At last some nice integration with Thunderbird and google calendar.

This tutorial “Stay in Sync with GCal and Thunderbird.” makes it easy, and in early road testing seems to work very well - which is always nice.

Also featured on Life hacker

R

If reading man files off the command line is not your thing - or you might need to print it off, or you simply prefer to view things in a browser, then a handy command line option to man will open the man page you want to read in a browser of choice.

Say you want to open a man file on ls, then simply type:

$man ls --html=firefox

That will open the man file in firefox - nice and easy (and of course firefox can be replaced by browser of choice).

R

Damian posted a link to a very funny graphic on the so called evils of Wifi the other day. When I saw the following post for an uber wardriver box linked to from the Make blog.

So based on that post, and the graphic of course, this has to be the greatest baby eater ever!

Baby eating aside, the slurp project looks really nice

A very good post (including link to video of show in question) on the Panorama episode this graphic was alludes to, can be found here Read the rest of this entry »

Last night I was creating an image to try out the latest Ubuntu variant, UbuntuStudio, the install was taking a long time though, it was late, and I wanted to go to bed.

For the heck of it, I hit the Suspend button, and then wondered what that would do to installation process… “hmmm, will I have to start again?” was my worry. To find out, I hit resume and hey presto, the installation resumed just fine.

Nice.

R

I use liferea as an rss feed reader - and until today, had not figured out how to add the rss feeds automatically to liferea.

It turns out to be rather simple, as liferea provides a DBUS interface script to add feeds automatically. From firefox, click on the RSS icon (orange icon) that appears in the address bar. A page will load with a yellow header from which you select a number of predefined applications (or webservices).

Select ‘Choose Application‘ from the ‘Subscribe to this feed’ drop down. In the file locater that appears, enter ‘/usr/bin/liferea-add-feed‘.

If you select the button that reads ‘Always use liferea-add-feed’ - anytime you click on the rss feed icon - that feed will automatically be added to liferea.

R

the other day I was looking over the site - and spotted the following google adsense advertisement (see picture below)

interesting way of generating income - with a test page!

R

I’ve recently had to do quite some work with OpenSolaris, and on the whole, there was a marked improvement to previous installments, but yet - I found myself struggling. My background is primarily Linux (Ubuntu/Debian) based, and I must admit that I found myself struggling. There are of course many similarities, but on the whole the difference between operations and the location of important files made for halting progress. Of course it must be remembered that it is a different operating system, and as such it will have differences to other operating systems.

It is with interest that I note the following story, and that I look forward to seeing more on the development of “Indiana”:

Sun hopes for Linux-like Solaris: News - Software - ZDNet Australia In an effort to spur adoption of Solaris, Sun Microsystems has begun a project code-named Indiana to try to give its operating system some of the trappings of Linux.

This should help in the greater adoption of OpenSolaris, which I believe will be a strong contender in the future, especially thanks to its Containers (Zones) technology .

R

Some of you may have noticed that I have often posted about posts from the ThreeHugger website. I find it fresh and interesting and fits with what I enjoy reading about it.

As the description of their site says:

TreeHugger is a fast-growing web magazine, dedicated to everything that has a modern aesthetic yet is environmentally responsible. Our goal is to make sustainability mainstream and to be the one-stop for the environment. If you want doom & gloom, this is not the place. We are looking for solutions, constructive developments and positive initiatives.

They also have a job with categories of jobs listed as green or not green, should you wish to guide your career in a greener line.

Its worth taking a look every so often, or subscribe to their feed.

(via Ubuntu blog)

Gimparoo! Adapting Photoshop Tutorials for The GIMP.

This does look good. Recently my Dad bought a new iMac, and as such have been trying to get to use more OS apps, like the Gimp, Firefox and Thunderbird. The biggest problem was the Gimp, even though I installed Gimpshop (makes the gimp  look a little more like photoshop) for him, there were still growing pains, as a lot of the UI is still quite different - but perhaps with these tutorials the transition might be easier.

R

Craig Cook writes a good piece on the different (but equally important!) mentalities to be borne in mind when going about the business of working with websites.

As I alluded too in my last posts, I am coming to the end of a project I have spent working on for over a year. During the course of that project, learning was one of the main components involved. As part of that learning, the three disciolines/modes had to called upon, but were restricted in parts by the technology used - but in fairness - also partially aided by it.

“These three disciplines—writing, engineering, and artistry —are not so different from one another. Each demands creative problem solving, and though each suggests a slightly different angle of attack, the target remains the same. “

and in my case, where I think things were going,

“When you’re able to think easily in all three modes one by one, you will soon find yourself thinking in all three simultaneously.”

