sheepeatingtaz » Tech

Social netWORKS

sheepeatingtaz — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 16:21:52 +0000

My new mission is to get as many of my ‘non-technical’ friends on things like Twitter and Facebook. They have both been extremely useful this last week. Lisa has been in hospital. Understandably, a lot of different people have wanted to be kept up to date. With Facebook & Twitter (Especially when using my mobile to update Twitter, which updates Facebook) I can text a quick update and anyone who uses these services is instantly up to date!

I’m going to try and get people set up with Twitter, as I really like the fact that you can recieve the updates via SMS as well as send them. I’m going to start using it more, not just for emergencies!!

Should it work?

sheepeatingtaz — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 16:19:24 +0000

I have one of these on my laptop:

I have one of these from Ebay (cost a couple of quid):

I have one of these from my box of cables:

I have one of these in my living room:

Should I be able to link the 4 together and view the laptop output(Ubuntu) on the TV? If so, could someone drop into the comments a link to how to make it work? I tried the Screens and Graphics option from the Control Centre, but it broke X. I’ve read things about xrandr, but read more about how it doesn’t work.

I’m hoping it can work, as it would help me with my MythTV testing.

Multi-region capabilities

sheepeatingtaz — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 08:15:47 +0000

Today, I have the happiness. I now have a DVD player in the living room that can play Multi-region DVD’s, as well as XVID/DIVX encoded videos. (In case anyone is interested, it is a Cyberhome DVD401 bought from Amazon.co.uk for the staggering sum of £17.99 + postage & packaging a couple of years back).

This means I can play my Cosby Show DVD’s (STILL only available in Region 1!) as well as my, erm, Recorded (from MythTV, obviously) media. If it had a hard drive I could install MythTV on, it would be perfect, but it will do as a stepping stone while I work on building a silent front end for the living room.

Tempation On Microsoft Course

sheepeatingtaz — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 11:00:47 +0000

I have been on Microsoft Course 2262 the last couple of days for work.

A couple of times, I’ve had to hold my tongue. The best example is that there was a whole module entitled “Troubleshooting Issues relating to Internet Explorer”. I was disappointed to see the contents of the module weren’t (wasn’t?) http://getfirefox.com.

Just for fun, here is one of the questions from the module “Troubleshooting Issues relating to Office”:

You recieve a call from a user who did not activate Office, and now he is running the Office programs in reduced-functionality mode. The user does not want to activate Office because he is worried that his personal information will be made available to other vendord.

How should you respond?

Now, the answer is obviously that I should tell them not worry, Microsoft will look after you etc etc blah blah blah. I do find it quite interesting that Microsoft are trying to use their ‘trainees’ as advocates for their software and practices.

Comedy responses to the above question welcome in the comments. They will give me something to read when we get onto “Troubleshooting Issues relating to Outlook Express”…

Faster Ubuntu!

sheepeatingtaz — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 09:33:46 +0000

To answer my own post:

Blacklisting the gspca webcam module has restored my laptop’s boot speed.

http://www.sheepeatingtaz.co.uk/images/gutsy-20080203-3.png

It will take some more time to discover why, or even where I need to file a bug. On the plus side, I don’t use the webcam, so it’s not going to impair my use of the system.

Slooooow Ubuntu Boot

sheepeatingtaz — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 10:19:56 +0000

Also posted to the Ubuntu-UK mailing list, but I would appreciate it if someone could take a look at a bootchart image from today, and hazard a guess as to why my computer takes (metaphorically) 3 days to boot?

http://www.sheepeatingtaz.co.uk/images/gutsy-20080202-1.png

Image is fairly large, so apologies! It looks like modprobe & udev are taking the time, but I have no idea how to find out why, so guidance would be appreciated!

The Work Laptop

sheepeatingtaz — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 10:28:58 +0000

So, I received my work laptop on Friday. It was like a small, defenceless child, seeking my protection. After nearly a full day, it is now (nearly) ready for use. Bearing in mind it came with Windows XP Pro, installed in OEM mode, this meant I had to:

Finish installing windows
Update Windows
Restart Windows
Update Windows
Restart Windows
Update Windows
Restart Windows
Update Windows
Restart Windows (That’s right – 4 times!)
Remove all the pre-installed crap (Apart from Diskkeeper Lite, which I shall keep)
Install Essential Software (Anti-Virus, Firewall, Anti-Spyware, Anti-Rootkit)
Install Necessary Software (Microsoft Office 2003, MySQL, SQLYog, Python, Notepad++, XMLCopyEditor, Filezilla, 7-zip, Cleartype & AltSwitcher XP Powertoys)
Update Microsoft Office
Install Updates To Microsoft Office Updates
Install Hotfixes for Microsoft Office Service Pack 3
Install Preferred Software (Firefox, RamDef, Tango Theme Patcher, Clearlooks XP Theme, Pidgin (+ Plugins), Cygwin, Console2, PuTTY, VLC, Launchy, GIMP)
Copy Firefox, Pidgin, PuTTY & Console2 Profiles from Main Office machine
Setup Fingerprint Scanner
Custom Desktop
Setup Work & home wireless connections
Setup VPN & RDP connections for clients & Office

I’m bound to remember something else as I start to use it regularly, but for now, that is all.

