Long time no post

Hello, I'm still alive, but busy in High School, finishing my senior year. I hope that I will have time in my college years to continue this, as compiz moves in new directions.

Indeed, as Compiz Fusion seems to be coming to an end, I may have to rename the cast. At the moment I do not have time enough to make more episodes, and compiz fusion hasn't developed much anyway.

I am pretty sure that this summer I will be able to start 'er up again, maybe with a new name, and start fresh with all new bleeding edge compiz++! :)

Another reason for me posting this is an important message: DO NOT INSTALL VIA GIT ANYMORE. As Kristian mentioned, the new work on Compiz has moved to git, and confused up scripts and how-tos. Just use what Ubuntu ships with; it's up-to-date enough to have all the plugins I've reviewed.

I don't know how many people still check this blog, but I hope to start something again sometime in the near future. :) Thanks for staying subscribed all this time!

--gavin

My new Xwinwrap gui Gwinwrap

I'm pleased to announce the first public version of my pygtk app Gwinwrap. It's still very new, and most likely buggy, but if you feel like trying it the code is at Google Code.

Basically, it finds all your xscreensavers and lists them, with a preview. You can choose to start the xwinwrap screen with opacity, and choose whether or not to use a nice command before for better cpu management. Xscreensaver Arguments are also accepted in the input box.

Hope you like it!

FusionCast VI -- New Plugin: Stackswitch

Well, here we are already with another episode. Keep in mind that I plan on making shorter, more specific episodes now for easier searching on Youtube, etc. Because of this, the episode numbers are less important and more emphasis is on the plugin/features outlined.

Watch the original video here for annotations, and/or if you're coming from the planet.

Can you Digg it? >> Thanks everyone for putting this on the front page! And welcome, diggers!



This episode, we show you an all-new plugin: Stackswitch! Added by Onestone to gitweb, this plugin is a neat hybrid of the scale and shift window switchers. Take a look at the video for details!

Thanks a whole lot to Kate Linford for personally offering her track, "Hip Hop Bond" to use on this cast. I think you'll find it quite outstanding! A link to the track may be made available later.

Links:
Stackswitch on Gitweb
Original Announcement (onestone's blog)

Please email me at fusioncast at gmail dot com!
I am on IRC occasionally under the nick of gavintlgold on irc.freenode.net #compiz-fusion.
Also, comment by clicking on the link below.

Tip: did you know that you can sort my posts by the label "episodes" to only see my episodes and cut out the announcements and stuff?

FusionCast Episode V - Ghost + Dodge!

NOTE: I would seriously recommend watching this from the Youtube page. You'll get the annotations that way and they'll clarify a few things. I'm putting the video here anyway for lazy people:



Here's a new episode of FusionCast! This time, we run through a couple of things you can do with the similar plugins Ghost and Dodge (not to be confused with the dodge animation!). These plugins are available only with the developmental version of Compiz Fusion (GIT).

Ghost: This plugin (in its default settings) makes all normal windows set to "Always on Top" transparent and inputless. In other words, you can click underneath the window but still see it. This can be useful for typing in commands, but also (I imagine) for image editing without having to import a photo into the image editor (see the video's example).

I changed the settings to this because I found it worked better (Allowing windows that aren't "normal" to ghost too):


Dodge: This plugin also lets you have windows on top without worrying about using their input. Instead of making the window transparent, it slides it out of the way when your cursor would be over it. Other ways of dodging are making the window go all the way off the screen and physically move (where it will remain until it is moved again). The wobbly effect really makes this plugin great. My custom configuration follows:


Oh, for those who thought this was pointless because the plugins are already pretty old, I am active now and you'll get a more useful, up to date video soon. This video is after all geared towards those who don't have GIT compiz I suppose. :) Horray for summer!

Links:
Ghost on gitweb
Dodge on gitweb


Please email me at fusioncast at gmail dot com!
I am on IRC occasionally (at irc.freenode.net #compiz-fusion) under the nick of gavintlgold.
Also, comment by clicking on the link below.

FusionCast on Twitter!

I just joined Twitter as FusionCast. If anyone is interested feel free to add me :) Videos coming very soon... I've updated my compiz and am now figuring out which new plugin to feature! (see the twitter for more updates!)

Youtube Annotations + More Vids to Come!

A very interesting feature that may be extremely useful for me is the new Youtube Annotations feature. Take a look at the page of my latest fusioncast for an example. It allows me to put notes in the middle of the cast. I think it'll be very useful in the future. What do you think?

Speaking of the future, I am now out of school (summer!) That means that I'll have considerably more time to work on video casts. Expect quite a few coming up! And tell me if they should have annotations too. Thanks!

Compiz Fusion Sphere is here! Yay!

All hail Desktop Sphere!

Finally, onestone has managed to code the desktop sphere many people were waiting for! He wrote about it on his blog. It's quite a neat plugin, and also merges the cubecaps plugin with the cube addon plugin, making for less plugins to worry about (the cubecaps plugin was sort of minor in the configurations, anyway).

Only available in git of course, but great to try out for those of us who have access to that ;)

And digg it too so others know: http://digg.com/linux_unix/Compiz_Fusion_Truly_Spherical_Desktop_View_Arrives

Blog post: http://dev.compiz-fusion.org/~onestone/blog/?p=10

Edit: sorry about messing up the planet, it's an annoying bug :(

Edit 2: To clarify, the sphere is available in the "Cubeaddon" plugin.