Good read,

R

Read the rest of this entry »

the project I am working on at work is on its way into the support stages, as such, a lot of documentation needs to be updated and written.

this guide “Screencasting how-to“, however, might help with documenting some of the actions that are needed, as I have often found that visually seeing something, helps to understand and learn it that bit better

(via Ubuntu blog)

A young man, Abdusalam Abubakar age 16, for his project on “attempting to crack the most hacker-proof encryption system in the world”. The Irish Times has minor details of the winner of this years EsatBT Young Scientist awards.

His project apparently had something to do with RSA encryption, and he (from Irish Times article)

“…based his initial work on partially successful attacks on the world’s most widely-used encryption system, RSA, mounted by two mathematicians. He decided to take the best aspects of both and generalise a new approach, which he believes has the potential to tackle at least some less complex coding systems.”

More details on this project would be great - but sadly even the EsatBT site does not currently have any details about the project. The Irish Independent also has a story on this (registration required), but does not really delve any further into the details. In the meantime, congrats to Abdusalam! R

Read the rest of this entry »

what a cool idea!

of late I have found myself switching off lights that are currently not needed (e.g. the toilets at work if there is no one using them) or being more aware of the amount of water I put in the kettle when I boil it up for a cuppa). probably due to hearing of (not having read the full thing yet… of the Stern Report wikipedia entry

the idea of something like this service is rather excellent - and I wonder how complicated it would be to arrange for a similar service to be set up here in Ireland!

Personal Kyoto: Achieve Your Own Personal Kyoto Protocol!

By analyzing your ConEd electric usage information, we can calculate a Personal Kyoto Goal for you that represents the amount you need to reduce your electric use to to achieve something like what the Kyoto Protocol would require of you.

in the past I found have articles from IBM Developer Works to be;

• to the point
• clear
• accessible
• informative

that is why I am looking forward to reading the following three articles

• Getting to know the Atom Publishing Protocol, Part 1: Create and edit Web resources with the Atom Publishing Protocol
• XML transformation with WebSphere Message Broker Version V6
• Discover the Ajax Toolkit Framework for Eclipse

makes for interesting reading.

R

apart from the fact that this (good) article is about CSS, I reckon the following lines are very apt and apply to a whole range of situations:

resolve to remove “but” and “should” from your professional vocabulary for a while. Replace them with “how” and “why” and commit to meeting your project objectives.

R

this project is a really excellent idea, and it will be very interesting to see how it shapes up over the coming months. below is a link to a video (and article) showing the first working prototype, and its running linux

Silicon Valley Sleuth: First video of a working “One Laptop Per Child” laptop (Exclusive)

R

Coté has an interesting post here about Sun’s news of their support for Ubuntu.

Ubuntu on UltraSPARC

“…this will be gravy: getting to run your pet OS at work is always a treat.”

I run ubuntu as my desktop, and I more than pleased with it, occasionally I have to wander back into the world of Windows, but never stay very long. It is beginning to feel more and more alien to me. In terms of getting stuff done, and have the control of how its done, is what I like most about it. In general it has so many features that make it so much more useful to me. Saying that, it also room for improvement, so I am eagerly awaiting the advent of dapper (and on that note, this is handy

Sean and Damian would probably both agree to this!

How cool would that be if a commercial company decided to ignore NIH and just pulled in existing package management?

R

A good read, should your interests lean you that way, on IBM Developer works, XML Matters: Up and Atom

but this line I found rang rather true,

This is intended as an example, and as is traditional in examples, it includes no error checking and isn’t particularly flexible.

fantastic very much worth watching,

Short film on Richard Feynman’s famous quip about fundamental physics as seen via quantum mechanics. Touches upon Einstein’s E=MC2, Newton’s law of gravity and the motion of planets, and the future of science”

R p.s would gladly have embedded - but there seems to be an issue with embedding google video…   

tomorrow, I am going to try this Mindfulness exercise: The catch-and-release distraction program!

Spend one workday hour today or tomorrow self-consciously aware of each single task you’re working on at a given time (try it: I’ll bet it’s a lot harder for you than it sounds).

it does sound hard, but could also prove interesting. this distraction thing seems to be a common facet of the IT industry nowadays, and other industries too. i see two tangents springing from it, loss of proper creative and technical work due to distractions imposed by the environment and the processes involved.

hallowell:…If you don’t allow yourself to stop and think, you’re not getting the best of your brain. What your brain is best equipped to do is to think, to analyze, to dissect and create. And if you’re simply responding to bits of stimulation, you won’t ever go deep.

the second would be in the loss of the apprecication of the things in life that are worthy of more time than a simple momentary glimpse, or quick feel (for want of a better expression!).

the warnings we could take from that, are for me summed in this

hallowell: … It’s the great seduction of the information age. You can create the illusion of doing work and of being productive and creative when you’re not. You’re just treading water.

there are links for further information on the 43 folders site.

R