mic i need to know. how vampire!ghost and vampire!price spend their individual time w pet (nickname ?:3) does pet have a favorite…
how does pet warm up to them!! 🧛🏽♀️🧛🏽♀️ literally kept captive like a bird but ghost and price are so so offputting but nice at the same time.. hmm…
im convinced you hacked into my brain because i was just drawing up ideas on how pet (love the nickname) has a different relationship with each of the boys hehe. i hope this suits ur fancy, i started running away with it like always oops! <3
price shows you to your quarters on the first night after the wooziness of being bitten (by an actual vampire!!!!) wears off. the space is grand and luxurious, and if you weren't so shaken up you'd marvel more at the beautiful window seat with gorgeous bay windows - the perfect spot to curl up with a good book.
once price leaves you alone in your room, you hastily lock the door and sob. what the hell has your life become?! for the first week, you don't dare leave your room in hopes of being able to avoid the creatures holding you captive. price is amused at your little attitude; how cute that you think a little door lock would stop him from being with his pet.
your relationship with price is weird, you're grateful he saved you from the woods, but you also hate him for keeping you in this stupid castle all alone. in an attempt to lower your hackles, price comes with breakfast for you each morning, he knocks as if to give you the illusion of choice whether you want him in your space or not, he unlocks the door and barges in no matter what you say anyway.
he insists on feeding you breakfast himself, you bristled at the idea at first because is he serious?! he offers you a simple shrug and a curt "amuse me, pet." and after realizing it was more of an order than a suggestion you concede.
you hate that price treats you like your his prized possession, it makes it so much harder to hate him. perhaps that was his goal really. it starts to work because eventually, you relax as he pops strawberries and decadent french toast in your mouth one morning - and when he leans in and licks the sweet juices from your lips, you feel warmth blooming in you. suddenly, you can't help but imagine him in between your legs licking over you reverently.
with ghost, things are so vastly different. you don't even see him until you finally work up the courage to leave your quarters. you're exploring the entirety of the manor and stumble upon the most impressive library you've ever seen. flitting between bookshelves silently until you're startled by a looming figure in the corner.
you realize it's ghost and are frozen with the decision on whether to leave him be or go over and try to talk to him. there's something so odd about him, but that only makes you want to figure him out more.
the library becomes you and ghost’s little meeting spot. he’s different when he’s not under the supervision of price, still very much reserved. but unlike price ghost avoids making any advances towards you, in fact, it was you that made the first move.
ghost had been dropping little tidbits about his life before he was turned and your heart ached painfully for him. he was curating a pile of his favorite books for you, and when he leaned into your space unintentionally, you place as shaky hand on his face in an attempt to drag him into a kiss.
ghost concedes and kisses you back with a passion you weren’t expecting. when you pull away and search his eyes for any sort of explanation, he simply shrugs and says he has to leave you for now. you’re left reeling from the magical kiss you two shared, surprised at much more you want from him.
58 notes
·
View notes
hey liz i've been thinking a lot about story structure lately and i wanted your take on how you decide what structure your stories will have? i know there's that "you have to do what your story needs and tells you to do" thing but these bitches dont ever tell me anything they just multiply so. thoughts? - bma
(as an aside, i don't know whether involving medium would change many things but it may be worth considering. mainly i think medium is just a matter of arrangement and that the story would be for most intents and purposes the same no matter how you choose to tell it. i guess you could argue that structure is arrangement in itself and intrinsically tied to medium but i sort of feel like it is secondary arrangement, if at all? like if you consider time as an element to outline -- the time IN the story (how things happen to your characters) is not necessarily the time you’re telling the story IN (how you are telling your reader that things are happening) aka internal chronology doesnt equal your work’s pacing? or should it??? does this make sense? i dont think so. i am sorry.) - bma :|
NOOO dont be sorry ur making total sense
i think there’s 3 thots to unpack here (medium, structure, & chronology) & i’m gonna start with medium bc it’s easier. im also putting it behind a cut bc it’s gonna get just stupidly long and rambly. i’m sorry in advance if it’s not helpful to you, i have a lot to say for someone who has never taken even one single class on writing and as a result doesn’t know jack shit (there’s a tl;dr at the end dont worry)
about MEDIUM:
so like ok i’m just some goof-off with a HS degree who writes fanfiction but In My Very Super Qualified Personal Opinion, i don’t think that most of the time medium is intrinsically tied to STRUCTURE of the main storytelling arc...i think the art of storytelling itself is distinct from the medium you choose to tell the story IN. this post puts it better than i ever could but basically for me, i feel like the story itself is sort of the raw, malleable concept, and the medium you choose to tell it in is how you convey the information??
