I created a project on Launchpad for the first time today. It’s called CS Greasy, a collection (or soon to be a collection) of Greasemonkey scripts related to CouchSurfing. It took a little time to figure it out, but thanks to Kasper’s help, I think we’ve got it working now.
I created a new team called [...]
Category Archives: Techy
CS Greasy on Launchpad
Also posted in CouchSurfing, Open Source Tagged bazaar, bzr, CouchSurfing, greasemonkey, launchpad Leave a comment
Proposing WP Flavours
Instigated in part by this discussion, I think the time has come to start forking WordPress. I think there is space for a few different forks, or flavours, of WordPress. I can imagine flavours focused on security, privacy and probably others. For example, a flavour that disables all the post versionining. A flavour that strips [...]
Also posted in Open Source, WordPress Tagged forking wordpress, WordPress, wordpress forks, wordpress privacy, wordpress security, wp flavors, wp flavours 1 Comment
My first greasemonkey script
On several ocassions I’ve looked for an animated weather map where I can see the predicted weather for a region. After some struggling, I found maps on weather underground that were close to what I wanted.
However, when I changed the date of the map, it loaded a whole new page with the new map for [...]
Also posted in Open Source Tagged firefox, greasemonkey, onchange, onclick, remove onchange, remove onclick, unsafeWindow, userscripts, weather maps, weather underground, wrappedJSObject, wunderground Leave a comment
VirtualBox host to guest networking
I’m creating a new development server on VirtualBox. I was using VMWare until recently, but since upgrading to Ubuntu 9.04 64bit, I’ve decided to try VirtualBox instead. I also recommended VirtualBox to my brother, so by using it myself I’ll be better able to support him if he has any issues.
Installing a new virtual machine [...]
Also posted in Open Source Tagged bridge networking, host only networking, ubuntu, ubuntu 9.04, ubuntu jaunty, virtualbox 3 Comments
Mapping plans
Since receiving my spot messenger I’ve been looking at mapping. I’d like to create a live route map that documents my travels. I’ve taken inspiration from Mark Beaumont’s map. Mark is cycling from Anchorage, Alaska to Ushuaia, Argentina, you can read more on his site.
The spot will update my location every 10 minutes. For $50 [...]
Mounting LVM vmware disks
I’ve spent a couple of weeks trying to recover some data from an old vmware machine. I didn’t want to install vmware on my new OS, so I looked into the vmware-mount program. The documentation refers to vmware-mount.pl, but I couldn’t find that file at first. It looks like since VMWare 2.0, vmware-mount.pl and vmware-loop [...]
Posted in Techy Tagged libcrypto.so, libcrypto.so.0.9.8, libfuse, libfuse.so.2, sslloadsharedlibrary, suspend, ubuntu, vmdk, vmware, vmware-loop, vmware-mount, vmware-mount.pl, vmware-server 2 Comments
Ubuntu Jaunty and pidgin-facebookchat 1.61
I was able to install pidgin-facebookchat 1.61 on Ubuntu Juanty Jackalope (9.04) by first installing the relevant libjson-glib-1.0-0 from Karmic. To find the correct deb look at the different builds on the right hand side of the page. In my case on 64-bit Ubuntu the relevant deb was this one, the 32-bit version is here.
I [...]
Also posted in Open Source Tagged facebook chat, jaunty, karmic, libpurple, pidgin, pidgin-facebookchat 2 Comments
Google Wave
This might be the most exciting technological development since email. I’m truly impressed at Google’s approach to this project. It gives me newfound faith in Google.
The guys behind Google Maps set out to answer the question “What would email look like if it were invented today?”
Their answer is truly outstanding. Wave is a collaborative communication [...]
Also posted in Open Source Tagged collaboration, collaborative communication, communication, email, Google, Google Wave 6 Comments
An Ubuntu Kindle outside the US
I just bought a Kindle and successfully loaded my first book onto it in Canada, using only Ubuntu. The process I used should work anywhere outside the United States. Here’s a quick summary for overseas, would-be Kindle owners.
1] Buy the Kindle. You need a shipping address in the United States where a friend or forwarding [...]
Posted in Techy Tagged Amazon, Amazon Kindle, Canada, gift cards, gift vouchers, Kindle, kindle hacking, kindle outside USA, us, usa 23 Comments
bbPress 0.9 and WordPressMU 2.7
I’ve just integrated cookie logins between bbPress 0.9.04 and WordPressMU 2.7.1 fort the second time. It took me a while to remember all the steps that were necessary the first time, so I’m documenting them here.
This is a quick and dirty integration. There might be a more fanciful or secure way of doing this. It [...]
Also posted in WordPress Tagged bb-config, bbPress, integration, WordPress, wordpressmu, wp-config, wpmu Leave a comment
lftp and cPanel
I routinely have problems connecting to cPanel FTP servers with lftp. Much to my frustration it works fine through gFTP. After some debugging investigation it seems that lftp automatically tries to use AUTH TLS and then fails. There is a simple solution. Set the lftp setting “ftp:ssl-allow” to false. This can be done by running [...]
