Using Ubuntu daily for the first time in a few months.  It absolutely flies on my Inspiron 1525 (Celeron 900 2.2 GHz, 2GB RAM).  Thinking about removing Windows or at least greatly reducing the space it takes up.

How To intro
The actual How To
Guide for nook that is referred to

My notes:

1. It does not work on 32 bit Ubuntu 12.04 since you can only compile jellybean on 64 bit O/S.  I learned this the hard way.  Thank goodness I have unlimited broadband.
2. You can do apt-get install eclipse on Ubuntu 12.04 and you get eclipse and java, contrary to the out of date google instructions.
3. To install libncurses5-dev you can do
   sudo apt-get install libncurses5-dev:i386
4. Did repo sync -j16.  It started at three pm and ended the following day after two restarts, and the one that worked was using -j10.
5. Did . build/envsetup.sh so that the lunch command would work
6. Did
   croot
   brunch grouper to build the rom and waited a long time.  I got a warning about java that made no sense – telling me I neded java_6.0.x but I only had java_6.0.34 or something.  There was also a warning at the start, but it ran OK.  For hours and hours on my Inspiron 1525 (Celeron 900 at 2.2 GHz Processor).  I went to bed.
7. It failed.  It turned out I should have done
   cd ./android/system/vendor/cm/
   ./get-prebuilt
8. Left it building with the step 6 again and went to work.  I came back to it nearly being complete but no .zip file 🙁
9. I worked out that the ./get-prebuilts had not worked.  I looked at the script and worked out that the Term.apk was “file not found”. I installed the Android Terminal Editor on my nexus, found the file in /data/app using root explorer, sent it to dropbox, downloaded it, renamed it to Term.apk, commented out the two curl lines in get-prebuilts and ran it again. It worked. I love the internet. No idea if it solves my build problems, but I am closer. 
10. Build problems not solved!!  Had to install several more packages and was put on to this thread that helped:
    http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1505006
11. Found I also needed to install xsltproc
12. Tried compiling again and went to bed waited eagerly to see what would happen since it seemed to be working.
13. SUCCESS!

I’ve ditched the terribly slow but pretty Gallery application on CyanogenMod for QuickPic.

Using MP3 Players at High Volume Puts Teens at Risk for Early Hearing Loss, Say Researchers

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/12/111228134852.htm

Lookup table.

Years ago I wrote the ultimate address book that has people and addresses as separate tables in a database where people can have more than one address.  It worked well.  Now I want to use something in the cloud, and can’t find anything that works as elegantly.  To keep things simple I plan to use Google contacts.

Easy.  Export my contacts, patch them together in Excel and import them as a google CSV.

Except that google exports in one format but is unable to import back again!?  Very frustrating, and their help files are dreadful giving no help at all on field headings.

At least they allow you to roll back your contacts, so my mistakes were able to be fixed. 

Later:  I eventually sorted it out, but it took a lot of pain to do so.