Geek Monkey

Problems running Firefox 5 from watir-webdriver on Mac OS 10.5

2011-07-29T14:15:00.000+01:00

Finally decided it was time to update my watir-webdriver development environment to the latest version of Firefox. I have been happily using Firefox 3.6.19 on my 64bit Intel Mac 10.5 and yesterday made the jump to Firefox 5.

To my horror there is a bug in Firefox 4 and 5 which causes problems when attempting to start Firefox from the command line (basically what watir-webdriver does).

Thankfully with the help of Jarib Bakken I was able to use the workaround detailed on this blog post.

The work around is to strip the x86_64 part from firefox-bin using ditto:

cd /Applications/Firefox.app/Contents/MacOS
mv firefox-bin firefox-bin.original
ditto --arch i386 firefox-bin.original firefox-bin

This will solve the problem until we can upgrade to a later version of Mac Os.

Doodle's Geek Monkey by Alastair Montgomery

Ruby and RSS

2011-07-21T16:00:00.003+01:00

Started looking into access RSS from Ruby discovered it pretty much already built in as described in this article Consuming RSS Feeds with Ruby, full docs are available in the Ruby Standard Library.

Accessing an RSS Feed is as simple as the following code snippet.

require "rss"
rss_feed = "http://meekgonkey.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?alt=rss"
rss_content = ""
open(rss_feed) { |f|
rss_content = f.read
}
puts "Bytes read #{rss_content.length} from feed"
rss = RSS::Parser.parse(rss_content,false)
puts "Title: #{rss.channel.title}"
puts "RSS URL: #{rss.channel.link}"
puts "Total entries: #{rss.items.size}"
rss.items.each { |item|
puts item.title
puts item.link
puts item.date
puts "---"
}

Which when run produces something along the lines of;
Bytes read 115009 from feed
Title: Geek Monkey
RSS URL: http://meekgonkey.blogspot.com/
Total entries: 25
Twitter from Ruby
http://meekgonkey.blogspot.com/2011/07/twitter-from-ruby.html
Thu, 21 Jul 2011 13:20:00 +0100
---
Github
http://meekgonkey.blogspot.com/2011/07/github.html
Mon, 18 Jul 2011 13:59:00 +0100
---
Google Plus
http://meekgonkey.blogspot.com/2011/07/google-plus.html
Fri, 01 Jul 2011 10:50:00 +0100
---
WATIR makes a tester's life easier.
http://meekgonkey.blogspot.com/2011/06/watir-makes-testers-life-easier.html
Wed, 29 Jun 2011 14:36:00 +0100
---
Setting browser size and position with watir-webdriver
http://meekgonkey.blogspot.com/2011/06/setting-browser-size-and-position-with.html
Thu, 23 Jun 2011 09:22:00 +0100
---

Doodle's Geek Monkey by Alastair Montgomery

Twitter from Ruby

2011-07-21T13:20:00.001+01:00

Just been looking at Ruby Twitter gem by John Nunemaker during my lunch break.
Looking good so far, got my Twitter Dev key setup and have made a test post from a Ruby script.

1. Tweeting from Ruby
2......
3. Profit!!!

Doodle's Geek Monkey by Alastair Montgomery

Github

2011-07-18T13:59:00.001+01:00

Finally got round to uploading some of my stuff to the GitHub site.
If you want a laugh have a look at my code alastairhm@github ;)

Doodle's Geek Monkey by Alastair Montgomery

Google Plus

2011-07-01T10:50:00.000+01:00

Having my first look at Google+, so far looks nice.
Need to figure out if you can get a RSS feed of the items you've +'ed?

Doodle's Geek Monkey by Alastair Montgomery

WATIR makes a tester's life easier.

2011-06-29T14:36:00.000+01:00

I am constantly amazed that Watir and Ruby make software testing a web application so easy.
For example finding all the links in a table based on their text starting with a string.

stub = "0 Text"
browser.table(:id,"myTable").links(:text,/#{stub}/).each { |link| puts link.text }

This will return all the links in the table "myTable" with text starting with "0 Text"

Doodle's Geek Monkey by Alastair Montgomery

Setting browser size and position with watir-webdriver

2011-06-23T09:22:00.000+01:00

In working on my automated web app test using watir-webdriver I need to change the window size and move it on the screen.

From asking the question at StackOverFlow.com you can do this with the following commands;

browser = Watir::Browser.new(:firefox)
browser.execute_script('window.resizeTo(800,600)')
browser.execute_script('window.moveTo(0,0)')

Doodle's Geek Monkey by Alastair Montgomery

Android Argus

2011-06-23T08:54:00.000+01:00

Doodle's Geek Monkey by Alastair Montgomery

Converting scripts from Watir to Webdriver, Table size

2011-05-11T15:45:00.001+01:00

I am starting the process of converting my WATIR scripts to use WATIR webdriver.

There a couple of table methods I was using in my WATIR scripts to check the size (rows and columns) of a HTML table.

myTable.row_count
myTable.column_count

These methods don't exist in webdriver so I was looking for a good way of doing the same check.

For rows this seems to give the same result as the row_count method

myTable.rows.length

For column count of the table I've tried converting the table to an array of strings and getting the length of the first row, but the conversion to the string array is taking a while.

myCols = myTable.strings[0].length

After asking the question on StackOverFlow the solution to find the number of columns in the table was to use;

myCols = myTable.row.cells.length

This assumes that the first row has the correct number of columns, which in our application should always be the case.

To avoid rewriting all the unit tests I've extended the Watir::Table class at the start of the script so that it contains the missing row_count and column_count methods.

class Watir::Table
    def row_count
        return self.rows.length
    end
    def column_count
        return self.row.cells.length
    end
end

The unit tests now run unaltered.

If your table has a uniform number of columns for each row then you could check the whole table by doing something like.

        myTable.rows.each { |myRow|
            myCols = myRow.cells.length
            assert_equal(validColumnCount,myCols,"Column count mismatch")
        }

Doodle's Geek Monkey by Alastair Montgomery

Kensington Orbit Optical TrackBall

2011-03-30T11:24:00.001+01:00

Kensington Orbit Optical TrackBall, a photo by Alastair Montgomery on Flickr.

