onyx-silver

Debian 8 ("Jessie") doesn't have a huge number of available Openbox themes, but creating a new Openbox theme from an existing one takes only a few minutes. System-wide themes are stored in the /usr/share/themes directory, and user-specific themes can be placed in ~/.local/share/themes. Just look for the themerc config file. The config file uses hexadecimal color codes, and of course one can find a number of sites out there for picking hex codes and viewing the corresponding colors.

I've been using the Onyx theme, which uses shades of blue for the selected menu items. The following shot shows the Onyx theme in the Openbox Configuration Manager (aka "obconf"), with my right-click desktop menu opened up:

To create a new theme called Onyx-Silver, I copied the /usr/share/themes/Onyx directory to ~/.local/share/themes, renamed the new directory as ~/.local/share/themes/Onyx-Silver, and edited the ~/.local/share/themes/Onyx-Silver/openbox-3/themerc file as follows.

Changed:

!! Selected menu item
menu.items.active.bg: raised splitvertical gradient
menu.items.active.bg.color: #6d95de
menu.items.active.bg.colorTo: #2b829d
menu.items.active.text.color: #f8f8f8

To:

!! Selected menu item
menu.items.active.bg: raised splitvertical gradient
menu.items.active.bg.color: #a5a5a5
menu.items.active.bg.colorTo: #929292
menu.items.active.text.color: #f8f8f8

As well, I changed the color of the window buttons when the cursor is hovering over them.

Changed:

!! Window buttons
window.*.button.*.bg: parentrelative
window.active.button.*.hover.bg: flat splitvertical gradient border
window.inactive.button.*.hover.bg: parentrelative
window.*.button.*.pressed.bg: flat splitvertical gradient border

window.active.button.*.hover.bg.color: #398dc6
window.active.button.*.hover.bg.colorTo: #236d83
window.active.button.*.hover.bg.border.color: #236d83

To:

!! Window buttons
window.*.button.*.bg: parentrelative
window.active.button.*.hover.bg: flat splitvertical gradient border
window.inactive.button.*.hover.bg: parentrelative
window.*.button.*.pressed.bg: flat splitvertical gradient border

window.active.button.*.hover.bg.color: #c5c5c5
window.active.button.*.hover.bg.colorTo: #878989
window.active.button.*.hover.bg.border.color: #236d83


Then I simply saved the file and ran obconf, where the new theme was available to select.

For more info on Openbox theme specifications, see: http://openbox.org/wiki/Help:Themes

yin and yang - shadow cannot exist without light

 From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yin_and_yang:

In Chinese philosophy, yin and yang ... describe how seemingly opposite or contrary forces may actually be complementary, interconnected, and interdependent in the natural world, and how they may give rise to each other as they interrelate to one another. Many tangible dualities (such as light and dark, fire and water, expanding and contracting) are thought of as physical manifestations of the duality symbolized by yin and yang...

...Yin and yang can be thought of as complementary (rather than opposing) forces that interact to form a dynamic system in which the whole is greater than the assembled parts. Everything has both yin and yang aspects (for instance shadow cannot exist without light). Either of the two major aspects may manifest more strongly in a particular object, depending on the criterion of the observation. The yin yang (i.e. taijitu symbol) shows a balance between two opposites with a portion of the opposite element in each section.

In Taoist metaphysics, distinctions between good and bad, along with other dichotomous moral judgments, are perceptual, not real; so, the duality of yin and yang is an indivisible whole...

back: the silver and black

With Sunday's 19-16 victory at San Diego, the Oakland Raiders clinched a playoff spot for the first time since 2002, which was the last time the Raiders won an NFL title. They can clinch the AFC West by winning their last two games (at home vs. the Colts, then at Denver), but if they falter they could lose out to the Kansas City Chiefs for the division title based on the head-to-head tiebreaker (the Chiefs beat the Raiders twice this season).

some key performers:

- Derek Carr, QB, 63,5% pass completions, 3705 passing yards, 25 TDs against 6 INTs.

- Latavius Murray, RB, 737 rushing yards, 4.2 yards per carry, 12 rushing TDs.

- Amari Cooper, WR, 74 receptions, 1038 receiving yards, 4 TD catches.

- Michael Crabtree, WR: 77 receptions, 866 receiving yards, 8 TD catches.

tearin' it up early

A couple of guards getting off to good starts early this season in the NBA:

Russell Westbrook, Oklahoma City. Westbrook leads the league in points per game (30.4); he's dishing out 11.0 assists per game, good enough for 2nd in the league; and when you include his 10.5 rebounds per game, he's averaging a triple-double -- nobody's done that for an entire season since Oscar Robertson, back in the 60s! Westbrook has collected 13 triple-doubles so far this season. He had 18 triple-doubles last season, tying Magic Johnson's mark from the 1981-82 season (Robertson had 41 back in '61-'62).

Classic shot of Oscar Robertson playing college ball at Cincinnati

James Harden, Houston. Harden is the league's 5th-leading scorer, pouring in 27.7 points per game, and he leads the league in assists (11.8). He's also been grabbing 8.0 rebounds per game. Not bad.