like in a book, you can say “she forgot her keys” and in a film you have to show her smacking her forehead, heading back into the house, and swiping her keeps off the counter. you can’t TELL in film, you have to show. similarly i regret every day i cannot perfectly describe a facial expression with words when i see it so clearly in my head. for audio-only podcasts that are dialogue heavy out of necessity you have different limitations than you would for, say, animated music videos with no dialogue at all. games allow for more interactivity and exploration while sacrificing accessibility, tv shows allow for more length while sacrificing, uh, a big hollywood budget...medium affects the kind of story you can reasonably tell which is why some stories are better suited to one medium than another. i think trying things in other mediums is a good way to stretch your storytelling muscles but with enough skill nearly any story could be told in any medium. i think when trying to decide on a medium you just gotta weigh the pros & cons and what you feel comfortable with/what you think would be most effective/what would evoke the strongest reaction
re: structure:
firstly “do what the story tells u to do” is a little silly like...the story isn’t sentient. come on. that’s like “i can only write when the writing gods inspire me” there are no writing gods! inspire yourself! it’s all in our weird messed up brains! ok anyway.
this is, again, just how i do things, and i am 700% self-taught so take it with a grain of salt, but when i sit down and start blocking out a story from scratch i don’t...actually consider the big structure at all! sorry if that’s not helpful to you. i like to make a list of everything i want to happen, and then put it together in a few different orders to see what looks best. and when i’m finished, whatever i have just like...IS the structure i go with, with perhaps minor tinkering to make it flow more smoothly. (i think this might be in the same spirit as “do what the story tells you” with less bullshit and more Agency Of The Writer.)
for long and more complex projects, i actually usually have several lists - one list of stuff that is, for example, the Action Plot (the kingdom has been cursed, i’m tracking down my serial killer sister to bring her to justice, i’m running from djinn who wanna kill my dad, i’m trying to bring my dead not-boyfriend back to life). then i have another list for Character A & Character B’s romance or whatever. and maybe a even another one for solo character development (magicphobic prince learns to love magic, former werewolf hunter figures out his family is a cult, half-demon learns to embrace his own nature). and as many lists as we need for however many Main Characters and or Plots/Sideplots
how i order the lists: individually first. don’t mix them together to start with. when deciding the order of an individual list i like to, for example in a romance arc, use escalating intimacy. “A and B have dinner together” is naturally gonna go way sooner than “A and B kiss” or “A and B talk about A’s angsty backstory” because that’s more satisfying. draw it out, good/important stuff last, dangle that carrot so we have a reason to keep reading! for singular character development, it’s basically a straightforward point A to point B...if i want my guy to start hating magic with everything he is and end up being very comfortable with it, i have to put “reluctantly uses magic to save his own life” WAYYY before “casually using magic to light torches and reheat his cold stew.”
the tricky part for me is when i’m done with these lists and then i need to mix them together To Pace My Whole Story. (this is usually why i wind up with a rainbow colored spreadsheet.) i don’t like to put too many things too close together because then the pace feels uneven. even if my Action Plot is only a thinly veiled excuse for romance and character development, i still don’t want to focus on a romance for 30,000 words and then go “and oh yeah in case you forgot Serial Killing Sister is still coming for your asses.” the more sideplots and major character arcs you’re juggling the harder it is to get an even distribution, which is my main concern always
and like, generally, whatever i have when i’m finished...is my structure. (sorry.)
i don’t know much about the classic 3-act or anything like that, but i usually can divide them up into 3-5 big arcs based on story turning points. sometimes i take a scene out of one arc and put it in another because it fits better and i like for my shit to be organized, but usually by the time i’m finished with all that, that’s what the final story is mostly gonna look like. (there have been a few exceptions when i realized i needed extra scenes/changes while i was MID-DRAFT and let me tell you that murders me EVERY time. it happened on the merlin fic i’m currently posting and that was like my own personal hell.)
this is also where thots about chronology come in:
i think time CAN be an element of this if you WANT it to be, but it doesn’t HAVE to be. if you want it to be, i would consider it just another “list” like character development or the romance arc.