All I need now is a Missile command style game :)

FxCamera App

2011-02-17T12:12:00.004Z

The iPhone guys at work have been talking about a retro camera app for their phones, so I've decided to look at what's available for the Android platform.

The second one I've checked out is Fx Camera

FxCamera enables you to take a picture with various effects,

ToyCam (number of colour mode and vignetting settings available with randomizer)
Polandroid (number of colour mode and film type settings available)
Fisheye
SymmetriCam
Warhol
Normal

It works quite well for the ToyCam and Polandroid but the other three modes are more of a novelty than something you'd use all the time. Downside it has a maximum picture resolution of 960 by 640 pixels. It is 1524kb in size and can be moved to the SD card.

Toy Cam Examples

Polandroid Examples

SymmetriCam Example

Doodle's Geek Monkey by Alastair Montgomery

Retro Camera App Android

2011-02-15T17:00:00.000Z

The iPhone guys at work have been talking about a retro camera app for their phones, so I've decided to look at what's available for the Android platform.

The first one I've checked out is Retro Camera

The free ad supported version gives you five retro camera types to play with, see example shots below. The application is a fairly chunky 6179 kb but can be moved to the SD card. It has a novel interface which replicates the retro camera but this reduces the viewfinder size which can be a problem.

Doodle's Geek Monkey by Alastair Montgomery

Android Alastair

2011-02-14T14:50:00.002Z

android1.png
Originally uploaded by Alastair Montgomery

Created with the http://androidify.com/ App on my HTC Desire

CentOS 5

2010-10-21T16:06:00.002+01:00

CentOS 5
Originally uploaded by Alastair Montgomery

CentOS 5

Setting up a CentOS5 VM to attempt to install Oracle 11g and Weblogic
test environment.

Linux Mint 10

2010-10-20T12:32:00.005+01:00

Installing Linux Mint 10 (Julia) on a VirtualBox VM with BTRFS filesystem.
Using the release candidate 1 CD

Initial install disk

Hard disk configuration
You have choose the advanced disk setup to create a small boot partition of either ext3 or 4 and a larger BTRFS partition.

Post Install
Post install after enabling the VirtualBox tools as detailed here.

Installing Websphere 7

Installing WebSphere 7 on Linux Mint 10, make sure the /bin/sh is
linked to bash not dash before you start.

Doodle's Geek Monkey by Alastair Montgomery

Ubuntu 10.10 RC

2010-10-05T11:22:00.005+01:00

Ubuntu 10.10 RC
Originally uploaded by Alastair Montgomery

The Ubuntu 10.10 release candidate running on VirtualBox.

Need to work out how to install the guest additions so I can get a proper screen resolution.

Found a solution,

Solution to VirtualBox guest problem
1. Open terminal and enter the following command:
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install build-essential linux-headers-$(uname -r)
sudo apt-get install virtualbox-ose-guest-x11
2. Once installation is finished, restart your virtualBox machine.
3. Go to System -->Preferences -->Monitors and change the resolution of your screen.

Life with an HTC Desire part 3

2010-05-19T20:00:00.001+01:00

Applications

Having more fun with apps, couple of my current time wasters are,

Sketch-a-bit

A collaborative, evolutionary-drawing app, the hook is that you can upload your doodles to the web and other people modify them. Some examples can be seen on their website at http://superfiretruck.com/sketchabit/ surprisingly you don't see too many "adult" doodles.

Fractoid

Generates fractal images. Pinch zooming works well on the HTC Desire and the 1GHz snapdragon renders the images at an acceptable speed. Examples of the image can be seen on this Flickr group

Dot 2

Simple but addictive tilt control game

Problems

Couple of issues I've noticed with the phone, battery life, with everything turned on (wifi, gps, etc) I seem to be getting around a days use out of the battery when I'm using apps a lot. Take a bit of getting used to since my old phone used to last a couple of days, guess price you pay.

The SD Card becomes unusable, this seems to be a common issue with the HTC Desire, a co-worker has the same problem and its mentioned around the web a lot.

A simple reboot of the phone brings it back to life, according to HTC I should back up the data and reformat the SD card to solve the problem, not tried it yet.

I got round to installing the Android SDK and went through the classic "Hello World" app tutorial, step one done :)

1. Install Android SDK

2. Write Killer app

3. Profit!!!

My full current app list

Doodle's Geek Monkey by Alastair Montgomery

Approaching 9000

2010-05-19T12:15:00.003+01:00

Noticed that I'm approaching the 9000th Tweet mark on my Twitter account, this is scary so I decided to map my Tweeting habits again using http://tweetstats.com/

Doodle's Geek Monkey by Alastair Montgomery

Puppy Linux 5

2010-05-17T12:47:00.002+01:00

Puppy Linux 5
Originally uploaded by Alastair Montgomery

The new Puppy Linux 5, showing the browser selection screen for easy install of your favorite browser.

So far it seems as quick as previous version running on a VM, need to try it with older hardware at home.

Life with an HTC Desire part 2

2010-05-04T10:26:00.004+01:00

Time rolls on and I'm getting used to finding my way around my HTC Desire.

I'm still trying out lots of apps, for this site http://www.appbrain.com which helps you keep track of the apps you've got on your phone. You download an app for your phone and it syncs your apps to the website, suggests other apps you might like etc. Useful so far.

Here is what I've got on my phone at the moment

alastair's Android apps on AppBrain

Doodle's Geek Monkey by Alastair Montgomery

Linux Geek Tux T-shirt and other stuff

2010-04-23T13:10:00.004+01:00

Tux Linux Geek by doodle_m
See more Tux T-Shirts

Just created this geek themed T-shirt and other stuff on Zazzle.

Tux Linux Geek by doodle_m
See more Binder Binders

Tux Linux Geek by doodle_m
See more Tux Hats

Linux Geek by doodle_m
Design a customized mousepad online with zazzle.com

Doodle's Geek Monkey by Alastair Montgomery

Life with a HTC Desire Part 1 Apps

2010-04-22T12:00:00.000+01:00

On Tuesday of this week I upgraded my mobile phone to an Android handset. After a long drawn out process of reading reviews and getting peoples advice from Twitter etc I finally decided on an HTC Desire.