These two guys also hold the top two spots in the league in free throw attempts (Westbrook - 10.4, Harden - 10.3). Both guys shoot well from the charity stripe -- Westbrook is hitting on about 81% of his tries and Harden comes in a few notches higher, at about 84%. Thus, Harden leads the league in free throws made per game (8.6) and Westbrook stands 3rd at 8.4. The ability to get to the line often -- and to collect lots of "free" points -- qualifies as an art form, one that separates the elite players from the rest.

I don't know if Westbrook and Harden can continue to put up these numbers throughout the entire season. Probably not. Westbrook's triple-double numbers certainly impress, and probably make him the leading MVP candidate so far, but I'm amazed that Harden is scoring so much while also leading the NBA in assists! I didn't think he had it in him!

* * *

Side note: Cleveland's LeBron James is quietly putting up some killer numbers of his own, and for one of the NBA's elite teams (the Cavs currently sport a 19-6 won/loss record, third-best in the league): 25.0 ppg, 9.0 apg, 7.6 rpg, 51.7% shooting from the field, 35.2% on 3-point tries. Outstanding, and still (perhaps) the best all-around player in pro basketball.

The Powerful LeBron James

* * *

Early-season sharp-shooting:

Steph Curry, Golden State: 3.8 made 3-pointers per game, tops in the league. Curry's shooting 40.3% on 9.4 three-point tries per game. He's also 2nd in the league in free throw percentage (93.2% on 5.2 tries per game). Blazing!

Kevin Durant, Golden State: Burying 53.8% of his shots from the field, 40.9% of his three-point tries, and 86.2% from the free throw line. Those numbers make me think of a guy named Larry Bird.

Courtney Lee, Knicks: 45.4% FGs, 86.4% FTs, 47.4% 3-pointers.

Channing Frye, in limited minutes with Cleveland: 44.6% FGs, 94.1% FTs, 47.1% 3-pointers.

George Hill, Utah: 53.4% FGs, 88.4% FTs, 45.6% 3-pointers.

C.J. McCollum, Portland: 47.8% FGs, 90.8% FTs, 45.5% 3-pointers.

fluxbox, simple and clean

Finally got Fluxbox installed and set up in openSUSE "Leap" 42.2. Here's what the default Fluxbox desktop looked like:

I basically used notes and copies of files from my Fluxbox installation in openSUSE 42.1 (see "fluxbox in leap") for reference. Here's my current Fluxbox desktop in Leap 42.2:

more ink for mx

Like MX-15, the newly-released MX-16 is based on Debian Jessie; so, for now, I'll stick with the earlier release, which I run from a flash drive sometimes.

The MX-16 release announcement at DistroWatch: https://www.distrowatch.com/?newsid=09669

The "official" MX-16 release announcement can be found here.

Also, here's an interesting piece: Dedoimedo interviews: MX Linux team

tinkering with openbox

My Openbox setups continue to evolve. Here's my current BunsenLabs desktop, with a reorganized menu; I've edited my conky and added a conky calendar:

I put a "start-stop-conky" item in my "openbox" submenu, which toggles my conkys off and on by running the ~/start-stop-conky script:

#!/bin/sh
# start or stop conky - click to start, click to stop
 
if pidof conky | grep [0-9] > /dev/null
   then
      exec killall conky
   else
      conky &
      conky -c /home/steve/.conkyrc-2
   exit
fi

My ~/.conkyrc-2 file contains the following (for the conky calendar):

alignment bottom_right
background no
border_width 1
cpu_avg_samples 2
default_color white
default_outline_color white
default_shade_color black
draw_borders no
draw_graph_borders yes
draw_outline no
draw_shades yes
use_xft yes
xftfont DejaVu Sans Mono:size=12
gap_x 15
gap_y 25
minimum_size 5 5
maximum_width 205
net_avg_samples 2
no_buffers yes
out_to_console no
out_to_stderr no
extra_newline no
double_buffer yes
own_window yes
own_window_class Conky
own_window_type desktop
own_window_transparent no
own_window_argb_visual yes
own_window_colour 000000
own_window_argb_value 155
own_window_hints undecorated,below,sticky,skip_taskbar,skip_pager
stippled_borders 0
update_interval 1.0
uppercase no
use_spacer none
show_graph_scale no
show_graph_range no

TEXT

$color ${font DejaVu Sans Mono:size=12}${execpi 60 DJS=`date +%_d`; cal -h | sed s/"\(^\|[^0-9]\)$DJS"'\b'/'\1${color gold}'"$DJS"'$color'/}

A similar setup in Antergos (on the same computer), but with a few launchers down near the bottom of the tint2 panel, and a somewhat different menu layout:

Here, a look back at the default Openbox setups I snapped earlier in BunsenLabs and Antergos, respectively:

Both distros ship with nice setups. Very few self-respecting Openbox users will stick with the default setups. If you use Openbox, you tinker; it's what you do. :)