LinkBlog
1st November 2014There are times when I just need to share some links outside the fleeting environment of Twitter, and this is where they might appear. The practice is very much in the spirit of the original weblog idea when it was about link sharing and not about writing down one’s thoughts as it subsequently became before sharing of photos, videos and other multimedia content became a mainstay of (legal) sharing for some people.
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10:19 October 14, 2017
17:03 October 7, 2017
17:01 October 7, 2017
Get rid of those extra TIFFs & PSDs in your Lightroom Library fast!
11:57 September 15, 2017
09:47 September 11, 2017
09:45 September 11, 2017
17:11 August 13, 2017
14:21 July 22, 2017
12:13 July 8, 2017
20:03 July 1, 2017
18:58 June 21, 2017
17:03 April 24, 2017
12:01 April 2, 2017
Windows 7: Windows 7 Not Updating
Windows Update error “0x80070002” or “0x80070003”
Fix Windows Update errors by using the DISM or System Update Readiness tool
18:17 March 22, 2017
23:25 March 12, 2017
22:08 March 7, 2017
Review: Evoluent Vertical Mouse 4 (and how to make it work in Ubuntu)
11:14 February 25, 2017
18:38 February 16, 2017
18:34 February 16, 2017
10:35 February 5, 2017
00:45 December 3, 2016
16:02 July 18, 2016
18:21 June 9, 2016
15:22 May 13, 2016
15:13 January 15, 2016
Get rid of the annoying formatting pop-up when you paste in Word
11:15 December 5, 2015
16:23 December 4, 2015
14:08 December 3, 2015
14:07 December 3, 2015
22:16 November 12, 2015
11:08 November 12, 2015
Fedora 23/22/21 nVidia Drivers Install Guide
09:56 October 30, 2015
20:15 October 29, 2015
20:10 October 29, 2015
20:06 October 29, 2015
21:01 October 2, 2015
22:02 September 28, 2015
11:28 August 7, 2015
16:14 July 27, 2015
11:18 July 24, 2015
18:40 July 10, 2015
15:16 July 9, 2015
18:41 July 6, 2015
07:24 July 2, 2015
The Command Prompt is Outdated: 2 Command Prompt Replacements for Windows
6 Great Windows 10 Features You Can Get Today on Windows 7 or 8
07:35 June 23, 2015
20:12 June 18, 2015
12:08 May 8, 2015
20:00 May 4, 2015
20:00 May 4, 2015
11:07 May 4, 2015
10:51 May 1, 2015
10:44 April 16, 2015
10:39 April 13, 2015
09:45 April 12, 2015
09:45 April 12, 2015
15:04 April 11, 2015
12:42 April 6, 2015
14:01 April 3, 2015
How to fix “System program problem detected” error on Ubuntu
19:27 March 28, 2015
11:34 March 27, 2015
11:21 March 27, 2015
11:04 March 27, 2015
16:51 March 26, 2015
16:53 March 18, 2015
04:00 March 7, 2015
02:39 March 5, 2015
Google Translate CLI Lets You Translate Text From The Command Line
01:51 March 5, 2015
23:19 February 21, 2015
14:25 February 19, 2015
11:56 February 16, 2015
22:29 February 9, 2015
15:45 February 5, 2015
Switch Windows by Hovering the Mouse Over a Window in Windows 7 or Vista
10:32 February 4, 2015
15:30 January 30, 2015
10:17 January 21, 2015
12:56 December 31, 2014
10:05 December 11, 2014
17:05 December 9, 2014
16:22 December 6, 2014
18:45 December 5, 2014
The crop tool is stuck in a fixed shape. How can I make it work properly?
14:55 November 26, 2014
22:12 November 18, 2014
How To Install MATE Desktop on Ubuntu 14.04 LTS
Cinnamon 2.4 Debuts With New Features, Here’s How To Install It In Ubuntu
FSF-Endorsed Linux Distro ‘Trisquel 7.0′ Released
19:53 November 11, 2014
21:54 November 4, 2014
21:52 November 4, 2014
22:30 October 30, 2014
21:34 June 11, 2014
18:57 January 24, 2014
Archive area of old releases of Java for those who need them.
Assorted Desktop Packages
29th September 2012Here is some desktop software that is either commonplace in the world of Linux or needs a bit more publicity, at least in my opinion. The list is sorted alphabetically, in case you are left wondering at its first entry. As with everything in this place, it may grow or contract, but change certainly is a feature of the world of Linux anyway. That’s never a bad thing, even if it upsets some from time to time.
This suite comes from the KDE project and includes office and graphical software. The latter includes Krita, which is described separately below, so this is an interesting collection of software.
Linux does have a choice of Twitter/X clients and this is one of them. It’s a KDE application that also supports Pump.IO, GNU Social and Friendica instances. There are others on the support list too, though Mastodon is a surprising absence given the recent furore surrounding Twitter/X.
The name is a play on that of Adobe’s Lightroom, and that gives you an idea of what it is about. This too allows non-destructive editing of images with the added information being kept in associated files with XMP extensions, one for each image. What the software does not have though is an image management interface like that of Lightroom or digiKam.
This is more than an organiser, and may be the KDE project’s counterpart to Adobe’s closed source Lightroom. Its photo organising doesn’t mean automated folder creation from EXIF information like F-Spot, Shotwell or Rapid Photo Downloader. It is for that reason that I combine digiKam with the last entry on the preceding list, since I jumped ship from Shotwell. The image processing part of the application is something that I have to explore.
Other IDE’s have taken over me these days, but this had a use for editing PHP scripts once upon a time. It is better known for what it offers Java developers, though.
A long-standing UNIX/Linux text editor that has been doing battle with Vi for longer than many can remember. Like the alternative, it has keyboard shortcuts that do anything but make concessions to Windows conventions, add needless steepening of any learning curve unless you find the appropriate option (CUA) that allows for some emulation of mainstream keyboard shortcuts. Nevertheless, there also is a GUI variant that makes life easier, and I have to concede that it has a history that is longer than even Microsoft itself. As if that weren’t enough compensation, it is a powerful piece of software whose functionality goes much further than text editing, whose surface I have only barely begun to scratch. The logic of the interface may differ from that to which many are accustomed, but it is consistent and well-thought-out nonetheless.