I am amazed with the phone and have hardly been able to drag myself away from the handset.

Thing I like the most is the seamless integration with my Google accounts for email, contacts and calendar syncing. I think it is going to make me much more organized.

I've been busy trying out application since I got the phone and here are is a list of the ones I've found useful so far.

Aldiko eBook reader

Aldiko is an ebook reading application that runs on any Android phone and which enables you to easily download and read thousands of books right on your smartphone.

Barcode scanner

Scan barcodes on CDs, books, and other products, then look up prices and reviews, or search for a word in a book and find where it occurs. You can also scan QR Codes containing URLs, contact info, calendar events, and more

BatteryTime

The only battery application that tells you how much time is left on your battery.

Jamendo Free Music Streaming

Easily browse through 20,000 albums by 9500 artists, thanks to an elegant and ergonomic interface. All of Jamendo’s main features, such as free download of all the tracks, playlist creation, access to album reviews and managing favorites, are of course integrated. Carry the best of jamendo in your pocket!

Last.fm

Your personal radio station on your phone: Choose an artist or genre and Last.fm builds the perfect playlist just for you, fresh every time, featuring your favorites and new discoveries powered by millions of Last.fm users sharing the music they love. You can skip any song and find out about concerts, too.

My Tracks

My Tracks is an application for your AndroidTM phone that enables you to record GPS tracks and view live statistics – such as time, speed, distance, and elevation – while hiking, biking, running or participating in other outdoor activities. Once recorded, you can share your tracks, upload them to Google Spreadsheets and visualize them on Google My Maps.

Photoshop.com Mobile

Perfect your pictures with the Photoshop.com Mobile App on your Android phone. Simply drag your finger to crop, adjust color, apply effects—you name it.

Twidroid

twidroid is the industry-standard twitter client for android, the only one I've found so far with list support.

Doodle's Geek Monkey by Alastair Montgomery

The bread monster visits for a third time.

2010-04-12T13:52:00.003+01:00

I continued my experiments with homemade bread this weekend. Results shown below, looks better than week 2 but was a bit heavier texture.

This is the recipe I am playing with at the moment.

For your ciabatta you’ll need:

4 cups of all-purpose flour (do NOT pack the flour into the measuring cup)
2 cups of warm water
1 teaspoon of salt
1/4 teaspoon of granulated yeast (or equivalent)

For the gorgeous readers needing metric equivalents of this recipe, Toon left a comment with the following conversion:

500 grams of all-purpose flour
4,7 deciliter of warm water
4 grams of salt (= 1 teaspoon = 5 ml)
1 gram of dry yeast (= 1/4 teaspoon = 1,25 ml)

1. Mix Water & Yeast

Pour the warm water into the medium-size mixing bowl and stir in the yeast with a spoon. No need to be particular, just dump and slosh.

2. Add Flour And Salt

Add flour and salt to your bowl of yeasty water. This, after measuring out the flour, presents another prime opportunity to get flour on your person. This will be regarded by many as a sign of your culinary determination. You’ll need such signs because anybody who actually watches you make the bread will think you’re one of the laziest bakers in existence.

3. Stir Into A Heavy Batter

Use a spoon. You could use your hands if you wanted but you probably didn’t wash your hands before starting this anyhow. Start with a quick run about around the perimeter of the bowl with your spoon. A few quick strokes through the middle and you should have a heavy batter. If it looks too thick to be pancake batter and not thick enough to be playdough, you’re right on target.

4. Set It And Nearly Forget It

Cover your project with a hand towel or plastic wrap and set in a safe place for a few hours. After the dough has rested for 8 to 12 hours, it will have nearly doubled in size. (If you add a bit of sugar at the start and you’re in a hurry, you can rush this process but I don’t recommend it for your first try.)

5. Preheat Oven & Prepare Your Pan

There’s a lot of room for variation at this stage. The goal is to place the dough onto a surface that will keep it from falling through the oven rack and not stick on. I use an old cookie sheet sprinkled with flour and corn meal. You can use a buttered pan, pizza stone, or baking paper. It’s up to you. The flour/cornmeal method takes only a few seconds.

6. Pour Out The Batter

This is the fun part! Uncover the bowl of dough and slowly pour it out onto the pan you just prepared for it. You’ll want to use a spoon to guide the dough into place and get the last bits out of the bowl. The dough will be very wet and sticky. That’s okay!

7. Add Spices (If Needed) & Place Bread Into 400F Oven

If you’re trying to stay within the one-minute prep, you probably won’t have time to sprinkle some of your favorite herbs onto your ciabatta before baking. If you’re not worried about time, some dried oregano, basil, and rosemary make a nice addition.

8. Remove Your Ciabatta From The Oven

Check on your ciabatta after about 25 minutes. Once it’s golden brown on top and looks good to eat, take it out of the oven and set it aside to cool for at least 10 minutes. You can cut into it immediately but if you do it’ll collapse and won’t look as pretty.

Doodle's Geek Monkey by Alastair Montgomery

Baker Tweet

2010-04-06T08:42:00.002+01:00

Check out how bakers can tell their Twitter followers that goodies have just come out of the oven by using BakerTweet.
Would only work if you had a favorite local baker you visited all the time?

BakerTweet from POKE on Vimeo.

Doodle's Geek Monkey by Alastair Montgomery

crunchbang linux Statler 10

2010-03-24T10:12:00.002Z

crunchbang linux Statler 10
Originally uploaded by Alastair Montgomery

CrunchBang Linux is now built on the Debian sources, tried the alpha release and it feels snappier than the Ubuntu based release.

Call of the Python

2010-02-26T08:05:00.002Z

I started learning Python last year to do some scripting at work for testing, I recently discovered the game libraries (pygame, pyglet, etc) so have started looking into writing a game.

This is something I've been wanting to do from an early age back when I got my first 8-bit computer and never had the time or the skills to achieve.

After just a week of using pyglet during my lunch hour at work and a couple of hours at night I'm well on my way to finishing my first game, a breakout/ arkanoid clone.

Enjoying every minute of it.

Doodle's Geek Monkey by Alastair Montgomery

Chuckie Egg in DHTML

2010-02-22T16:30:00.000Z

Sometime your jaw just drops

Almost perfect version of Chuckie Egg written in DHTML with level editor.

http://marklomas.net/ch-egg/dhtmlch-egg/playch-egg.htm

Installing Repton 1 under Wine

2010-02-11T14:22:00.003Z

Installing Repton 1 under Wine
Originally uploaded by Alastair Montgomery

Installing the Windows Repton 1 under Wine running on Ubuntu 9.10 using XCFE window manager.

Good news that it works apart small issues with the responsiveness of the pointer in the menus.

Download and buy at http://www.superiorinteractive.com/repton/

You can run it full screen or in a window as shown below.

Even after 25 years away from the game I still remembered how to do the first level, scary or what.

Poster Printer

2010-02-10T12:21:00.002Z

Poster Printer

via gHacks technology news by Martin on 2/10/10

Easy Poster Printer is a free software program for the Windows operating system that enables a user to create a poster out of an image or photo that is loaded into the software. Veteran users might already know the concept that is applied to those images from services such as Rasterbator or Block Posters which we reviewed earlier.

The process of creating a poster is divided into three steps. A photo or image is loaded in step one. This image is automatically shown in the large area on the right divided into A4 units. Each unit will be printed on one sheet of paper in the printing stage.

It is then possible to edit some of the settings of the printout in step 2. The initial display might for instance not be optimal.

Easy Poster Printer offers to:

Stretch the image
Change the posters dimensions and measuring unit
Change the background color
Rotate and flip images
Apply paper scaling so that the image fits perfectly on the selected number of paper sheets
Select the paper orientation (portrait or landscape)
Select the print quality and cut lines

A Zoom preview can be enabled which can be used to determine the quality of the poster that is created. A click on the Print Poster button will send the print job to the printer from where it is then printed.

Easy Poster Printer supports several standard formats from A0 to B3 and provides the options to add new formats to the list for future uses.

The program supports posters with a maximum size of 20mx20m which should be enough for most purposes.

The software program is easy to use and yields results in less than a minute after loading the photo or image into the program.

The poster printer is freely available at the developer's website. It is compatible with Microsoft Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7. The program requires the Microsoft .net Framework.

Arcade Puppy

2010-01-28T14:54:00.002Z

Arcade Puppy
Originally uploaded by Alastair Montgomery

While hunting about of instructions to install Python on Puppy Linux I came across Arcade Puppy.

Basically a version 4.2 variation with a lot of retro game system emulators installed.

Picture shows Arcade version of Puppy Linux running on a VirtualBox VM; running the game "Thrust" on the Spectrum emulator.

Linux Distro hunting

2010-01-25T17:00:00.003Z

I'm looking for a new Distro to run on my old PCs at home.

Previously I've been running Puppy Linux on it, which so far has been okay, but it doesn't come with some packages I want installed out of the box (mainly Python).

Basically the bases I need covered are,

Low profile, able to run in small amount of RAM
Fast booting
Python
Firefox 3.x, Opera 10.x or Chromium browser
Mplayer or similar for video playback

So the contenders so far are,

Vector Linux

Speed, performance, stability -- these are attributes that set VectorLinux apart in the crowded field of Linux distributions.The creators of VectorLinux had a single credo: keep it simple, keep it small and let the end user decide what their operating system is going to be. What has evolved from this concept is perhaps the best little Linux operating system available anywhere. For the casual computer user you have a lightning fast desktop with graphical programs to handle your daily activities from web surfing, sending and receiving email, chatting on ICQ or IRC to running an ftp server. Power users will be pleased because all the tools are there to compile their own programs, use the system as a server or perhaps the gateway for their home or office computer network. Administrators will be equally as pleased because the small size and memory requirements of the operating system can be deployed on older machines maybe long forgotten.

CrunchBang Linux

CrunchBang Linux is an Ubuntu based distribution offering a great blend of speed, style and substance. Using the nimble Openbox window manager, it is highly customisable and provides a modern, full-featured GNU/Linux system without sacrificing performance.

ZenWalk Linux

Zenwalk is a GNU/Linux operating system, designed to provide the following characteristics:

Modern and user-friendly (latest stable software, selected applications)

Fast (optimized for performance capabilities)

Rational (one mainstream application for each task)

Complete (full development/desktop/multimedia environment)

Evolutionary (simple network package management tool - netpkg)

Puppy Linux

Find and install the missing resources on Puppy

More involved installs which would require more work to setup would be,

Arch Linux

Slackware Linux

I will be downloading the ISO images and be playing with them over the coming weeks, any other suggestions are welcome.

Doodle's Geek Monkey by Alastair Montgomery

Remote control using Twitter

2010-01-22T12:30:00.001Z

I have been thinking about running task on a Ubuntu Linux machine remotely using Twitter. Why you ask, due to firewall restriction where the machine is located I can't get direct access to it but it has connection out to the internet.

So I thought I could send coded messages to it using Twitter and have it run certain tasks. Should be fairly easy to do in Python I thought, but what do use it for? Kicking off test runs, downloads or other system tasks?

Downloads seemed a simple place to start, why max out my home broadband usage limit when I can get the remote machine to download things off-peak.

For the proof of concept I decided to code it for using WGET and a command line YouTube down loader.

Using this Python Twitter API I was able to get a proto-type running in a short time.

Basically it should work like this,

I send a direct message to a Twitter account which only follows me and I follow on my main account.
This contains the code for type of download and the URL of the download.
The Python script is started by cron at scheduled times.
The script connects to Twitter and checks for direct messages.
It parses the direct message and either spawns a WGET or youTube-dl command to get the resource.
If its a video it then runs a command is run to convert it to divX ready for upload it to my phone.
If its a file then it is virus checked.
Finally the direct messages are deleted from the Twitter account and a reply sent to my Twitter account.

So now without physical or remote access to the machine I can queue up downloads to retrieve during off peak hours.

Now I've got it work, need to fine tune it to run other remote tasks, like restarting Weblogic or deploying new version of the application and running test suites.

Doodle's Geek Monkey by Alastair Montgomery

Converting MP4 files to other divX and mp3 formats

2010-01-20T12:00:00.001Z

I find myself often converting MP4 video files to divX and mp3 format to play on my LG phone.

I used to do this with VLC application but this required too much button poking on my part.

So after reading up on the Linux command line ffmpeg and mencoder utilities I've created this basic shell script to do it automatically.


#!/bin/bash
echo "MP4 Conversion"
for f in *.mp4;
do
 echo "...Processing $f file..."
 ffmpeg -i "$f" -vn -ac 2 -acodec libmp3lame -ab 128k `echo $f|cut -d. -f1`.mp3 > /dev/null 2>&1
 mencoder "$f" -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg4:vpass=1 -oac mp3lame -lameopts vbr=3 -o `echo $f|cut -d. -f1`.divx > /dev/null 2>&1
done

This will convert all the mp4 files in the local directory to both divx and mp3 format ready to be transferred to my phone. Obviously you need to have the ffmpeg, mencoder and lame mp3 encoder installed on your Linux machine for this too work.

Doodle's Geek Monkey by Alastair Montgomery

LinCity-NG – the open source city simulation game

2009-12-17T12:00:00.000Z

LinCity-NG – the open source city simulation game

via The Red Ferret Journal by Nigel on 12/14/09

LinCity-NG is a city simulation game. You know, kind of like that game we all used to play back in the [...]

98 words | permalink | No comments | digg this

Odroid: all the open, none of the contract

2009-12-16T12:00:00.001Z

Odroid: all the open, none of the contract

via Hack a Day by Mike Szczys on 12/14/09

The Odroid derives its name from the combination of Open and Android. The hardware is aimed at the portable gaming market and runs Android. The specs are amazing, the device is open and begging you to develop for the platform.

The Samsung S5PC100 System-On-A-Chip provides the device with an ARM Cortex-A8 processor running at 833MHz. The usual suspects are all here, a capacitive touchscreen, accelerometer, SDHC slot, and WiFi. What you usually don't expect to see is a serial debugger and 720p HD output. But the best part, we get all of this without a 2 year contract or the hardware being locked down as we're used to with and Android based cell phone.

[Thanks Stillbourne via LinuxDevices]

Hackable Android handheld game device uses Cortex-A8 SoC - News - Linux for Devices

Ubuntu 10.04

2009-12-15T15:20:00.004Z

Ubuntu 10.04
Originally uploaded by Alastair Montgomery

Lasted cut of the new Ubuntu 10.04 Desktop, trying it out in a VirtualBox VM

Update

After installing the VirtualBox guest tools the mouse pointer is no longer displayed, doh!

Create and manage databases in Linux with Glom

2009-11-27T07:00:00.000Z

Might be worth a look.

Create and manage databases in Linux with Glom

via gHacks technology news by Jack Wallen on 11/25/09

If you've ever had to work with a database in Linux you most likely are aware of three or four tools that can handle the task: MySQL, PostgreSQL, PhpMyAdmin, and OpenOffice Base. These are all outstanding applications, but the first two are complex command-line only tools, the third requires a web server, and the last isn't as robust as some admins will need. But there is another tool that is very flexible and makes creating databases a simple task.

Glom can help you design and create databases as well as a user-interfaces with little to know coding or command line skills. Glom has an easy to use GUI that focuses on helping you get your job done instead of being an hindrance. Glom uses the PostgreSQL database as a backend, but can only edit databases created internally. In other words, all of those databases you created with PostgreSQL…Glom can not touch them. That is fine, because Glom is very good at creating and managing your databases.

In this tutorial you will learn how to install and get started using Glom.

Installation

If you point your browser to the Glom Download Page you will see fairly concise instructions on how to install Glom on your distribution. You might notice the warning that the default Ubuntu repository holds an out of date, buggy version of Glom. I installed Glom onto Ubuntu 9.10, using the Ubuntu Software Center (without having to add any extra repositories). The version that installed was 1.12.2. The latest source code available for Glom is 1.12. So this warning is most likely unnecessary for Karmic Koala users.

Once you have Glom installed you will find the menu entry located in the Office sub-menu of the Applications menu.

NOTE: There is a version of Glom for Windows.

Using Glom

Create New

When you first fire up Glom a small window will open (see Figure 1). From that window click on the Create New Document tab. In this tab select New Empty Document and then click the Select button. The next step needs you to input two pieces of information:

Name: This will serve as the actual file name.
Title: A human-readable name for your database.

In this same window you can select an option that will save this database to a database server, or to save it locally. If you go with the former, you will have to input the details of the server in a separate step. After you have all of your information configured, click the Save button to continue. Depending upon the speed of your machine, the database initiation phase can take some time. But once the database is initiated, a new window will open (see Figure 2) where you can begin to create tables for your database. When you are working with your database there are two user levels (selected from the User Level menu):

Developer: This is the level you use to create/edit your databases.
Operator: This is the level you use to work with your databases.

Figure 2

To create a table click on the Add button which will create a new line for a table. You have to name the table, so double click on the first column of your new table and enter a name. When you do that hit enter and you will see that the Title will auto-fill for you. You can also select if this table is to be hidden and/or default by selecting the check box for either option.

After you have created the tables the Glom window will change to the data entry mode. For each table you have created you will have to enter data in order to fill the tables. Adding data is done the same way as adding a table. The difference is that you have to select which table you want to add data to from the Tables menu in the toolbar.

Figure 3

After you have entered your data, you can then switch to the Details view (see Figure 3) where you can view data, add static items and containers to a record. You can also create new Fields to add to your data. These will come in handy as they can add data to a user entry such as their birthday.

To create a custom field go to the Developer menu and select Fields. From this window you can add, edit, and delete all of the fields you need.

After you have completed creating your database, go to the User Level menu, select Operator, and start working with your new database.

Final thoughts

Although this tutorial only scratches the surface of the power Glom offers, you get the idea that this tool could really make a database developers job very easy. Give Glom a try, you will look at PostgreSQL databases in a completely different light.

Tags: database, database administration, db, postgresql

Handbrake 0.94 transcodes DVDs even faster

2009-11-26T12:00:00.001Z

Looks good :)

Handbrake 0.94 transcodes DVDs even faster

via Download Squad by Jay Hathaway on 11/25/09

Filed under: Video, Windows, Macintosh, Linux

Handbrake, the insanely great multi-platform video transcoder - or "dvd ripper," if you're really being honest - just got its first update in almost a year. The biggest new change is 64-bit support, which means a 10% jump in encoding speed. According to our sister site, TUAW, Mac users don't even need to be running Snow Leopard to get the 64-bit advantage: it also works on OS X 10.5 on 64-bit capable machines.

If you're a fan of the AVI or xVid formats, you're out of luck with this release of Handbrake. These formats have been dropped in favor of pushing H.264. The good news is that you should now be able to rip DVDs in real time, or darn close. There's also a time-saving Live Preview option, so you can check the quality of your rips without waiting until they finish.

[via TUAW]

Handbrake 0.94 transcodes DVDs even faster originally appeared on Download Squad on Wed, 25 Nov 2009 18:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Mac OS X - Linux - Microsoft Windows - HandBrake - Download Squad

Wave Graph

2009-11-25T12:20:00.002Z

Wave Graph
Originally uploaded by Alastair Montgomery

Music Listen Stats from Last.FM

Made with Lastfm Extra Stats

Google Chrome OS First Look

2009-11-23T12:00:00.000Z

First look at Chrome OS running in a VM by following the instructions on gHacks

Login screen after quick boot up, use your Gmail account details.

Looks basically like the Chrome browser at this point.

Doodle's Geek Monkey by Alastair Montgomery

Tweet from the command line with Twidge

2009-11-19T07:00:00.000Z

Tweet from the command line with Twidge

via gHacks technology news by Jack Wallen on 11/13/09

For the longest time I refused to see the value in Twitter. Over the last six months I have changed my tune on that. Now I use Twitter primarily as a PR tool for my articles. And since my renewed belief in micro-blogging, I have found plenty of tools with which to enact with Twitter.

One tool I have found to be the least invasive is Twidge. Twidge does not have an application or daemon running in the background. Twidge does not have a panel applet. Twidge doesn't even remain open in the terminal window. Twidge just allows you to enter commands that take specific action on your Twitter account. It's simple, it's fast, and it's…well…command line fu-tastic! With that said, let's install, configure, and use Twidge.

Features

The first thing you need to know is if Twidge offers enough features to convince you to use it. Here is the short list:

Simple to use.
View activity of friends.
Add followers.
Follow users.
Archiving of your tweets.
Automatic URL shortening via tinyurl.com.

And much more.

Installation

As you would expect, twidge can be found in your distribution repositories. So all you need to do is open up a terminal and issue a command like:

sudo apt-get install twidge

yum install twidge

urpmi twidge

The installation will pick up the curl dependency automatically. After Twidge is installed, keep that terminal open because you'll need it (at least to begin with).

Configuration

In order to use Twidge you have to configure it to authenticate to your account. To do this you have to run a built-in configuration script issued from the command line. Issue the command:

twidge setup

You will be asked two simple questions:

Your use(r)name.
Your password.

That's it. Now you are ready to start using Twidge.

Usage

The basic usage of Twidge is:

twidge update 'STATUS'

Where STATUS is what you want to post to twitter (between single quotes).

Of course updating is not always enough. Twidge has a number of built-in tools. Let's take a look at what they are. NOTE: The basic usage of these tools is:

twidge TOOL OPTIONS

Where TOOL is the tool you want to use and OPTIONS are any options you want to pass to the tool (if any options are available).

Display updates.

lsarchive: List your own posts.
lsdm: List direct messages sent to you.
lsdmarchive: List direct messages you have sent.
lsrecent: Lists recent posts made by you or those you follow.
lsreplies: Lists all recent replies made to you.
lsfollowers: Lists those following you.
lsfollowing: Lists those you are following.

Action commands.

All of these tools are used in the same way the tools above are used, except in certain instances you proceed the tool name with username like so:

twidge TOOL USERNAME

Where TOOL is the specific tool you want to use and USERNAME is the user you want to send the information to.

dmsend: Send a direct to a user.
follow: Follow a specific user.
unfollow: Stop following a user.
update: Update your status.

So let's say you want to update your status to say "Hey everyone, I am reading a cool article on Ghacks right now!". To do this you would enter the command:

twidge update 'Hey everyone, I am reading a cool article on Ghacks right now!'

and hit enter when you're done.

Let's say, however, you wanted to use I'm instead of I am. The use of a single quote in the middle of that tweet would cause an error. To get around that just enter:

twidge update

and then hit enter. You should notice that you do not get your bash prompt back. What you do now is type in your tweet, without using quotes, and then hit enter. This way you can use contractions without having to worry about proper shell quotes.

Using twidge without command line

Although Twidge is a command line only tool, you can get around opening up a terminal by opening up your desktop's run dialog and then entering your twidge command there. If you're using GNOME you hit <Alt>F2 and then enter the Twidge command in the run dialog. This keeps you from having to have yet another window open, and it's much faster.

Final thoughts

I will make no bones about the fact that Twidge is not nearly as simple as the standard GUI-based tool. But Twidge makes up for that with speed, reliability, and flexibility. Because of its command line nature, you could even create a nifty bash script to use something like fortune and then add that bash script to a cron job so you would get an automatically updated status. Script-fu-tastic!

Tags: cli, command-line, tweet, twitter

Free Image Editors

2009-11-18T07:00:00.000Z

Free Image Editors

via TrustedReviews Site-wide Feed by Cliff Smith on 11/16/09

Good image editing software doesn't have to cost hundreds of pounds

Google Go Test

2009-11-11T10:38:00.002Z

Google Go Test
Originally uploaded by Alastair Montgomery

The ubiquitous Hello World test on Google's new programming languag "Google Go".

The install on my Ubuntu 9.10 Linux machine went painlessly following the instructions on this page http://golang.org/doc/install.html

Now I can can't wait until lunchtime to crack on with the tutorials

What's Inside a Cup of Coffee?

2009-10-12T05:00:00.000+01:00

What's Inside a Cup of Coffee?

via Wired Top Stories by Patrick di Justo on 10/4/09

Caffeine
This is why the world produces more than 16 billion pounds of coffee beans per year. It's actually an alkaloid plant toxin (like nicotine and cocaine), a bug killer that stimulates us by blocking neuroreceptors for the sleep chemical adenosine. The result: you, awake.

