Great Desktop Calender on Linux

I love Screenlets and Gdesklets all every other widget type thing for Linux, but none of them have a calender for your desktop like this. This post will be review Rainlendar, which your desktop should not live without. This post will review it and tell you how to install i ton Linux, cause boy did I have problems with this guy.....but it was worth it once we figured out what was going on. So It will hopefully be easy for you now!

But first we got the review. What is Rainlendar? Rainlendar is a Calendar that sits on your desktop and basically is your life at your fingertips. I love to stay organized and my Google Calendar has been awesome, but it never gave me a quick look at what was going on. I like having my calendar on my desktop cause usually if I need to check a date I want to do it fast, with this I do not have to log into Google or open my internet browser. Now I know all the Linux Open Source, free software people are goign to kill me but there is a pay version of Rainlendar. But I do not use it, I use the free one which I have no regrets over. The only functionality the pay version has that a Linux user might use is syncing with your Google Calendar. For me I do not feel the need to have two Calendars, but some may want the Google one for on the go, but hey if you got a Linux laptop Rainlendar is always on your desktop....

I guess before I go any further I should dazzle you with screen shots of it on my computer. Just a note Rainlender isn't this blur with text, I just blurred out some of my appointments. So first Screen shot is my whole desktop, then I will give you a nice zoomed in on the Calendar itself.



The screen shots pretty much so the functionality of this great application. You can see dates on the Calendar with things to do are blue, and things marked important are red. Also some things are put into categories, pretty much like tags, and they have tiny symbols that show up. Two of the symbols on my calendar you can see are vacation, and medical. To add an even you just double click a date on the Calendar, and then it automatically will come up in the Events list. You can also turn the events list off if you do not want it. There also is a to do list but I have mine turned off cause I just keep everything as events. Another neat feature is if you hold your mouse over an icon a little snazzy looking balloon pops up with information saying what is going on on that day.

Installation will come in my next post, Figured I would give you a cliff hanger...jk I have to leave. Anywho its simple enough to install but if it don't work for you stay tuned cause I will help you guys who are broken....

Update:

Now I have instructions on Installation for Rainlendar!

Stacks for Awn!

If you pay any attention to Apple you know that a new feature coming out in Leopard is a feature called stacks. Its pretty spiffy, and if you want to see what mac's demo is like go here. Anywho Timon over at the awn forum started a post and was determined to make this possible on Awn. here is a screenshot Timon posted in the Forum of his version of stacks for Awn:


If you want to use it, you need to apply the patch. You can get the patch here. Also if you need help apply a patch to awn, check out this forum post here. OK so maybe I will get this for my self and write a review about it latter, I just am not in the mood to configure a patch at the moment....

Compiz Fusion Updates

There were some Compiz Fusion updates, but nothing I found very dramatic or worth blogging about so if you want to read it you can read about them here. But at the end of that post I linked to was something super cool, which is worth writing about. To make things short and two the point, it is a paper airplane effect for the animation plugin! So here is a screenshot I took of his video they made:


Anywho it looks awesome and the plane flies around! So if you want to check out the video go here. Also information on the new animation and instructions about installing it are here.

Cool Side Bar Screenlet

This may be another one of those eye candies that someone will likely say it looks like vista...But I don't care it makes my desktop look cool. I found this new screenlet, called Sidebar. It gives you a nice looking sidebar for you to rest screenlets onto. I have to say it looks damn nice, and has a tone of themes to choose from. So I am sure you can find a theme that will look great on your desktop. Here is mine:

Guitar hero On Linux

Frets on Fire is a game that mimics the great console game Guitar Hero. The game i splayed using the keyboard as the guitar. Not only does it play similar to Guitar Hero but you can see how you compare to the rest of the world, by having your scores sent online:


As you can see in the above screen shot they chose, "Upload High Scores". And if you interested to see what the online score board looks like you can check it out here. Also I know you will want to see an in game screen shot too, so go check it out:

Now This is Just a Cool Idea!

If you haven't noticed I spend a lot of time over on the Awn forum, cause I set them up and absolutely love helping out with the project. If you haven't looked into Awn in a while go check out the forums, they are buzzing with tons of great ideas and coders creating the great mockups. But anywho I just came across this nifty little mockup for widgets and docks in this post. But you got to watch this video!

My Great Idea!

I really like these new Compiz Fusion effects. So I was thinking what could be better about them? While using the flip 3d plugin I noticed it even showed minimized application which is a feature I really liked....cause using a nvidia graphics card with my 64mb of video ram doesn't allow me to have lots of windows open up and showing, but i noticed I could have them minimized and still use them, I just can't use them all at once. Anyway I got a little off topic there, back to my great idea. I noticed when using flip 3d the minimized applications came up only as an icon...depicted below you see my Exaile music player is minimized so you see the Exaile icon and not the picture of what it looks like, unlike my Firefox browser in the background which is un-minimized:


Anywho what if Compiz could take a little shot of each window you opened so even if it was minimized it could pull back that shot and display it there instead of the very ugly and stretched icons?