i usually plot without considering Time very much...to me, it’s all down to the events you want to show, and however much time it takes is the byproduct. if you want to show something from a character’s chilhood but then tell the bulk of it when they’re adults, that’s one thing. if you want to show a scene from their childhood, teenhood, young adulthood, etc, that’s a different kind of pacing?? i usually do it this way so i can regard time like wordcount: it takes as long as it takes. 3 days or 3 years, a 1.5k drabble or a 100k epic...overall, my LARGEST CONCERN is that even distribution. in the same way that i don’t want one chapter to be 30,000 words when the rest are 10,000 words, i personally am not a fan of huge timeskips offscreen
(because this where i think someone’s own internal chronology DOES matter...this is just a personal preference, as a reader i have a hard time really comprehending, say, a year timeskip or a 10yr timeskip when all i did was turn one page. like, a year is such a long time. i can’t even begin to describe how different i am now to how i was a year ago. it’s the same for character development. time IS development and as a writer i’m not really comfortable having that take place offscreen - for main characters, at least. it’s just too jarring. a little prologue with something happening 10 or 20 years ago is usually fine, but for the most part, i’m not a fan. ...i can do one chapter per year a lot easier than i can do two chapters in childhood and the other 8 in adulthood. of course you can play with this a LOT with nonlinear storytelling, which is a whole other very cool thing, and someone skilled in their work can keep me sucked in no matter what, but imo if you don’t want to risk throwing your reader out of your work it’s better to keep things steady)
HOWEVER sometimes time IS an element u wanna consider outside of just making sure your shit is evenly distributed...if your heart is moved to tell a story in a specific timeframe, over a year, or from solstice to solstice (this was almost the timeline for my merlin fic and then i changed it), for the first six months of a friendship, or even a huge journey in the span of a single day (toby fox had a lot of success with this one lol).
i think it can help to choose a start and end point for your chronology the same way you do for character development (prince goes from hating magic to being ok with it, story takes place from ages 8 to 25, or from new year’s eve 2038 to 2039, whatever) - that way you can keep your distribution even, if that’s a thing you want to do...even if you have a lot of skips you can still note what happens offscreen to make it work better in your head? like, if you just make it another List, another column on your spreadsheet, when you’re in the early stages of organizing you can be conscious of it and make sure it’s playing into the story the way you want it to
anyway these r my thots im SOOOO SORRY this is so long lmao. brain machine broke today which is why i had to ramble more to explain myself. the tl;dr in case ur brain is melting out of ur ears & u didn’t sign up for an essay:
imo medium is totally distinct from storytelling tho ofc some stories are better suited to some mediums
structure? i don’t know her. i plot w/o regard to structure and then if it looks funny i mush it into a more structurally sound shape
my main concern when structuring anything, including time, is an even distribution of Events and a steady rate of escalation
structure to me is just what i have when i’m finished plotting. i’m sorry one day i’m gonna take a writing class
internal chronology matters to me personally because i have a little bit of time blindness but maybe not to everyone, i know many very successful stories where they disregarded that entirely to no ill effect
writer’s block isn’t real! everyone just needs more rainbow spreadsheets
thank u for asking I HOPE i didn’t make you regret it too badly lmao and that at least a little of it was helpful!!
9 notes
·
View notes
New Post has been published on Vin Zite
New Post has been published on https://vinzite.com/linux-power-tools/
Linux Power Tools
World War II – Germany decided to attack Poland.
Poland had many great warriors. They all prepared to fight the Germans.
They were all ready with the best armor, the best and well trained
horses, and of course the best weapons , swords , spears …. And
the Pols were brave and were ready to give their lives for their
country. Sadly they did just that… give their lives. The Germans
had tanks… It is very important to have the right weapons when one
goes for a war.
In the same way it is very important for system administrators to have
the right tools to to work smart. Linux is a great desktop OS for
developers as well as system
administrators. Let us take a look at some of the utilities which makes
this a great environment for system administrators and developers. Most
of the content below is taken from the home pages of these apps and the
I make no claims to the originality. My aim is to introduce the reader
to the
wonderful tools that are available in a Linux/BSD desktop environment.
Konsole
Let’s start from what most people think Linux is all about – a text-based
part shell. Konsole is what
is known as an X terminal emulator, often referred to as a terminal or
a shell. It gives you the equivalent of an old-fashioned text screen on
your desktop, but one which can easily share the screen with your
graphical applications. What makes Konsole special?
