When I left Mac for Ubuntu, there were a few programs that I missed. Skitch, this really amazing screenshot app that integrates with the web and causes your colleagues to deposit copious amounts of drool on their keyboards when they see the quality of your work product, was right underneath Scrivener in the most missed category. (Funny, all the programs that I really miss seem to start with an S...) I'd sort of given up and reverted to taking screenshots and then editing them with a combination of GIMP and Inkscape. Then I found Shutter.
This little jewel does everything I need it do quickly and with a minimal of fuss. It has some nice plugins, a built in editor, and a low learning curve. Nice, eh? Here are some screenshots I took playing around. It took longer to open up the other programs than it did to figure out Shutter. So I'm in love with a computer program. So what? Look at this way, this means that next set of Knitter's Guides, which are going much better on the new computer, won't take nearly as long to create as the first ones did!
Click the images to see them full size.
You can change the red text and blue background defaults, but I didn't see the need for this quick demo.
So um... I have a choice. I can spend the next month testing my website on every web browser known to man (I don't know if Martians use web browsers. If they do, I suggest downloading one from earth.) or write more patterns/knit. I'm leaning towards knitting. It's more fun and lot easier on the eyes than sitting in front of a computer screen all day hitting the refresh button. So I am calling on you, dear reader, to help me out.
On November 29, 2009, I will draw three names from the comments (with the help of a random number generator).
1st Prize: $25 Gift Certificate to WEBS (or $25 via paypal if you're outside the continental US)
2nd and 3rd Prize: Electronic Copy of Shalott Socks (Ravelry Link) (My Site Link)
WIP and Site News contains more details about the recent makeover and a screenshot of the first design, which didn't quite make the cut.
(Using Firefox 3.5.5)
At least for me, the capital A in About at the top of the page looks slightly blurry. I'd also consider making the bullets in the side bar slightly darker, as at first I thought that my screen was dirty, not that they were part of the site.
Also, you have a spelling error in your article about Japanese short row toes. You should be able to put your work down without losing your place, not without loosing your place.
Nice catch!
(And this is the reason you don't do global search and replace in SQL, everyone!)
Thanks!
Not an HTML issue but a grammar one. In the text of your guide to Inkscape, the word knitter's should be knitters because it is a plural and not a possessive.
I like the idea of the monochromatic color scheme a lot, and LOVE the way the pictures are set up - gorgeous! I also love the amount and quality of resources and patterns you have on the site :)
The only two things I think are niggling at me are: the black/white is a little stark and cold...and also, for the "Recent Posts" and "Resources" areas under the pictures are rather large and there isn't separation, so it looks a little...jumbled. I know it's not the most scientific explanation, but good luck with the beta testing!
I checked it out using Safari 4.0.4
Looks good- not glitches or odd, nonintuitive features. I like the links to web based software resources. and alternate OS tools. Nice clean site- easy to folow and read. Colors looked good.
I love the images on the main page. They are certainly beautiful and vibrant but I would love if they cycled in a slow slide show so that while reading the rest of the page if something catches your eye you can go to look at it. many people have limited time in their day so being able to see the images while doing something else is a great time saver and attention grabbing!
Love the clean look. I think the header could use a little color or graphical element, but that might be just me. The one issue I see is that the search box on the lower right of the header isn't labeled as such. It's just ... a box. I clicked on it initially thinking it might be an image or other element that hadn't loaded. A little magnifying glass image beside it would make all the difference.
Hello from France!
The bits about web design, and all that technical stuff is a little beyond me, but makes me think "you should really try and get your head around it".
Other than that I really like the simple, attractive and unfussy layout, and love the links. Especially "what not to knit".
You are now on my bookmark list.
Thanks for pointing out the connection issues. I tried to optimize the back end of the site for quicker load times, but wasn't sure I succeeded. It sounds like the back end is doing alright. (Yeah!)
I was going for a starker, more clean design that what you see with a lot of knitting sites. I've thought about adding a little more color or a few pictures to sidebar, but haven't made up my mind. I don't want colors or photos detracting from the site's content and I certainly don't want the colors to clash with the yarn or make the writing illegible.
I'll play around with it some and see if I can improve things a little, but no promises. (I'm a plain jane type myself, so I'll probably ask my sister for a little color advice.)
