Below is the list of the applications, that are making my “Ubuntu experience” so damn enjoyable and productive. You should certainly check them out, and if you find them to be decent or even better alternatives to your current Windows selection, you might want to reconsider, what do you expect of your operating system and your work environment and maybe the next time when you need to renew your Windows license, give Ubuntu or some other Linux distribution a try. You can even test most of the major Linux distributions by live CD with no “obligations” whatsoever, while it doesn’t even touch your current operating system or other hard drive data. So here they are:
Graphics
F-spot //personal photo management
Gimp //image manipulation
gThumb //image viewer and browser
Phatch //photo batch processor
Synfig //vector-based 2D animation
Inkscape //vector-based drawing program
Xara Xtreme //vector graphics, illustration and DTP
Agave //color-scheme designer
Office
FreeMind //mind-mapping tool
PDF Editor //manipulate PDF documents
Thunderbird //mail client
Prism //web apps on your desktop
Writer //OpenOffice.org word processor
Impress //OpenOffice.org presentation
Calc //OpenOffice.org spreadsheet
Base //OpenOffice.org database
Incollector //collect various information
Evince //document viewer
Tools
Gnome Commander //file manager
Gnome Do //quickly perform actions
KeepassX //password manager
Tracker //desktop search tool
pyRenamer //batch rename files
Screenlets //widget-like mini-applications
SearchMonkey //search within text, code etc.
Phone Manager //control your mobile phone
Brasero //CD/DVD burning
recordMyDesktop //record your desktop
Internet
Deluge //bit-torrent client
Downloader for X //download manager
Filezilla //FTP client
Firefox //web browser
Skype //free Internet calls
Pidgin //instant messaging client
System tools
Firestarter //desktop firewall tool
gISOMount //mount and manage .iso images
ClamTk //anti-virus
GParted //partition editor
Multimedia
Audacity //audio editor
Avidemux //video editor
EasyTag //editing ID3 tags
Exaile //audio player
Last-Exit //last.fm alternative
Miro //RSS video aggregator
Totem //multimedia player
Vlc //multimedia player
Sound Juicer //CD ripper
WebDesign
KompoZer //web authoring
gEdit //text editor
Eclipse //extensible tool platform and Java IDE
Aptana Studio //web development environment
KImageMapEditor //edit image maps
Quanta Plus //web development environment
Joomla //open source CMS
phpMyAdmin //MySQL administration
Drupal //open source CMS
Magento //open source eCommerce
Wordpress //blog tool and publishing platform
Some other very useful apps
Banshee //media management and playback
Evolution //groupware suite with mail client and organizer
K3B //popular CD/DVD burning solution
GCStar //manage collections
GnuCash //personal finance tracking
Lyx //almost WYSIWYG-frontend for LaTeX
Planner //project management
aMSN //MSN alternative
aMule //ed2k client
DC++ //dc++ client
Liferea //feed aggregator
Blender //3D modeller/renderer
Dia //diagram editor
Scribus //desktop publishing
Wink //create tutorials and presentations
And even if the desired task performing application wasn’t find on the list, there are still hundreds of them available in the distribution’s repositories.
Probably the biggest mistake I had been doing in my life was the apologetic approach with which I unconsciously terrorized everything, I had acted upon. That kind of behavior is practically always highly unattractive and makes you to repress all potentially “bad” aspects of your personality and habits (so you don’t need to be ashamed of them to often) and makes you some kind of a highlight of your personality traits, that are approved by the masses surrounding you. You become a nice guy in eyes of many, but on the other hand, you are killing a part of yourself with such self-repression. And as you can guess, that kind of behaviour is very far from total self-expression and consequently from happiness. But you’re beloved by the masses you say… Isn’t that something?