Konsole’s advanced features include simple configuration and the
ability to use multiple terminal shells in a single window, making for
a less cluttered desktop. Konsole is also availablpartand
can thus be easily embedded in other applications, like practiced by
Kate and Konqueror.
As most system administrators need log into servers on a regular basis
the konsole gives them a benefit over the Windoze command prompt. In
windows one needs to use a program like putty to log in using SSH. Also
as linux is the desktop OS the techs can use the man pages on the local
system.
One can also try out the various commands locally. Consider a simple
example.
Is it
$ ln sourcefile destinationfile
or is it
$ ln destinationfile sourcefile
Such things can be easily found out locally without carrying out
experiments on the server. Many techs believe that servers are places
where they can experiment. However, such experiments can lead to major
losses to the customers due to one small error. A system administrator
must understand that people have immense faith in them when they give
their entire data to them and they cannot risk carrying out simple
experiments on servers.
Some screenshots of the konsole can be seen at the konsole site
Personal Information Manager / Groupware
There are two popular choices here. Evolution
from Novel
and the Kontact
from KDE. Both these an email client, calendaring, meeting
scheduling, a task list, contact management and syncing functionality.
Kontact is essentially the regular KDE PIM components which have been
put in together i.e. kmail, korganizer, knotes etc.. It is very a very
neat package and is stable and light. Both these are very
functional and can connect to many groupware servers.
Klipper
Klipper is the KDE clipboard utility. It stores clipboard history, and
allows you to link clipboard contents to application actions. Klipper
can perform actions on the contents of the clipboard, based on whether
they match a particular regular expression. For example, any clipboard
contents starting with “http://” can be passed to the web-browser as
URLs to open.
Copying text is as simple as highlighting the text. And to paste the
text all one needs to do is click on the center mouse button. This can
be particularly useful for sys-admins as they use a sequence
of commands from time to time. Having these in the clipboard and using
them often can make the work a lot easier.
Gaim / Kopete
Communicating via an instant messenger is an essential these days.
Linux has a very clean solution for this. Both Kopete and Gaim are
capable of
handling multiple IM protocols such as supporting AIM, ICQ, MSN,
Yahoo, Jabber, IRC, Novell GroupWise Messenger, Lotus SameTime. Gaim is
a multi-protocol instant messaging (IM) client for Linux, BSD, MacOS X,
and Windows. It is compatible with AIM and ICQ (Oscar protocol), MSN
Messenger, Yahoo!, IRC, Jabber, Gadu-Gadu, SILC, GroupWise Messenger,
and Zephyr networks.
Kjots
KJots is a small program that helps you to write down some
short notes
and organizes them for you. It has two basic items used to organize
your notes – “Books” and “Pages”. This is a good light tool to
write in all the templated responses and other important notes for
quick references.
Kwallet
A lovely password manager which can store passwords for all the logins
including those of kopete and websites.
Tea Cooker
KTeaTime is a handy timer for steeping tea. No longer will you have to
guess at how long it takes for your tea to be ready. Simply select the
type of tea you have, and it will alert you when the tea is ready to
drink. Now how can a tea cooker be useful for techs. Often techs get
involved in solving a problem and forget to update the client about the
progress. Without communicating with the client, on many occasions the
entire effort goes down the drain as the client get very agitated
thinking that nobody is looking at his problem. What the tech can do is
use the tea cooker and get a reminder so that he can respond the client
with the progress.
Koffice/ Open Office
M$ Office is one of the most used software and a major reason why
customers do not shift to other operating systems. They need Word and
Excel for just about everything. K-Office and Open Office are two great
solutions. Open Office can open M$ Office files and can even safe the
files in M$ Office format which makes it easy to communicate with those
who still use M$ products.
Lyx
Besides office suites which replicate the windows world products in
features, Linux also has some great alternatives. LyX is an example of a great document processor.
What is LyX?
LyX is the first WYSIWYM (What you
see is what you mean) document processor.
LyX is what?!
LyX is an advanced open source document processor that encourages an
approach to writing based on the
structure of your documents, not their appearance. LyX lets you
concentrate on writing, leaving details of visual layout to the
software. LyX produces high quality, professional output — using
LaTeX, an industrial strength typesetting engine, in the background;
LyX is far more than a
front-end to LaTeX, however. No knowledge of LaTeX is necessary to use
LyX,
although it will give a user more power. LyX is stable and fully
featured. It has been used for documents as large as a thesis, or as
small as a business letter. Despite its simple GUI interface (available
in many languages), it supports tables, figures, and hyperlinked
cross-references, and has a best-of-breed math editor.
