Human Compact Themes (for Ubuntu 8.10)
I have now two versions of the theme: one with normal icon sizes, and one with the smaller 16×16 icons for even more compactness. Here is a comparison animation of the standard Human theme vs. the compact theme:
You can download the themes here:
Download and Installation
- Save the theme to your computer.
- Open the gnome’s appearence dialog with System > Preferences > Appearance.
- Drag and drop the downloaded file into the Theme tab of the appearance dialog. If you get an error message “Can’t move directory over directory”, you have already installed a theme with the same name. To be able to reinstall it, remove the directory ~/.themes/Human Compact or ~/.themes/Human Compact Small Icons.
- Choose “Apply new theme” in the popup dialog.
Most changes will occur immediately, but for e.g. the icon sizes it is best to log out and log in again. When you change the theme, you can get the Human Compact theme back by clicking on Customize, and then selecting Human Compact.
Any question, praise or flames? please post them!
Install for root (e.g. Synaptic)
Some readers asked how to get this to work for applications that run as root (e.g. synaptic), so here it is: simply copy the copy the theme file into the root’s home directory, like this (exchange username with your own name):
sudo cp /home/username/.themes/Human\ Compact/gtk-2.0/gtkrc /root/.gtkrc-2.0
Afterwards synaptic uses the human compact theme.
Older Themes
Here is some information about the original compact themes I have created:
- How to Make a Human Compact Theme
- Human Compact Theme (for Ubuntu 8.04)
- Clearlooks Compact Theme (for Ubuntu 8.04)
How to Make a Compact Gnome Theme
UPDATE: Human Compact Theme for Ubuntu 8.10 (Intrepid Ibex) is available!
Well, it is a bit difficult to create a step-by-step tutorial, but I will try anyways. Prepare to fiddle around with your configuration and try it out several times until you get the desired results.
- All your Gnome themes are located under /usr/share/themes. Find the theme of which you want to create a compact one, and copy it into your home directory with e.g.
cp -r /usr/share/themes/Human ~/.themes/Human-Compact
- If there is a file index.theme, open it and change all the names (e.g. add “Compact” where appropriate). This file is necessary if you want to directly choose the theme from the Appearance Preferences; if it is not available you have to choose a theme and select “customize” to select the compact controls for it.
- Now to the fiddling part. Open gtk-2.0/gtkrc, and change lots of thickness and width settings… When you do this, always check how your changes work visibly, e.g. if the application still have usable borders etc. To help with the fiddling, I have added a diff of the Human vs. the Compact theme, you might be able to reuse some of the settings there.
- Once you are satisfied with your theme, you can create a .tar.bz2 distribution for backup or to be used by others, e.g. with this command:
cd ~/.themes tar cjvf ~/Human-Compact.tar.bz2 Human-Compact
- That’s it. Have fun with your theme!
Create High Quality Flash Videos in Ubuntu
I recently got a nice new camera that can shoot HDTV videos, and the only way to show off the awesome quality to the world is by creating flash videos by myself. Here is an example:
I use Ubuntu, so this tutorial won’t work on Windows. I have encoded the video into the H.264 format, left the original resolution at 848 x 480, and the framerate at 30 Hz. I use constant quality setting because then the video look very good even when the camera moves quickly, and it uses less bitrate when not needed. The disadvantage is that the required bitrate is uneven, so make sure youre buffer is large enough before you start playing.
Here is how to do this:
- Encode your video with mencoder (click to install). It has to be x264 for video (0 or 1 bframes), and faac for audio.
- Convert the result into an mp4 using mp4creator (click to install), as described here.
- Now you have an mp4 file that can be played with JW player. Download it, have a look at the readme.html, and follow the example described there.
- The player requires 20 pixels in height, so add this to the SWFObject creation.
I have written a small ruby script to convert any movie to a MP4 file. The first parameter is the input file, second parameter is the framerate. Save this file as e.g. convert2mp4.rb.
Read more
Via Ferrata Teufelsteig
This sunday I was on a fabulous via ferrata (german translation is “Klettersteig”). Here is a video of it:
The via feretta is called Teufelsteig which translates to devli’s steep road.
Walking through difficult terrain, close to the peak
A view around to nearby peaks and chines
Finally, after about 4 hours hiking and climbing, we have reached the peak of 1822m and enjoy the view 
ActionCam Damberg Kriterium
On 29th August, we went on a cool mountain biking trip around the Damberg. Here is a map of the famous Damberg Kriterium. It is about 43 km, and 850 meters in altitude (bikemap overestimates 1040m). It was a fun trip, thanks for Jürgen (who was NOT the organizer) for organizing this! Here is the route:
I got a brand new Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ5, which is an absolutely excellent compact camera. It can record HDTV 16:9 videos, so I did what obviously everybody should do: mount it on a cycling helmet. The construction seems adventurous: I use the camera’s, one cut-off mini tripod, one rubber band, my cycling helmet, the camera’s wristband as a safety backup, and a healthy dose of good faith. That’s it! The whole construct may look a bit fragile, but simplicity is the key; it is actually very sturdy, because of the simple design there is almost nothing that can go wrong. The camera position is excellent too. Jürgen has made a really cool remix of the videos:
If you want the the videos in all their length and glory, I have encoded the clips with very high quality for your maximum viewing pleasure. You need a fast computer, an up-to-date flash player, and a fast internet connection (press play and then pause to start caching the whole clip if the connection is too slow.).