Water
Hot H₂O is a super solvent, leaching flavors and oils out of the coffee bean. A good cup of joe is 98.75 percent water and 1.25 percent soluble plant matter. Caffeine is a diuretic, so coffee newbies pee out the water quickly; java junkies build up resistance.

2-Ethylphenol
Creates a tarlike, medicinal odor in your morning wake-up. It's also a component of cockroach alarm pheromones, chemical signals that warn the colony of danger.

Quinic acid
Gives coffee its slightly sour flavor. On the plus side, it's one of the starter chemicals in the formulation of Tamiflu.

3,5 Dicaffeoylquinic acid
When scientists pretreat neurons with this acid in the lab, the cells are significantly (though not completely) protected from free-radical damage. Yup: Coffee is a good source of antioxidants.

Dimethyl disulfide
A product of roasting the green coffee bean, this compound is just at the threshold of detectability in brewed java. Good thing, too, as it's one of the compounds that gives human feces its odor.

Acetylmethylcarbinol
That rich, buttery taste in your daily jolt comes in part from this flammable yellow liquid, which helps give real butter its flavor and is a component of artificial flavoring in microwave popcorn.

Putrescine
Ever wonder what makes spoiled meat so poisonous? Here you go. Ptomaines like putrescine are produced when E. coli bacteria in the meat break down amino acids. Naturally present in coffee beans, it smells, as you might guess from the name, like Satan's outhouse.

Trigonelline
Chemically, it's a molecule of niacin with a methyl group attached. It breaks down into pyridines, which give coffee its sweet, earthy taste and also prevent the tooth-eating bacterium Streptococcus mutans from attaching to your teeth. Coffee fights the Cavity Creeps.

Niacin
Trigonelline is unstable above 160 degrees F; the methyl group detaches, unleashing the niacin—vitamin B3—into your cup. Two or three espressos can provide half your recommended daily allowance.

This Is a Photoshop and It Blew My Mind [Graphics]

2009-10-08T06:00:00.000+01:00

This is amazing, just imagine if you could hook it up to Flickr.

This Is a Photoshop and It Blew My Mind [Graphics]

via Gizmodo by Jesus Diaz on 10/5/09

PhotoSketch is an internet-based program that can take the rough, labeled sketch on the left and automagically turn it into the naff montage on the right. Seems unbelievable but—as the video shows—it works:

According to authors, their software can take any rough sketch, with the shape of each element labeled with its name, find images corresponding to each drawn element, judge which are a better match to the shapes, and then seamlessly merge it all into one single image.

PhotoSketch's blending algorithm analyzes each of these images, compares them with each other, and decides which are better for the blending process. It automatically traces and places them into a single photograph, matching the scene, and adding shadows. Of course, the results are less than perfect, but they are good enough:

The authors of the program—Tao Chen, Ming-Ming Cheng, Ping Tan, Ariel Shamir, and Shi-Min Hu at the Department of Computer Science and Technology, Tsinghua University, and the National University of Singapure—presented it at Siggraph Asia 2009. An event that will be remembered forever in the History of Humanity as the day in which a million of dorks were finally able to put themselves in X-rated positions with Megan Fox. [PhotoSketch—Thanks Brice]

The 80s Now Have One More Cassette Tape Measure To Be Proud Of [Cassette Tape]

2009-10-07T06:00:00.000+01:00

This is retro cool, just don't try using it in your walkman :)

The 80s Now Have One More Cassette Tape Measure To Be Proud Of [Cassette Tape]

via Gizmodo by Jason Chen on 10/5/09

Only Gama-Go would be able to take a Cassette Tape and make it into a pun-based product that's both useful and compact. Plus, it's only $8. [Gama-Go]

Flickroom

2009-10-01T10:01:00.002+01:00

Flickroom
Originally uploaded by Alastair Montgomery

A cool Adobe AIR appplication for Flickr, well worth a look.

http://www.flickroom.org/beta/

Twitter on Lynx

2009-09-14T09:10:00.002+01:00

Twitter on Lynx
Originally uploaded by Alastair Montgomery

Been trying to use Twitter on Lynx browser, the mobile version of Twitter seems to work okay but can't login using the regular version.

Oracle Weblogic Server 11g

2009-09-10T13:29:00.002+01:00

Oracle Weblogic Server 11g
Originally uploaded by Alastair Montgomery

Oracle branding on the Weblogic console just feels wrong :o/

Opera 10 Release Candidate

2009-08-26T12:00:00.000+01:00

Just installed the Opera 10 Release Candidate

I have been using the beta versions since they came out and it has become my browser of choice at work and at home.

Doodle's Geek Monkey by Alastair Montgomery

SimplyMEPIS

2009-08-25T14:59:00.002+01:00

SimplyMEPIS
Originally uploaded by Alastair Montgomery

Giving SimplyMEPIS a go on a 64 bit VM

URL Shortening Rant

2009-08-25T08:03:00.004+01:00

URL shortening is a great idea for Twitter's 120 character limit but it does have its problems. Most annoying, you find an interesting link and click on it and get presented with the screen above. There is nothing you can do to get to the article you clicked on until the server load goes down.

Other problems include you don't know what site you will end up on so can end up on a phishing site or something NSFW, although TinyURLs preview option kind of helps that problem.

If only Twitter had implemented a better way to include a URL so it didn't impact on your 120 characters we wouldn't be in this mess.

Doodle's Geek Monkey by Alastair Montgomery

Dusty Keyboard

2009-08-11T12:43:00.002+01:00

Dusty Keyboard
Originally uploaded by Alastair Montgomery

Keyboard to the PC I've reused as a Ubuntu Linux automated test box.

As you can see its been under my desk for a while.

Guess you could work out the password from the clean keys?

I've installed Synergy mouse and keyboard sharing on my three active desktops so I don't have to use this keyboard much. If you use more than one desktop computer I'd recommend you install it, saves you having to change between input devices. You just move your cursor off the edge of the screen and you are controlling the pointer on your other machine.

