Meet Qwant, and interesting new search engine

While looking for something unique and new to monk with, I found Qwant. (https://www.qwant.com/)

The first thing I liked about it is that like DuckDuckGo.com, Qwant doesn't track you or put you in a filter bubble.

I also like that upon searching for something you get a 3 pane window, in column form.

In the first pane is a regular Google or DuckDuckGo web relevance type search.

In the second pane is any news that may be relevant to your search.

And the third pane covers social conversations that may be relevant.

Here is a screenshot of the info gathered in this three pane setup. I used the rather uninteresting search term of shoes, but you get the point. (Yes I am a white male from the middle of Wisconsin, for me shoes are uninteresting.)

Media type search results such as images and videos have a banner on the top of the three pane search area.

Here is what the Qwant team has to say about their software:

"Qwant was launched in France in February 2013 after two years of research and development. The European search engine continues to grow, innovate and the entire Qwant team is proud to present its new "Beta" version which includes:

A modern and clutter-free design
Ergonomically designed while keeping user experience in mind
New in-depth search functions
An interface adapted to mobile and tablet" -https://www.qwant.com/about

Qwant has a strange mixture of DuckDuckGo privacy sensibilities, Google search feel, and covers all the relevant fields of today's modern internet in one view.

Here is what the Qwant team has to say about their privacy philosophy:

"What is a cookie?

Cookies are the information stored by your browser, such as your session ID or your preferences.
Qwant's philosophy is based on two principles: no user tracking and no filter bubble.
We make every effort to respect the privacy of our online visitors while providing a safe environment and relevant results.

What is tracking?

Tracking is used to create a user profile, most often for commercial purposes. There are different methods of doing this, including what we call cookies. Advertising networks and other organizations seeking publicity want to collect as much user information as possible in order to provide them with targeted advertisements.

Rest assured, there's no advertising on Qwant, and we don't use those types of cookies!" -https://www.qwant.com/privacy

Check it out if you have the notion. https://www.qwant.com/

HFS - easy to use http file server

Yesterday I was digging for a quick and easy way to share files locally.

I found it in this wonderful utility.

HFS works beautifully on windows and rather well on Linux.

Here's what the software creator, Massimo has to say about his useful software:

"You can use HFS (HTTP File Server) to send and receive files.

It's different from classic file sharing because it uses web technology to be more compatible with today's Internet.

It also differs from classic web servers because
it's very easy to use and runs "right out-of-the box".

Access your remote files, over the network.
It has been successfully tested with Wine under Linux." -http://www.rejetto.com/hfs

What I like about it most is, it's a single self contained executable that does not need to be installed.

In other words, it's a portable use as you need http file server. Just beautiful.

The steps for using it are very easy. 1, you choose a file or folder to share. 2, you get the local ip address. Share the address with the person you want to share the file or folder contents with, and whalla, your running a file server.

It seriously couldn't be easier.

Here's the link to download you own copy:
http://rejetto.com/hfs/

100,000 Stars - an interactive visualization of the stellar neighborhood

While checking out StumbleUpon I ran into this very cool representation of our galaxy. The truth is it's a very small portion of our galaxy, but it's still very impressive just the same.

Here's what the creators of 100,000 Stars has to say for themselves:

"100,000 Stars is an interactive visualization of the stellar neighborhood created for the Google Chrome web browser. It shows the location of 119,617 nearby stars derived from multiple sources, including the 1989 Hipparcos mission. Zooming in reveals 87 individually identified stars and our solar system. The galaxy view is an artist's rendition based on NGC 1232, a spiral galaxy like the Milky Way.

Programmed by some space enthusiasts at Google.

Music by Sam Hulick, whose work you may have heard in the video game, Mass Effect. The track is titled “In a Strange Land” and is used with his permission.

Galaxy images provided by Wikipedia and ESO/IDA/Danish 1.5m/R.Gendler and A. Hornstrup.

Star renderings derived from Wikipedia

Sun images courtesy of NASA/SDO and the AIA, EVE, and HMI science teams.

