geany's color chooser

How convenient! The Geany text editor has a color chooser -- for some reason, I hadn't noticed that before, but I'll certainly take advantage of it from now on!

a little more about that shutdown script

So, what is gxmessage (which I wrote about earlier, here and here)? A description:

Gxmessage is an xmessage clone for GTK based desktops. Gxmessage pops up a dialog window, displays a given message or question, then waits for the user's response. That response is returned as the program's exit code. Because gxmessage is a drop-in alternative to xmessage, gxmessage accepts any option xmessage would, and returns the same exit codes.

From: https://trmusson.dreamhosters.com/programs.html#gxmessage

From your Linux system, if you have gxmessage installed, you should have access to the man gxmessage document. Or the manpage can be found online -- see: https://helpmanual.io/man1/gxmessage/. (Arch Linux currently has that same May 25th, 2015 version of man gxmessage.)

Looks like the earliest mention of a gxmessage script for logging out of Openbox was posted online at "urukrama's weblog" back in 2007 (see: https://urukrama.wordpress.com/2007/12/03/confirm-to-shut-down-reboot-or-log-out-in-openbox/). Here's the script back then:

#!/bin/bash

gmessage "Are you sure you want to shut down your computer?" -center -title "Take action" -font "Sans bold 10" -default "Cancel" -buttons "_Cancel":1,"_Log out":2,"_Reboot":3,"_Shut down":4 >/dev/null

case $? in
1)
echo "Exit";;
2)
killall openbox;;
3)
sudo shutdown -r now;;
4)
sudo shutdown -h now;;
esac

Well, that script used gmessage instead of gxmessage, and there are other differences compared to the script I'm using now, in Arch:

#!/bin/bash

gxmessage "Shut down the computer?" -center -title "Take action" -font "Sans bold 10" -default "Cancel" -buttons "_Cancel":1,"_Log Out":2,"_Reboot":3,"_Shut Down":4 >/dev/null

case $? in
    1)
        echo "Exit";;
    2)
        openbox --exit;;
    3)
        systemctl reboot;;
    4)
        systemctl poweroff;;
esac

Anyway, I think that the great Openbox guru "urukrama" should get the credit for coming up with the script. And, who is/was "urukrama"? Along with "urukrama's weblog", I found the following:

https://www.opendesktop.org/u/urukrama/
https://github.com/urukrama

to dethrone a champ

The series stats for the 2019 NBA Finals: https://www.basketball-reference.com/playoffs/2019-nba-finals-warriors-vs-raptors.html

That page will be updated as the Finals continue. Toronto leads Golden State 3 games to 1, with a chance to clinch the title Monday in Toronto. I'm pulling for the Raptors to win it all, but the hoop fan in me hopes that the series goes 7 games, regardless of which team ultimately prevails.

Intriguing, entertaining series so far! Injuries and a very capable opponent have made things very difficult for Golden State. The Warriors have their backs to the wall, but if any team is capable of overcoming a 3-1 deficit in the NBA Finals, it's this one.

If that happens, it'll be a huge story, obviously; it would be Golden State's third straight title, their fourth in five years -- and this time against seemingly insurmountable odds. They'd have to somehow win three in a row, with a Game 5 and a Game 7 on the road. But the Toronto Raptors winning Canada's first NBA Championship (and having to dethrone a great champion in the process) would also be a huge story! I can't wait to see how this plays out.

testing netinstall

I did my 2nd Debian Buster (Testing) netinstall (I was gonna hold off on doing that, but found myself with some time to kill), this time going with Openbox instead of a full DE:

I added Fluxbox; in those sessions, I'm using the tint2 panel instead of the Fluxbox toolbar, so the desktop looks very much like my Openbox desktoop:

From what I can tell, the move from Testing to Stable for Debian 10 ("Buster") could happen any day now; everything looks great!

openbox shutdown, revisited

A few years back, I wrote about the shutdown script I was using in Openbox (see: "openbox shutdown"). Lately, I've been using a similar script, but with a couple of changes that make things simpler here.

I replaced the sudo shutdown -r now and sudo shutdown -h now commands with systemctl reboot and systemctl poweroff, respectively. Not an acceptable option for systemd-haters, but oh well.

My ~/shutdown-script file in Debian Buster Openbox (again, this requires the gxmessage package) looks like this:

#!/bin/bash

gmessage "Shut down the computer?" -center -title "Take action" -font "Sans bold 10" -default "Cancel" -buttons "_Cancel":1,"_Log Out":2,"_Reboot":3,"_Shut Down":4 >/dev/null

case $? in
    1)
        echo "Exit";;
    2)
        openbox --exit;;
    3)
        systemctl reboot;;
    4)
        systemctl poweroff;;
esac

After making that file executable, I added a "shutdown" entry in my Openbox menu, using the ~/shutdown-script command.

The same script works for me in Openbox in Arch, except I had to replace the word "gmessage" with "gxmessage" in the script.

Nothing fancy, just a "Take action" message box, plain and simple:

diggin' lts

From https://www.debian.org/lts/:

Debian Long Term Support (LTS) is a project to extend the lifetime of all Debian stable releases to (at least) 5 years. Debian LTS is not handled by the Debian security team, but by a separate group of volunteers and companies interested in making it a success.

I like this. I've taken advantage of this project with the Jessie-based BunsenLabs "Deuterium" (which was like a point release of BunsenLabs "Hydrogen"), keeping it running here past four years since Jessie was first released. That's gone smoothly, and I'm even thinking that I'll hang onto that one until the Buster-based BL "Lithium" comes out later this year.

I may do something similar with my Debian Stretch Openbox/Fluxbox installation; I'm in no hurry to move to Debian 10 ("Buster") with that one.

I'm also using Kubuntu 18.04, which is an LTS release; my first go-round with a Long Term Support release from the Ubuntu side started back around 2006, with Kubuntu 6.06. There are situations that come up where an LTS release can really come in handy, so it's nice that Ubuntu and Debian offer them. I try to find a way to make sure I have an up-to-date web browser (maybe go outside of the repos for that), but as for other software, often there's no real need for the "latest and greatest".

Some good Debian LTS info here:

https://wiki.debian.org/LTS
https://wiki.debian.org/LTS/Using