KDE Apps I Love, That You Should Love Too

Posted on March 8, 2012 by kevin

All fanboy-ism aside, KDE is an excellent example of what can happen within open source development. It has a load of innovative technologies that make it easy for users to use, and for developers to tweak.  Jumping back into fanboy mode, KDE has tons of awesome features that make it stand head and shoulders above its competition.  However, I do not want to talk about these features tonight. No, tonight I talk about KDE applications that are irreplaceable simply because they are that darn good.

Amarok – the KDE Music Player & Manager

As far as music players go, there are few that compare with Amarok. KDE’s de-facto music player has evolved over the years into a contextual music library manager that does a great job at playing music from a variety of sources. For people who have insane music libraries, like me, Amarok’s ability to store library meta data in a MySQL database means faster startup and search times without sacrificing variety. Amarok also brings some music store power to KDE through the Amazon mp3 store, though its internet abilities do not end there. With Amarok you can buy and/or listen to music from services such as Last.fm, Jamendo, Magnatune, and MP3Tunes. Additionally, with its scriptable interface it is possible to add services to retrieve contextual data such as concert dates, pictures, cover art, and more.

Kate – KDE’s Advanced Text Editor

While it may seem weird for a text editor to make an awesome applications list, note that KDE’s text editor, Kate, is so much more than Notepad. To start things off, Kate does syntax highlighting, line numbering, code folding, and tab-completion. That’s before you get into its plugins for adding multiple tabs, an embedded terminal, debugging, file browsing, and more. With session support, Kate quickly transforms from a run of the mill text editor to a very flexible and capable development environment for KDE.  Add in its features for code completion, indentation, code snippets, and filtering and Kate is a superb text editor that is stable and silky smooth to use.

rekonq – the KDE Webkit Web Browser

Years ago, there was Konqueror and KHTML. The folks over at Apple used KHTML and after years of development we got an open source Webkit. It was inevitable that this technology would eventually make its way back to KDE, and today, there a few ways to get Webkit browsing on Linux. While it is possible to switch Konqueror to use Webkit instead of its default KHTML, rekonq provides enough useful features to make the switch worthwhile. In terms of out-of-the-box experience, rekonq has very high parity with many modern browsers. Need to block ads, it’s got that; need to trick sites that you’re not really you, it’s got that too. It also has built-in network analysis, web element inspection, and detachable tabs. Plus, on top of all that, it also integrates with a number of KDE technologies, like KGet and KWallet.

Okular – KDE’s Excellent Document Reader

In many ways, Okular is on the same level as Amarok on how much better it is when compared to its alternatives. To begin with, Okular reads pretty much everything. Without too much fuss Okular gives you an integrated document reader that allows you to bookmark sections within the document, as well as annotations on any page that you want to take special notes on. It’s also very fast, loading e-books that are several hundred pages long with ease. Oh — an aside on personal tastes follows — when I have to read documents on computers without Okular, I weep a little in pain.

Dolphin – a File Manager for KDE

For a task as integral to using a computer as file management, it is shocking that no one can get it quite right. On one end of the spectrum, you have developers hiding as much of the filesystem from users as possible. On the other end, you have developers adding so much abstraction to file management that you can’t actually manage files. In the middle, you have KDE’s Dolphin. As far as file managers go, you have all the pieces you’d expect in Dolphin:

  • icon, compact, and detail view modes
  • split folder views
  • folder bookmarks (“places”)
  • file previews
  • recursive search
  • current folder filtering

Beyond the list above, you also get integrated FTP/WebDAV/SFTP file browsing and management and integrated version control through git and svn.  Diving further you can even set it to open archives as folders, configure your different view modes, and even change the file types that have previews available.

Other KDE Apps

By no means is this an exhaustive list of the KDE apps I use everyday. These are just the apps that I really miss for about 8 hours at work everyday when I’m stuck using Windows. Some other notable applications are soundKonverter, Kid3, K3B, Karbon, KTorrent, Krita, and Digikam. There are also some applications that I simply never use, so they aren’t mentioned here either. All of which are KDE apps that are particularly good at their intended purpose.