Another WordPress plugin
I’ve been on something of a plugin writing spree of late. I’ve just written my second WordPress plugin this week.
I realised that the timezone was wrong on this blog. It’s been wrong since I left Sydney. Now that I’m posting status updates, and not using the “posted X minutes ago” format, it’s obvious when my [...]
Considering a Kindle
I’m considering the purchase of an Amazon Kindle 2. I like reading books but books a’re big and bulky which doesn’t fit very well with my current nomadic lifestyle. I’ve spoken to a few people who recommend the Kindle.
However, I just read this. Amazon has allowed publishers to restrict whether a book can be read [...]
My Manhattan office
I went to the New York OpenCoffee meeting this morning. I’ve been to a few OpenCoffee’s around the world and I like the events. They normally give me a quick flavour of the tech scene in a place. The meetings in Cape Town are really buzzing for example.
This morning’s meeting opened with a series of [...]
Also posted in Business, Travels Tagged Ashley J Heather, business startup, dotbox, incubation, new york city, NY, opencoffee, startups 2 Comments
A sad day for Michael Arrington
Michael Arrington is the main entrepreneur and journalist behind TechCrunch. According to Technorati, TechCrunch is the second most popular blog on the internet. TechCrunch covers technology startup news, specifically silicon valley, web based type stuff (as far as I know, I’m not a regular reader).
Michael posted some sad news yesterday. He is taking a break [...]
Unsubscribing from AirAsia
I cannot unsubscribe from AirAsia’s email newsletter. They say email unsubscribe@fly.airasia.com to be removed from the mailing list. That email address is dead. Likewise unsubscribe@airasia.com is also dead.
I’ve tried contacting their customer support department, nothing.
AirAsia’s emails appear to be handled by dartmail.net. Whois shows that this domain is owned by Google. The first result in [...]
Also posted in Rants Tagged air asia, clickz, double click, Google, privacy, Spam, unsubscribe, usubscribing 12 Comments
New laptop: Lenovo X301
Exactly one month after I bought it, my Lenovo X301 finally arrived in Guadalajara. Big thanks to Ferg and Maeve for getting it to me.
I’m very impressed with the X301. It’s not cheap, my configuration retails for around $3′500 USD, but it definitely feels worth it. The machine is half the weight of my previous [...]
Satellite versus roaming
Satellite broadband runs about $5-$7 USD per Mb. It seems expensive. I thought I’d compare that to global roaming charges. Vodafone NZ charge $10 – $30 per Mb depending on the region!
At these kind of prices, it looks like I’ll be staying in major metropolitan areas with wifi for the next few months. I was [...]
Also posted in Business, Travels Tagged bgan, bgan pricing, data roaming, rbgan, roaming, satellite phones 3 Comments
Skype on Ubuntu 8.10
Every time I reinstall Skype on Linux I lose sound for some reason. I can hear the other side, but they can’t hear me. I fiddle with the volume settings, and after a while it starts working. This time, I paid attention and made note of how I got it working. This post is as [...]
Zend Studio garbled chars fix
Following my post about installing Zend Studio 5.5.1 on Ubuntu 8.10, Gyorgy posted a comment about a problem with garbled characters. I had noticed the problem myself, but only briefly, I don’t tend to work with very large files. As yet, I hadn’t gotten a chance to look into it.
I spent some time on it [...]
Posted in Techy Tagged garbled chars, netbeans, ubuntu, Ubuntu 8.10, Ubuntu Intrepid, zend, zend studio, Zend Studio 5.5.1 8 Comments
Full encryption is go!
This post comes to you from Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid Ibex, upon a fully encrpted 500GB disk. So if my laptop should fall into the wrong hands, my customers, family and friends can rest assured their data, passwords, photographs or emails are (for all practical purposes) secure.
Thus far I haven’t noticed a performance cost. The system [...]
Also posted in Open Source Tagged encryption, full disk encryption, grc, intrepid ibex, laptop security, security, ubuntu 3 Comments
EasySpace Suck
I’ve just been advised by EasySpace that the VPS I rent from them cannot access torrents. They block all torrent traffic on their network.
I’m sorry but Easyspace do not allow connection to torrent trackers on our network. There is the potential for the service to be abused so it is forbidden entirely.
Uploading/Downloading torrents will also [...]
Also posted in Rants Tagged bittorrent, consumer action, customer complaints, easyspace, torrents 8 Comments
Rsync.net gets cheaper
My online backup service, rsync.net, has just dropped their prices. They’re now $1.20 per GB per month, unlimited bandwidth. Pretty reasonable I reckon. Plus they’ve added a couple of Windows clients to make things easier for poor souls not yet enlightened to the power of Linux. :-p
While others are talking doom and gloom it would [...]
Posted in Techy Tagged automated backup, backup, Online-Backup, rsync.net, scheduled backup 11 Comments