Dia
Dia is a great tool for creating diagrams. It has a huge in-built
library of objects which are specially useful for software engineers.
So making a diagram of a computer network is as easy as dragging a few
computers and switches from the list of objects available. It currently
has special objects to help draw entity relationship diagrams, UML
diagrams, flowcharts, network diagrams, and simple circuits. It is also
possible to add support for new shapes by writing simple XML files,
using a subset of SVG to draw the shape.
Gnucash
An average tech earns a good salary and spends it is well too. To keep
track of all these personal expenses the best is to have a great
software. Gnucash is an ideal way to manage personal finances. Designed
to be easy to use, yet powerful
and flexible, GnuCash allows you to track bank accounts, stocks, income
and expenses. As quick and intuitive to use as a checkbook register, it
is based on professional accounting principles to ensure balanced books
and accurate reports.
KTuberling
And finally a product for all those techs who maintain their servers
well and have no work or pending issues and yet have to sit through the
nights waiting for some issue to popup.
KTuberling was
originally game intended for small children. Of course, it may be
suitable for adults who have remained
young at heart. Most techs in general love this software. It is a
“potato editor”. That means that you can drag and drop eyes, mouths,
mustache, and other parts of face and goodies onto a potato-like guy.
Similarly, you have a penguin and an aquarium on which you can drop
other stuff.
There is no winner for the game. The only purpose is to make the
funniest faces you can. There is a museum,like a “Madame Tusseau”
gallery, where you can find many funny examples of decorated potatoes,
penguins and aquariums.
World War II – Germany decided to attack Poland.
Poland had many great warriors. They all prepared to fight the Germans.
They were all ready with the best armor, the best and well trained
horses, and ofcourse the best weapons , swords , spears …. And
the Pols were brave and were ready to give their lives for their
country. Sadly they did just that… give their lives. The Germans
had tanks… It is very important to have the right weapons when one
goes for a war.
In the same way it is very important for system administrators to have
the right tools to to work smart. Linux is a great desktop OS for
developers as well as system
administrators. Let us take a look at some of the utilities which makes
this a great environment for system administrators and developers. Most
of the content below is taken from the home pages of these apps and the
I make no claims on the originality. My aim is to introduce the reader
to the
wonderful tools that are available in a Linux/BSD desktop environment.
Konsole
Let’s start from what most people think Linux is all about – a text
based shell. Konsole is what
is known as an X terminal emulator, often referred to as a terminal or
a shell. It gives you the equivalent of an old-fashioned text screen on
your desktop, but one which can easily share the screen with your
graphical applications. What makes Konsole special?
Konsole’s advanced features include simple configuration and the
ability to use multiple terminal shells in a single window, making for
a less cluttered desktop. Konsole is also available as kpart and
can thus be easily embedded in other applications, like practiced by
Kate and Konqueror.
As most system administrators need log into servers on a regular basis
the konsole gives them a benefit over the Windoze command prompt. In
windows one needs to use a program like putty to log in using SSH. Also
as linux is the desktop OS the techs can use the man pages on the local
system.
One can also try out the various commands locally. Consider a simple
example.
Is it
$ ln sourcefile destinationfile
or is it
$ ln destinationfile sourcefile
Such things can be easily found out locally without carrying out
experiments on the server. Many techs believe that servers are places
where they can experiment. However, such experiments can lead to major
losses to the customers due to one small error. A system administrator
must understand that people have immense faith in them when they give
their entire data to them and they cannot risk carrying out simple
experiments on servers.
Some screenshots of the konsole can be seen at the konsole site
Personal Information Manager / Groupware
There are two popular choices here. Evolution
from Novel
and the Kontact
from KDE. Both these an email client, calendaring, meeting
scheduling, a task list, contact management and syncing functionality.
Kontact is essentially the regular KDE PIM components which have been
put in together i.e. kmail, korganizer, knotes etc.. It is very a very
neat package and is stable and light. Both these are very
functional and can connect to many groupware servers.
Klipper
Klipper is the KDE clipboard utility. It stores clipboard history, and
allows you to link clipboard contents to application actions. Klipper
can perform actions on the contents of the clipboard, based on whether
they match a particular regular expression. For example, any clipboard
contents starting with “http://” can be passed to the web-browser as
URLs to open.