Are there any KDE applications that you prefer over their GNOME, OS/X, or Windows counterparts?

Posted in Linux | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

SEO Matters to You, Here’s Why

Posted on March 7, 2012 by kevin

For years I’ve worked as a web consultant. If that title sounds a little ambiguous, it is because I have performed a number of duties under that title. My favorite, and really the only one I feel like mentioning here, is the time I’ve spent performing SEO for my past clients. There was always something about taking on a new client, making some adjustments, and then watching things improve over the course of the following weeks. Maybe it was watching a site turn from flailing to successful, or seeing readers take part in discussions, or maybe it was seeing buzz build around my clients’ brand because of the changes we made.

Of course, I’ve been neglecting the SEO for k3v.in. Mostly, because I’ve been distracted by life matters, but also because I know that the task before me is daunting.

Why SEO Really Matters

For bloggers, businesses, artists, and everyone else with a site out there: SEO matters to you too. No matter how you look at it, search engine optimization brings something to your online offering, and SEO is  something you should not ignore. In the very least, SEO strategies are going to result in a healthier, more complete index of your site in search engine indices. This means little to no duplicate content, healthy site mapping and navigation, and all eligible pages being present in the SERPs. On top of all that, even a modest amount of SEO is going to find errors, broken links, and more; which vastly improve your user experience.

Modern SEO goes further than that. Through page title and heading optimizations, improved site structure and presentation, and increased content relevancy, SEO brings more than visitors to your site.

SEO Tools Anyone Can Use

Of course, knowing what SEO can do means nothing if you aren’t able to do it. Fortunately, there are many high-quality SEO tools that make the work us SEO folks do everyday much easier. If you’re publishing regular updates, you can easily use a CMS like WordPress or Drupal to do most of the heavy lifting for you. The cherry on top is that both of these applications have plugins that streamline the creation and management of new and existing content.

In addition to plugins for SEO, there are a number of services that let you track site performance, user behavior, and more. Combined with tools that let you track things like inbound links and conversion paths, SEO provides a deep level of intelligence on how people use your site from the moment they  find you, to the point that they finish whatever transaction you have planned for them.

When is SEO Not Important?

As an SEO myself, I will come out and say it is never not important, but its importance is certainly diminished in some situations. A blog for your family reunion or  wedding usually won’t need an extensive link-building campaign. In these situations, SEO still provides a value by blocking access to pages that you don’t necessarily want the entire Internet to find with a simple search.

Can SEO be Measured?

While it is often true that direct benefits of SEO cannot be measured empirically, its indirect influence can certainly be observed, analyzed, and reported. Some strategies, such as link-building, will almost certainly result in an increase in traffic; yet it is traffic quality that ultimately determines the campaign’s success. If it means more orders and less abandoned carts, that increase is certainly positive, but it can also result in the exact opposite. There are many indicators including, but certainly not limited to, the following:

  • number of orders (+)
  • average order size (+)
  • abandoned carts (-)
  • cancellations (-)
  • number of comments (+)
  • number of spam comments (-)
  • ratio of spam to legitimate comments (+/-)
  • search impressions (+)
  • search clicks (+)
  • page impressions (+)
  • page clicks (+)
  • page views (+)
  • time on site (+)

In ideal situations, things marked (+) increase, while things marked (-) decrease. Items marked (+/-) can really go either way based on their related stats, and the current stage of your development. Again, that is not everything, but they are tangible enough to measure success by.

Final Thoughts

Anyway, that was a lot of words to basically announce that I’m doing some SEO around the site in the next week or so. Granted, I’m really just taking my advice in these matters, but it still needs doing.

How about you, are there any key benefits you find, or tools you use, regarding SEO?

Posted in SEO | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Focus Stealing and Window Behavior in KDE4

Posted on March 4, 2012 by kevin

A feature common to many Linux desktop environments is “focus stealing prevention”. Basically, it allows you to prevent certain windows from interrupting your current task. It’s a feature that, if you’re asked to use another desktop or operating system, that you come to miss quickly.

