh well. But it was still the original black, which don't get me wrong, it's nice, just not so much against pink. I have contacted Camille Le Roux at www.ftw-design.com/en/wallpapers.html to ask her permission on using her "Pink Garden" wallpaper, I think it's really great. I do still have some issues to work out, Harbour Launcher still will not autostart, and the default Gnome panels are kind of in the way. Two not really huge issues, but I just want to find out how to do it. So please look for MIE Live Alpha coming really soon.

MIE Live CD and Digital Surveillance

No doubt you noticed the "Sponsor" section on the right there. Juan Arenas from Digital Surveillance saw my blog, and is a fan. He was kind enough to offer the use of a server he isn't currently using. So I jumped on the offer. I did want to put a link to Digital Surveillance up here just to thank him for the use of his server. I did let him know that I and not he would be responsible for any content on his server. So now to the hopefully good news. I have used CrunchBang Lite to add Harbour Launcher and my themes in to a Live CD. This is nothing more than a just for fun kind of thing, and am not looking into creating a new distro. If you want to join in the fun feel free to download MIE Live CD.

HP MIE for Everyone! CrunchBang MIE

I was browsing around LXer and Linux Today, so I don't even remember where I read an article stating that HP had removed HP Mini MIE downloads on the same day that Windows 7 was launched. So I panicked and started thinking about an idea i had a while back, HP Mini MIE on a Live CD. Now I had no clue how to start, but my encounter with CrunchBang left a sweet taste in my mouth. To make a very long story relatively short, I spent last night installing CrunchBang mini edition in VirtualBox and following the instructions here to get Harbour Launcher and all the other HP Mini MIE interface running. I did also have to install some gnome stuff, because the interface is tied into gnome. Any way the result was a 590MB iso that looks like so, mind you this is in virtualbox, so resolution was off a bit. I'm new to all this, so at the moment it starts off in openbox, and i have to execute "harbour-launcher" in the command line. After Harbour Launcher loads, I have to go into "Settings", select "Appearance", and select "Glassy-Bleu". I tested this in virtualbox, on my desktop, and on my HP dv2125nr. Everything is working, but I am experiencing random crashes. I do still have to load my alternate themes, and I hope to be able to script this auto launch correctly. I did create this iso with remastersys and used the dist option, so you should be able to install this on a pretty low end system, but my virtual machine has 512 MB of ram. If any one is interested in this project please let me know I'm not too sure of the legality of it all, but I don't want to see this awesome UI just left to die.

[Update]

I was able to create a MIE Live CD with my themes pre-installed. I am still not sure how to get it to automagically launch Harbour Launcher upon boot up, but i'm not sure if this isn't a blessing in disguise. If i leave it as is the disc could serve as a multipurpose disc. Come on we all know it's good to have a rescue disc around. Maybe I'll just add harbour launcher to the menu, and a person could choose to launch it. If anyone has ideas of what else i should include please let me know. I think this last build was 606 MB big.

[Update 2]

I came across that blog again people it can be found here

Side Note

Everyone I am sorry to say that I have been very uninspired lately, and I have been a bit busy. Anyhow the HP Mini MIE is built on top of the Ubuntu Linux Operating System. Due out in about a week is the new and improved Ubuntu 9.10. I have been Beta testing Ubuntu 9.10 and let me tell you I am very unhappy. I started using Ubuntu 7.04 on my HP dv2125nr and let me tell you I thought it was great. Ubuntu 7.10 came along and it was not very different than 7.04, but since then i have had problems with little things that are just a pain in the ass. Ok so Ubuntu's latest incarnation has left my speakers clicking every 60 seconds. My suspend and hybernate no longer work, I no longer have access to my Windows shares. Now i understand that the OS is free both in cost to me and in code. I am willing to deal with that, but i have a problem with a large number of articles that preach that Ubuntu 9.10 is the Windows 7 killer. It's not. I think it's really cool that Ubuntu's developers want to keep a 6 month release cycle, but how about we take a two year hiatus from that rule, and fix these little glitches that are bothering everyday users. I am using my same dv2125nr and I don't see how things just keep on not working or work worst than they did 2 years ago. Samba went from unstoppable networking beast to blind crap shoot. Sound went from breaking once in a while after an update to clicking annoyingly every 60 seconds. Let's be honest what's a laptop without suspend and hibernate, a low battery life small profile desktop. Come on Ubuntu I am willing to stick around for a little longer. I installed the Beta last night and just now the Release candidate finished downloading. I am first going to update my current Ubuntu 9.10 beta with all the current updates. If this proves to be fruitless, i will install the release candidate. If this doesn't fix any of my problems, I'll be looking to get my Linux jollies elsewhere. Maybe I'll even give BSD a shot.

[UPDATE]
Well it appears that the clicking sound coming from my speakers was Ubuntu 9.10 trying to save power from sound, so I disabled that, and no more clicks. I found an article stating that SD cards being mounted on netbooks was causing Suspend and Hibernate to fail. So i took a chance and unmounted my SD card before attempting a suspend and hibernate. My results were mixed. Suspend worked, and Hibernate sort of worked. I had to still hold the power button to turn off my laptop, but on power up it woke up from its hibernation. As far as being able to access Windows shares, I did come across an article stating Windows 7 broke something in the way it allegedly shares files, but I can't access the same share under Windows XP so something is going on. I do want to also mention that I tried Linux Mint, and Suspend and Hibernate worked out of the box. I still could not get access to my Windows shares though. For some reason I dont like Linux Mint as much as Ubuntu, but I'm willing to stick with Ubuntu as long as i can suspend. The way i see it i can just carry some music files on my laptop. I freed up 20 gigs by finally removing Windows XP. All in all not too shabby. Also this version of Ubuntu 9.10 is still just a Release Candidate, maybe the system will get better still.

[UPDATE 2]

I'm not sure why this happened, but i guess Samba and Windows 7 have some issue with one another. I was able to mount my Windows 7 shares using the "Connect to Server" option in Ubuntu 9.10. I hit "Connect to server", chose "Windows Share", typed in the IP address of my Windows 7 machine in the "Server" box, typed the name of my shared folder, and entered my user name in "User Name", this is my Windows 7 username. I did check book mark, but you don't have to. Now when i hit connect I had to enter my password. This password is the password to your Windows 7 machine, not the password to your Windows 7 home group. I hope this works for you.

[UPDATE3]

Bluetooth has become easy to manage in Ubuntu 9.10. I was ready to create a blog dedicated to just this feature. Bluetooth on linux has been so terrible that i forgot all about it. I have a Kensington Bluetooth dongle, and a Plantronics 220 ear piece. Now for some crazy reason i have never been able to stream music to this ear piece. I tried under Windows XP and every linux distro i have played with. There were plenty of how to's on the subject, and i tried following them as close as possible, but nothing seemed to work. I installed a beta of Windows 7 a while back, and it was able to stream music to my headset with no problem. So i tried to stream again under Ubuntu 9.04, and nothing. So just now i was trying to think of things that i wish worked under Ubuntu 9.10 and I remebered my bluetooth headset that gets absolutely no use. So I figured lets plug it in and see what happens. So it discovered just fine, and I chose it as my input output for sound, and Tupac's rendition of "Changes" played in my ear. Changes in deed my frineds. I hope this is one feature of Ubuntu Linux that is not lost as time goes by.