Thanks for letting me know which browser you're using. Safari is one of the ones that I couldn't do more than a Litmus.com test for. That's why I stuck the irritating banner on the top. If all goes well, the banner should disappear in a few weeks.
Thanks for the input. Videos are a planned improvement. I hope to purchase a small video camera sometime in the next few weeks. (After confirming all bills will be paid for the month.)
I'm still thinking on the color issue. I might lighten up the sides a little or something, but that's something I won't try on the public site. Thanks for the input!
P.S. I hope to make the Foxfire bar go away as soon as I've confirmed IE and Safari work okay.
I'll have to think about this one long and hard. (I already had a mental block with the colored Ravelry and Twitter buttons. I was worried they might clash with future projects...) Thanks for the input!
Not silly at all. I'm so used to looking at it, I didn't even notice the sentence spacing. I wonder if there's some CSS magic that may fix that... I'll have to look into it.
I like that the pictures at the top of the page are big. I often wish the pictures on blogs would be bigger. And the way you can scroll from one to the other is cool. Haven't seen that before.
No browser issues as far as I can tell and the only thing I can possibly think of that I don't like is so silly. Not even worth mentioning, but you asked. In your paragraph above, it doesn't look like there are any spaces after the periods. There are, I can tell when I highlight the words, but the sentences look too close together. I know - silly.
Nice site. Thanks for having a contest. :)
I really like the layout of the site, it is very straight forward, neat and organized.
One thing to possibly consider is using some more pictures in the design. There is a lot black and white and text. While I don't think you need to have graphics and pictures all over the place (that would mess with the clean-cut design you have going on), it would give the site a little more visual interest.
I like the information available, esp. the patterns. The Foxfire bar was annoying till I realized I could close it. Having information on how to utilize programs is great too. I do agree that having a bit more color would be nice on a knitting site, but maybe that is a planned enhancement!
Well, all the places I went, the links were working just fine. :) I liked all the photos/close-ups in the tutorials. Thanks. I'm a visual learner, so lots of pictures or videos really help.
I like the site. Well thought out. Well executed. The only problem that I have so far is that I'm browsing in Safari 4.0.4 on a Mac, and that your site is optimized for Firefox. I know this, because it pops up a banner across the top, like the Internet Explorer pop up bar. This one is orange and says that the site is optimized for Firefox and wants me to Get Firefox. There is a close option on the bar, but I generally can't be bothered to click on random links that are obviously not part of the website content. The main issue that arises from this is that it stays on the top of each page until closed. That means that it covers everything above the cross bars of the 'e' in The and Penguin. I would either ditch the bar, or at least pad the top of the style sheet down to account for the bar. It's nice to be able to see the name of the site...
It like that is isn't so cluttered with stuff that it takes forever to load on my pokey little computer, but it seems a bit stark. For a site for knitting, I'd expect more color and a few more pictures. Just don't add so much that it starts taking a longer time to load the page. Remember, not everyone has a fast computer or high speed connection.
I live that you don't have a busy background for your blog posts. However the white is rather black especially sandwiched in between the wide dark gray bars on the sides. The light colored backgrounds that I see in the comments are much easier to read--there is a nice pale blue and a creamy yellow that I see in the comment section that are very soothing to the eyes.
I love the design of your site overall. One thing I noticed that bugged me - when you visit the blog you see every comment posted for every entry. It's not a huge deal, but for a post where you will have a lot of comments (like this one, for example), it's a bit cumbersome.
I'll add the line-up issue to the list. I think the problem is that the pictures aren't all the same height...
The Penguin logo bit the dust during the redesign, but I call it the Knitting Penguin because I blog about knitting and linux (occasionally at the same time).
I'm thrilled you liked the About section. I was a little unsure about it and almost didn't post it.
Thank you.
I love the design of the blog / site; it is really easy to navigate. The top menu is great, although maybe you could have a roll-over of the sub-menus to make it even easier to navigate. Also, when you click on the knitting techniques and designs pages, the individual entries in the page don't 'line up' - there are some that are higher than others, rather than making a smooth, straight grid of entries IYKWIM... fussy, I know, but you asked!
Also, I really really like the bit about you; it is rare that you get a real feel for the person in question from the about me bit....well done!
All in all, love the site (but where is the penguin?!)