Focus Stealing Prevention in KDE

In KDE you can set a global setting for focus prevention from System Settings -> Window Behavior -> Window Behavior. From here, you can configure how aggressively KWin — KDE’s window manager — prevents windows from taking focus. Personally, I prefer the medium setting since most of the applications I use are KDE applications.

Modifying Window Behavior with Window Rules

For the most part, window prevention keeps things out of my way, but there are some situations where I actually want interruptions from a specific kind of window. One of those situations is when I need to enter a password for a PolicyKit authentication. Since these windows are dialogs for polkit-kde, they don’t have parent windows, so focus stealing prevention places them in the background, this is anything from annoying to damned frustrating depending on what is asking for a password. Enter Window Rules.

With window rules, it is possible to not only override the global focus stealing prevention policy, but also to move those dialogs to the top, resize, reposition, set opacity, and much, much more. To make it all better, adding window rules is really super easy, even if you don’t know a lot about the window you want to change.

Adding a New Window Rule

You can add Window Rules from System Settings -> Window Behavior -> Window Rules by simply clicking the “New…” button. The point of focus here is the giant “Detect Window Properties” button which allows you to retrieve the properties of a window without having to know them off of the top of your head. The rest is really simple, the tabs are fairly self-explanatory:

  • Size & Position – lets you change where windows show up on the desktop, and how big they are when the window appears
  • Arrangement & Access – lets you control how the window appears on the desktop, window grouping, tiling, and more
  • Appearance & Fixes – lets you change various properties of the window, and its contents, when drawn on your desktop, it also allows you to override window decorations, focus, opacity, and many other fixes

What’s All This Good For?

There’s many reasons you might want to create custom rules, the first that comes to my mind is to get things out of my way. I also like to move things over to one edge of the screen, like KRunner. It is also useful to make things group automatically, or to float a window when you have tiling enabled, or to fix the size of a window that you regularly need to resize when it opens, like the KMix mixer window.

Posted in Linux | Leave a comment

Hearty Slow Cooker Chicken Soup

Posted on February 25, 2012 by kevin

I wanted to take a few moments to share one of my latest kitchen creations with the slow cooking masses out there.

Hearty Chicken Soup

I like chicken soup, but I’m also allergic to wheat. With these two things in mind, I decided to look around online for some chicken soup recipes, and after combining a few, I came up with this. This is a slow cooker (crock pot) recipe that takes between 6 and 10 hours to cook. I suggest starting it the night before you want to serve it, and using the left overs for packed lunches.

Ingredients:

The ingredients list is relatively simple, as any soup should be, and makes enough food for around 6 – 8 servings.

  • 1lb chicken breasts
  • 1 cup sliced carrots (peeled)
  • 1 cup sliced celery
  • 1/2 cup chopped onion
  • 2 whole potatoes (chopped)
  • 2 12oz cans chicken broth
  • 2 12oz cans cream of chicken soup
  • 1/2 tbsp salt
  • 1/2 tbsp pepper
  • 1tbsp thyme
  • 1tbsp Lawry’s seasoning

Note: You can increase or decrease these ingredients for more or less servings.

Preparation (~30 minutes):

  1. Peel and slice carrots, measure to ~1 cup or slightly more.
  2. Slice celery, measure to ~1 cup or slightly more.
  3. Peel and chop onion, measure to ~1/2 cup or slightly more.
  4. Clean and chop potatoes to ~1″ cubes.
  5. Clean and cut chicken into ~1″ wide strips.
  6. Add carrots, celery, onion, and potatoes pot, sprinkle spices over top vegetables.
  7. Place chicken over top of vegetables and spices.
  8. Pour cans of broth, followed by soup, over top chicken.

Note: You can also place whole breasts into the soup, as they will mostly flack apart as it cooks.

Cooking (~6 – 10 hours):

  1. Cover cooker, place on High for 2 hours.
  2. Stir, switch to Low, cook for 4 – 8 hours.
  3. Stir, switch to Warm for serving.