Now I’m faced with a difficult choice. Do I put a Linux distro on in Dual Boot?
Pros:

IMO, Linux is better than Windows
I Prefer Using Linux
I’m more comfortable in Linux
It’s got a 120GB HD, and not a lot of data to store. I could ‘donate’ 30GB no problems.
Windows makes me feel dirty

Cons:

I don’t need it.
I will probably not use it, as I need to use Windows for work, and it is a work laptop
My Personal laptop, and all the desktops at home all have Ubuntu on, so they can make me clean again

I did try the gOS live cd, but it absolutely positively would not connect to my wireless network at home, whereas I know Ubuntu does. I also for the life of me couldn’t work out myself how to get a terminal up (within the Window manager, Ctrl-Alt-F1 worked fine). If I did put Linux on, I would probably wait for Hardy, as it is a work machine, so I need the LTS really to cover my own arse.

Opinions, as always, are welcome! I would also like to know if I’ve missed any windows software that others deem worthy of being installed. I would never have found most of the software I use most of the time if it weren’t for the Open Source community suggesting it!

Laptop Recommendations

sheepeatingtaz — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 08:40:52 +0000

Unrelated to my previous post! Yesterday, my boss said:

Steve, get yourself a work laptop. But Don’t spend more than £400

So, seeing as it is for me, I want the most for my money!

I would like 2Gb Ram, but am aware I may have to settle for 1Gb.

Hard drive is not really an issue. It’s a work laptop, so I don’t need oodles of storage space, however…

It will have to run Windows XP Pro by default. I would then be able to run Ubuntu in dual-boot for my ‘Normal’ needs

The quicker processor for the money, the better, obviously

I’m torn on teh size that I want. I’d like recommendations. I Think I would prefer something portable, as any demos etc would be given on a projector/big screen

Please Help!

Dead Pixels?

sheepeatingtaz — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 09:30:10 +0000

On my laptop (an Acer 5600) I have two line running vertically down my screen. These lines started about a pixel thick, in a green or pink or white colour. They are getting bigger. They are both now 2 or 3 mm wide, with a mixture of colours. They are down the right hand side of my screen (one about about 3 cm from the right edge, the other is 2 cm further in from it). If I gently pull the top right corner of the screen toward me while simultaneously pushing the left away, they disappear. Is there anything I can do to fix it permanently besides taking to a repair shop/replacing the screen completely?

XML Copy Editor

sheepeatingtaz — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 16:34:43 +0000

I’ve used a lot of programs in the past for ‘coding’. I’ve gone with notepad (back when I first started), through various things up to (for example) complex tools like Eclipse. I also gone back ‘down’ the scale, and used gedit/kate/notepad++ (depending on what platform I am using). In the end, I often get fed up of trying to be ‘helped’ by the complex tools, and want nothing more than syntax highlighting and pretty printing.

In my current job, I am doing a lot of work with XML, with various different XML schemas for various different companies. I have the need for a tool to view, edit and validate XML documents. There are various things around the internet that do this. Some are Open Source, some are proprietary, some are in between. Some cost money, some don’t. Others in my office use Oxygen/ so I had been using this (and getting frustrated with it both in standalone and eclipse plugin form for just not helping me when it thought it was!). Then, by chance on the Ubuntu-uk mailing list someone suggested XML Copy Editor.

I Love It. Cross platform (with Ubuntu .deb for ease). Simple. Does the job. Load XML file. Press F11 to pretty print (I’m slow in the head sometimes, and need help understanding the structures ). Syntax? Already Highlighted. Associate Schema from the XML Menu. F5 to validate. Job Done. Searches, highlights the line you are on, but nothing more obtrusive (at least as far as I can tell!).

Plus, it is open source. I can go onto sourceforge, and help out. I wish I were able to do more, but I may start taking Tony Whitmore as an example and donate some money once a year to open source projects that I use, value, yet cannot contribute much else to. XML Copy Editor is top of my list.

gOS

sheepeatingtaz — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 14:51:09 +0000

I’m thinking about trying gOS on my laptop.

Periodically, I like to wipe my hard drives and start again. Mainly because I have a habit of tinkering, despite not really knowing what I’m doing . This results in things being a mess. I can backup the important files from my /home partition, and start again.

Anyway, back to gOS. The thing I like about it is that it runs mainly web apps. I use mainly web apps. It seems silly, therefore, to not use it! It’s based on Ubuntu, so anything I feel I’m missing, I can install from repositories. It is VERY rare nowadays (mainly due to spare time constraints) that I manually compile & install anything, so it seems like a good way to go.

However, I’ve read a couple of reviews, and they aren’t brilliant. The level of stability is reported as being somewhat flakey, and I’m not sure I have the time to debug & report as I should. Also, the next version of Ubuntu is an LTS, which raises the question of whether I should just wait for that, then I shouldn’t have to worry about anything!

I’m also going to read my LPI book, so that I will in future know what I’m doing, and not feel the need to start again once a year

MySQL default date values

sheepeatingtaz — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 10:46:50 +0000

Is it possible to set the default value of a datetime MySQL field to todays date + 30?

If so, how?!?

Firefox 3.0 b 1

sheepeatingtaz — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 12:46:26 +0000

There is now a beta available for Firefox 3. Reading through the release notes came up with this:

Memory usage: Over 300 individual memory leaks have been plugged, and a new XPCOM cycle collector completely eliminates many more. Developers are continuing to work on optimizing memory use (by releasing cached objects more quickly) and reducing fragmentation.

\o/

No more 400MB RAM usage (I hope)

Don’t Listen Alone

sheepeatingtaz — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 10:58:33 +0000

It what appears to be a continuation of the theme, there is another promo video available for Lugradio Live 2007:

http://www.lugradio.org/listenalone/

Freedom March

sheepeatingtaz — Fri, 08 Jun 2007 15:58:06 +0000

Lugradio Live 2007 is approaching.

Spread the word, and the video:

http://www.lugradio.org/freedommarch/