Can you put some space between the lines (maybe line spacing at 1.5 or double-spaced) for links? The second line of text is touching the underscore/underline from the previous line. Hope this makes sense!
Very informative. However, when I clicked on the decoding and charting cables link I came up with this error
404 Error
Oops! I can't find this page. Likely, this happened during the move. The Knitter's Guides to Inkscape and Open Office are now under Designer Resources. Designs and Patterns are all under the Designs tab. Ubuntu content is still blog posts.
Please use the search box in the header to find what you're looking for.
This site looks great! I found that I'm getting a 404 Error page when clicking on the "more..." links for the patterns shown at the top. Outside of that the pages are all really clean and nicely designed. Great job! :)
I know I started this off as WIP (work in progress for you non-acronym types) but the site news is a little more important to the future of this site and the Knitter's Guide project, so lets talk honestly about the future first.
As some of you may have noticed in my bio as a freelancer, I wear multiple hats. I am familiar with multiple CMS systems. (Before you ask, yes, I am one of those people who can take a .psd file, look at it, and convert it into a working theme in 24 hours or less). My point is that I know SimpleCMS, Joomla, Drupal, and Wordpress all quite well. I wouldn't claim any of them are old friends. Indeed, they all make me want to pull out my hair at times. But I do understand the strengths and weaknesses of each system. When planning my future website, one thing became very clear. Wordpress wasn't the right choice for me. The new site will use Drupal for four reasons:
No offense intended towards Wordpress. It's great and I will continue recommending it to clients, but it won't do everything I need it to do. One of the coming Designer Resources is a LaTeX knitting pattern template, which is currently in beta testing. (See a working sample here.) (If you are on Ravelry, you may read the original call for testers and the ensuing discussion on what LaTeX is and why I'm using it here.) I am very devoted to this concept, but because of the time involved, both support and development, it isn't a resource I can offer for free. Being able to support this and other efforts requires allowing users to comment and discuss problems openly in forums as well as contact me privately. My abilities to do that with WordPress are limited and selling the template from a Wordpress.com hosted site would violate their terms of service. Writing the tutorials, hosting fees, etc also costs money. (When you freelance, time really is money.)
Things like the Knitter's Guide to Inkscape, which is currently being expanded and several new additions will debut on the new site, including screen casts, will remain free. In the future, I hope to open the guides up and allow everyone to contribute stories and tips. If you really know what you're doing, I would love some help writing the tutorials. This content could eventually be broken away from the main site and doing that with Drupal is much easier than doing it with WordPress. Still, as I mentioned earlier, I don't live in a vacuum. For sale patterns will be part of the new site. I have considered putting a donate button or creating an Amazon affiliate account and linking to the design books I use. These would only appear on the Blog, Designer Resources, and Knitting Techniques page. And it will only happen if I can figure out a tasteful way to do it. I don't know what your opinions are on monetizing part of the site and I would love to hear your thoughts. In keeping with the new platform, one of my current WIPS is the site itself.
I'm still not sold on the vines on the side, but the site needs something over there. (I take suggestions!) Those are my placeholders for the moment. Who knows? They may grow on me and become a permanent part of the site. The blank whitespace where the cursor is will have a newsletter subscribe box. I turned it off before I took the screen shot and forgot to turn it back on. (For better or worse, I did my own drawings (vines, monogram, and RSS symbol).) I also decided to break the rules and used Times, a serif font, instead of the recommended sans serif. It's a look and feel decision and with proper line spacing, the page is more readable than it would have been if I'd chosen the sans serif. (Plus, Arial is rather ugly...)
Every year, I design a few Christmas ornaments which I make and give away to family and friends as gifts. This year will be the first year I formally write up the patterns. The first ornament is a tree top angle. Reminiscent of Victorian white work, the angel is knitted, not crocheted, with cotton thread. She doesn't have a head, wings, a halo, or arms yet, but she's starting to look quite pretty. I can't wait to wet her, dip her in 50/50 Elmer's washable school glue and water, blow up a ballon to fill in the body and pin the wings out. She doesn't have a name yet, but I'm thinking about calling her "Carol".
Thanks!
The monetization I'm talking about probably falls within the guidelines you mentioned, but there are other reasons for the move. I'm really looking forward to the increased flexibility, but I also recognize increased administrative duties/headaches go hand in hand with that.
WP.com has been great and I will continue to recommend them. But my needs have changed and the WordPress platform can't meet them. (Not even if I go and install a bunch of plug ins that would probably slow down my site.)
Thanks for the support.
FYI: All articles on the blog will keep the same link they currently have. There will not be any changes to existing urls.
Good luck with the new site, I look forward to visiting.
FWIW-If you are the author/creator of what you are selling, you can use your .com site to tastefully promote and sell it, such as on an Etsy shop or elsewhere. Even Amazon affiliates are tolerated as long as there is a relevant reason for it, like an accompanying book review. The one thing that is definitely not allowed is plastering your .com blog with ads redirecting to third party sites. Regardless, it's always a good idea to run it by .com Support if you're not sure. Just wanted to clear that up.
Thanks for the opinion. As you can probably tell, I've been stressing over this issue. It's good to know you won't be turned off if I begin doing some little things to monetize the site.
I also like the serifs. Glad you approve.
Kristle
I hear you. The html issue has reared its ugly head several times. I'm real big on valid code and accessibility. Luckily, I've found several main stream modules that seem to live up to my ideals and I've found the community more receptive to html related bug reports than the WordPress community. IMHO, the Drupal modules seem to have cleaner (less error riddled) PHP than the WordPress plugins, but the html seems to better for the WordPress. I'd much rather clean the html than the PHP. (Several times with WordPress, I've found it simpler to write my own module. For example, creating a top bar login widget...)
I agree with the data separation stuff. Neither system is ideal. I also find that any site that gives you a WYSIWYG editor opens it self up for even greater problems with this.
Importing my WordPress content was very simple with the WordPress Import module. Cleaning of the extraneous WordPress code wasn't. Running a S&R script and HTMLTidy helped, but I still ended up hand-checking the code.
Thanks for the opinion!
Hi Kristle,
Monetizing a site tastefully and in specific areas is fine by me. I've been self-employed a variety of ways in my life, and I do know that time is money in that situation.
Also, for what it's worth, I find serif fonts much easier to read than sans serif. Particularly when you get into things like I, l and 1!
Looking forward to developments!
I'm hearing you on the Wordpress vs Drupal decision. It's a tough one- I wish I'd gone with Drupal for one of my sites but I'm too far down the road to switch it now. Neither are perfect, and I find myself re-writing other people's plugins/modules constantly, not because they don't function as I want, but because the front end HTML is so poor and I'm a bit of a purist. I find Drupal is worse in that respect, that doesn't make it a bad product. IMHO neither have a great framework for separation of data from the presentation layer.
My Little Windows Hat is now in the Fall 2009 issue of Petite Purls. They have a great selection of patterns this fall and I am honored (and very humbled) by the company I'm in. I think my personal favorite is Alison's Ladybug, and I'm sure I will be making several Peanuts for Christmas gifts.
Why am I not making my own? Well the hat was prototyped several times before it went to my tester (who has asked that I not mention her name, but thank you, thank you, thank you!). I may make another, but I probably won't. Three is two too many in my opinion. There were a few last minute edits. The hat shown in the photo is actually 3/4” shorter than what the pattern is now written to. Thank God that error was caught before publication.
As some of you already know, I'm a chart person. I can't think in *k2tog, yo, p2* if my life depends on it. So I made all the charts first and then wrote the written directions based on the charts. Joan Bebe, bless her and her little red pen, was able to condense the chart based instructions in a few spots into a more understandable form. One of the perils of being a chart person is that I think in repeat chart A, then work chart B twice. This doesn't always translate so well into written instructions and she reworked a few places where the way I think was a little too evident.
Brandy and Allegra were both amazing throughout this whole process. If you ever have the opportunity to work with them, I highly recommend take it.
Happy knitting, everyone!
Kristle (aka The Knitting Penguin)
P.S. Before you ask, all of the charts were created using Inkscape. I'll be posting more about that later.
As several people have reminded me, I did promise a quick run through of some of the changes I made following the Ubuntu upgrade. As I mentioned in that post, I have a black listed graphics card and an older machine, but I don't believe I made any of these changes due to hardware issues. *Begin rant* I do enough hacking for others people. I have ZERO desire to do it on my own machine. If something doesn't work out of the box or with only a minimum of tinkering, the chances are pretty high I'll ditch it or never try it. This means I prefer to install all of my software from either repositories or .deb installation files. There are legitimate reasons for doing this other than ease of installation.*End rant*
For several years now, I've used Flyback for backups. I love the way it creates incremental backups that can be read on any machine with or without the Flyback software. However, Flyback is normally started from a prompt or a manual addition to the Application's menu and the project no longer has active development, at least not anywhere I found. I swapped to Back in Time, which is like Flyback, but it installs to Applications > System Tools without any hassle and it's automated scheduling works. (I had to use a word around to get Flyback to do this on my machine.)
For several years, I've used Evolution, the default Ubuntu email client. I liked it, it worked, and it had the entire kitchen sink plus the pantry. The day after my update Evolution crashed three times. I installed Thunderbird with the Lightening extension for scheduling and tasks and didn't look back. (You can install both of these from the repositories. System > Administration > Synaptic The only thing it doesn't do is memos and I never used that feature anyway. I like the interface and it just plain works. (I used several extensions to integrate it with Remember the Milk. Maybe at some point, I'll get around to writing about that, but right now my life revolves around contracted writing and the next installment in the Knitter's Guide to Inkscape.
For a long time, I used Emacs, primarily for web coding. Then I began using the Firefox web development extension to code css. I'm a visual person and flipping between two programs so that I can see what the changes really look like seems a little absurd, but the extension wasn't quite up to level I needed it to be. After a lot of thought and some exploration, I swapped to Kompozer for intricate css work (i.e. the kind that you really need to see it while you're doing it and you'd better be looking at in something other than your head) and Bluefish for everything else. I have noticed an increase in my efficiency as a result of this change. Some of you undoubtedly believe this is sacrilege, but look at this way. At least, least I didn't change to Vim.
(In case you're wondering what a dock is, it's the handy set of application icons that Mac became famous for a few years ago. Gnome-DO + Docky takes this idea and moves it up a notch. My installation started with awn, which always seemed a little sluggish to me, probably because I was permanently swapping from one of those shiny Macs, I mentioned earlier. (No, I wasn't new to Linux. I've been using Linux either as dual-boot or on a separate machine since 2001, but I wasn't enough of a Linux die-hard to give up my little mac. The mac sort of died. (It still runs, but using it takes a lot of effort and some tape.) But the damage was done. I refuse to use anything that doesn't have a dock. The two extra clicks it takes to click applications, the category, and then program are two too many. And running them from terminal is just as much work. I'm lazy. The dock encourages my laziness in an efficient manner. Enough said. After awn, I used cairo-dock for about nine months. I was happy with it. Then a friend suggested Gnome-DO. It took me a few weeks to get used to it. Then I was hooked. Docky houses my frequently used applications and a simple windows + shift will let me run any application, search for and open any file, and, as an added bonus, it Remembers the Milk, tweets, searches my bookmarks, and it has a dictionary. I think I'm in love. Note: Gnome-DO comes with Docky, which is a Gnome-DO theme. To get to it, start Gnome-DO. Right click and go to Preferences > Appearance.
I still have Firefox installed and I do use it on occasion, but it is no longer my main web browser. I use Opera. It has a basic email client, bit torrent, a tea timer widget, and my daily crossword puzzle. I use it for the tea timer and the crossword. Oh, and the user agent switcher is built in, unlike Firefox which requires a plugin. While I personally despise anyone who says we only support IE and Firefox on computers running Mac and Windows, these sites are sometimes a necessary evil. I'll lie to them in a heartbeat. 99% of the time, everything works. This does bring me to another change. Most of my blog posts were written using the ScribeFire extension. I swapped to Bilbo. (ScribeFire always seemed to make my Firefox a little unstable (probably due to a conflict with another extension). So even though I resisted this change at first, Bilbo's working out better for me. (Bilbo is technically a KDE app, but I've had no problems installing and running under Gnome exactly like I would any other application. Like Back In Time, it appears to be under active development.)