Copying text is as simple as highlighting the text. And to paste the
text all one needs to do is click on the center mouse button. This can
be particularly useful for sys-admins as they use a sequence
of commands from time to time. Having these in the clipboard and using
them often can make the work a lot easier.
1 note
·
View note
Linux Power Tools
New Post has been published on https://netmaddy.com/linux-power-tools/
Linux Power Tools
In the same way, it is very important for system administrators to have
the right tools to work smart. Linux is a great desktop OS for
developers as well as system administrators. Let us take a look at some of the utilities which make this a great environment for system administrators and developers. Most of the content below is taken from the home pages of these apps and the make no claims on the originality. My aim is to introduce the reader to the wonderful tools that are available in a Linux/BSD desktop environment My Live Updates.
Konsole
Let’s start from what most people think Linux is all about – a text-based
part shell. Konsole is what
is known as an X terminal emulator, often referred to as a terminal or
a shell. It gives you the equivalent of an old-fashioned text screen on
your desktop, but one which can easily share the screen with your
graphical applications. What makes Konsole special?
Konsole’s advanced features include simple configuration and the
ability to use multiple terminal shells in a single window, making for
a less cluttered desktop. Konsole is also can thus be easily embedded in other applications, like practiced by
Kate and Konqueror.
Linux Power Tools
As most system administrators need log into servers on a regular basis
the konsole gives them a benefit over the Windoze command prompt. In
windows one needs to use a program like putty to log in using SSH. Also
as linux is the desktop OS the techs can use the man pages on the local
system.
One can also try out the various commands locally. Consider a simple
example.
Is it
$ ln sourcefile destinationfile
or is it
$ ln destinationfile sourcefile
Such things can be easily found out locally without carrying out
experiments on the server. Many techs believe that servers are places
where they can experiment. However, such experiments can lead to major
losses to the customers due to one small error. A system administrator
must understand that people have immense faith in them when they give
their entire data to them and they cannot risk carrying out simple
experiments on servers.
Some screenshots of the konsole can be seen at the konsole site
Personal Information Manager / Groupware
There are two popular choices here. Evolution
from Novel
and the Kontact
from KDE. Both these an email client, calendaring, meeting
scheduling, a task list, contact management and syncing functionality.
Kontact is essentially the regular KDE PIM components which have been
put in together i.e. kmail, korganizer, knotes etc.. It is very a very
neat package and is stable and light. Both these are very
functional and can connect to many groupware servers.
Klipper
Klipper is the KDE clipboard utility. It stores clipboard history, and
allows you to link clipboard contents to application actions. Klipper
can perform actions on the contents of the clipboard, based on whether
they match a particular regular expression. For example, any clipboard
contents starting with “http://” can be passed to the web-browser as
URLs to open.
Copying text is as simple as highlighting the text. And to paste the
text all one needs to do is click on the center mouse button. This can
be particularly useful for sys-admins as they use a sequence
of commands from time to time. Having these in the clipboard and using
them often can make the work a lot easier.
Gaim / Kopete
Communicating via an instant messenger is an essential these days.
Linux has a very clean solution for this. Both Kopete
(http://kopete.kde.org) and Gaim (http://gaim.sourceforge.net/) are
capable of
handling multiple IM protocols such as supporting AIM, ICQ, MSN,
Yahoo, Jabber, IRC, Novell GroupWise Messenger, Lotus SameTime. Gaim is
a multi-protocol instant messaging (IM) client for Linux, BSD, MacOS X,
and Windows. It is compatible with AIM and ICQ (Oscar protocol), MSN
Messenger, Yahoo!, IRC, Jabber, Gadu-Gadu, SILC, GroupWise Messenger,
and Zephyr networks.
Kjots
KJots is a small program that helps you to write down some
short notes
and organizes them for you. It has two basic items used to organize
your notes – “Books” and “Pages”. This is a good light tool to
write in all the templated responses and other important notes for
quick references.
Kwallet
A lovely password manager which can store passwords for all the logins
including those of kopete and websites.
