Author: Joseph

The Last Starfighter Desktop

Wallpaper: Adapted to desaturate the colors
Source: http://morganrlewis.deviantart.com/art/The-Last-Starfighter-Symbol-WP-312143367

Greetings, Starfighter. You have been recruited by the Star League to defend the frontier against Xur and the Ko-Dan armada.

Linux Mint 18.1 Cinnamon
Mint-X-Aqua Icons
Generic Cinnamon Panel

DuckDuckGo Search

 

Third party trackers are killing the Internet

Open any news or entertainment website in a background tab. While you’re waiting for it to load feel free to read this rant.

Third Party Advertising and Trackers Are Killing The Internet

Sitepoint wrote in 2015 that page weights increased to over 2 megabytes. The New York Times analyzed editorial vs non editorial content on news sites that same year and discovered that mobile plans would cost a user nearly $10 a month to load one website’s homepage daily.

Take only what you need to survive

Content providers insist they need these advertising services to remain profitable and naturally, I disagree. The creft of junk visitors experience increase abandon rate and make them less likely to visit again. Especially when bombarded by the same poorly targeted ads over and over.. and over.

Audit your website

  • Check your typical download statistics. (DuckDuckGo search)
  • Verify what third party services you need to operate. Do you really need social network sharing buttons? Google Analytics? Is that third party ad service actually making you money?
  • Make a list of what you need and remove what you don’t.
Welcome to real life.

Chances are these services are as much a drain on your audience as they are on your bottom line. Take only what you need to survive and focus on what really matters. Your site is better without that industrial strength hair dryer.

Pandora Radio on Linux

Pandora Radio running in Firefox 51.0.1 in Peppermint 7
htop and pianobar running in the Peppermint terminal.

I’ve been a paid Pandora Radio subscriber for years and love the service. Their website has always been a sour point because it sucks up CPU resources. Things have improved and their recent redesign completely ditched any need for Adobe Flash (it’s about time).

htop and firefox running Pandora Radio.

Running Pandora Radio in the background while at the computer is now a habit, Last year I logged thousands of hours at work, home and in the car.

creating a config file in nano

My solution for keeping CPU resources down has always been  Pianobar an extemely lightweight terminal client thats easy to set up and use.

Download it from your repository. In Ubuntu its easy.

sudo apt-get install pianobar

Then create a .config folder in your user folder if it doesen’t already exist. In there create a pianobar folder.

Within that folder create a file named config and provide your account info using a text editor such as nano. This will allow you to bypass logging in and selecting a station each time pianobar runs.

user = your user email address goes here
password = password goes here
audio_quality = mp3-hifi
autostart_station = station number from url goes here

Then open your terminal and type pianobar at the prompt.

Once running you can view the help menu by typing a ?

+    love song
-    ban song
a    add music to station
c    create new station
d    delete station
e    explain why this song is played
g    add genre station
h    song history
i    print information about song/station
j    add shared station
n    next song
p    pause/resume playback
q    quit
r    rename station
s    change station
t    tired (ban song for 1 month)
u    upcoming songs
x    select quickmix stations
b    bookmark song/artist
(    decrease volume
)    increase volume
=    delete seeds/feedback
v    create new station from song or artist
P    resume playback
S    pause playback
^    reset volume
!    change settings

Terminals not your thing? Pithos is just as awesome.

Tricia Helfer as Caprica Six

Oh, if you’re wondering about the wallpaper.