Dynamic Subspace

Category: Computers

Customize Xfce on Debian 12 Bookworm to Look Like BeOS and Haiku OS
This weekend, I installed Debian 12 Bookworm with Xfce desktop environment on my desktop computer, because I wanted a pure Xfce installation on top of a distro running a 6.0 or higher kernel to theme as close to BeOS as I can get.

As I’ve written about before here, I have fond memories of using BeOS on my old PowerMacintosh 8500/120. When I used it on that hardware, it felt like the future. Many of its features were ahead of its time for a desktop computing environment. It was also incredibly easy to navigate and interact with due to its colors, icons, and textured UI elements.

I believe that BeOS and Haiku OS have GUIs that are easy to see and interact with, because they aren’t flattened to death like most contemporary operating systems, which have less contrast and textured borders that hinder visual comprehension and interaction.

I tried installing Xubuntu, but after installation, I was greeted by the login prompt, I entered my credentials, received a black screen (NB: not rebooting–for some reason the DE wouldn’t launch and it would kick me back to the login screen), and was greeted again by the login prompt. Since that was a fresh installation, I was concerned about the long-term stability of it on my computer. Hence, I tried out Debian 12, which installed and booted without a hitch!

In addition to reinstalling Automatic1111 for Stable Diffusion for AI image generation and Llama.cpp for AI text generation, I set about theming Xfce to look as much like BeOS as possible.

I describe step-by-step how to make Xfce mimic BeOS in the sections below.

Window Manager Theme

Perhaps the most notable aspect of BeOS/Haiku’s look-and-feel is the yellow, tabbed window title bar. Some tutorials suggest using the BeOS-r5-XFWM theme, but I opted for the Haiku-Alpha theme, because it only keeps the close window tic box and eliminates the other options such as minimize, maximize, etc., which you can still operate by setting one option to title bar double clicks and others from the drop-down right-click menu.

Decompress the downloaded file and move the resulting folder into ~/.themes (remember to turn on “show hidden files and folders” in your file manager, and create the .themes folder if it does not already exist). Then, go to Settings > Window Manager > select Haiku-Alpha. Also, set the font to Swis721 BT Bold size 9 (see font section below for more info).

Appearance Theme

To give Xfce the general look-and-feel of BeOS’s relatively high contrast interface (by today’s modern, flat interface standards), I installed the BeOS-r5-GTK theme.

Decompress the downloaded file and move the resulting folder into ~/.themes. Then, go into Settings > Appearance > Style > select BeOS-r5-GTK-master.

Next, click on the Fonts tab. For Default Font, select Swis721 BT Regular size 9, and for Default Monospace Font, select Courier 10 Pitch Regular size 10 (see Font section below for more info).

Fonts

There are two essential fonts, which can be easily found through Google searches: Swis721 BT Roman and Courier 10 Pitch for Powerline.

Once downloaded, move the ttf files into ~/.fonts (remember to turn on “show hidden files and folders” in your file manager, and create the .themes folder if it does not already exist).

There are two main areas where the fonts need to be set. First, go to Settings > Window Manager > Style tab and set the Title font to Swis721 BT Bold size 9. Then, go to Settings > Appearance > Fonts tab and set the Default Font to Swis721 BT Regular size 9 and set the Default Monospace Font to Courier 10 Pitch Regular size 10.

Mouse Cursors

The hand mouse cursor is an integral element of BeOS’s look-and-feel. I opted to use HaikuHand reHash.

Decompress the downloaded file and move its folder into ~/.icons (remember to turn on “show hidden files and folders” in your file manager, and create the .themes folder if it does not already exist). Then, select HaikuHand reHash in Settings > Mouse and Touchpad > Theme.

Icons

The isometric view icons for BeOS capture that mid-to-late-1990s era of gesturing towards 3D through 2D designs. Vaporware Mac System 8 Copland exemplified this aesthetic, too (but aspects of it found its way into the eventual MacOS 8 and others incorporated its design elements into shareware like Aaron and the Iconfactory’s innovative icon sets. I created some icons in this style, too.

To make Xfce as BeOS-like as possible, I used the BeOS-r5-Icons pack.

Decompress the downloaded file and move it into ~/.icons (remember to turn on “show hidden files and folders” in your file manager, and create the .themes folder if it does not already exist). Then, go to Settings > Appearance > Icons tab > select BeOS-r5-Icons.

Desktop

There are BeOS desktop wallpaper pictures that you can download and set as your wallpaper. However, I wanted a simpler solid color background. To achieve this, go to Settings > Desktop. Set Style to “None,” and set Color to “Solid color.” Then, click on the color rectangle to the right of Color, and next, click on the “+” under Custom and enter this hex value for the default deep blue BeOS desktop color: #336698.

Dock

After a lot of head-hitting-the-desk, I settled on using the Xfce’s Panel instead of a more visually interesting dock that used a BeOS-inspired theme (e.g., BeOS-dr8-DockbarX). I was able to get DockbarX installed from source eventually, but I couldn’t get the Xfce4 DockbarX plugin to work with the Xfce Panel. It wasn’t from a lack of trying! It’s worth trying to get those installed–you might have better luck. For me, I needed to move on, so I settled on customizing the Xfce panel to meet my needs and fit the BeOS aesthetic well enough. I went to Settings > Panel > Display tabl to set Panel 1 in Deskbar Mode, set the Row size to 48 with 1 row and ticked “Automatically increase the length. On the Appearance tab, I set the Fixed icon size to 48.

On the Items tab, I clicked the preferences for the Applications Menu, removed the Button title and changed the Icon to the isometric 3D Be logo (this will be an option after you’ve installed the icons pack as described above in the Icons section).

It would be easy to configure the panel to be more like the original Deskbar in BeOS, too. The main changes needed would be to increase the Number of rows to 4 or 5, change the Application menu icon to the flat “BeOS” logo icon (included in the icon pack installation in the Icons section above).

And, it’s important to remember that there was not one, eternal version of BeOS. As with any developed software, it changed over time with its UI and look-and-feel changing with it. For me, the 1996 Developer Release is what I remember most because I ran it on bare metal on my PowerMacintosh 8500/120. It continued to evolve and change after that in ways that I am less familiar with.

QMMP/Winamp Skin

If you use QMMP for listening to music on your computer, you’ll need to grab a Winamp skin to give it the BeOS look and title bar. BeAmp Too is my favorite. There are a few others available if you search for “beos” on the Winamp Skin Museum.

Whichever one you choose, download the zip file for the theme to your Downloads folder. Then, open QMMP, right click on the title bar and choose Settings, click on the Appearances section on the left, click the Skins tab, and then click on “Add…” at the bottom, navigate to your downloaded theme zip file and select it. QMMP will copy the file into the ~/.qmmp/skins directory for you. Select the theme on the Appearances > Skins tab to activate the theme.

Other Tweaks

The following are other tweaks to Xfce that I prefer for daily use.

Disable overlay/auto hiding scrollbars

Edit /etc/environment and add the line
```
GTK_OVERLAY_SCROLLING=0 
```
Save the file. Logout and login to see the change take effect.

White font for desktop items

Go to ~/.config/gtk-3.0/ and create a file named gtk.css (edit this file if it already exists). Add these lines to it:
```
XfdesktopIconView.label {
    color: white;
}
```
Save the file. Logout and login to see the change take effect.

Consistent Scroll Bar Speed

In folders with many files, I have noticed that if I begin scrolling but slow down a little, the speed of scrolling after that point for the rest of my mouse-down drag will be EXCEEDINGLY slow. This is by design–a feature called zoom scrolling. Well, I don’t like it. If you don’t like it either, you can tame it by setting the trigger time to longer than the default of 500 milliseconds. To do this, go to ~/.config/gtk-3.0/ and create a file named settings.ini (edit this file if it already exists). Add these lines to it:
```
[Settings]
gtk-long-press-time=5000
```
Save the file. Logout and login to see the change take effect.

Thanks to:

An unnamed Reddit user (their account has been deleted) posted an excellent write up of their BeOS-r5-XFCE theming of XFCE in r/unixporn that gave me a roadmap for what was possible.

Metsatron, Roberto21, Retardtonic, and Xu Zhen for their respective work on the components that make this customization possible.

The Debian community for Bookworm.

And thanks to the Haiku OS developers who are keeping the BeOS dream alive!
June 25, 2023
Linkages in Making: Assembling a Bandai 1/144 Millennium Falcon Rise of Skywalker Model and Creating a Composite Image of the Falcon Among the Stars

Introduction

This week, I created the composite image above of the Millennium Falcon midflight among the stars. This most recent exercise in making was made possible by the Falcon model at the center of the composition that I assembled in June 2021 while healing from a broke toe.

I like to think about how one project links to another, how one kind of making supports another kind of making. Making and culture go hand-in-hand. One new thing makes possible countless new things given tools, materials, and know-how.

In this case, I assembled and painted a Bandai 1/144-scale Millennium Falcon plastic model set from Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. Proper assembly, though by no means professional, required tools (e.g., sprue cutter, paint brushes, and toothpicks), materials (e.g., plastic model glue, acrylic paints, and tape), and know-how (e.g., cutting, filing, gluing, and mixing paints and washes).

A year later, I created the science fictional composite image above. Its production required tools (e.g., Linux Mint-running desktop computer, GNU Image Manipulation Program, or aka GIMP, and the Internet), materials (e.g., the assembled model, a photo of the model in an orientation appropriate for the composite image, and a public domain photo of a star field), and know-how (e.g., an idea for what the finished product will look like, a workflow for using GIMP to achieve it, and an understanding of how to use GIMP’s affordances including layers, opacity, and filters for each stage of the workflow).

Assembling the Model

The completed Bandai 1/144 Millennium Falcon model is only about 9 1/4″ long. Hence, it and its constituent parts are very tiny. I built and painted the model over the course of a week. Given more time and equipment, I would have liked to have done a more professional job with lots of masking and airbrushed paint. Given my limitations, I decided to have fun and use what I had at hand to assemble and paint the model.

One example of the assembly process is pictured below. It involves the cockpit. Even though the model is sold as the Falcon from The Rise of Skywalker, it included Han Solo and Chewbacca figures, which I decided to use instead of the other cast miniatures. For these detailed elements of the model, I used a combination of toothpicks, very fine brushes, and dabs of paint to achieve the intended effect.

The pictures below show the assembled cockpit with shaky, imperfect paint application on the left and remnants of the dark wash that I applied to age and highlight lines on the model’s surface on the right.

The photos below show the completed model perched on its included, adjustable stand.

Overall, Bandai’s model was expertly designed, easy to assemble, and highly respectful of its source material.

Creating the Composite Image in GIMP

The Bandai 1/144-scale Falcon sits on my desk to the left of my keyboard between LEGO models of The Mandalorian’s N-1 and the Millennium Falcon from The Force Awakens (It’s safe to say that I aspire to have as cluttered and interesting workspace as Ray Bradbury has in the opening to Ray Bradbury Theater shown here). So, I see it everyday.

Recently, I was thinking wouldn’t it be fun to use it to create an in-flight image using the model. That stray thought picked up the thread from making the model and began creating a linkage to using the model to create something new–a fantastic image of the Falcon flying in outerspace.

Looking through my photos, I selected the one below due to it’s orientation and composition within the photo’s rectangular frame.

I cut out the Falcon and added it to its own layer with a translucent background in GIMP. I selected all of the window areas in the cockpit and adjusted the brightness and contrast to make the interior a little more recognizable. Then, I adjusted the shadows and exposure to make the Falcon’s exterior “pop.” Next, I used the clone tool to copy matte colors to hide some of the shinier/mirrored spots (especially in the dish and in the panels directly beneath the dish). And, I used the clone and smudge tools to fill in a gap between top and bottom parts of the cockpit (the black line as seen above).

To put the Falcon in outer space, I created a base layer and pasted a star field image from NASA (found here).

On the ventral side of the Falcon, you can see that the sides of the lower mandible are catching light that throws off the image if we’re imagining one light source (e.g., a star–of course, there could be two stars, but most of the ventral side of the Falcon is in shadow, so I wanted to stick to that). So I selected those bright areas and then used the clone tool to copy that coloration from either side–the left side looks redder and the right side more neutral–onto its own layer. I set the clone tool to 50% opacity to control the shade as shown below.

To make the scene appear more alive, I added layers for the headlights (a center circle of very bright yellow with crossed Block 03 brushes at 45 and 135 degrees for the diffraction spikes with a smidge of Gaussian blur).

And finally, the Falcon needs its engines, which I created with a large, single brush stroke with neon blue light (##04d9ff) with 95% hardness but only 44% force (not that kind!).

Conclusion

A plastic model building project from the past makes another project of science fictional image manipulation possible. Making in the present is linked to making in the past. This is the general work of culture–linkages up and down time, across geographies and nations, circuitous and not always obvious. This blog post is a microcosm of the macrocosmic work of inhabiting and building our culture. I suggest in closing that we should all reflect and chart these linkages. We might not be able to map them all, but those that we do, pays a debt of gratitude perhaps both ways–we in the present rely on that we are given from the past and the past lives on through the work that we do today.

Download the full size composite Falcon image here.

June 23, 2023
Updates to the Neuroscience and Science Fiction Literature Chronological Bibliography

Brain illuminated from within and transparent face. My brain MRI scan used with ControlNet. Image created by Stable Diffusion.

Following my recent updates of the Generative AI and Pedagogy Bibliography and Skateboarding Studies Bibliography, I’m happy to announce that I’ve made significant changes and additions to the Neuroscience and Science Fiction Literature Chronological Bibliography that I created on 2 April 2015 but hadn’t updated since 2019.

Overall, the page now has a table of contents that helps with understanding and navigating the page’s wealth of information. In the primary source list, I added headings and dividers for decades and years with the titles in each year being alphabetized by author’s last name. Also, the biggest improvement was reformatting each entry in the latest MLA style with information gleaned from my research and the Internet Speculative Fiction Database. Those stories and chapters that I did not have on hand are therefore listed without inclusive page numbers (I will add these as I source each item). In the secondary sources list, I reordered these alphabetically by author’s last name as these are a reference source and chronology isn’t as important as it is for the primary source list.

The number of sources listed in the primary source list increased 61% from 103 to 166. Each includes parenthetical notes about the specific brain-related narrative elements. Many thanks to James Davis Nicoll and the commenters on his “Get Out of My Head: SFF Stories About Sharing Brain-Space With Someone Else” (Tor.com, 8 Nov. 2018) article for contributing some of the new titles to the primary source list.

The number of second sources increased 141% from 17 to 41, which includes a French title that I can’t wait to get my hands on: Laurent Vercueil’s Neuro-Science-Fiction (Le Bélial, 2022).

I’ll continue adding to this bibliography as well as the others that I maintain as a part of my research interests. If you have a useful source that I should add, please send it my way. Also, I’m open to collaboration, so let me know if you’re likewise inclined and would like to discuss a project!

June 11, 2023
Updates to the Generative AI and Pedagogy Bibliography

A cute humanoid robot writing at a desk with bookshelf in background. Image created with Stable Diffusion.

Over the weekend, I made some significant updates to the Generative AI and Pedagogy Bibliography and Resource List page, which includes background, debates, teaching approaches, applications, disciplinary research, and a list of online resources. I started it as a place to organize my own research while sharing it back out to others.

It now features a table of contents at the top of the page under the introduction.

I added about 50 articles and books to the bibliography, which now contains 232 sources.

And, I added three links to the resource list at the bottom of the page which brings it to 42 links.

I will periodically add more entries to the list as my own research progresses. But, it’s important to note that this bibliography isn’t meant to be exhaustive.

June 5, 2023
2023 Spring Recess Updates

I wanted to make the most of this year’s Spring Recess. Below are a few things that I accomplished during this late semester respite: a computer storage upgrade, installing Mac OS X Leopard on QEMU, finding Star Wars action figures on eBay, beginning a generative AI and pedagogy bibliography, and spending time with Y.

Upgraded My Desktop Computer’s Boot Drive

Inside my desktop computer after installing 2TB NVMe SSD.

I took advantage of a BestBuy deal on 2TB Samsung 970 EVO Plus NVMe SSDs to upgrade my desktop computer’s boot drive. Originally, I had a 512GB NVMe drive installed. I had pulled out the wifi card that was in the secondary M.2 slot awhile back. So, I moved the 512GB to that slot (under the video card as pictured above) and installed the 2TB Samsung drive into the primary M.2 slot (just above the video card as pictured above). With the hardware installation done, I reinstalled Linux Mint 21.1, which I run on my desktop and laptop computers.

Installing Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard on QEMU

Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard running in QEMU.

Since I reinstalled Linux Mint, I thought that it was a good opportunity to play around with QEMU. For most of my Macintosh emulation needs (mostly System 7.5.5 for Apple’s HotSauce and Voyager’s Expanded Books but occasionally earlier versions that best support some Hypercard stacks and other older software), I rely on SheepShaver and Basilisk II. QEMU-System-PPC supports Mac OS 9.x through Mac OS X 10.5. After Mac OS X 10.9 Mavericks, Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard was my favorite version of Mac OS X, so I picked it for QEMU. After grabbing an ISO from archive.org, it was a short order to install and use Leopard. I had hoped to use an older version of OsiriX to look at the MRI that I had at the University of Liverpool (contemporary DICOM viewers have trouble opening the files), but I should have read the documentation first and seen that OpenGL was a non-starter on the regular version of QEMU.

Star Wars Action Figures from eBay

Star Wars Vintage Collection and Kenner/Retro Collection action figures.

At the beginning of Spring Recess, I hit eBay and racked up some good deals with bidding and best offers on 3.75″ Hasbro Vintage Collection action figures, Hasbro Retro Collection action figures, and Kenner action figures. I don’t like to collect action figures in their packages. I like to create scenes with them for display. With these new acquisitions, I plan to create some Empire and Return of the Jedi scenes with my 1979 Kenner Millennium Falcon (not pictured) and 2008 Hasbro Legacy Collection Millennium Falcon (pictured above, aka the Big Falcon).

Compiling a Bibliography of Generative AI Technologies and Pedagogy Resources

I compiled all of my current research on Generative AI technologies and how they might be used in teaching on this page. It’s not an exhaustive list, but it has a lot of recent publications. It can help someone get up to speed on what’s going on now with ChatGPT, Stable Diffusion, and other AI tools to create text, images, and music from prompts.

Y and I also got to spend time catching up via video chat with my cousin Angie in Maryland and our graduate school friend Masaya in Japan. We enjoyed a walk in Green-Wood Cemetery just before we were awash in tree pollen. And, we watched a lot of Family Guy, too.

Stewie and Rupert from Family Guy.

April 16, 2023