For a while, this was my photo organiser of choice, but it has not seen a new release since December 2010. Maybe that’s because it works well enough as it is, yet you cannot help thinking that a project with no new releases is a dead one, even if that sometime reflects how right they got things at the time.
Before my quest for added automation took over, this was my FTP client of choice, and its advent has made the need to buy such software extinct. That it works on both Windows and Linux is a bonus.
The ubiquitous Photoshop challenger is maturing nicely, though its interface may not please some.
This is very like ImageMagick (see below) with its main selling point being that it’s faster than its parent for the purpose of command line image editing; my own testing seems to support this so far. The commands that you use are similar to ImageMagick too, apart mainly from adding the gm command before the likes of convert and others. Speaking of convert, the GraphicsMagick version has yet to support the -annotate switch, so -draw needs to be used in its place.
Using a command line tool for image processing may seem counter-intuitive, but there are operations where you need not have much user intervention. Included among these is image resizing and conversion between file formats, and yours truly has done both. Processing many files at a stroke comes naturally to this very useful and talented piece of software, too.
Software media centres lie largely beyond my purview, but this seems to be one of the better known of the breed. It overlays the desktop when it is running and caters for consumption of music, movies, TV, photo slideshows and games. Controversially, there even is PVR capability for recording live broadcasts as well.
For those with a more artistic bent, this is a digital drawing and illustration package that will work not only on Linux but also on Windows or OS X. The results can be striking, so it looks as if your talent may be the only limitation with this tool.
Oracle’s takeover of Sun Microsystems meant that some feathers were ruffled in the open-source and free software community, and one example of a change coming from this is the forking of OpenOffice. It is that act that has brought LibreOffice into being, and it then gained so much ground that it eclipsed its parent.
Mozilla may promote their wares as bing privacy-friendly, yet others are not sure, so Firefox has been forked to give LibreWolf. This removes telemetry, adds a content blocker along with other enhancements.
There’s no way that I could not include what once was the de facto standard web browser for Linux, though there’s competition from Chrome/Chromium now too. There is also a mobile version for phones running the Android OS.
The original Mozilla suite still lives on, and this is what it’s called nowadays.
This has replaced Evolution on Linux systems that I use, and it comes close to eclipsing Microsoft Outlook everywhere else, too.
The main function of this piece of software is to record broadcast TV, hence that part of the name. It also has media playback capability, and that is what makes it more of a media centre than the digital video recording functionality may suggest.
UNIX/Linux offers plenty of text editors, so here’s another of the less well-known ones that I have encountered. Syntax highlighting is part of the offer and some menu customisation is possible too. In essence, it is a straightforward text editor that works with Windows keyboard shortcuts, but that can be no bad thing.
You cannot feature Eclipse in a software listing without having NetBeans too. In fact, it was NetBeans that I first encountered, and that was many moons ago. There is a PHP variant available, but that seemed very sluggish when I tried it and turned back to Eclipse, with which I have stuck ever since. That poor performance may have been caused by the variant of Java that was available to it, so I may give it another ago when I have the time.
Here, OBS stands for Open Broadcaster Software, and that somewhat says what it does. In essence, we are talking about video recording and live-streaming. With the increasing pervasiveness of video like what once was the case with photography, it is easy to see the use case for this kind of software.
Is this the office suite of choice for Linux? It certainly felt that way before Oracle bought Sun Microsystems and upset a few open-source developers. Now, the appearance of LibreOffice is going to make things look a little more interesting.
This is a far more user-friendly way to run Windows software on Linux, using the WINE libraries in the background. The name seems to originate from game playing, though web browsers like Internet Explorer and Safari are available too, along with a selection of other software. For the adventurous, there also is the possibility of installing something you have yourself.
Here’s the description from the website:
Privoxy is a non-caching web proxy with advanced filtering capabilities for enhancing privacy, modifying web page data and HTTP headers, controlling access, and removing ads and other obnoxious Internet junk.
It’s available for a number of platforms, including Linux and UNIX, and offers a way of blocking ads in Google Chrome, which is how I got to hear about it. Ubuntu users can snag a copy from the usual repositories too.
Configuration is by editing text files, but the default settings have sufficient so far. Setting a browser to use it means searching through settings for the means of making it use IP address 127.0.0.1 and port 8118 for ordinary and secure HTTP connections.
When Shotwell, started to fail to download photos from ever larger memory cards, it was time to look at something else and this became the replacement. You can use it to copy images from any card reader into the directory structure of your choosing. It does nothing more than downloading, and it does it so well that it merits a mention on here.
This was my photo library manager of choice until its limitations when it came to handling large data volumes came to light. It is written for the GNOME desktop environment and worked well for a few years before technology overtook it. Still, it also offers limited photo editing capabilities to go with its organising skills.
This reader and manipulator of raw digital camera image formats acts either alone or as a plugin. It can be used via the command line or using a GUI. That makes it flexible for those times when you need things to happen without much input from yourself.
All in all, this is an excellent piece of virtualisation software that makes you wonder why you’d pay for something like VMware Workstation. There is a closed source variant, but the open-source equivalent has what you’d want for personal use anyway. Windows 11 support took a while to come into place because of its TPM requirements, but that is steady these days.
Since the widely used VSCode is so available and appears to be open-source in nature, one does wonder why this project exists. Here is their take on that conundrum:
Microsoft’s VSCode source code is open source (MIT-licensed), but the product available for download (Visual Studio Code) is licensed under this not-FLOSS licence and contains telemetry/tracking. According to this comment from a Visual Studio Code maintainer:
When Microsoft builds Visual Studio Code, we do exactly this. They clone the VSCode repository, they lay down a customized product.json that has Microsoft-specific functionality (telemetry, gallery, logo, etc.), and then produce a build that we release under their licence.