Note: These instructions give the best flavor. You can also pre-cook your chicken and potatoes to cut cook time by about half.

Variations:

After cooking this I realized that I could probably change the soup slightly by simply adding or swapping ingredients. Here are a few:

  • Hearty Chicken Stew – After cooking for 2 hours, mix 1/2 cup corn starch with 1/2 cup cool water. Mix this into pot before switching to low.
  • Hearty Chicken Noodle Soup – Cook 1-1/2 cup spiral pasta, and add to pot about 30 minutes before serving.
  • Hearty Cream of Chicken Soup – Swap chicken broth for 3 additional cans of cream of chicken soup and add to pot before vegetables.
  • Wheat Free Chicken Soup – By shopping carefully, you can prepare this entire meal without any wheat. You can also change out corn starch for potato starch for a gluten-free meal.

Serving:

This is made for serving in a bowl, and it is delicious. Serving size is around 1 cup, or more or less depending on appetite. The left overs work really well in packed lunches for work or school if there is access to a microwave.

Posted in Cooking | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Kevin’s Hearty Chili

Posted on February 14, 2012 by kevin

There are few things more filling than a healthy hearty bowl of chili, and very few of those things are as easy to prepare as chili, particularly when you are trying to feed six or more people. For the past several years I’ve been making this chili in one of three varieties — meaty, beany, and hearty — at various spice levels. It has a few ingredients to get the desired taste and texture, but you should find them all at your local grocery store.

Part One – Gather The Ingredients

This list is for preparing the hearty version of my chili, for the beany version simply add 2 more cans of beans, for the meaty version double the amount of beef. Where measurements are not included, I assume you have much more than you need for the recipe, otherwise, all other ingredients are pretty much exact. For making a spicier chili, I will include notes in part two to get more zest from the finished product.

  • 1lb ground beef*
  • 3 whole jalapenos
  • chili powder
  • cayenne powder**
  • 1/3 cup diced onion
  • 2x 12oz cans of tomato sauce
  • 2x 6oz cans of tomato paste
  • salt
  • pepper
  • beef bullion
  • bay leaves
  • 2x 12oz cans of pinto beans
  • 1x can of kidney beans
  • 1x can of black eyed peas
  • steak sauce (Heinz 57 or A1)
  • sugar

* can be substituted with turkey, sausage, or meat of your choice.
** can be replaced by whole cayennes

Part Two – Preparing the Base

The next part is important to start before cooking your meat, and basically starts with draining, but not rinsing, the beans and adding them to your favorite slow cooker. Next add your tomato sauce and tomato paste. If you haven’t already, go ahead and dice your onion and drop that in the pot too.

Now, depending on how spicy you want your chili, you will either need to clean out the seeds of your jalepenos and dice them (mild), or slice your jalepenos in rings (medium). Either way drop your finished jalepenos into the pot and move on to adding spices. I suggest 2tbsp of chili powder, and 1tbsp of cayenne, though you can certainly add more to get the spicy to your liking. Now, add 2 cups of boiling water, drop in 3 bay leaves, switch your slow cooker on high and move on to part three. Oh, don’t forget to cover your cooker.

Part Three – Preparing the Meat

Now, meat preparation is important, particularly if you want to have a synergy between the tastes in the tomato stock and your beef. So start by adding 1tsp of salt, pepper, cayenne, and chili to your meat before it starts cooking. Cook your meat on high, using the edge of a spatula to break it apart until you reach your desired level of chunkiness. Additionally, while cooking if you want to achieve higher levels of spice, you can add more cayenne, or slice up an extra jalepeno and saute it with your meat. Also, if you want more flavor from your meat, you can add garlic cloves (diced), garlic powder (2tsp), or more onion (diced) while your meat is cooking.

This part is important, you must cook your meat until it is “dry”. This will remove most of the water from your meat, as well as some of the fat content. You’ll know it is ready when water no longer pools at the bottom of your pan. When it is done, add the meat to your slow cooker without draining. You are almost to the point where you can let the slow cooker work its magic. Simply stir your chili until everything is evenly distributed, cover, and leave on high for 60 minutes.