A Word of Caution: Creating Your Custom Ubuntu Disk

I have the unfortunate title of PC repair man in my family. As all of you might have immediately assumed correctly, these are Windows systems. So to try and make my miserable job easier I figured 'Why not load a bunch of tools onto Ubuntu and respin the son of a bitch?' Now i have just started dabbling into respinning. So let me tell you all how it went, it was stupid. I tried Reconstructor and Ubuntu Customization Kit in just about every way conceivable. I was served with divorce papers because i neglected my kid trying to get this thing to happen. I first thought maybe its my CrunchBang iso, maybe for some reason these programs don't like CrunchBang 9.04. So i tried Xubuntu 9.04 with no luck. I tried Ubuntu 8.04, see i was in it for the Long Term, no luck. I kept getting a login prompt that i had not set, so only God knows the password, maybe Jesus and the Holy Ghost too, but that's for scholars to decide. By this time I was sleeping in the car because my wife had enough of my crying. I used my best friend Google to guide me to the answer. I threw my laptop into the Gulf of Mexico, and that didn't work. All hope was lost. Suddenly there was a glimmer in a post i just happen to pass by. It said that some program called remastersys existed. What is remastersys? I googled to it while in my first session with the marriage counselor. I swear i love my wife and kid, but this is important. So after reading up on remastersys it was slowly beginning to spin a wheel somewhere in that lump of fat i call a brain. Where had i seen 'remastersys' before. Oh well I'm sure it's nothing. So I booted my CrunchBang virtual machine because I was going to figure out how to install it and make it work, and i was probably going to need vacation time from work, to get it done. I hadn't bathed all weekend but that's not important because even if remastersys wasn't in the repos i was going to figure it out, i will recompile this program with my own bare hands out of mud and sticks if i had to. And then suddenly while i browsed through my CrunchBang 9.04 virtual machine I happened to see a program entry named remastersys. Some idiot made remastersys a default program and didn't mention anything to me about it. What is going on? Needless to say not only was it pre-installed, but i was able to create a live iso of the programs i wanted. Now i was just testing remastersys, my iso ended up being 741MB which is too big for a cd, and i am unsure if livecd iso can be booted from a dvd. See I'm not bright at all, but i installed LXDE and i'mm sure that takes up some space, there was other stuff i could do without. All in all it was an awesome learning experience. I highly recommend remastersys to anyone wanting to do something similar. Thanks to the developers, and thanks also to the team that creates CrunchBang Linux it was genius to include remastersys on it. In case anyone is curious i wanted to add antivirus programs onto CrunchBang. So I installed ClamAv, AVG8, and F-Prot. I wanted to also add Avira and Antivir, but couldn't get them to go. For Malware i wanted to use BotHunter, but I couldn't get it to go, not a huge deal though that one came with a livecd of its own. If anyone has any advice on additional Antivirus or Anti-Spyware/Malware tools that i could use, please feel free to let me know I could really use the advice.

Things that make you go hmmm!

Well some of the younglings out there might not remember that 80's catch phrase, but i do. Well as you all know by now Virtualbox 3.0 is out and like the bee to the honey i just had to install it. There is actually a whole lot more to the story of stupid things I do, but that's to far off the subject. So I moved my HP Mini MIE Virtual Machine into Virtualbox 3.0 and did an update. Well something rather odd occured. My splash screen went all Compaq. I don't know if anyone else reported it, but might there be a Compaq Linux Machine coming out? I took the screen shot during boot up. The strange thing is that when i shut it down it still says HP. In case you don't know Compaq is also owned by HP but as far as I know there isn't any Compaq Linux out there. Stranger still is why this splash screen is in there repo. Well as we say in the Linux world, "the more the merrier". I hope there is a new MIE like interface for Compaq, it'll give us more to play around with. Maybe it's just an ant hill, but how i hope it is a mountain. What can i say i get easily excited.

Golden Slumbers

I know that it has been a little while but what can I say, sometimes i have things to do. I found this really nice HP wallpaper, and decided to go with it. I named it "Golden Slumbers" because my daughter loves that Beatles song. There are still little things to do, like change the color of welcome but its complete enough. I hope you all like it. I know that i said i was working on a port of Mint, but I really don't like that theme. Maybe the Ubuntu port and the Mint theme are different, but i couldn't stand looking at it. If anyone else is working on themes please let me know, i would love to see other peoples work.

Linux in the Future

If anyone has read my profile, I claim to be "an escaped test monkey from the future". It's not too far off, but the truth is I'm not from the future. I've been thinking for a while about the "Year of Linux". Quite frankly, I think we missed it. There were articles in the late 90's that the future of computers was not in a boring office, but rather in the dynamic corner of the home known as the "living room". Both Microsoft and Apple took a shot at conquering your living room, but it didn't work. I think Apple still has the itv thing, but I have never seen one in anyone's living room. The strange thing is that Linux pulled a Houdini on us all. I signed up for a cable subscription, and suddenly Linux was in my "living room". Not only did it suddenly show up, but it managed to attach itself to my first true love, my television. Now i know it is only Linux in an embedded form, in my DVR, but Linux all the same. There are a new generation of televisions on the market that have all the capabilities of a DVR already built in to them. So that means even more linux devices will be out there. Now since we have all of the troops already in the trojan horse, maybe its time to spring the trap. In the very near future I see a new network emerging that will give us an ability to connect all of these devices, and use them right from our desktops. How awesome would it be to start a pot of coffee right from your desktop. Manage your DVR, from anywhere. It may not be everyone's cup of tea, but I know that there are techno geeks that would love more options in there lives. Our current main focus maybe desktop computing, but I have a feeling that new devices and appliances will be the inroad for linux dominance.