I heard VirtualBox was faster. I tried it. On my machine, it is so I swapped. I use it to test sites with Internet Explorer and to run BitNami virtual stacks for an experiment I'm currently working on. I'm also toying with the idea of swapping distros (again). I'm currently working my way through Debian, but I don't see any advantage to making the swap as of this writing. A quick note about BitNami, installing Drupal on XAMPP (the old version because the new one uses the wrong version of php) took me about 40 minutes from the time I downloaded it until I finished the basic installation. This is not including the configuration tasks that you have to do after the basic install. Using a BitNami Native LAMP stack and Drupal module. I had a working localhost Drupal installation in a little under 5 minutes. Even though I've since swapped to a virtual machine for this project, I'm sure you can see the why I like the concept behind BitNami. This brings me to a soapbox moment. If you're encouraging someone to swap to Linux or are thinking about making the swap yourself, install VirtualBox on their (or your) computer and download the distro you're thinking about using. Install it on the virtual machine and play with it for a while before you partition your hard drive or wipe out your existing operating system. Find out if you (or they) can live with the restrictions of Linux (and believe me, there are almost as many restrictions as there are freedoms). Your favorite Windows programs may run perfectly under WINE or Crossover Office, but there's also a chance that they won't. Find out beforehand and get some hands on experience with the alternatives. Now, before this post runs away from me, I'm stepping off the soapbox.
I have several designs that I've been sitting on for the past several months and I'm getting antsy as my first publication date approaches. This will probably be my last non-knitting post for a while.
For a while now, I’ve been working on a series of open source software tutorials for knitting. These are currently only available from my website and I started a poll yesterday asking what people want to see next as far as tutorials go.
Now, I’m looking for a few guest bloggers who can either contribute additional tutorials or personal stories related to using OpenSource Software such as Inkscape, GIMP, OpenOffice, Dia, Kexi, ImageMagick, WordPress, TEXnic Center (or Kile)… You get the point. There are a lot of OpenSource applications that you can apply to your designing.
Contributions may be done either as a guest author where the entire work resides on my site or as an excerpt that links to a larger article on your own site. You retain all copyrights.
At present, the only compensation offered is links to your site(s) and designer page here on Ravelry. You retain all copyrights.If you wish to double post the article (to my site and your own), I will have to ask that you hold off on your own publication for 3 weeks and that you included a “as published on” statement. Edited to say that guest authors will receive free editing and assistance with tutorial graphics.
Please email me at kcyarn7 at gmail dot com with the following information:
No registration or login is required to use the poll. Just click the boxes and push vote.
I don't normally post this sort of thing, but the Knitting Lounge at Fashion Week is the sort of project that can benefit all indy handknit designers in the long run. (It could also create a lot more competition, but that's fine by me.) I donated what I could (it wasn't much, but every penny helps) and I'm encouraging everyone to donate what they can. I tend to bounce from one LTS version to another. It's not that I don't like the *.1 versions, but upgrading takes time. Unless there is a substantial performance or software package difference, I don't upgrade. So when I decided to upgrade to 9.04 from 8.04, there was no longer an upgrade to 8.10 button on my machine. I'm now writing this in Ubuntu 9.04 which runs beautifully on my old 8.04 box. For a variety of reasons, I did not do a fresh install.
In case you haven't noticed, this isn't exactly the latest/greatest anything. In computer terms, I have a dinosaur. One other thing that you may have noticed (or may not, depending entirely on whether or not you ran into this issue yourself), my graphics card was blacklisted by Compiz. Compiz is normally used for compositing. It's what allows you to run things like Cairo-Dock, Awn, and Gnome-DO Docky. Since Gnome-DO Docky is a “prize it out of my cold dead fingers” app, I must have compositing. I'll talk about using Metacity compositing instead at the end of the post. There are ways to hack the Compiz blacklist, but a hack is a hack and there are valid performance reasons for not running Compiz on blacklisted chipsets.
You will need the following:
Note: Replace *** with i386, amd64, etc. Choose the one that is appropriate for your computer. See the Ubuntu download site for more information.Don't reach for a CD to burn these images. You don't need it.