Part Four – Spicing and Thickening

After about 60 minutes, your chili is ready for tasting. I usually don’t recommend serving at this stage, as there is still some flavor to be passed around between ingredients. However, it is a good time to figure out where it is headed before it is beyond being recovered. You can use spices we’ve already added, or more peppers if you are daring, to make things more spicy. If things are already too hot, you can use a combination of sugar and steak sauce, in 1tbsp increments, to get a taste that is less likely to melt your taste buds. If you added anything for spice at this stage, it is probably a good idea to add a 1/2 cup of water to prevent your chili from becoming a dehydrated brick.

Once everything is stirred in, cover your slow cooker, switch it to low, and cook for 60 minutes. When the timer goes off, your chili is ready to serve.

Enjoy!

Posted in Cooking | Leave a comment

Memory, Thou Art My Enemy!

Posted on January 24, 2012 by kevin

Two years ago I bought my future (now current) wife a laptop. Now, it wasn’t nothing big, I just wanted her to have a laptop that she could experiment with, as well as the laptop that she worked on from day to day so I got her a cheap-ish refurbished HP laptop.

The day she got it, I helped her install Linux on it and helped her get started with using Linux. However, she did not have the best of luck with it. For starters, she went into Linux trying to use it the same way she used her Macbook. Despite my reminders that Linux doesn’t work the same as Mac OS/X, she only found frustration.

This set a kind of odd precedent for her and me regarding the function of this laptop. One that resulted in her saying that Linux sucked, and me saying that she was doing something wrong. In my defense, when I used her computer, I never had these problems, so I literally could never duplicate the problems she was having.

Until tonight.

Typically, I don’t have problems installing Linux, particularly Arch Linux, on anything, however, tonight the laptop seemed to insist on fighting me every step of the way. After two failed installs, I finally got the installation to complete, but I was unable to get it to boot.

This led me to trying to troubleshoot hardware, so I started with the BIOS to see what diagnostics it offered. The disk test succeeded, but I was getting an odd failure when testing memory. So, after removing one stick of memory, I rebooted, and voila, everything work.

The moral of the story folks: listen to your spouse. Especially, if they are complaining about their crappy performing desktop.

Posted in News | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Badass Punk Songs

Posted on January 7, 2012 by kevin

As I previously mentioned, I’m something of a fan of music of the Punk genre. This is, in part, due to a lifelong exposure to bands like Bad Religion, the Ramones and the Clash; but as I grew older, my tastes expanded to include Pennywise, H20, NOFX, and a slew of others. Of course, I wouldn’t be here writing this without a point, so here are some of my favorites, with as little commentary as I feel is necessary to explain why I love that song.

10. Dropkick Murphys – “Workers Song”

Ok, I stumbled on this one while our CEO was traipsing around the world doing the things I could only dream about doing, so there is a bit of personal motivation for this song making the list. Aside from that, it is one of the more melodic Dropkick Murphys tunes, and it isn’t disappointing at all. While there are probably a few more DKM tunes that others will say are better, this is one of my personal favorites of all time.

Also: “Gang’s All Here” and “God Willing”

9. Anti-Flag – “You’ve Got to Die for the Government”

It is said that we tie memories to emotions. This song is tied to that emotion that is best described as a healthy serving of rage with a side of disappointment and shame. It also fits whenever I spend extended periods of time with my overly conservative military family.

Also: “Turncoat” “Soddom, Gomorrah, Washington DC”

8. Goldfinger – “King for a Day”

I’ve never thought that punk music had to always be anger and rage. This track reminds me to take a minute or two and calm down. Afterall, what’s the point of living your life the way you want to live it if you don’t take the time to enjoy it?

Also: “Here in Your Bedroom” “99 Red Balloons”

7. Me First and the Gimme Gimmes – “Rocket Man”

This is one my wife’s favorite songs, and I have to admit that her preference has a lot to do with my love of it as well.

