Hollywood Geek news. Han Solo is back

Disney and the Star Wars Lucasfilm folks have announced casting for the Episode 7 of Star Wars. All the original major cast members are back and it looks like Harrison Ford will take on a big role. Apparently, Han Solo will be have a big role in the new trilogy.

Very cool indeed.

Some Links:
http://www.theguardian.com/film/2014/apr/29/star-wars-7-london-shoot-harrison-ford-mark-hamill
http://metro.co.uk/2014/04/29/star-wars-episode-7-excitement-mounts-amid-rumours-of-gigantic-role-for-han-solo-4712225/

Ubuntu Folder colors. Aka Macintosh Finder Labels

Mac OS 7 had this back in the mid 1990s. Now, you can have this same feature on Ubuntu 14.04 in 2014. Mac OS calls it labels. This is basically the same principle.

I gotta say, this is a cool system add-on. It is handy for organizing work. Unfortunately, it is not built-in the OS. You will need top download and install it from the link below:

Link:http://foldercolor.tuxfamily.org/

Andy Warhol and the Amiga

This is a pretty cool article on Engadget. A group of people (Carnegie Mellon University's Computer Club and a team of artists, archivists and curators) found and extracted some lost work Andy Warhol did on the now, retro defunct Amiga 1000. In the mid 80s, Warhol experimented with computer graphics. The most notable work was the one where he retouched Debbie Harry (aka Blondie) on stage. However, unbeknownst, he had a 41 floppies of un-seen work. This is the equivalent of finding a Picasso, Monet, or Rothko on a paper napkin.
I find this story pretty cool because I like Warhol and I loved the Amiga. This totally brings me back to nostalgic times of the 80s.

The Pittsburgh's Carnegie Museum of Modern Art will be showing the premier on May 10th to showcase of some Warhol's experiment for the public.

Links: 
http://www.engadget.com/2014/04/24/resurrecting-andy-warhols-80s-amiga-artwork/
http://www.nowseethis.org/

5,000 mile update: Fiat 500e electric car.

I've had my electric Fiat 500e for over 5  months; totaling 5,000 miles. Since then, I have not once visited a gas station. My overall "fuel" cost to drive 5,000 miles is less then $120. That $120 would only last me two weeks in my Range Rover Sport. Is that amazing or what. What other car can go that far on $120?

So what do I have to report?

Parallella Kickstarter. A year too late

Here is a Kickstarter projected that I help funded more than a year ago. ETA delivery was May 2013. I finally get this April 2014.

This is suppose to be a super-charged Raspberry PI. It is billed as a "A Supercomputer For Everyone."
It comes in 16 and 64 core configuration. The 16 core hits 13 GHz and 26 gigaflops performance. It is a dual core ARM A9 SoC with either a 16 or 64 core "co-processor" RISC chips. You can also cluster these little babies. I was going to build a little Debian/Ubuntu mini box with this. However, for now, I think I rather go with an INTEL NUC.

I'm pretty much glad I didn't lose my money on this but I've lost my enthusiasm. For the time being, this is going ino the drawer. After being stood up for close to a year, you can see why I'm not so enthusiastic any more.




Links:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/adapteva/parallella-a-supercomputer-for-everyone
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/09/99-raspberry-pi-sized-supercomputer-touted-in-kickstarter-project/

Ubuntu 14.04 LTS HiDPI

So Ubuntu 14.04 has been released and it promises to have better support for HiDPI (Retina) displays.

I decided to take it for a spin inside VMware Fusion on my Macbook Pro. 

I have to say, it is a major, major improvement. In fact, it is pretty good. There is a good slider in the display that increases the icons and interface. It isn't quite 100% perfect as many applications don't work quite right. There are some icons and sliders that don't work right in a few places here and there. But overall, it works pretty good.

Blood Moon, April 14th, 2014 Lunar Eclipse

I stayed up past my bed-time for this. They made a big stink about this on the night-time nightly news.

Now, I just need to invest in a better zoom lens for future astronomy photographing.