Author: Bob Martens

Categories
Technology

My Problem with GNOME 3

I’ve had openSUSE 13.1 installed on a Lenovo ThinkPad X220 for the past weeks and it has worked pretty well. I’ve used the GNOME desktop mainly because it has the ability to call up a search box with a single button (the Windows key on this laptop). That allows me really easy access to most functions I need to accomplish.

However, GNOME 3 has bugged me more than a little bit for one major reason and I’ll use some pictures to illustrate it.

openSUSE

SLED

Notice the subtle difference? Here are two more pictures to illustrate a little bit better.

openSUSEMarked

SLEDMarked

It is really subtle and only noticeable on a small screen (like the X220’s 1366×768).

The usable area for a Firefox window in openSUSE 13.1 GNOME is 634 pixels high. On SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop (SLED) it is 657 pixels high. While that difference of 23 pixels (give or take a few, I was just cropping the images in Acorn) might not seem like a lot, on a screen where pixels are at a premium it can make a sizable difference in just how it feels. The SLED desktop, at least in this instance, just feels a little less cramped.

Now, this is an extreme case, obviously, but it makes a difference. Smash such large toolbars on the top of the screen feels oppressive in a way that the SLED one does not. GNOME 3 overall just feels a little bit heavier than GNOME 2 at the moment on these screen sizes. On larger screens, obviously, the differences are not as drastic.

At this point I should state that GNOME has taken a decidedly Apple-ish approach here with Apple’s persistent toolbar along the top of the screens. I don’t have an exact analog with which to test it with to see how Firefox fares on, say, an 11″ MacBook Air which has the identical screen resolution. I’ll try to have a friend screenshot that soon so I can pull it apart.

The point of this was not to bag on GNOME 3, but to point out one difference I have noted so far between the openSUSE GNOME 3 and SLED GNOME 2 design directions and the feeling I have when using them. It is interesting, at least.

Categories
Business Technology

Better Documentation

As my role has changed at work, so has my main reading material. Gone are a lot of the design and development books (even though I still keep them on a shelf in my office basement) and in are the reams and reams of documentation to try to get up-to-speed both on where we are as a college IT department and where we need to go.

Because of the shift I’m going to take a moment to describe what I would like to see from vendors when it comes to documentation. Let me start with some examples of what I am working with right now.

We currently use Novell NetWare 6.5 for file serving and directory management and authentication. Since we are looking at a migration to Novell Open Enterprise Server 11, I get to spend quite a bit of time with Novell’s documentation. Here is a look at what is available for Novell Filr.

Filr Documentation

Not bad. A lot of different guides available both as HTML and a downloadable PDF. The documentation itself is quite good, so I don’t have any issue with that. Having it available online is really nice and it is nicely formatted and everything.

I also am looking at SUSE Linux Enterprise Server to help us standardize on a few Linux distributions and because Open Enterprise Server 11 uses SLES 11 as its base operating system. Here is a look at what is available for SLES 11.

SLES Documentation

Similar to what is being offered by Novell, but there are a few more options! Not just online HTML and a downloadable PDF, but also an EPUB option! So you can load up that file into your eBook reader of choice and enjoy the documentation along with a table of contents and other niceties.

I want to see that from more vendors in the future. What EPUB allows is also the embedding of things like videos and animations into the files as well. That could open up better documentation in the future if time and effort can be dedicated to it.

However, I understand the hesitation as well. EPUB is still not a ubiquitous format with Amazon tying their entire eBook ecosystem to their Kindle formats and Apple using the iBooks format to extend EPUB to something entirely its own. The flip side of that on Apple’s side is that at least iBooks.app can read a standard EPUB.

Maybe ideally, there would be some way to “subscribe” to documentation so that an updated version of an EPUB or some other format might be automatically downloaded and incorporated so that you always have the most up-to-date version. Dash.app does something like that by allowing you to download documentation for various libraries and languages and then have updated versions delivered as they are available.

It is kind of like RSS for documentation.

Moving to something like that would maybe encourage vendors to take the approach of treating documentation as a living document, making changes as flaws are found and also updating it with best practices or even releasing different types or styles of documentation.