What should a GUI look like?

I've spent the last few days thinking about what a gui should look like. I stated before that i would really like to create my own GUI (graphical user interface). I can't think of anything that really sticks out as being a must have function. I have thought seriously about how HP have designed the MIE. In my opinion MIE is great for media browsing. I can totally see a desktop running MIE at a party and having my friends browse my music collection, and seeing pictures of my family, but I don't know so much about having my emails exposed like that. Not that I have anything to hide, but it's just a bit wierd. So i was thinking about a GUI with multiple panes, but with different functionality, have a pane for Media, one for Business, etc. Unlike the MIE though I would really want the user to have options. I feel very confined by MIE when I'm testing my themes. I have the MIE installed ontop of Ubuntu 9.04, and one of the things that I like, is that i don't always have to use it. Other times I just have to have it on, but the choise is there. So I definitely want to give that option to the user, even if you have it on, and you just feel like using the traditional desktop, you will have the option. That's about all I have to say on the matter. I would be really interested in what your ideal GUI looks like.

On a side note I installed Linux Mint on my Desktop, I never use my desktop, but i wanted to see what all the hooplaah was all about. Needless to say i think they have a really nice looking theme. So you guessed it, I'm going to butcher it. I haven't received request for any of my themes, which sucks a bit, but I guess everyone is happy with the MIE as is. Oh well. It'll be a passion project. Hopefully I'll have something by next week.

How to: Change Your Mini MIE Theme

Well it has been a very fun weekend for me, but it's finished. After a few minutes of playing with my Mini MIE VM I'm done. I like gdebi, but you can do this however you want. My intent when i started the theming project was to try to make themes that just worked. Unfortunately things don't work out as planned all the time. HP Mini MIE user hold "Alt+F2" and get your hands on that command line. Type "xterm", and here we go.

1) sudo apt-get install gdebi

2) Go here and get gtk-theme-switch 2, the dependencies are already met, so just get the i386 version at the bottom there. There was a message about the same package already in repos, but I wanted to stay away from the repos if i could, but try it if you like.

3) untar your new theme to /usr/share/themes/

4) Thanks to this guy we get "gtk-theme-switch2 /usr/share/themes/YOURTHEMEHERE" no quotes.

5) Now type "gconf-editor" go to apps->metacity->general. Scroll down to the theme option, double click, and type the name of the theme here. In my example "Tam_MIE".

That's it changing the theme is complete. I know its a little involved, but it really is not bad at all. Especially if you're just going to change it once in a while.

It looks pretty funny, but my display could only go be at its lowest resolution. Again I didn't really care to make the VM look good. Well i hope someone finds it helpful, it really was alot of fun for me, I didn't know what the HECK I was doing. Again if anyone is interested feel free to email me for your copy of a theme.

Running HP Mini MIE Inside VirtualBox

As I posted a while back I am very new to all of this stuff, but I try. After a long night, I managed to kind of get HP Mini MIE installed in VirtualBox. If you'd like to get as far as i got, this is how I did it. Needed is the newest VirtualBox, the HP Mini MIE .img file, a USB drive (not sure whats recommended mine is 4GB), and Imagewriter. Sorry if i don't add links to it all, but I'm tired. Make sure you can mount USB into VirtualBox, System>Administration>Users and Groups, highlight your profile, and click unlock. Click Properties, then go to Privileges Tab. Scroll to the bottom, and make sure "Use Virtualbox" is checked.

1) Use Imagewriter to get the .img onto your USB

2) Use "VBoxManage convertfromraw -format VDI dennis-stable-install-usb-gm-1.img MiniMIE.vdi" no quotes of course. This makes your .img VirtualBox ready.