Star data provided by:
HYG Database, by Astronomy Nexus

Gliese/Jahreiß Catalog, by Dr. Wilhelm Gliese and Dr. Hartmut Jahreiss

Bright Star Catalog (5th edition), by Dr. E. Dorrit Hoffleit and Dr. Wayne H. Warren Jr, and the Department of Astronomy at Yale University

HIPPARCOS Catalog (3rd Edition) by the European Space Agency" -http://stars.chromeexperiments.com/

I ran this on Chrome and Firefox. It was slower on Firefox, but considering this visualization is a "Chrome Expirement" it's not shocking Chrome handled it better.

In either case though, If you love astronomy like I do, it's worth a look.

*These images are screenshots from 100,000 Stars.

Chalet OS - Easy Windows to Linux user migration

Chalet OS was introduced to me by a internet friend (and the author) Dejan Petrovic.

If you read this blog, you know that I am a huge fan of XFCE, and an even bigger fan of Xubuntu's implementation of it.

Chalet OS takes the ease of use of Xubuntu, and it's low resource foothold, and gives it the familiar feel of Windows operating systems. It has the feel of Windows 7.

It will feel comfortable to most Windows users. This is the intention of ChaletOS, to feel like home to migrating Windows users.

This is what the author has to say about his Linux distribution:

"We all know someone who tried to switch to Linux but was unsuccessful. The system that he tried was too different from what he was used to, there were too many new things and the old things were not where he expected. The goal of this project is to let anyone get used to Linux.

    This system is not too different from Xubuntu, on which it is based, but ChaletOS has a style that everyone knows well, appealing simplicity and an impressive speed. All this will let them to fall in love with this system quickly. Because of its small hardware requirements it will revive some old machines and refresh others, not so old.

    The name ChaletOS came from the style of the mountain houses in Switzerland. The concept of these houses is similar to the concept that we had while we made this system: simplicity, beauty and recognizability. Since we want the new users to feel at home, we hope this project will meet this goal." -https://sites.google.com/site/chaletoslinux/

Here are some screenshots of the OS, thanks to https://sites.google.com/site/chaletoslinux/Screenshots:

These are the "vanilla" or untouched, fresh install screenshots. There are more available here:
https://plus.google.com/u/0/communities/108630943169932456503/stream/6dfa42a6-0c28-4d7a-a7e1-a55e414c374a

The community has done a lot with ChaletOS, as you can see on the page listed above.

If you would be interested in trying this OS out for yourself, the official website is https://sites.google.com/site/chaletoslinux/

JW Broadcasting in XBMC or KODI

*Updated March 13th, 2015

If you are a fan of XBMC (KODI is the new name of XBMC) you can watch with ease JW Broadcasting material now thanks to a plugin.

As of March 13th, thanks to the author of the plugin Jonathan Demarks, this plugin works on Windows as well as Linux.

To start, you need to download the plugin. It's available here:
https://github.com/ca0abinary/plugin.video.jwtv-unofficial

Once downloaded, run KODI/XBMC

Follow these screens to install it:

Go to system

Go to Add-ons

Go to "Install from .zip file"

Choose this .zip file

Once this process is done, you should be ready to use JW Broadcasting in XBMC/KODI.

Here is how you find it in XBMC/KODI once the process is done:

As you can see, I was able to easily watch the February 2015 Featured Program. The "play bar" on the bottom goes away after just a bit of time, which you already know if you are an avid XBMC/KODI user.

And again, many thanks to the creator of this wonderful plugin, Jonathan Demarks!

If you have any questions about this, please feel free to contact me. My contact information is on the side panel of this website.

XFCE still rocks!

I know I will come off as a bit of a fan boy, but...

After exhaustively looking for a different desktop environment for Linux, I can say that XFCE is still number one in my book.

I have tried just about all of them, including window managers.

Gnome, Unity, KDE, Cinnamon, Mate, LXDE, Openbox, Enlightenment, Blackbox, Fluxbox, i3, rat poison, awesome, fvwm...

