Creating a recipe card is very easy and straight forward. Adding the data yourself is a breeze and you can even import a photo. One thing I really like is the ability to go to any website and Gourmet Recipe Manager will try to pull the recipe data from the webpage. Very useful! Just plug in the URL of your favorite websites like Martha Stewart, Rachel Ray, Anthony Bourdain… literally any web page with a recipe on it and let Gourmet Recipe Manager do the grunt work of scraping the ingredients list, instructions & description for you.

If you want to share recipes with family, friends, neighbors, or anyone… you can easily export your recipe in a number of ways. As an HTML file, a plain text file, a MealMaster file and to PDF. I have hard copies of my recipes now by exporting to PDF and selecting the “index card” size.

Below are a few walk through images to get you aquainted with the Gourmet Recipe Manager. As always, click the images to see full size.

In the last photo you can see my recipe for English Muffins. My photo included on the left side with rating, prep time and instructions. On the the right side is the ingredients list. Any cooking times are included in the recipe will be highlighted and are made clickable which pops up a handy timer. Ive used this many times now.

If you are a seasoned cook or budding chef, you are going to fall in love with this application!

Lets get down to business, shall we? I love this program. I use it any time I want to create a panorama. You can install Hugin from the Ubuntu Software Center. Once installed, it will reside in “Applications – Graphics”. Step #1 is to load in some photos you want to create the panorama image from. Here is the GUI…

I’ll use two photos from Kiev I took a few years ago…

After selecting your photos, click onto step #2, which is “Align”. Hugin will start processing and finding alignment points all over your photos. See it in action here…

…and here are my two photos stitched together and are still in a sort of editing mode.

You can rotate the image around, straighten it, etc. Clicking the “autocrop” button will do exactly that.

Make sure to click the “photometrics” checkbox to blend the different image exposures to create one nice flowing image. Lastly, go back to the Hugin Assistant box and click the final step “Create Panorama”.

Hugin will again do a bunch of calculations and will ask you to name the file to save it as a TIF image. The Hugin Panorama Creator is simple as 1-2-3 and takes no time at all. Here is my finished panoramic image!

As always, clicking on any images in our blog posts will bring them up full size. Good luck in your panorama stitching in Ubuntu!

I remembered that Google has its own set of desktop widgets called “Gadgets”. I havent touched them for a few years so I was interested to see how they have progressed.

Are you getting sick of my obsession with widgets and desktop apps? I really like the idea of having some widget tools “at the ready”. To track a package without needing to go to a website. To translate relatives chats on ICQ and respond back. Stock info, weather info, news, flight status, etc. So here I am trying everything

For the Google Gadgets, you dont need to go to a website or install a browser to use these in Ubuntu. Simply go to the software center (Applications – Ubuntu Software Center) and type in “Google Gadgets”. Ubuntu users want to install the GTK version, Kubuntu users want the KDE version. After install you can start installing various gadgets by going to “Applications – Internet – Google Gadgets”. It comes with a right side dock, which Im no fan of so I removed it. You can easily access your gadgets and install new ones by right clicking the Google Gadget icon at the top right of your panel. See photo…

After a right click of the icon, you’ll get a drop down menu. Just click “add gadgets” and you will get this nice little gadget browser…

Sort through them all. There are some gems in a rough patch of mostly dumb gadgets. I like the retro clock with the flip numbers, I like the stocks (not as much as the Opera stock widget), i like the package tracker, and its really cool to have a little gmail box right on my desktop showing me a mobile version of my gmail account. Very cool!

A few notes: You can also make a hotkey for hiding and unhiding your gadgets. Right click the gadget icon on your panel and click “change hotkey”. I put mine as F12 but you can do whatever suits you. If you want multiple instances of one gadget (say a clock) just install it again. If you want these to load up at boot, you’ll have to manually add the gadgets app yourself. Go to “System – Preferences – Startup Applications” and add “Google Gadgets” for the name and for the command use “/usr/bin/ggl-gtk %F” (without quotes).

All in all I really like these gadgets and they dont appear to be a resource hog. I especially like the gadget layer where I can hide and unhide my gadgets at will.

For those of you coming from OSX macs, or just like to use widgets on your desktop, the Opera widgets are really coming into their own now. Click the image of the desktop above to see an example. They have just about everything. Flight tracking, package tracking, calculators, calendars, search widgets, clocks, translators, you name it. These definitely look more professional than the Screenlets apps. You also can make DEB files of the Opera widgets, which means you dont need Opera installed. After downloading a widget and opening it, select “advanced” and checkmark “make deb package from this widget”.

Here is what the website states:

“TeamViewer is the all-in-one Solution for remote computer access and support over the Internet. Team Viewer connects to any PC or server around the world within a few seconds. You can remote control your partner’s PC as if you were sitting right in front of it. Find out why more than 100 million users trust TeamViewer!”