sudo apt-get autoremove. When it asks you if you want to remove x number of packages type Y and press enter.Note: You do have to upgrade to 8.10 before upgrading to 9.04. You don't necessarily need the 9.04.iso, but it upgrading with the .iso is faster in my experience. (This whole procedure from beginning to end took me about 6 hours to download and install everything. I took the dog outside and played ball while it was running, did a little bit of gardening, and cast-on a sock. I returned to the computer every 30 minutes or so to click OK and left. Admittedly, my hardware was part of the reason why this upgrade was so slow. The Asus EEE 1100H upgraded from 8.10 to 9.04 in about 2.5 hours over a wireless connection with no .iso)
sudo mount -o loop ~/ubuntu-8.10-alternate-i386.iso /media/cdrom0. You should now be able to go to your home folder or your desktop and see that a cd is mounted.gksu “sh /cdrom/cdromupgrade”. You can also run this command by typing Alt + F2 and typing the command above into the box that appears.sudo apt-get autoremove. When it asks you if you want to remove x number of packages type Y and press enter.The Update Manager does have an upgrade to 9.04 button. You may use it if you wish. You may also notice a new program on your computer under System > Administration > Computer Janitor. Under NO circumstances should you run this program. It is a great concept, but it hasn't been fully realized yet and personal experience (in a virtual computer setup solely for this experiment) says it breaks things. The Ubuntu forums also document others experiences with this program. I haven't read about a good one yet. I'm not saying that they aren't out there just that I haven't heard of any good experiences with it. As I indicated earlier, I ere on the side of caution, which is why I'm saying don't use this program at this time.
sudo apt-get autoremove. When it asks you if you want to remove x number of packages type Y and press enter.sudo mount -o loop ~/ubuntu-9.04-alternate-i386.iso /media/cdrom0. You should now be able to go to your home folder or your desktop and see that a cd is mounted.gksu “sh /cdrom/cdromupgrade”. You can also run this command by typing Alt + F2 and typing the command above into the box that appears.sudo apt-get autoremove. When it asks you if you want to remove x number of packages type Y and press enter.After the upgrade, you will notice that many of the repositories from the old distribution and some of your specially installed programs, including Amarok and OpenOffice 3.1 have been uninstalled. Fix these first.
Note: There were some changes in how Ubuntu handles the Amarok libraries. When you install Amarok, you need to install the kubuntu-restricted-extras package. (This applies to both Ubuntu Gnome and KDE.) This will get you mp3 support. (You should also be using the legal Fluendo mp3 codecs, but that's just my personal opinion.)
As I mentioned earlier, I am a Gnome-DO Docky addict. I think this program beats all the other docks hands down in terms of functionality. It took me about three days after I first installed it to get used to it and now, there's no going back. Unfortunately, Docky requires compositing and Compiz, which is what I used to use for compositing, no longer works on my graphics chipset. Fear not! Metacity now has compositing. I do like to change these settings from the commandline, but some of you are probably commandlined out after the upgrade, so I'll use the interface.
Your computer screen will probably flash when the compositing turns on. You know have compositing enabled and can use your favorite dock. Note: Many have observed that Metacity compositing is not as flashy as Compiz. I haven't noticed any difference, but as you can tell from my hardware list, I'm not exactly running the type of box that would have 3-D effects enabled. Even if I did have that sort of a box, I probably wouldn't use them because I personally find most desktop effects highly distracting. There were some other software related decisions that I made following this upgrade, which I will detail in a future post. Most were for improved functionality, but one wasn't. I did swap my email client from Evolution to Thunderbird (with the Lightening extension installed). I honestly do not know what happened to Evolution between 8.04 and 9.04, but Evolution on the newly upgraded machine was not stable and none of the usual fixes worked. I do run and enjoy playing with alphas and betas. I expect these programs to not be completely stable and I'm okay with that. However, that attitude does not extend to my code editor, email client, or word processor. Hence, the switch. Well, I hope you found this post useful and that it didn't make your eyes cross too much.
[...] have reminded me, I did promise a quick run through of some of the changes I made following the Ubuntu upgrade. As I mentioned in that post, I have a black listed graphics card and an older machine, but I [...]
Thanks for this. I note you said your Asus Eee updated much more quickly from 8.10 to 9.04 without .iso; I have an Eee PC 901 with 8.04 installed. I've seen tutorials on how to upgrade to 8.10 using a Live Boot USB, but would like to know if you can point me to a resource that tells me how to do it the way you did. Thank you very much for these tutorials; they enhance my use of Ubuntu considerably. I'm a newbie to both Ubuntu and knitting design and you're a great help to me!
Just to let everyone know... My article "Back It Up" is in the August 2009 issue of Freelance Writer's Report, published by Cassell Network of Writers. 
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