That is where I would like to see things move. It feels like the technologies are already out there, but they need to be tested in such a manner and improved upon.

Categories
Business Technology

A Paperless Farm: Scanners

One interesting thing about starting to get more involved with a growing farm is that you start to get a grim picture of just how much paperwork there is to do any small thing. I know that we are putting up a new hog barn (which I would say is a “big thing”), but even just hauling manure onto land that is owned is cause for paperwork.

So what is a person to do?

I’m not sure what the “end game” will look like for this, but I do know that I want to try go as paperless as I am able to. This will require a few things to happen:

  1. I need to get my hands on every piece of paper that flows to and from the farm.
  2. I need to try to digitize as many of the forms as I am able to, including invoices.
  3. I will need to find myself a capable scanner I can tuck into a backpack. I can’t keep a computer and scanner in the hog barn office, so I will need to be able to take one with me.
  4. Figure out the best way to catalog, share, and backup all of the various pieces of paper I will be digitizing.
  5. Invest in a good paper shredder.

The idea is to digitize as much as possible and then to transition more and more of the paper stuff that we need to do to digital as well. It will be a long process, but I think it will be worth it in the end.

However, the wildcard at the moment is the portable scanner. It would be nice to have something be small enough to fit into a backpack (along with a laptop), comes with a document feeder attached, scan both sides of a document, and be USB-powered as well. Actually, that is also the order I wold rank those features (1 being most important):

  1. Small enough to fit into a backpack
  2. Has a document feeder
  3. Scans both side of a document
  4. USB-powered

After throwing the question out to Twitter and doing a little research myself I’ve come up with the following possibilities (all links to Amazon):

Each has problems so I’m not sure what I am going to ultimately purchase.

  • The Doxie One is the smallest one along with being the cheapest. I can also scan directly to removable media, which could be a benefit where I just bring it a long, scan the documents, and then bring them back to my computer to work with them. Sadly, no dual-side scanning and only a single page at a time.
  • The Canon imageFORMULA P-215 is perhaps the front-running at this point. It is the middle-of-the-road option as far as size and weight but it has a document feeder, does dual-side scanning, and looks to be pretty speedy at the same time. While it is still small, it IS more than twice the weight of the Doxie One.
  • The Fujitsu ScanSnap S1300i is the largest of the bunch and is comparable to the Canon P-215. The ScanSnap series is very well-regarded overall.

At the moment it is a toss-up between the Doxie and the Canon. I’ll report back when I have made a decision and used it a little bit, but it will need to be soon. That paperwork does not go away.

Categories
Business Technology

Agricultural Accounting

Well, Martens Family Farm is finally alive! After months of planning, meetings, more planning, more meetings and more meetings … the business is alive and we are pushing ahead with our plans for an expansion of the hog operation and also freeing up some more time for some partners so that we can continue to push things ahead into the future.

That’s the really exciting part.

The not-so-exciting part is that now we need to keep better track of where money is going, where it is coming from, and what it is being used for and why. That’s the nitty-gritty of what my job is from this point forward. I like to think of my job as “greasing the gears” to make sure that those who know how to farm can continue to do so without needing to worry as much about the money and compliance issues inherit with any business.

Alright, so I lied … that does sound really exciting to me.

What I need now is the ability to easily track income and expenses for an operation where I am only one of for partners and one of any number of people who are going to help on a small-but-growing family operation.

So I get to look at the current state of agricultural accounting software (or just small business accounting software in general, but for use within a farm).

Let me say, I’m not impressed so far.

QuickBooks is the “industry leader” at the moment and so far the online version as a few things going for it:

  1. Access from anywhere.
  2. iOS apps.

Alright, I lied, it really only has two things going for it. Other than that it is a highly complicated and slow web application which has 1000s of options to try to fit into any and all different industries.

I think I also need a basic accounting book to get my head around things.

However, I get the feeling that there has to be something better, easier, and simpler to use to get us started and off the ground. Having a mobile application so that I can easily add income and expenses right where I am would be a bonus.