I recently gave it a try. Team Viewer is free and they have DEB files for both 32 bit and 64 bit Debian and Ubuntu systems. They also have RPMs, source files, as well as Mac and Windows installations. Better yet, they have an iPhone app now. If you are a sys admin handling several computers you could really excel with this, or like many regular “Joe’s” such as myself, you can still make use of Team Viewer to troubleshoot the computers of family members & neighbors.

In the photo above you can see the TeamViewer sign in screen. With TeamViewer installed on another computer (say your moms), you would just need her ID and passcode to access her system. If you set up a free account with TeamViewer, you can save several computers into your account for easy access of those systems. It would be very easy to help your mom install software, troubleshoot computer problems and so on, even if you live 4000 miles away!

Below is a photo of my work computer (purple desktop) logged in to my home computer (the teal desktop). On a 3mbps internet connection I notice a bit of lag, but not bad. On a 10mpbs internet connection TeamViewer is very smooth. Its highly customizable as well giving you the  ability to transfer files back and forth, ability to chat, as well as change the quality of the display (lower for slow connections, high for better connections).

TeamViewer also offers paid accounts giving you a bunch of added features and support. For the average user helping out mom or a friend, you dont really need the paid accounts.

GRAMPS is an Open Source genealogy program using the GTK/GNOME interface. It is an extremely flexible program fitting the needs for both the amateur genealogist and serious genealogical researcher. GRAMPS has the ability to import GEDCOM files exported from many proprietary genealogy programs and can produce a large number of reports in many popular formats.

I have been slowly building my family tree for many years and it is so nice to have a free genealogy app available that is as robust as this one is. Easily input your family info, create graphs, charts and reports as well as add photos, map links and more.

You can find the latest version available in the Ubuntu Software Center.

Sometimes, its nice to know what your internet is doing. There is a little traffic monitor applet for the gnome panel called “netspeed” that shows how much traffic occurs on a network device (be it ethernet, wireless, or even dial-up). You can find it in the Ubuntu Software Center by searching on “netspeed”.

After installation, you will need to right click on one of your panels (the top one or bottom one) and click “add to panel” to find the new app you just installed. In the list its labeled as “Network Monitor”. Adding it and moving around to your fave place on the panel and thats it. Right clicking the app gives you more options and preferences.

Here is a fun and simple application I like in Ubuntu. It is an online comics reader called “Buoh”. Unfortunately, its no longer in the repositories. Dont worry, you can still install and use it though!

Download the appropriate ZIP file and extract the two DEB files needed.

Buoh-amd64.zip

I’ve been using Rhythmbox a lot lately. Its great for listening to music, but you can do more, like browse the Ubuntu One Music Store and buy music, or even listen to podcasts. There is a travel show I like to watch on public TV called Rick Steves’ Europe. Browsing his website, I found he also has a weekly radio travel show. The link below graciously lists the XML podcast link, making it easy to cut and paste it into Rhythmbox….

http://www.ricksteves.com/radio/podcast.htm

… but many radio shows and hosts like Rudy Maxas’ Travel World dont offer easy links like this. Instead, they direct you to a proprietary iTunes page. If you dont have iTunes, you’re out of luck. Not anymore. A quick search on the Ubuntu Forums found me the Feed Flipper.

Plug in the itunes URL of the podcast feed you are interested in on this page:

http://picklemonkey.net/flipper/convert.php?feed=

Copy the highlighted blue web link and paste it into Rhythmbox when it asks for the URL of the new podcast you are trying to set up. Simple as that! Have fun! There are tons of podcasts allover the internet. From travel shows to linux shows to even learning a foreign language, you can certainly find a podcast to fill up a boring work day!

One of the fun parts of Ubuntu is that its easy to play old Nintendo NES games. The photos above and below are just a few faves. Kung Fu, Mike Tyson’s Punch Out, Hogans Alley, RC Pro Am, Duck Hunt, Tennis, Joust, Dig Dug, Russ’n Attack, Gauntlet and on and on.

So if you want to have fun right now, go up to “Applications > Ubuntu Software Center” and do a search on “gfceu” and install the GFCE Ultra NES Emulator (should be the first program listed).

Once the program is installed, you can find it listed under “Applications > Games”. GFCEU’s main menu has some tabs for making changes like enabling sound or going full screen. It also requires you to locate a game rom file… in this case NES files. I also recommend clicking the “Input” tab and configuring gamepad #1 (and or #2 if you have friends who also want to play). When you click onto Gamepad 1, it will pop up a little window for you to input you button. You’ll have to press your buttons twice to confirm each keyboard button. A and B, Select, Start, up, down, left, right. If you dont do this you wont have any clue which buttons control the games. GFCEU even works great with a wireless game controller and if you are really serious, there are NES gamepads converted to USB all over ebay for sale.

So are you ready to play?

Check out some of the NES rom files at the link below. If that link doesnt have what you are looking for just search around the net for nes files like this “kung fu nes” or maybe “super mario nes”. You’re looking for .NES files.