Ahoy!
Gnome 2.20 has a new Clearlooks version, known during development as Gummy. The main new features are blue scrollbars, fading tabs and rounded toolbars.

Clearlooks (gummy)

ClearlooksClassic

If you don’t like the new theme you can use ClearlooksClassic, or just disable the single features you don’t like. To do so, just open (or create if it doesn’t exist) the .gtkrc-2.0 file in your home directory and set the options you prefer:

style "my-clearlooks" = "clearlooks-default"
{
    engine "clearlooks"
    {
        colorize_scrollbar = TRUE  # TRUE = blue scrollbars
        menubarstyle       = 2     # 0 = flat, 1 = sunken, 2 = flat gradient
        toolbarstyle       = 1     # 0 = flat, 1 = enable effects
        animation          = FALSE # TRUE = animated progress bars
        style              = GUMMY
    }
}

class "*" style "my-clearlooks"

Animations work only if --enable-animation was used at configure-time.

If you want the old style for notebook tabs use:

style "my-clearlooks-notebook" = "clearlooks-notebook"
{
    engine "clearlooks" 
    {
        style = CLASSIC
    }
}

class "GtkNotebook" style : highest "my-clearlooks-notebook"

Personally, I like blue scrollbars and toolbars, but I’m unsure about fading tabs. Nevertheless, I’m probably going to disable rounded toolbars as they are ugly when there are more bars (such as in nautilus or in file-roller) and in Evolution (the background of the “New” button is flat).

Two toolbars in file-roller

Evolution and Clearlooks

Beamer is a LaTeX class that allows you to easily create presentations. It contains several themes, but they are a bit ugly, so I wrote a new theme (named Torino) that I’m going to use for the slides for my graduation dissertation.

The look of the theme is based on a layout by Novell/SUSE and the nouvelle color theme uses the same colors of that one. There are other two color themes: chameleon, similar to nouvelle but green only, and freewilly, a blue theme that should look good even with crappy projectors.

The theme accepts some options that allow you to change the logo, the watermark, bullet lists, etc.

  
Chameleon

  
Nouvelle

  
Freewilly

• Download beamer-torino
• GitHub page and repository

A big thank you to Alessandro Finamore who helped me with the realization of the theme.

I usually prefer oven ready lasagna as it doesn’t need to be boiled before assembling the dish, but you can also use dried or fresh lasagna or prepare the pasta on your own. In the latter case you can use the lasagna recipe written by Fabio Rosciano.

If you are using non-oven ready pasta you have to boil it for some minutes and then drain it, removing completely the water.

The Italian translation of the recipe is on my cooking blog.

Ingredients for the béchamel sauce

• 5 tbs. (75 g) unsalted butter
• 3/4 cup (75 g) all-purpose flour
• 3 cups (750 g) milk
• salt
• pepper
• nutmeg

Ingredients

• 1 box (9 ounces, 250 g) oven ready lasagna
• 6 leeks, with 1 inch of dark green part, split, cleaned and sliced
• 1 lb. (450 g) not cured, sweet, plain (without fennel or anise) pork sausage
• 1 glass white wine
• 2 tbs. olive oil
• Parmesan cheese
• salt

Prepare the béchamel sauce. Heat the butter over low heat until melted, then add the flour all at once and stir until smooth. Cook over low heat for 3 minutes stirring constantly. Add milk (at room temperature or hot) and cook for about 5 to 7 minutes, stirring constantly. Add salt, pepper and some nutmeg.

Prepare the filling. Cut the sausage casing lengthwise and remove it. Heat the olive oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Add the sausage and cook, stirring and breaking up the meat with a spoon, for 5 minutes. Add leeks, salt and wine, and cook for 15-20 minutes, stirring frequently.

Assemble. Arrange a layer of lasagna in a buttered baking dish, spread with some béchamel, some leeks and sausage mixture, and a thin scattering of Parmesan cheese. Repeat with remaining ingredients, ending with béchamel and a good sprinkling of Parmesan.

Pre-heat the oven to 375º F (190° C) and bake for about 25 minutes.