I’ve got a bunch of DVDs and books, and I thought it would be great to have a collection manager to help me keep track of ‘em… so after a little research and starting a discussion on the ubuntu forums, i finally found one I’m gonna try. It’s called GCstar. I installed it in Ubuntu using these instructions, but if you’re a Windows user, you can use these.

So far, I’m enjoying it a bunch. It even has a way to mark if each book is lent out and to whom, and to even keep track of it’s lending history. Pretty snazzy, eh?!

okay, found an article today about a sweet Mac-like application launcher, AWN. figured I’d try it out. found the article here: http://www.tectonic.co.za/view.php?src=rss&id=1881

First I added these two repositories (I just do this through the synaptic package manager)
deb http://download.tuxfamily.org/syzygy42 gutsy avant-window-navigator

deb-src http://download.tuxfamily.org/syzygy42 gutsy avant-window-navigator

update your repositories:
sudo apt-get update

then open a terminal and run these commands one after the other (to add the appropriate apt key):
wget http://download.tuxfamily.org/syzygy42/reacocard.asc
sudo apt-key add reacocard.asc
rm reacocard.asc

then download AWN and its applets:
sudo apt-get install avant-window-navigator-bzr awn-core-applets-bzr

you should then be able to find the taskbar under Applications->Accessories (Avant Window Navigator)

to have it start up with your system, go System->Preferences->Sessions and add a new startup item. AVN’s command is “avant-window-navigator”.

after installing it you’ll have to customize all the application launchers and all that – but it’s pretty cool!

(note: the commands to install have been copied from the article mentioned at the top of this blog – they’re what worked for me to install this program)