When you clone and build from the VSCode repo, none of these endpoints are configured in the default product.json. Therefore, you generate a “clean” build, without the Microsoft customisations, which is by default licensed under the MIT licence.
The VSCodium project exists so that you don’t have to download and build from source. This project includes special build scripts that clone Microsoft’s VSCode repo, run the build commands, and upload the resulting binaries for you to GitHub releases. These binaries are licensed under the MIT licence. Telemetry is disabled.
If you want to build from source yourself, head over to Microsoft’s VSCode repo and follow their instructions. VSCodium exists to make it easier to get the latest version of MIT-licensed VS Code.
This is a fork of Firefox that claims to be faster and more private. From my brief test, it certainly feels faster, though I was not as able to test things on the privacy end.
Getting custom Python imports to work in Visual Studio Code
18th February 2022While I continue to use Spyder as my preferred Python code editor, I also tried out Visual Studio Code. Handily, this Integrated Development Environment also has facilities for working with R and Julia code as well as MarkDown text editing and adding the required extensions is enough for these applications; it helps that there is an unofficial Grammarly extension for content creation.
My Python code development makes use of the Pylance extension and it works a little differently from Spyder when it comes to including files using import statements. Spyder will look into the folder where the base script is located but the default behaviour of Pylance is that it looks in the root path of your workspace. This meant that any code that ran successfully in Spyder failed in Visual Studio Code.
The way around this was to add the required location using the python.analysis.extraPaths setting for the workspace. That meant opening Settings by navigating to File > Preferences > Settings in the menu system and entering python.analysis.extraPaths into the search box. That took me to the section that I needed and I then clicked on Add Item before entering the required path and clicking on the OK button. That was enough to fix the problem and all worked as it should after that.
Snippets
15th September 2012There are times when I feel the need to share some snippets with a longer lifespan than a tweet. This is a place for those and some yet may even turn into longer articles themselves. That already has happened for one of them, so there is something of a digital scrapbook in operation here.
23:22 May 17, 2024
Now that I have a presence on Mastodon, I have begun to use a command line tool called toot to add missives on there. The web interface works as well, yet toot can be logged into more than one account at a time; switching between accounts is a fairly facile operation. For a command line tool, toot is well intuitive once you get used to it.
13:08 January 8, 2024
Now that ownCloud has been acquired by Kiteworks, there is some uncertainty about what happens next. So far, there is an offer for ownCloud and Nextcloud users to move to Kiteworks’ proprietary platform. Nextcloud itself has been busy making use of the uncertainty to promote their own product line.
19:15 November 19, 2023
The open-source section of the website got a lot of tweaking in the last few weeks. The recipient of the attention was the operating system subsection. That got a full reorganisation with all the listings seeing new entries too. The desktop software also got a bit of attention, and other areas could get altered yet.
11:35 January 20, 2023
Recently, I have been having trouble with Nvidia drivers following a kernel update in Linux Mint (21.1 is the version that I am using). The kernel version has been rolled back from 5.19.x to 5.15.x, and I installed an old AMD graphics card as well. Things still are not perfect, though, so I will be looking out for a way to make things smoother. For now, all is good enough for the moment.
10:30 February 12, 2022
Google Analytics appears to be losing favour in the EU, if Matomo is to be believed. First, Austria outlawed its usage and no France follows suit. This naturally suits Matomo, a self-hosted open-source alternative for collecting website metrics, so it should not be any surprise that they are forthcoming with these details.
16:20 October 9, 2021
Here is the sequence of commands to use when upgrading from OpenMediaVault 4.x to 5.x. All need to be executed with elevated access privileges:
wget -O - https://github.com/OpenMediaVault-Plugin-Developers/installScript/raw/master/upgrade4to5 | sudo bash
reboot
Once your system has restarted and you have logged in again, then you execute these:
apt-get purge openmediavault-omvextrasorg resolvconf
wget -O - https://github.com/OpenMediaVault-Plugin-Developers/packages/raw/master/install | bash
apt-get update
apt-get dist-upgrade
omv-salt deploy run nginx
omv-salt deploy run phpfpm
apt-get install usrmerge
omv-confdbadm migrate conf 5.0.0
15:19 October 9, 2021
Here are some North American online emporia fro buying computers, their components or peripherals:
09:06 September 24, 2021
Here are boilerplate commands for banning and unbanning IP addresses using Fail2ban:
fail2ban-client set <JAIL> banip <IP>
fail2ban-client set <JAIL> unbanip <IP>
13:09 July 27, 2020
If you ever need to install Linux kernel headers on an openSUSE instance in order to install VirtualBox Guest Additions, the following command should be executed in order to do the needful:
sudo zypper in kernel-source
10:37 February 5, 2017
Here is a possible way of resetting the CSS definition for a HTML element, class or ID:
#reset-this-parent {
all: initial;
* {
all: unset;
}
}
Browser support for the above may vary though.
10:39 November 23, 2016
After seeing messages like “The authenticity of host ‘hostname’ can’t be established” during ssh connections, I decided to investigate more and came up with the following solution:
sudo chown -v $USER ~/.ssh/known_hosts
My known_hosts file had gained root ownership so i could not write to it so changing the ownership to that of my own user account sorted the problem. An alternative could be to change the group assignment using chgrp and setting permissions using chmod but what I did sufficed for my needs.
06:30 November 23, 2016
When I ran into trouble with accessing my own websites using my broadband, I found that the solution was to change DNS Lookup Service to what Google offers. This was done on the router side and the IP addresses used were 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.8.4.
22:33 June 4, 2016
Here’s a way to convert DNG files to JPEG ones:
find -type f | grep DNG | parallel mogrify -format jpg {}
10:51 September 16, 2015
Here is a way to recursively delete folders and their contents in PowerShell:
Remove-Item .\foldertodelete -Force -Recurse
The Force switch silences any messages that otherwise would appear and the Recurse switch is what gets directories removed.