No, it isn’t, believe me. That way you become just one more of so many, a creature of tradition, with habits and values dictated by others. With no clear mission or purpose you would like to guide your life to, and quite likely incapable of critical thinking. You become Just one more of the repeaters, guided and manipulated for benefits of others, nothing else than a passive player of your own life. With your wishes dictated by the marketers, self-esteem degraded by commercials, your free time exchanged for bad quality TV entertainment, and opportunities for analysis of thoughts and meditation polluted by the music from your iPod. TV news are terrorizing you with fear and conditioning you in scarcity of real knowledge and real news, to reject every culture and every fellow man, that is at least slightly different. We become like sheep and even worse; we don’t even need a sheep dog, while we, with our criticism and rejection of every deviation, force ourselves and others to realign back to the path of the purpose of which we usually don’t have a slightest idea. Probably not the life you’re dreaming of…
So what is there to do? Just be unique, don’t be afraid to express the full spectrum of your personality… There is nothing to be ashamed of. Of course you make mistakes, we all do… So why should you regret them? Unless they are contradicting to your system of values, that is not a worthy practice. And you have your own value system, don’t you? Not the one brainwashed to you by your religion or some similar institution, but the one you really and sincerely believe in. The one that would really boost meaning to your life and sharp its core purpose. And for God’s sake, live your own life! (the same goes for me to 
) You owe this to your “Creator”; may it be a chimpanzee, or some extremely advanced intelligence. So in some way, you become a “bad boy” with nice values. Unapologetic about his weaknesses, critical thinking, purpose guided and by value system oriented person, experiencing life at its fullest and appreciating others for what they are in their core and not to be limited by their prejudices and criticism. At least that is where I am heading for quite some time now and positive results are already evident…
I have a dream… (and I’m not even Martin Luther King :D) That someday, I will have the privilege, to wake up beside a gorgeous woman, grown up to her age, with eyes of a goddess, smile of an angel, and the softness of lips, from beyond my wildest comprehension. Sparkles of happiness in her eyes with slight shyness of her smile, cause of the pleasure received during the night, would quickly repay all the hard times we had gone through during the long lasting relationship, and her soft hand, accompanied with her radiating bliss, caressing my face, the ultimate cure for every stressful situation I would find myself in. The time would be caught in the moment, and my beauty ideal reset every single time, to her god-like appearance. With her smell representing the best our mother nature will ever have to offer, and her gentle floating through the space, presenting the source of guidelines and inspiration for every harmonic movement, she would more than motivate me to dedicate many of my hours to explore and cherish finest and most intimate details of her personality. As my only lifelong inspiration she would have to get used to spoiling and at the same time sharpening her feelings and emotions while we would together learn and explore even the most hidden depths of our passions, emotions and love. It would be a life so simple, but at the same time lived to every extend we would have knowledge to do so. Only love, trust and ultimate pleasure on the path to our oneness…
From time to time I observe myself and my current material and intellectual state. I could easily say both of the above have improved greatly through the recent year, still can be felt some kind of discontent, trying to remind me , that I have been pushing myself way below my limits. Human nature as it is, and in my case, far too deep reaching influence of perfectionism, differs my achievements greatly from expectations, set at the start of the journey, which are far more optimized and planned time much more productively spent. And unless you are well-trained planer, guided by down to earth realistic expectations, the feeling mentioned above will always be present, so probably the best solution for this would be to tame it, put more value on the work done, reward yourself for it in some way, and choose to strive for excellence rather than perfection (because it is unattainable, only time consuming) in the future.
And you should never look satisfaction as a matter of distant future, because if you don’t know how to find happiness in the moment, it won’t come just by itself in the future either. And that doesn’t mean, that you should resign all far reaching projects… Just try to live a life of as much joys as possible… including those, experienced at the completion of those big, long time period extending projects. They can be even much more satisfactory.
He who controls the information you receive, controls your mind and furthermore, you. Because as Dr. Paul Joseph Goebbels, leader of the Nazi Party’s propaganda unit had said: “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.” And he also had said: “Think of the press as a great keyboard on which the government can play.” So you should really take in consideration the sources from where your information come from. Because behind the vast majority of today’s media, there are different interests, we usually even don’t know of. So it’s very hard to find a media source, independent in its financing, that would serve us with news as objective as possible. But I believe I found one; it’s called The Real News. Backed up with only the users donations, it tries to present all the perspectives of events possible, not just the ones your government or your merchants would like you to see. But as I said, they run on users donations, so they need every help they can get, especially in current times of financial and economical crisis.
And even if you don’t like the news source described above (unfortunately they are mostly concentrating their coverage on North America, but there are plans to go worldwide as soon as possible), do yourself a favour and watch and listen to news more critically. Try to see the big picture about a news provided and try to detect the interests of it’s provider if there are any. For example, you will never see a coverage on some damaging effects of some medicine on commercial TV where its provider spends lots of money on advertising. So always try to also have an alternative sources for your news, to see as many perspectives as it is possible. And remember: The Internet is your best ally with this… Because it is much harder to be controlled as classical media like TV and newspapers.