If you name it, I most likely tried it. (I know this is no where near the full list.)

Why do I like XFCE? Simply, it has just enough bells and whistles to be easily used by most people, and yet it is very light on resources.

It's a tricked out pony, especially if your number one concern is functionality.

I personally like Xubuntu's slant on things, making XFCE just pretty enough to be gentle on the eyes, without compromising speed and stability.

This is my screenshot. An awesome desktop environment.

I seriously suggest you try XFCE with your distro today.

And if you are an Ubuntu user, then try out Xubuntu!

Watchtower Library 2014 in Ubuntu 14.04 *UPDATED*

*If you have already done these steps and it still doesn't work, 

please check out the update section below!

After getting my Watchtower Library 2014 installed, it would not open.

I did some research, and found you need Wine 1.7 to run it.

Sure enough, a simple upgrade to Wine 1.7, and Watchtower Library 2014 runs like a champ now.

Here is a guide thanks to WineHQ on installing Wine 1.7:

Open the Software Sources menu by launching the Ubuntu Software Center and selecting Edit->Software Sources. Choose the Other Software tab and click Add.

Then, copy and paste the line below.

ppa:ubuntu-wine/ppa

Warning: Beta packages

The 1.7 packages here are beta packages. This means they will periodically suffer from regressions, and as a result an update may break functionality in Wine. If the stable 1.6 Wine version works for you, then you may not want to use these beta packages.

Installing Wine:

Once you have added the repository, you are ready to install.

To get the most recent Wine 1.7 beta, click this link to install the wine1.7 package.

To install the older, stable Wine 1.6 version, click this link to install the wine1.6 package.

Upgrading to a new version of Ubuntu

If you are upgrading the entire system, such as going from Ubuntu 13.10 to 14.04, you will need to come back to this page and add the repository again. The built in update manager will not switch the Wine repository automatically.

Alternative Command Line Instructions for Installing Wine:

It is also possible to add the PPA and install via the terminal. This may be useful on Ubuntu flavors and derivatives.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-wine/ppa

Then update APT package information by running 'sudo apt-get update'. You can now install Wine by typing 'sudo apt-get install wine1.7'.

If you'd like to browse the PPA manually, you can visit its Launchpad page.

This guide found at https://www.winehq.org/download/ubuntu

Remember, if you choose to not install the microsoft fonts with wine, then you will need to follow these instructions for turning the "blocks" into letters:

http://dennygoot.blogspot.com/2013/04/watchtower-library-text-is-all-squares.html

If there are any questions, please feel free to email me at dennygoot@gmail.com.

-Denny

* UPDATED April 4th, 2015 *

Thanks to conversations with Stefano Tabanelli both by email and the disqus comment board on this blog, we now know that on some versions of Ubuntu, Wine needs to be set to a different "windows" mode (or version).

There are two ways to change the windows mode. One is to do it globally, the other way is to specifically control one executable. 

The advantage of the first is that all wine applications will be effected. This way is easier, but if you use wine for more than just the Watchtower Library, you may need to use the "specific executable" option.

For both options you first need to start the "Configure Wine" link. 

It can be found in Xubuntu here: (click on pictures to make them larger.)

In regular Ubuntu, you can find it by searching for configure wine in the Unity launcher on the top left.

Once you have the Wine configure window open, then you can change the windows type right at the bottom right like this:

Stefanos noted he chose windows 2003 here and it worked for him. I set mine to windows xp and tried it and it also worked.

This is setting the default, or global setting.

If you need to be "executable specific", then instead of choosing the windows version here, we instead choose "add application".

Here is a visual walk through for you:

Once this is done, it should solve your problem. 

Remember, if you choose to not install the microsoft fonts with wine, then you will need to follow these instructions for turning the "blocks" into letters:

http://dennygoot.blogspot.com/2013/04/watchtower-library-text-is-all-squares.html

Again, if there are any questions, please feel free to email me at dennygoot@gmail.com.

-Denny