Calendar applet can show multiple timezones!

While we are on the calendar applet, there's one more addition to the calendar applet's abilities -- that of showing different timezones on a world map! The screenshot is attached. Notice how the parts of the world where it is day time is shown in a lighter shade of blue. I have added Shanghai and Mountain View as other timezones and you can see the red dots that indicate them on the world map! Also accompanied with the time is the weather info of that particular place. This is neat!

One can also check tasks and appointments in one glance at the same place. This is very very useful. However, I guess this works only if use evolution for calendaring and tasks.

Calendar applet now shows weather info!

My last couple of posts about Hardy were rants about some niggling bugs. However, now I'll start listing nice features that have been added in the new release.

Like the title says, the calendar applet now shows the weather info! See attached screenshot which shows the temperature alongside the date and time!

Battery applet doesn't refresh

The battery applet in gnome that gives the status of the battery (whether your laptop is plugged in to AC power or if its discharging, etc.). This applet doesn't refresh. In fact, it holds previous state of the battery.
One example is as below:



Update: This bug has been fixed now. The latest update fixes this!

Gnome uses wrong screen size...

I installed the all the latest Hardy (8.04) updates and a bug which was present in Gutsy (7.10) resurfaced. The package in question is xserver-xorg-ati. The thing is, with this package, gnome uses a wrong screen size. I use an external monitor with my laptop and it is capable of 1280x1024 resolution whereas my laptop LCD can only do 1024x768. However, gnome thinks that even the external monitor can only do 1024x768 and displays only on that part of the screen. Here's a screenshot:




There's also a bug in launchpad that I raised when Gutsy was released. The current work-around is to downgrade the xserver-xorg-ati package to the previous version (if you are running Hardy).
And if you are running Gutsy and not using the laptop LCD and the external monitor at the same time,
then running the following command in a terminal will help:

$ xrandr --output LVDS --off

Hope this helps!

Ubuntu Hardy updates

So, I've been using the Ubuntu Hardy Alpha for more than a month now. I like some of the improvements in the upcoming release and there are some rants as well. I'll keep updating with all the new things that are there in Hardy, good or bad :-)