Category Archives: Techy
My very own OpenID server
I just installed SimpleID. Now I have my very own OpenID server. I no longer need to subject myself to the pain of myopenid.com. After they consistently ignored all my requests to fix a major bug in their system, I’ve … Continue reading
Posted in Open Source, Techy
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A WordPress hosting cooperative
Maybe you make WordPress sites for cash. Maybe you design themes or write plugins. Then, after your work is done, your clients (or friends, lovers, etc) need to be supported. Somebody needs to keep WordPress and her plugins up to … Continue reading
Posted in Business, WordPress
Tagged coop, cooperative, hosting, press hosting, WordPress, wordpress hosting, wp.coop
23 Comments
A new short url
I’ve just acquired two short domains. They are cal.io and chm.ac. The first is cool, the second is a short version of my standard username, chmac (and formed from my initials, how original!). I’m thinking I want to move this … Continue reading
Posted in Techy
Tagged cal.io, calio, chm.ac, chmac, domains, short links, short urls, shortlinks
5 Comments
Links in twitter feeds in Liferea
I use Liferea to consume feeds. In turn, I consume twitter by RSS. However, twitter’s RSS feeds suck. Urls are not clickable, user names are not links, nothing. It’s flat text. Using Liferea’s ability to locally parse feeds and a … Continue reading
Posted in Open Source, Techy
Tagged liferea, links, twitter, twitter feeds, twitter hacking, twitter links, urls
14 Comments
Insufficient boot space on Ubuntu
When installing the latest batch of updates to Ubuntu 10.04 I hit a problem, I ran out of space on my /boot partition. A dialog popped up warning of low space on /boot. Then the install of updates failed because … Continue reading
Posted in Techy
Tagged /boot, boot partition, free space, insufficient space, kernel, kernel upgrades, ubuntu, upgrades
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Switching to twentyten
I’ve just upgraded to WordPress 3.0 and switched to the brand new default theme called twentyten. If you’re reading this in your feed reader, come by and check out the new look. I’ll update my picture (people seem shocked when … Continue reading
Regenerating nautilus thumbnails
Sometimes nautilus will try to generate a thumbnail for a video file while it’s downloading. Then nautilus remembers that it tried, and failed, to generate a thumbnail for that file. Once the file has finished downloading, the thumbnail remains broken. … Continue reading
Posted in Open Source, Techy
Tagged delete thumbnails, fix thumbnails, nautilus, nautilus scripts, regenerate thumbnails, thumbnails, ubuntu
4 Comments
Installing lyx without the bloat
For a few months now I’ve been researching programs to write in. I have OpenOffice, I tried AbiWord, I use gedit for text files. They’re all good programs, but they’re not what I want to write in. I want something … Continue reading
Posted in Techy
Tagged bloat, docs, equivs, huge files, latex, lyx, saving bandwidth, tex, ubuntu, wasted space
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Prepaid ICE sim card in Costa Rica
Yesterday I bought a prepaid ICE sim card in Costa Rica. Last time I was in Costa Rica they didn’t exist. Then they were available, but very hard to find I read. I walked into a shop called abCelular in … Continue reading
Posted in Techy, Travels
Tagged abCelular, Costa Rica, ICE, Kolbi, prepaid, prepaid sims, San Isidro, sim cards
26 Comments
CS Greasy on Launchpad
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 … Continue reading
Posted in CouchSurfing, Open Source, Techy
Tagged bazaar, bzr, CouchSurfing, greasemonkey, launchpad
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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 … Continue reading
Posted in Open Source, Techy, 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 … Continue reading
Posted in Open Source, Techy
Tagged firefox, greasemonkey, onchange, onclick, remove onchange, remove onclick, unsafeWindow, userscripts, weather maps, weather underground, wrappedJSObject, wunderground
2 Comments
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 … Continue reading
Posted in Open Source, Techy
Tagged bridge networking, host only networking, ubuntu, ubuntu 9.04, ubuntu jaunty, virtualbox
15 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 … Continue reading
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 … Continue reading
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
4 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 … Continue reading
Posted in Open Source, Techy
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 … Continue reading
Posted in Open Source, Techy
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 … Continue reading
Posted in Techy
Tagged Amazon, Amazon Kindle, Canada, gift cards, gift vouchers, Kindle, kindle hacking, kindle outside USA, us, usa
24 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 … Continue reading
Posted in Techy, WordPress
Tagged bb-config, bbPress, integration, WordPress, wordpressmu, wp-config, wpmu
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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 … Continue reading
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 … Continue reading
Trying a new theme
I’m trying a new theme on the blog. I’m going for a lighter, simpler look more focused on the content and less on the blog. What do you think? If you’re reading this in a feed reader, come check out … Continue reading
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, … Continue reading
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 … Continue reading
Posted in Business, Techy, Travels
Tagged Ashley J Heather, business startup, dotbox, incubation, new york city, NY, opencoffee, startups
2 Comments