Just some videos well worth taking in account, I have watched recently…
Money as debt (with Slovenian subtitles)
And an interview about economic crisis with Ron Paul, one of the current USA elections presidential candidates:
Ron Paul on Economic Crash - Part 1
Ron Paul on Economic Crash - Part 2
Ron Paul on Economic Crash - Part 3
Ron Paul on Economic Crash - Part 4
Ron Paul on Economic Crash - Part 5
We get our pleasure from serving and connecting with others. And therefore it is a great pleasure when you look into the eyes of someone that is in a state of total blissfulness. I had such an honor today by witnessing the look of my cousin who just got a daughter. And you can’t even imagine how happy I am for him. How his happiness made even my day… unbelievable, you can take my word for it. But one thing is for sure… the purpose I chose for my life is the right one. I am here to enrich lives of others… Not some kind of a slave, but a man who consciously and deliberately directs his life to improving lives of others and totally enjoys doing it. I am totally sold to this theory!
Everybody is talking about Slovenia as of a country of great opportunity to become one of the most prosperous economies in the time-span of the next few decades. And even I couldn’t agree more. But for this goal to be achieved, I believe it is about time to take our own initiative, and carve our own path into the future, not just following all the time, to some old models, economies we admire went through on their development. Because even though the ability of being a good follower is essential for becoming an excellent leader, a follower can never surpass his teacher, until he matures enough, to become the latter himself. And since I believe the future lies in new and advanced technologies, why don’t we become the pilot country for such projects?
I believe the current state of the country could match all the criteria needed for such a venture. It seems the country will be led by social democrats, who I believe should distance themselves from extremes of pure capitalism and give some more focus to well-being of the residents of this country, which I believe could come as a very probable side effect of such development. Our territory and population is also small enough and I believe we, as a nation, are also quite adaptable, for such projects to succeed. Furthermore, we have also the reputation of a hard-working nation and I think we’re ambitious enough, and have the guts to take on such a project. Also the big international corporations are not so deeply rooted in our economy, and we don’t depend as much on American economy as the other western countries.
The only bigger obstacle at the moment, would probably be money. But as the projected technologies (if they turn out as successful) should become quite profitable, “investors” shouldn’t be to hard to find. development in such a way could contribute a lot to our “added knowledge”, and might be an excellent way to update our technical universities laboratories, since some of my physics experiments I did few years ago, had to be done on equipment dated almost all the way back to the second world war.
So why wouldn’t we travel by MagLev train instead of our current 100km/h passenger trains and why not getting all the energy required, only from renewable sources? Why not putting more of our efforts in training people to use the technologies of the 21th century regularly and take advantage of all of its benefits (ecological, better productivity,..)?
***
And just some interesting videos worth taking in account, I found recently, while browsing the internet (Zeitgeist: Addendum):
And the first part for those interested in going deeper into the rabbit hole 
(Zeitgeist: The movie):
While browsing through various social sites like Facebook, Netlog and others, I find it very interesting, how can some be so naive, to publish in their profile, various photos of their main “attributes”, covered only in underwear, and than expect it to catch an eye of a guy, capable of honest and serious friendship or even partnership. Of course, it catches my eye, no doubt about that… But I can assure you, that interest would be gone, as soon as I would get “my hour of satisfaction” (if we call it so), and than you would quickly realize, how you degraded yourself to nothing more than an “object of lust”.
Still there are some, that like to be seen by others. I can only hope, that the confirmation from them isn’t the main resource they build self-esteem an confidence upon. Because if that is so, I believe, they have no bright future ahead, at least from my perspective. So why behaving that way?
I still believe that true and sincere relationships based on deeper personal similarities, interlaced with trust and intimacy and upgraded with physical attractiveness, can be much more satisfying, they last much longer and can be amplified to higher degree of sex appeal than the ones described above. But they very rarely, if ever, start with a girl half naked, positioning herself in sexually challenging poses. This turns me on, I admit it, but that is really all it does…
Despite long time, that has passed, the sweet thought of you, never has left me. Day in and day out I’ve been calculating every possible outcome, to the best moments, my life has witnessed up to now. Searching your double in every woman I interact with and questioning myself, how would it be different with you by my side, in every joy I receive through life. But it is never the same. Only you can keep my total focus, only you my total dedication, despite the effort invested to enable this kind of feelings, without your presence required. You know very well, how happy you made me, every time I had a privilege to admire you, and probably can infer how enjoyable the week was, when your smile blessed me in all its glory. So girl, why can’t you just realize, that YOU ARE MY FAIRY TALE? My everything I ever wanted. I would really like to see someday, your face to be the first picture I see in the morning, and in the evening, your sexiness prelude to my sweetest dreams. Your eyes to be my most sincere judge, and your lips core standard for tenderness, care and eroticism. You will be mine some day.. and you know it. I can hardly wait that day to come!