On the cheap side of things, I have been thinking about trying to use GnuCash to get started. Seeing as it is free and doesn’t try to hem you into any set way of doing things, it looks like a decent lower-tech solution to our problem.

Needless to say I have a lot of work to do as we get things ramped up on our end. I’ll keep posting things as I find them, but I’ll leave with this plea to the software industry at-large:

There is a huge swath of farmers who are nearing retirement age and their younger progeny are going to be taking over the operations or at least taking a more active role in them. There is a huge opportunity to start developing software to serve this industry that doesn’t look like it was written for Windows 95. Do it. We are out there and we want to use software that is good.

Categories
Technology

A Month With Linux: Some Shortcomings

Sorry to report, but I am not starting it yet. Recently I’ve been playing around with the latest release of OS X, 10.9 Mavericks, and it almost derailed this entire project of mine. However, I still have plans to go ahead with it and at the moment I am using the pending release of openSUSE 13.1 as a milestone where I will need to make a final decision as to which distro I am going to use and which month I am going to devote to this little project.

Instead of just sitting around, though, I am going to post what are some things holding me back from just jumping in and doing this. Warning, this is completely and totally biased and just my opinions. I have been running an Apple-exclusive household for a few years now and I find Apple’s hardware and software to fit most of what I want to do very well.

However, I philosophically fall in-line with the open source community and would consider myself an advocate for those communities as well. Keeping all of that in mind, I really want to see things get more than just better, but great for Linux and open source.

  • Email clients are routinely a pain in the butt. I know that “webmail” is the default way for most people to consume their mail, but I like having a single program where I am able to bring in all of my disparate accounts and access them at the same time. Sadly, from what I can find, no one is really interested in a the same unified inbox as Apple’s Mail.app can provide. I need to dig more into Thunderbird, but the lack of sane defaults kills me sometimes. I think that email clients are considered dead by a great many developers, and that is too bad because there is a ton of room for excellent email clients on Linux.
  • Lack of native applications is a pain sometimes. This might have more to do with the fragmentation of the Linux distributions more than anything else, but it really forces you into the browser for a great many things. I like the looks and feel of a truly native application, but on Linux the options just are not there for the sort of really excellent native applications I have become used to having on OS X and iOS.
  • I hope someone can help me with this one, but I have a hard time getting file system compatibility between Windows, OS X, and Linux machines. I know that FAT can work, but FAT has limitations I run into far more than I want. If someone has a modern file system I can use to make an external hard drive portable between Windows, OS X, and Linux I would love to hear it. I have some training materials along with disk images I would love to be able to move between those three operating systems.
  • For openSUSE, the lack of an openSUSE-specific theme for GNOME is kind of disappointing. OS X has a very distinctive look and feel, Windows has a very distinctive look at feel (don’t get me started on 8), but GNOME is GNOME is GNOME is GNOME … which might not be a terrible thing. The hard part is that I thought openSUSE/SUSE has an excellent theme for GNOME 2, but now it looks too “samey” for my taste.
  • Don’t worry, I won’t leave KDE out of this. The hoops you need to jump through to get some sort of “super button” on your keyboard is disappointing. For GNOME I just tap the Windows key and it brings up my search box. Not so in KDE. While I understand the philosophy behind it (and I spent two hours looking into it one day), it is still frustrating to not have a simple button I can push to bring up their menu.
  • KDE also has options for pretty much everything. I understand wanting to give people choice but … I guess it just doesn’t jive with my needs as much.

That’s a sampling. No deal breakers in there and definitely the opinions of a person who wants openSUSE to be more like OS X, which is a ridiculous thing to want.

With all of that said, I will still give it a try, and maybe some of it will grow on me over time. Still hoping some designers get the itch and really try to see how far they can bend GNOME to make a really attractive-looking openSUSE theme.

Another wildcard in all of this is what SUSE is going to do with SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 12. While openSUSE has moved to having KDE be the default desktop, SUSE has not announced anything yet. If they move from GNOME 2 to GNOME 3, maybe there will be some work done there. If, however, they move to KDE then I think I might need to move on as well and learn to love modifier keys.

Sadly.