Also: “The Longest Time” “Much Too Young”

6. The Offspring – “Bad Habit”

Seriously, this is the only song that can save me from the uncontrollable anger that being stuck in traffic for an hour can bring on.

Also: “Killboy Powerhead” “The Kids Aren’t Alright”

5. NOFX – “She’s Nubs”

All kidding aside, it is probably a bit insensitive to make a song about a girl that has no arms or legs. This is all made ok by the fact that she makes some dude carry her to punk shows in a backpack. The song is cleanly wrapped up in the final line: “But boy she sure knows how to rock, she’s nubs”.

Also: “Moron Brothers” “Whatever Didi Wants”

4. Rise Against – “Give It All”

Here’s a challenge for you, go to your nearest windy road, put this song on, drive. When the song is done, see how fast you are driving, and slow down before you get yourself killed. Really though, this is one of the best driving songs I’ve ever heard, perhaps that’s why its been in more than a couple driving games!

Also: “To Them These Streets Belong” “The Dirt Whispered”

3. Millencolin – “Man or Mouse”

Yeah, this kinda ventures out of the punk realm, but it is also a fantastic song to get your spirits up when people are trying to get you to live your life in a way that you don’t personally agree with.

Also: “Machine 15″ “Monkey Boogie”

2. Bad Religion – “Funk Armageddon, This is Hell”

This song _still_ gives me goosebumps when I hear it. It is fun to mosh to, listen to, write to… Actually, hearing this song live is one of the few things that can drive me to wanting to punch a random stranger in the face for shoving religion down my throat since I was born.

Also: “Supersonic” “A Walk”

1. Pennywise – “Date With Destiny”

Two things you should know: Pennywise is my favorite punk band, and I didn’t pick Bro Hymn because I think it kind of transcends the purposes of this list. “Date With Destiny” however, is one of the few songs that really embodies many of the underlying philosophies that spawned punk music as a whole.

Also: “Peaceful Day” “My Own Country”

Posted in Music | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

New Year, New Blog, New Post!

Posted on January 3, 2012 by kevin

Seeing as how I’m moving most of my professional style blog posts to my SEO site, I figured the new year was as good a reason as any to start the blog over again. Starting today I’m going to commit myself to a weekly post, covering the things I’m interested in: Linux, KDE, and the three P’s (Python, Philosophy, & Punk Music); without venturing into the things I work in: SEO, SEM, Online Marketing, Web Design, User Interface & Experience (all of these will be covered over at KZen SEO).

Continuing with the new year theme, I wanted to share some resolutions I have for this year.

Name Change

For years I have wanted to change my last name, and this year I will finally finish it. In just a few months, I will share my last name with my stepfather.

I Will, For Once, Work For Myself

Not that I have anything against corporations, but for far too long I have worked for companies whose greatest interest is in improving their bottom line. That said, I think this year I will finally establish my own personal consulting firm (hence KZen SEO), perhaps covering a range of services from SEO and SEM to areas that further engage my passions such as implementation of Linux as a computing platform for small businesses and non-profit organizations.

A Thought a Week, Every Week

Being the introvert that I am, I will start sharing my views on many of the thoughts that zoom through my INTP head all the time. Granted, this will be the scatter brained thoughts that can only classify as random, but maybe they’ll start to make sense in time.

Certifications and Education

For a long time I have gotten by using the knowledge that a life in jobs ranging from fry cook to robotics developer without much to show for it. Seeing as I really want to improve my lot in life, I will begin pursuing the education and certifications that actually prove to myself, as well as everyone else, that I actually do know what I’m talking about. On the horizon is my LPIC-1 and LPIC-2, but more will be added as time goes on. Particularly, I want to increase my knowledge and authority with Python.

Write and Release, a Backup Application

I’ve always been disappointed with backup solutions on pretty much every platform I’ve ever used. Some are pretty good, but are missing out on features I feel are critical; some have the features I want, but an abysmal interface; and the rest are the abominations that appear in b-rated horror movies.

Posted in News | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment