Jayhawks Rock

Naturally, I have to do an ode to the ‘Hawks, what with their winning the NCAA Basketball National Championship last night. This after the football team winning the Orange Bowl game in January. Sportswise, a good time to be a Jayhawk these days! As was the case Saturday night when they won the semi-final, there were lots of fireworks in the neighborhood and generally about town immediately after the win, and downtown Lawrence was a solid mass of humans acting out in various ways. The university canceled classes today, and downtown was relatively deserted. Seems a lot of people called in sick at numerous businesses, including the courthouse and county offices. Today’s weather was not especially cooperative, being rainy, but I kind of doubt it dampened things much up on “the hill”. I expect we’ll see a downtown parade before too long. Stephen and Kimberly probably remember the 1988 parade featuring Danny and the Miracles. I do. Yeah, this is pretty cool! We’ll be cheering for the Stanford women’s team tonight.

Potable Apps

Okay, I admit, it’s not really “potable” apps, but “portable apps”. I recently wrote about Knoppix on a stick, and mentioned winPenPack where you can get a whole collection of portable apps installable on a USB stick, a/k/a flash drive. In the Knoppix article I wrote about having/escaping the Linux wireless connection conundrum. The evening I wrote the article, it connected with ease. The following evening, however, I just couldn’t find the right sequence of clicks to get a wireless connection. The bad thing about this portable Linux on a stick is that it doesn’t save configuration settings between boots. Even if you save a file right on the desktop, it’s gone the next time you boot it up. I’m hoping there’s a way around this. But that’s not what this article is about.

Being frustrated with the inability to get Linux connected to the internet, I went back to Windows and went to one of my favorite hangouts — the Sourceforge site. Sourceforge is essentially the home of the Open Source Community. It’s more than just a place to get free programs. It’s a place infused with the energy and mindset that made the internet what it should be. A person could write a lot more about that, but I’ll save it for another time.

While perusing Sourceforge I came across the Portable Apps Project. The same thing also has its own Portable Apps Website. I think Portable Apps might even be better than winPenPack. I downloaded the standard suite and installed it all on one USB stick, and then downloaded a bunch more portable apps to add to it. Having already done a couple of installations of winPenPack and, therefore, being already familiar with how much can packed onto one little USB stick, I was nevertheless again amazed at all the stuff I put on it, and how much space is still left. I was hard pressed to think of anything more to add, that I might conceivably want to have on it. Yet, a visit to the PortableApps website just now revealed several new additions to the list of available apps, particularly, several new games. The standard PortableApps installation includes Sudoku.

Like winPenPack and Knoppix, PortableApps is all free stuff. BTW, I’m back on Knoppix/Linux this evening, while also watching a little March Madness, though I’ll likely be paying more attention to the TV and less attention to the monitor tomorrow, when KU will be playing. Rock Chalk!