23:38 August 18, 2015
Thomson Reuters is changing over Open Calais at the end of August.
11:05 July 29, 2015
Motorola now selling phones direct to the public through its own store. Customisation options are available for more expensive models like Moto X and Nexus 6 too.
10:18 April 12, 2015
Devuan (pronounced like dev-one) is a fork of Debian that does not use systemd as Debian, like so many other distros, is doing. Part of the name must come from a collective calling itself Veteran UNIX Admin (VUA). There is no actual release just but one is intended for around the same time as Debian 8.0 gets released and donations are being solicted via the website.
18:51 February 20, 2015
Here is a handy way to get PowerShell to show files larger than a certain size:
get-childitem | where-object {$_.length -gt 10000}
|ft fullname, length -auto
19:40 December 1, 2014
When a VirtualBox upgrade broke the networking on a Windows 8.1, it was time to look at System Restore to see what it would do. It reverted version 4.3.20 to 4.3.15 and the network disconnection stopped. For now, I will remain with that older version after the misstep with the latest one. Sometimes it is best to stick with what is known to work.
20:38 October 30, 2014
With my deciding to try doing about my waistline during the summer (a bike got put on a trainer and around 30 minutes is spent on it most evenings while I also catch up some reading; now, I feel fitter and incursions into the countryside have an added air of confidence about them), an interest in fitness monitors has developed and the Pulse Ox from Withings has taken my eye due its being price of around £100. That makes it less than alternatives and it isn’t the only health gadget that the company does either with there being a blood pressure monitor in its range too. The Pulse Ox monitors such things as heart rate, activity such as walking and running, sleeping and weight too. It should work with your smartphone as well, which is a bonus. It is one of several like it with Samsung and Apple going in for phone apps and Microsoft releasing their Band device as well. This appears to be a growing area where I never expected to see mainstream technology companies having a role for themselves.
12:44 October 30, 2014
Ergotech now have useful desktop stands for tablet computers. There is one for a full size iPad and another for any other type of tablet. A standalone one on wheels also is available though I cannot see myself ever needing such an item.
20:24 October 20, 2014
Here are some more specialist information sources with search facilities:
18:53 October 7, 2014
Here is the test for the “Shellshock” vulnerability in the bash shell:
env x='() { :;}; echo vulnerable’ bash -c “echo this is a test”
It should not return the following:
vulnerable
this is a test
This would be acceptable:
bash: warning: x: ignoring function definition attempt
bash: error importing function definition for `x’
this is a test
Also, just having this might be fine too:
this is a test
In case you need it, Redhat has more information on the bug that caused scare stories everywhere. Now, it is over to system administrators everywhere to do their bit now that bash has been patched.
21:36 August 24, 2014
Sometimes you need to create more than one directory level in a hierarchy at once and mkdir has the -p option for this purpose. That gets it to create any missing levels in a folder path and avoids warnings that would be issued otherwise.
16:18 August 21, 2014
Debian 8 is under development and has its first beta ready for download. XFCE is now the default desktop environment though it remains possible to install GNOME and GNOME Shell too. In fact, I successfully have given that a go in a VirtualBox installation and will keeping an eye on development so long as no system meltdowns occur. The version of the X Window system already is incompatible with VirtualBox 4.3.14 so we need to await a new version of the virtualisation software before we get access to advanced functions like full window desktop expansion. What we have at the moment works well enough to keep eye on development so we can wait for that full support.
18:31 August 6, 2014
Perfect Resize from onOne Software caught my eye for scaling up images after seeing it mentioned in a Outdoor Photography review of Avanquest PhotoZoom Professional. With a library of 6″ x 4″ prints, I am limited in how large I can make scanned images without they looking blurred and pixelated so that’s why my interest was aroused. There may be a free moment spent seeing what it might do in that situation yet.
16:24 August 2, 2014
Nvidia has a useful page on the difference between DVI-D and DVI-I. It came in handy when transitioning from VGA to DVI on my home PC’s. That made what appears on my Iiyama screen much sharper and allowed me to rid myself of a suspect VGA cable too.
21:42 June 11, 2014
Here are some interesting articles about EFI and UEFI that I uncovered during a recent episode of setting up dual booting of Windows 8.1 and Linux Mint 17 on a PC with EFI:
UEFI Dual-Boot -- Ubuntu 12.04.3 + Windows 8.1 (One GPT HDD)
11:53 May 3, 2014
In the U.K., BT allows you to divert your phone calls for a fee and I have made good use of it over the past year. The service is called Call Diversion and Eircom, Ireland’s counterpart to BT, offers Call Forwarding in Éire. Both are handy because redirecting a call to a mobile phone means that you know you are not missing any calls and that there is nothing lurking on an answering machine when you do get to your home or office. Landline telephony may seem less exciting these days than other forms of communication yet it still has its place and I would not get any nasty surprises along the path of life either. If only I had started doing this kind of thing earlier than I did…
20:12 April 4, 2014
Here’s a useful article about the ever useful locate command. Whether it is FreeBSD or Ubuntu that you are running, this article has a use and that especially when the locate database needs updating with the updatedb command.
20:54 March 12, 2014
A recent website redesign was well helped by modern.IE‘s collection of virtual machine appliances containing different versions of Windows and Internet Explorer. Depending on the host operating system that you are using, you have different options. For Linux, it is VirtualBox only while Windows gains VMware and Virtual PC too. It is a matter of just picking out what suits your situation from dropdown lists.