Tea Cooker
KTeaTime is a handy timer for steeping tea. No longer will you have to
guess at how long it takes for your tea to be ready. Simply select the
type of tea you have, and it will alert you when the tea is ready to
drink. Now how can a tea cooker be useful for techs. Often techs get
involved in solving a problem and forget to update the client about the
progress. Without communicating with the client, on many occasions the
entire effort goes down the drain as the client get very agitated
thinking that nobody is looking at his problem. What the tech can do is
use the tea cooker and get a reminder so that he can respond the client
with the progress.
Koffice/ Open Office
M$ Office is one of the most used software and a major reason why
customers do not shift to other operating systems. They need Word and
Excel for just about everything. K-Office and Open Office are two great
solutions. Open Office can open M$ Office files and can even safe the
files in M$ Office format which makes it easy to communicate with those
who still use M$ products.
Lyx
Besides office suites which replicate the windows world products in
features, Linux also has some great alternatives. LyX
(http://www.lyx.org) is an example of a great document processor.
What is LyX?
LyX is the first WYSIWYM (What you
see is what you mean) document processor.
LyX is what?!
LyX is an advanced open source document processor that encourages an
approach to writing based on the
structure of your documents, not their appearance. LyX lets you
concentrate on writing, leaving details of visual layout to the
software. LyX produces high quality, professional output — using
LaTeX, an industrial strength typesetting engine, in the background;
LyX is far more than a
front-end to LaTeX, however. No knowledge of LaTeX is necessary to use
LyX,
although it will give a user more power. LyX is stable and fully
featured. It has been used for documents as large as a thesis, or as
small as a business letter. Despite its simple GUI interface (available
in many languages), it supports tables, figures, and hyperlinked
cross-references, and has a best-of-breed math editor.
Dia
Dia is a great tool for creating diagrams. It has a huge in-built
library of objects which are specially useful for software engineers.
So making a diagram of a computer network is as easy as dragging a few
computers and switches from the list of objects available. It currently
has special objects to help draw entity relationship diagrams, UML
diagrams, flowcharts, network diagrams, and simple circuits. It is also
possible to add support for new shapes by writing simple XML files,
using a subset of SVG to draw the shape.
Gnucash
An average tech earns a good salary and spends it is well too. To keep
track of all these personal expenses the best is to have a great
software. Gnucash is an ideal way to manage personal finances. Designed
to be easy to use, yet powerful
and flexible, GnuCash allows you to track bank accounts, stocks, income
and expenses. As quick and intuitive to use as a checkbook register, it
is based on professional accounting principles to ensure balanced books
and accurate reports.
KTuberling
And finally a product for all those techs who maintain their servers
well and have no work or pending issues and yet have to sit through the
nights waiting for some issue to popup.
KTuberling (http://opensource.bureau-cornavin.com/ktuberling/) was
originally game intended for small children. Of course, it may be
suitable for adults who have remained
young at heart. Most techs in general love this software. It is a
“potato editor”. That means that you can drag and drop eyes, mouths,
mustache, and other parts of face and goodies onto a potato-like guy.
Similarly, you have a penguin and an aquarium on which you can drop
other stuff.
There is no winner for the game. The only purpose is to make the
funniest faces you can. There is a museum,like a “Madame Tusseau”
gallery, where you can find many funny examples of decorated potatoes,
penguins and aquariums.
World War II – Germany decided to attack Poland.
Poland had many great warriors. They all prepared to fight the Germans.
They were all ready with the best armor, the best and well trained
horses, and ofcourse the best weapons , swords , spears …. And
the Pols were brave and were ready to give their lives for their
country. Sadly they did just that… give their lives. The Germans
had tanks… It is very important to have the right weapons when one
goes for a war.
In the same way it is very important for system administrators to have
the right tools to to work smart. Linux is a great desktop OS for
developers as well as system
administrators. Let us take a look at some of the utilities which makes
this a great environment for system administrators and developers. Most
of the content below is taken from the home pages of these apps and the
I make no claims on the originality. My aim is to introduce the reader
to the
wonderful tools that are available in a Linux/BSD desktop environment.
Konsole
Let’s start from what most people think Linux is all about – a text
based shell. Konsole is what
is known as an X terminal emulator, often referred to as a terminal or
a shell. It gives you the equivalent of an old-fashioned text screen on
your desktop, but one which can easily share the screen with your
graphical applications. What makes Konsole special?
Konsole’s advanced features include simple configuration and the
ability to use multiple terminal shells in a single window, making for
a less cluttered desktop. Konsole is also available as part and
can thus be easily embedded in other applications, like practiced by
Kate and Konqueror.
0 notes