Saturday, May 14, 2005

At about two o'clock this afternoon, our dog Chelsea gave birth to 4 healthy Bichon Frise pups: 3 males and one female. Chelsea is an unusually small dog for her breed (don't call her the runt, it hurts her feelings)so we had to take her to the vet because the puppies were too big for her. The vet took an x-ray and decided that Chelsea was going to require a C-section, but as they were prepping for the operation, the first puppy came through naturally. After that the other three were born without further complications. See the pictures below for the before and after. Mommy and pups are resting quietly now in the computer room.

Our Bichon Frise is in labour in this picture. Poor Chelsea!Poor Chelsea is very pregnant and in labour
Chelsea had FOUR puppies!Our Bichon Frise Chelsea had four puppies!

Wednesday, May 11, 2005

Geek Post! How I made my Linux Desktop look like a Mac Desktop!

This is just a listing for my own purposes so I can recreate a MacOSX like desktop in Linux whenever I want. As many of you know, I would like to buy a Mac for my next computer. However, due to budgetary constraints, that ain't gonna happen for awhile. The next best thing is to skin Windows to look like MacOSX. There are even sites that will show you how! But Sheri is most comfortable with the "win2k" theme in WinXP, so after a brief flirtation with windowblinds I stopped messing with the XP desktop.

So instead, for over a year now, I have been running a couple of Mac inspired themes on my Linux desktops. On the KDE side of the house I have installed Baghira. Baghira is a faithful recreation of the MacOSX desktop right down to the buttons. It even rounds the top of your desktop for you. To switch the theme for my apps that use GTK in KDE, I am using the GTK theme switcher program. It's a neat little applet that allows me to set the font and the theme to match KDE/QT (in this case by setting it to AquaExtremeSunken). On the Gnome side of the house I have installed the GnoMac Theme Pack and I am using the AquaExtremeSunken theme from that pack for my Gnome Desktop. It goes further than Baghira in the sense that its design has been lifted straight from screenshots from a Mac. For my dock I am using Ksmoothdock and my icons came from PLF's non-free repository. If you are interested in skinning your WindowsXP to look like MacOSX, check out AquaXP a website dedicated to skinning XP with a Mac-like interface.

My Current Desktop!My Desktop: Baghira QT theme and AquaExtremeSunken GTK theme

Well, I haven't blogged for awhile. The weather has just been too nice...take today for example. Today I was able to leave work early. I walked home. Joey was playing with his trike on the sidewalk in front of the house. Sheri was out front planting flowers in the garden. Drew was at school. It was early afternoon. The sun was shining and it was warm. When Sheri was finished planting annuals in the front garden, we went in the back yard and sat at the patio table. I made some coffee. We saw a Cardinal. After we picked up Drew and Celina (the girl Sheri sits) from School, we drove to Lester B. Pearson Park to play at the infinity playplace. But it rained. So we went home instead.