3) Start VirtualBox, and make your new Virtual Machine. Make a primary master partition (Used 8GB), and add MiniMIE.vdi as a primary slave.

4) Start your new Machine, make sure to hit F12 and select boot from Primary Slave , option 2. Also under Devices>USB>Select Your USB. This will mount your USB into the VirtualMachine. Watch the install happen.

After it installs things get weird. I think it has to do with the whole lpia thing. I don't rightly know, but anyways I would appreciate any help anyone could give. This whole adventure is to try and see if the "gnome-appearance-properties" command works on the HP Mini MIE. If you have better luck with your attempt please let me know where i went wrong.

UPDATE: Xorg needs to be tweaked, but I made some ground check out my screenshot.

UPDATE2: Ok I kind of know whats going on, but I don't know how to fix it. My Virtual Machine does not see a network connection, and I can't "Install Guest Additions" because i can't apt-get dependencies, there are a few. My xserver is runnung but in a limited space. If anyone could send some tips my way it would be greatly appreciated. I'm pretty sure my wife has contacted a divorce lawyer by now, just kidding, but I'm desperate to get this darn thing conected to the net. So i can apt-get "break my system".

UPDATE3: Ok i have network connection! Even after an update i was unable to get the video and sound working, but that doesn't matter to me. I used the "pcnet32.ko" from Ubuntu Remix to get my wifi installed. "depmod -ae pcnet32.ko" and then edited /etc/modules with a "pcnet32" entry. rebooted, and wifi came to life. I'm sure you could do something similar for both video and sound, but thats not my concern. I went through all this troble to try and figure out a solution for installing alternate themes. It was alot of fun, Oh BTW happy fathers day to you all.

Tam MIE

I've been browsing the Internet for any information I might be able to find on accessing "gnome-appearance-properties", but I haven't heard back on wether or not this command can be executed in a store bought HP Mini MIE. I was contemplating changing the title of my blog, but after much consideration i will not. The themes should work just fine on the HP Mini MIE when someone figures out just how to access the "Appearance" option. So all I'm doing is getting things ready. So I'm very sorry for any false hope i might have caused, and believe me if I had an HP Mini MIE I'd have it all figured out. But until then my work will continue on themes.

Any how, here we go... HP put together a beautiful little netbook called the HP Mini "Vivienne Tam" Edition. Believe you me if i had the cash to spare I'd scoop this up for my daughter or my wife. However for some crazy reason unbeknown to anyone on earth, HP decided that there is no such thing as a "chic geek". Well i beg to differ i know for a fact there are ladies out there with plenty of style and intelligence, so without further ado, here is my theme for the "Ladies of Linux". Based on the "Vivienne Tam" wallpaper,and the color on the case of the Netbook, the "Tam MIE" theme is a array of brilliant and vibrant colors. I hope someone likes it, I've been using it all week, and to be honest it's grown on me. I also took a screenshot of moovida standing in for elisa. For those of you who don't know its the same software just different name. If anyone is interested in this one please let me know. For those people using the store bought HP Mini MIE I will continue to scour the internet for a solution.

A Set Back

Well it looks like I have managed to break the most reliable operating system. Just goes to prove that I can do just about anything. I was trying to use the "Ubuntu Customization Kit" to try and create a disk with Harbour Launcher on it to test out the themes, and I totally fudged it. In the process i rendered my Ubuntu install useless, and after i reinstalled everything, my Harbour Launcher was really really slow. So now i have a dilema. I hate when I do this, my last set up was totally awesome. Well I'm going to try and fix it, but this was totally my fault. I do have something in the works for a theme. Hopefully if i can get past this hick-up I'll have it by weeks end.

UPDATE: A bit of a blessing in disguise. Ok first of all I forgot to install my Nvidia driver, so that was the problem with my crawling Elisa. Of course i didn't find out until i had already upgraded to Moovida. For those of us running a patched up Mini MIE, let me say Moovida works. The one thing that i found in my 2 minutes of playing around was that if you accidentally close Moovida, Harbour Launcher can not restart it, so you'll have to drag ur mouse over to the application menu at click on Moovida again. Not a big deal if you ask me, but other than that, i was still able to use all other operation as normal. I also found that playing music on it no longer takes up 50 percent of my system resources. If i collapse the window it takes up about 15 percent. A big improvement. Any ways just thought someone might be interested.