The first one that I picked was Vista with IE 7 and it was an interface that I had not seen for a while. For all the criticism, the operating system did work well though I wonder if it arrived before the computer hardware that it really needed in order to run smoothly. The dark theme cannot have helped its cause either, especially when compared with the much brighter Windows 7 or Windows 8.x. A Windows XP appliance with IE 6 was grabbed before it gets yanked and support for the elderly OS does finish in April. IE 6 probably is on its last legs so I probably can ignore it now but IE 7 might live longer yet. Window 7 appliances with IE 9 and IE 10 also were downloaded and confirmed that all was well in recent versions of IE when it came to the website. The Vista virtual machine allowed me to ensure that all looks acceptable on IE 7 too. The VM’s themselves contain evaluation versions of enterprise variants of Windows and have a limited lifespan though it is little trouble to reimport an appliance again to rest the clock if so required. In most cases, you extend the evaluation periods too through re-arming and there only are so many times that you can do that anyway. With Windows 8.x, it isn’t even a possibility anyway.
22:05 March 9, 2014
Today, I found an interesting article on CSS media queries and put it to some use for a website redesign that has been keeping me busy over the weekend. Twitter’s Bootstrap came in handy for this too. Now, it’s on to ridding the new design of any rough edges that remain in there. That can be an ongoing task and the site is here if you fancy a look to see what my efforts have produced.
16:20 February 26, 2014
Adding a new Zalman ZM450-GS power supply did little to sort the buzzing in my speakers but it has made the PC where it was installed so much quieter; a much larger fan spinning slower helps while still moving the required amount of air. It is 450W too and I am wondering if my main PC would benefit from a similar upgrade. That may be quieter than the other one was but the case was not a deluxe model so the change should do no harm. As for the speakers, moving them was the only way to get rid of the buzzing. Looking back on this now, it seems that one of them was far too close to a PC.
20:33 February 15, 2014
Currently, the spare PC appears to be causing buzzing on my main PC speakers and with my landline telephone when it is placed right under these. Removing it helps to cut it down but I fancy having a better fix and am wondering if a new power supply might help. Also, I am wondering if there are other sources too. In the meantime, I would like to share an article on the subject that I recently found: Kill Studio Hum and Buzz at the Source.
22:14 February 12, 2014
Applying latest set of updates to LMDE worked to get to Update 8 worked smoothly unlike some predecessors. This brought the latest version of Cinnamon so GNOME now is redundant. It will be interesting to see where things go next.
16:24 February 8, 2014
During the week, I discovered that Twitter is not a benign place to go ruminating. A sharp riposte in an unnecessary tone of voice was enough to bring on a sense of extra caution. Wherever you get humanity, you are likely to encounter and one had a go at me so some thoughts are going to be kept away from there from this point forward. Sometimes, you own website is a far better place to go ponder happenings in the world around you. After all, an ugly comment can be deleted and a rogue IP address blocked if things need to go that far. Of course. more civility would be best. Polite correction is the best course whenever it is warranted since we all are human and no one is beyond making mistakes.
16:15 February 8, 2014
On my outdoors website, I have been using a PHP script from Detect Mobile Browsers but this does not distinguish between Android running on a tablet and that running on a phone. Therefore, I have turned to another source of such scripting and that is working better so far. In fact, this offers more than just PHP but also Python, JavaScript and other scripting languages along with configuration files for web servers too. Apache, Nginx and IIS all have something for them. The logic essentially is based on Perl regular expression matching of user agent strings, not an infallible means but good enough for me along with a smattering of responsive design.
14:30 February 1, 2014
For anyone lost when faced with the changes Microsoft brought in with the launch of Windows 8 and largely retained in Windows 8.1, TechRadar has a useful article: 62 Windows 8 tips, tricks and secrets. What will prove especially interesting is where Microsoft goes next when many of their customers prefer the Windows 7 interface and are sticking with the elderly Windows XP. You only can get so far by telling your customers that they are wrong all of the time and the is competition in the form of Apple’s OS X and Google’s Chrome now.
14:23 February 1, 2014
TechRadar has a round-up of Best free photo editing software: 10 top image editors you should try. Usual options like GIMP, Paint.Net and IrfanView get a mention along with other less well known ones. Interestingly, Google’s Picasa is excluded from the list but that might be because it largely is an image file management tool even if it has some image editing capabilities too.
21:28 January 27, 2014
Late last week, I found out about the image file sorting tool PhotoSift via an article on the software. It looks interesting though I have yet to try it.
17:52 January 27, 2014
Here are some interesting reviews from TechRadar:
Best compact system camera 2014: the top models reviewed
Best tripod and camera support: 13 tested
The tripod heads review really caught my eye more than the others. After all, 2013 was the year that I got a CSC and a Manfrotto tripod has sat reproachingly in the corner far more often than it should.
19:41 January 16, 2014
Today, I spotted two interesting articles to which I want to retain links on here:
Managing the future of complex business and IT landscapes
Send large files to clients with these 8 free tools
Both of these ring bells for me for different reasons. The first is a reminder of a slow and painful system project with which I was involved and of an ineffective IT support service that pained us at the time. The second is ever present in my current job with its need to send data and output files to clients as well as receiving specifications from them.
19:36 January 4, 2014
In recent weeks, I have been having trouble with the onboard network controller on a spare PC that I have at home. It connects to the network fine for a few minutes and then struggles. Making use of an old PCI ethernet card that I had from another machine solved the problem. Does anyone know of issues with ASRock motherboards and onboard network ports at all? It isn’t something that I have seen before and this motherboard never had good networking capability as long as I have had it.
19:33 January 4, 2014
After Christmas, I took delivery of an HTC One mini mobile phone that I got free as part of a contract renewal with O2. It also is known as the M4 and I have been getting used to it since I got it. A lot is familiar and there are some little differences too. Some of these leave me asking why what worked well before got changed to something that is less smooth. Of course, that can be the course of things and it applies to buying a new car as much as getting a phone upgrade. All in all, the phone works well and battery life appears much improved over the HTC Desire S so far, never a bad thing to notice.
19:25 January 4, 2014
This morning, the hosting provider for this website had an outage that lasted over three hours. The provider was Fasthosts and the cause was a power failure. They usually are good so this thankfully does not happen too often. However, we have been getting a lot of stormy weather crossing Britain and Ireland this winter so I suspect that there should be little in the way of surprise when something like this happens. Weather is not due to settle during this month so there may be more power failures, hopefully elsewhere, before things settle down again.
17:20 January 3, 2014
On one WordPress website that I have, the refresh rate for RSS widgets wasn’t the quickest and the remedy was to add this line into the themes functions.php file:
add_filter( ‘wp_feed_cache_transient_lifetime’, create_function(‘$a’, ‘return 600;’) );
It creates a custom function that is attached to the widget and the refresh time is set to 600 seconds or 10 minutes. So far, this seems to be doing what I needed.
17:56 December 19, 2013
What I didn’t realise is that TRIM currently is not enabled in Ubuntu by default. That is set to change in Ubuntu 14.04 and here is some advice on the matter until then.
20:41 December 14, 2013
This weekend, I had visions of needing a new hard drive when all files on one in my main home PC (runs Ubuntu GNOME 13.10 64-bit) went read only. The cure was to re-seat the SATA cables and all was well again. Sometimes, inexpensive remedies are best and I need not to forget this one.
20:54 October 29, 2013
Here are two interesting articles that I spotted: the first is on new features in GNOME 3.10 and the second about getting DRM-protected Flash media playing on Ubuntu 13.10. For now, I am sticking with Ubuntu GNOME 13.04 in spite of a pop-up dialogue encouraging an upgrade to 13.10; the potential for even a little disruption is something that I am delaying for now.
20:34 October 16, 2013
While editing a file in Nano on an virtual Arch Linux web server that I have, I noticed that a file had DOS newline characters instead of UNIX ones so conversion using the dos2unix command was in order. There is more on this to be found on nixCraft and there are other options such as sed described in there too.
21:51 September 7, 2013
Following a look at Webmin, I have to say that it seems a worthy tool for remote management of servers. My trial so far has been on my Ubuntu virtual web server and it works on port 10000 without interfering with the operation of the actual web server. Being able to run system updates and deletion of MySQL databases without resorting to the command will seem a bonus for some. There’s more to it than these though and I have seen the possibility of managing virtual servers located within a real being mooted. It was an issue of Linux User & Developer than inspired me so my Linux magazine reading is seeing its uses.
20:30 September 4, 2013
Here are some interesting articles for anyone thinking about software development and its realities:
The care and feeding of software engineers (or, why engineers are grumpy)
Being an introvert as I am, this article really is something to which I can relate. Whenever I cannot get the space for undisturbed work, it takes from how I enjoy my job.
How designers and engineers can play nice (and still run with scissors)
We all have to work cross-functionally so you cannot have it all your own way…
Six reasons why the NHS National Programme for IT failed
Having been involved in system design, development and implementation myself, I have something to share that fits into the same topic area. Too many cooks can spoil a broth.
Queensland Government Bans IBM from IT Contracts
My past experiences of IBM have not been good and it wasn’t just where I worked either so this is not exactly a surprise. Service organisations need to ensure that they are sufficient responsive and flexible with empowered and enthusiastic staff who do the needful.
23:09 August 11, 2013
Vagrant and Puppet look like very interesting tools for working with virtual machines. They work with VirtualBox or VMware’s Fusion and Workstation so there’s a choice of virtualisation tool.
20:52 April 18, 2013
Crash reports have been appearing after logging into an Ubuntu session for /usr/share/hplip/config_usb_printer.py and it repeating has been reinstalling HPLIP software for my HP LaserJet 1018 printer too. Leaving the printer off until I need it would be one solution and saves some electricity too but it is best to try to sort an issue when you keep getting it. The first step was to download the latest HP software and install it. That wasn’t a complete solution so I altered the latest send_message function call in /usr/share/hplip/config_usb_printer.py from the following:
send_message( device_uri, printer_name, EVENT_DIAGNOSE_PRINTQUEUE, username, 0,”)
to:
send_message( device_uri, printer_name, EVENT_DIAGNOSE_PRINTQUEUE, ”, 0,”)
So far that alteration appears to have addressed the problem but I’ll be keeping an eye on things anyway. If you’re wondering, the inspiration came from a bug discussion on Launchpad and it was the queue clearing section of the Python script that I went and edited.
20:40 April 16, 2013
Recently, I have been having bother with WordPress Jetpack comment form submission. This was caused by the Bad Behaviour plugin and allowing cross site form submission sorted the problem. The setting to change is in Settings > Bad Behaviour on the Dashboard.
17:31 March 16, 2013
Here’s a quick way to make Faenza and Faience icons available to Ubuntu and maybe Linux Mint too:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:tiheum/equinox
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install faenza-icon-theme faience-*
20:53 February 19, 2013
During a look at a Fedora 18 Live DVD, I found a user name was needed to get to the desktop and root did the trick for me. What I didn’t notice was an install to hard drive option for the GNOME variant that I tried. Maybe it was hidden on the desktop and not displayed. If so, it looks like an oversight.
16:02 February 14, 2013
Here’s the way to find the version of PROC CDISC that came with the version of SAS that you are using:
proc cdisc version;
run;
14:00 February 14, 2013
Here’s robustness principal for software design that otherwise is known as Postel’s Law after TCP pioneer Jon Postel:
Be conservative in what you do, be liberal in what you accept from others
08:10 February 14, 2013
Here’s a command for removal of orphaned packages in Arch Linux and its derivatives (CinnArch and ArchBang come to mind but there may be others):
sudo pacman -Rns $(pacman -Qqtd)
15:11 January 26, 2013
Cinnarch looks very interesting. It’s based on Arch Linux so it’s a rolling distro but has Cinnamon as its desktop environment. Currently, it’s still in beta but I am tempted to give it a go in a virtual machine.
20:55 December 15, 2012
Having decided that my ever sluggish system needed a fresh operating system installation, I set to trying to get on Linux Mint 14. However, not remembering that the disk and not the partition needs specifying for GRUB installation cost me some time. Later, adding on GNOME Shell resulted in a system conflict between MDM and GDM so I now am running Ubuntu GNOME Remix instead. All feels fresher so far though a spot bother was had with the lock screen that caused me to turn off the feature. VMware Player installed without any of the trickery needed to get in its forbear and runs without a hitch so far too. Other bits and pieces need instating yet but the basis of a refreshed computing platform is in place now.
20:56 November 19, 2012
A look at Linux Mint 14 64-bit release candidate in a VirtualBox virtual machine confronted me with irritating mouse pointer behaviour. The pointer constantly darts to the left when you need it not to do that and it seriously affects usability. The final version will be awaited to see if there is an improvement because it’s not very usable as things stand. GNOME Shell can be installed in working order after a spot of fiddling. Installing the software from the Software Store doesn’t add gnome-session as well so the command line alternative remains best:
sudo apt-get install gnome-shell && sudo apt-get install gnome-session
These two really need packaging together as dependencies. Cinnamon is looking as nice as ever and in need of a plug-in that makes virtual desktops behave as they do in GNOME, even if that’s a minority interest now.
12:07 September 30, 2012
Here are commands for adding Cinnamon to Ubuntu:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:gwendal-lebihan-dev/cinnamon-stable
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install cinnamon
14:39 September 29, 2012
Had a look at GNOME 3.6 in Ubuntu GNOME Remix 12.10 Beta 1 release. Not all extensions are supported yet but GNOME 3.6 only launched officially yesterday anyway. Will take a little while for those extension developers to catch up with it. No hurry in moving from GNOME 3.4 until they do so.
20:24 September 22, 2012
Picked up Netgear ethernet switcher at PC World today. Working without a hitch so far. Some network reorganisation may follow suit.
20:14 September 22, 2012
Initially, I needed to use the command “modprobe vboxdrv” to get VirtualBox going on Sabayon 10. However, there seems to be a better remedy: adding the line ‘modules=”vboxdrv vboxnetflt vboxnetadp”‘ (removing the outer single quotes, by the way) to /etc/conf.d/modules and restarting the system. That seems to have done the trick though I wonder it wasn’t added for me automatically.
13:08 September 22, 2012
Until recently, I hadn’t realised that most if not all SSD’s come in 2.5″ form factor. An extra bracket is needed for installing into 3.5″ drive bays. While tempting, this remains a nice to have upgrade for me.
20:02 September 21, 2012
Found out why my proftpd daemon wasn’t working on Linux Mint. Needed to set it as standalone and not inetd operation. It’s the ServerType setting in /etc/proftpd/proftpd.conf.
21:53 September 18, 2012
Given the site a new appearance. The cause was getting microblogging going on this page. Clashes with zeeDisplay theme and Twitter Tools made for replacements that now power what you see here. Jetpack plugin added too. All looking good to my eyes so far. More tinkering may happen yet.
21:36 September 15, 2012
Here are a few places where you will find Linux version information stored: /etc/issue, /etc/issue.net, /etc/lsb-release.
17:30 September 15, 2012
Desktop swapping can be done in Ubuntu and here’s the command for Xubuntu:
sudo apt-get install xubuntu-desktop
17:22 September 15, 2012
Here’s a set of commands that I once used to get GNOME Shell going for a Sabayon 9 installation in a VirtualBox virtual machine:
su
equo install --ask linux-sources
cd /run/media/john/VBOXADDITIONS_4.1.16_78094
./VBoxLinuxAdditions.run
mv /usr/libexec/gnome-session-check-accelerated-helper /usr/libexec/gnome-session-check-accelerated-helper.bak
ln -s /bin/true /usr/libexec/gnome-session-check-accelerated-helper
Hope they have a use though VirtualBox has gone through a few versions since I discovered that these had the desired effect though the login screen behaved a little oddly. Otherwise, everything worked as it should.
14:16 September 15, 2012
Pondering purchase of NAS. QNAP TS-412 looking promising but need to think about my home networking set up first. Might need an ethernet switch but plan to look into it more first, especially with uplink capability needed.
14:11 September 15, 2012
Appearance of Sabayon 10 caused a bit of disturbance to my Sabayon installation that needed installation from a DVD to resolve. Tried GRUB repairs before the non-loading of an Nvidia kernel module caused bother. Went for old fashioned approach for sake of saving a little troubleshooting time.
13:52 September 15, 2012
This has been added using the Live Blogging plugin and it’s good for pages too, unlike Automattic’s own Liveblog plugin. Maybe they’ll add that sort of functionality in time.
Using multi-line commenting in Perl to inactivate blocks of code during testing
26th December 2019Recently, I needed to inactivate blocks of code in a Perl script while doing some testing. This is something that I often do in other computing languages so I sought the same in Perl. To do that, I need to use the POD methodology. This meant enclosing the code as follows.
=start
<< Code to be inactivated by inclusion in a comment >>
=cut
The =start line could use any word after the equality sign but it seems that =cut is needed to close the multi-line comment. If this was actual programming documentation, then the comment block should include some meaningful text for use with perldoc but that was not a concern here since the commenting statements would be removed afterwards anyway and it is good practice not to leave commented code in a production script or program to avoid any later confusion.
In my case, this facility allowed me to isolate the code that I needed to alter and test before putting everything back as needed. It also saved time since I did not need to individually comment out every executable line because multiple lines could be inactivated at a time.
What about a book on WordPress development?
7th October 2007Here’s something that I would really appreciate: a book on code cutting for WordPress customisation and extension. Having the Codex is all very fine but having a dead tree compendium that you can peruse at your leisure is a definite bonus. If there was a way to get the Codex on PDF and print it all off for easier reading, that would be progress. I believe that a publisher did plan to bring to the market something like what I want but author and publisher parted company, a pity. It would be great to see something like Apress’ Pro Drupal Development for WordPress. What about it, Automattic folks?
SAS Data Step Hash Objects and Memory
3rd June 2008Using hash objects in SAS data step code offers some great advantages from the speed point of view; having a set of data in memory rather than on disk makes things much faster. However, that means that you need to keep more of an eye on the amount of memory that’s being used. The first thing is to work out how much memory is available and it’s not necessarily the total amount installed on the system or, for that matter, the amount of memory per processor on a multi-processor system. What you really need is the number, in bytes, that is stored in the XMRLMEM system option and here’s a piece of code that’ll do just that:
data _null_;
mem=getoption('xmrlmem');
put mem;
run;
The XMRLMEM is itself an option that you can only declare in the system call that starts SAS up in the first place and there are advantages to keeping it under control, particularly on large multi-user servers. However, if your hash objects start to exceed what is available, here’s the sort of thing that you can expect to see:
ERROR: Hash object added 49136 items when memory failure occurred.
FATAL: Insufficient memory to execute data step program. Aborted during the EXECUTION phase.
NOTE: The SAS System stopped processing this step because of insufficient memory.
NOTE: SAS set option OBS=0 and will continue to check statements. This may cause NOTE: No observations in data set.
Those messages are a cue for you to learn to keep those hash objects and to only ever make them as large as your memory settings will allow. Another thing to note is that hash objects are best retained for rather fixed data volumes instead of ones that could outgrow their limits. There’s a certain amount of common sense in operation here but it may be that promoters of hash objects don’t mention their limitations as much as they should. If you want to find out more, SAS have a useful paper on their website and the their Knowledge Base has more on the error messages that you can get.
Selecting SAS code in the Program Editor on UNIX
5th June 2007Here’s a possible bugbear with programming using the SAS Display Manager in UNIX, selecting sections of code and running them. In the installations that I have encountered, the mouse selection is not retained so the code selection cannot be run. There is a fix for this and it is not the most obvious. Going to the Preferences dialogue box (Tools > Options > Preferences… from the menu bar) and selecting the Editing tab brings up the screen below:
Ensuring that "Automatically store selection" is switched off, as shown above, will allow one to select and submit sections of code from a SAS program like what is normal practice with Windows SAS. It isn’t an obvious solution but it does the trick for me.
Another way to look through WordPress code
10th August 2008At times in the past, I have complained about there not being sufficient documentation of the actual code used in WordPress itself. True, there is the venerable Codex but that can be incomplete and any extra help is always useful. Peter Westwood (a.k.a westi) has generated documentation from the code itself and put it up on the web for all to peruse. While we are on the subject of information on the more advanced aspects of WordPress, blogs by Mark Jaquith and Andrew Ozz are also worth a look. As the cliché goes, every little helps…
All Change?
19th September 2011Could 2011 be remembered as the year when the desktop computing interface got a major overhaul? One part of this, Windows 8, won’t be with us until next year but there has been enough happening so far this year that has resulted in a lot of comment. With many if not all of the changes, it is possible to detect the influence of interfaces used on smartphones. After all, the carryover from Windows Phone 7 to the new Metro interface is unmistakeable.
Two developments in the Linux world have spawned a hell of an amount of comment: Canonical’s decision to develop Unity for Ubuntu and the arrival of GNOME 3. While there have been many complaints about the changes made in both, there must be a fair few folk who are just getting on with using them without complaint. Maybe there are many who even quietly like the new interfaces. While I am not so sure about Unity, I surprised myself by taking to GNOME Shell so much that I installed it on Linux Mint. It remains a work in progress as does Unity but it’ll be very interesting to see it mature. Perhaps a good number of the growing collection of GNOME Shell plugins could make it into the main codebase. If that were to happen, I could see it being welcomed by a good few folk.
There was little doubt that the changes in GNOME 3 looked daunting so Ubuntu’s taking a different approach is understandable until you come to realise how change that involves anyway. With GNOME 3 working so well for me, I feel disinclined to dally very much with Unity at all. In fact, I am writing these words on a Toshiba laptop running UGR, effectively Ubuntu running GNOME 3, and that could become my main home computing operating system in time.
For those who find these changes not to their taste, there are alternatives. Some Linux distributions are sticking with GNOME 2 as long as they can and there apparently has been some mention of a fork to keep a GNOME 2 interface available indefinitely. However, there are other possibilities such as LXDE and XFCE out there too. In fact, until GNOME 3 won me over, LXDE was coming to mind as a place of safety until I learned that Linux Mint was retaining its desktop identity. As always, there’s KDE too but I have never warmed to that for some reason.
The latest version of OS X, Lion, also included some changes inspired by iOS, the operating system that powers both the iPhone and iPad. However, while the current edition of PC Pro highlights some disgruntlement in professional circles regarding Apple’s direction, they do not seem to have aroused the kind of ire that has been abroad in the world of Linux. Is it because Linux users want to feel that they are in charge and that iMac and MacBook users are content to have decisions made for them so long as everything just works? Speaking for myself, the former description seems to fit me though having choices means that I can reject decisions that I do not like so much.
At the time of writing, the release of a developer preview of the next version of Windows has been generating a lot of attention. It also appears that changes are headed for the Windows user too. However, I get the sense that a more conservative interface option will be retained and that could be essential for avoiding the alienation of corporate users. After all, I cannot see the Metro interface gaining much favour in the working environment when so many of us have so much to do. Nevertheless, I plan to get my hands on the developer preview to have a look (the weekend proved too short for this). It will be very interesting to see how the next version of Windows develops and I plan to keep an eye on it as it does so.
It now looks as if many will have their work cut out if they are to avoid where desktop computing interfaces are going. Established paradigms are being questioned, particularly as a result of touch interfaces on smartphones and tablets. Wii and Kinect have involved other ways of interacting with computers too so there’s a lot of mileage in rethinking how we work with computers. So far, I have been able to deal with the changes in the world of Linux but I am left wondering at the changes that Microsoft is making. After Vista, they need to be careful and they know that. Maybe, they’ll be better at getting users through changes in computing interfaces than others but it’ll be very interesting to see what happens. Unlike open source community projects, they have the survival of a massive multinational at stake.