UPDATE 2: Well I've been contacted by a reader, and was asked some questions that i did not foresee being a problem. Apparently there is not Appearance Option Under Preferences on the HP Mini MIE. I know that there are some options that are hidden, i dont know if this is one of them, but if a command line can be accessed try using this command without quote "gnome-appearance-properties". Or try doing Alt-F2 and execute the command from there. Sorry I wasn't aware of Appearance not being present as an option, and not having access to the Mini I really wouldn't know how to even change the theme. I am sure that there is a way to access Appearance, but I wouldn't know where to begin. If a solution does not come up soon, I'll make sure to rename my blog. If anyone has any information that would prove helpful, please post or contact me.

HP BLUE MIE

Here it is peeps, my theme based on something blue. This is "Glassy-Bleu" GIMPed blue. There are just a few little things that I'll be changing in the near future, but it's close enough to being complete. Some stuff just didn;t translate well to blue. I don't have any way of distributing the files i have worked on, but if anyone would like to have these files, please feel free to let me know.

One more small step for "THEMEKIND"

I know that everyone might get tired of my strange postings, but what can I say, I get excited easily. Using glade, i was able to do something simple, like switch the position of the desktop items around. Just search for "harbour-launcher.glade" in your filesystem. Make sure to create a backup of the original, just in case something goes wrong. I'm going try build a new UI, but baby steps come first.

Ferrari MIE

Well everyone I was doing some muddling around on the internet and i found a downloadable copy of my original "Ferrari MIE" theme. I'll have to reconstruct this one properly since I destroyed it in my reinstall. But that's for an in the future project. Next up will be a blue theme based on an HP wallpaper i found on the net. After that i was thinking of a red one for use on the "Vivienne Tam" edition Mini. I don't know why HP wouldn't offer a red theme for it, but i guess that's the way the cookie crumbles. I did briefly look into how the interface works, but no luck as of yet on how to actually move desktop objects around. I'm sure it's out there somewhere.

Aqua Dreams MIE

I know I said the end of the week, but I wasn't counting on Francois from Zgegblog to get back to me so soon. My thanks to him for having the time to burn, and giving me permission to butcher his beautiful creation. Also thanks to everyone that submits "How To's" on the GIMP website. I am very new to anything having to do with art, but I try. Thank you also to the poor lonely HP developer who designed the interface, it is really nice, but it can't be dark all the time. Let's get to it though. I took the original "Aqua Dreams" wallpaper and GIMPed it with a opaque rectangle, just to give some horizontal segmentation. I did use the original HP MIE media buttons for inspiration on a new set of media buttons. Some people might not like them, but i wanted to bring some of those nice blue colors to this end of the desktop. There are some conflicts in the way that the slider bar is created. I know that its in the original "Aqua Dreams" .rc file, but to be honest I can live with it. I did not change anything with elisa because i rarely access it. Also I didn't change the original launch bar, again i thought the blue just fit. Please let me know what you think, my hope is to get the .rc files cleaned up, the folders zipped and ready to give out to anyone brave enough to copy them in. Until then if you have any questions, or comments, please feel free to write. I will forewarn that Francois has requested I let him see the finished product, so there may be some tweaking done before i zip. On a bit of a side note, I had to reinstall Ubuntu 9.04 after the "Ferrari MIE" fiasco. I'm not sure why I had problems, but I installed "Harbour Launcher" using as many of the packages in synaptic as possible. So far everything with working just fine.

Change Of Scene

I was browsing the net for a more stable set of instructions for installing Harbour Launcher, the HP specific Ubuntu UI. To my surprise i ran into an article written in Liliputing. I never thought my work would be referenced that fast. To be honest I took the post off after a week because I thought i was buried deep within Google. So I am pretty psyched now, and i think that given the "it just works" crowd that the HP MIE is intended for, I would like to take the already created gnome themes, and retrofit them for MIE use. I am fairly new to moding themes, but if anyone is interested I'll be here. I haven't had time to work on anything as of late, but i think that this would be a nice hobby for me. To begin with I am going to take the once butchered "Aqua Dreams" and make it MIE friendly. I'll try and have something by the end of the week.