10 Essential UNIX/Linux Command Cheat Sheets

2009-08-05T12:00:00.000+01:00

Cool article from Tech Source work repeating.

10 Essential UNIX/Linux Command Cheat Sheets

via TECH SOURCE FROM BOHOL by noreply@blogger.com (jun auza) on 8/4/09

Linux has become so idiot proof nowadays that there is less and less need to use the command line. However, the commands and shell scripts have remained powerful for advanced users to utilize to help them do complicated tasks quickly and efficiently.

To those of you who are aspiring to become a UNIX/Linux guru, you have to know loads of commands and learn how to effectively use them. But there is really no need to memorize everything since there are plenty of cheat sheets available on the web and on books. To spare you from the hassles of searching, I have here a collection of 10 essential UNIX/Linux cheat sheets that can greatly help you on your quest for mastery:

UNIX Tutorial for Beginners
This is a quick and easy UNIX/Linux tutorial page that is aimed at beginners. It gives a subtle introduction to some of the most important UNIX/Linux commands.

CLICK HERE TO VIEW

Learning the Shell
Aside from showing you how to apply the most basic UNIX/Linux commands, "Learning the Shell' will teach you the utmost importance of using the command line.

CLICK HERE TO VIEW

Learn UNIX in 10 Minutes
From the page: This is something that I had given out to students (CAD user training) in years past. The purpose was to have on one page the basics commands for getting started using the UNIX shell (so that they didn't call me asking what to do the first time someone gave them a tape).

CLICK HERE TO VIEW

FOSSwire Unix/Linux Command Cheat Sheet
A one page UNIX/Linux command reference that you can download in PDF format. You can easily print it, and then paste it on your wall.

CLICK HERE TO VIEW

UNIX Toolbox
From the page: This document is a collection of Unix/Linux/BSD commands and tasks which are useful for IT work or for advanced users. This is a practical guide with concise explanations; however the reader is supposed to know what s/he is doing.

CLICK HERE TO VIEW

Practical Linux Command Line Reference
This is another handy one-page cheat sheet for common command line operations. All of the commands have been tested on Fedora and Ubuntu.

CLICK HERE TO VIEW

How to Look Like a UNIX Guru
From the page: This lecture takes you through the basic commands and then shows you how to combine them in simple patterns or idioms to provide sophisticated functionality like histogramming. This lecture assumes you know what a shell is and that you have some basic familiarity with UNIX.

CLICK HERE TO VIEW

A Directory of Linux Commands (in alphabetical order)
From the O'reilly book "Linux in a Nutshell, 5th Edition", it features an alphabetical list of 687 commands and a short description on each one of them.

CLICK HERE TO VIEW

Linux Security Quick Reference Guide
This quick reference guide (in PDF) will serve as your aid on improving the security of your Linux system. It provides some pointers to more in-depth security information that could help you become a good UNIX/Linux system administrator.

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD

Bash Programming Cheat Sheet
From the page: A quick cheat sheet for programmers who want to do shell scripting. This is not intended to teach programming, etc. but it is intended for someone who knows one programming language to begin learning about bash scripting.

CLICK HERE TO VIEW

Through comments, feel free to share some links to other essential UNIX/Linux cheat sheets that I failed to include here.

Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup

2009-07-31T16:01:00.002+01:00

Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup
Originally uploaded by Alastair Montgomery

Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup

A Rouge like game available for most platforms. Great fun.

http://crawl-ref.sourceforge.net/

Ubuntu installing Websphere 7 (Success)

2009-07-31T10:22:00.005+01:00

Ubuntu installing Websphere 7
Originally uploaded by Alastair Montgomery

Attempting to install Websphere 7 Express on Ubuntu 9.0.4

Its hung at "importConfigArchive" stage for a long time, not looking good so far.

Time to do a bit of searching...

Update

Found this on the IBM site seems that sh is linked to dash instead of bash might be the problem. So I've linked sh to bash and going to try installing again.

Update 2

Success changing the sh to be linked to bash allowed WebSphere 7 to install. To do this you need to enter the following commands in a terminal window.

cd /bin
sudo rm sh
sudo ln -s bash sh

It might be a good idea to change it back once your install has finished.

cd /bin
sudo rm sh
sudo ln -s dash sh

Ubuntu 9.04 painfully slow screen redraws, any ideas?

2009-07-16T09:40:00.006+01:00

Tried the Live CD version of Ubuntu 9.04 on my new laptop (Compaq Presario CQ60-305EA) last night, screen redraw was painfully slow. It was almost like a window blind effect opening or moving a Firefox window.

Most confusing, wonder if it has problems with the NVIDIA GeForce 8200M?

Not worth dual booting if that is an indication of the speed I'll get.

Anyone got any ideas on a solution?

Update

BigMatt said...
You just need the drivers. Here's a thread with some more info.
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1221876

Doodle's Geek Monkey by Alastair Montgomery

Google Chrome on Mint Linux

2009-07-07T11:51:00.002+01:00

Google Chrome on Mint Linux
Originally uploaded by Alastair Montgomery

Testing the Dev build of Chrome running on my Mint Linux VM.

Feels pretty nippy, especially scrolling through Google Reader.

Nibbo Search

2009-07-03T10:30:00.002+01:00

Nibbo Search
Originally uploaded by Alastair Montgomery

Been testing a new search engine http://www.nibbo.com/ so far I like it.

Its really a nice front end on existing search engines so you can search a number of things at the same time.

From the site,

About Nibbo

We believe that there's a lot of room for improvement in web searching, and we wanted to do something about it. This is the reason why Nibbo was born: to offer an improved way to find whatever you're looking for.

While other search engines offer only one type of search at a time, Nibbo will show a preview of multiple search types in an unobstrusive way, and provide information like the number of results that are to be expected for the different engines. The type and order of those previews is completely configurable, as well as the default search settings.

Plus, for authenticated users, we offer the option to create custom search engines by just providing a list of keywords or website addresses. Right now it's not possible to share those engines among users, but we're planning to add this feature in the near future.

Nibbo is powered by Google App Engine, Google AJAX search, Google CSE, and Amazon CloudFront.

The Secret Of Monkey Island on DosBox

2009-07-01T13:57:00.002+01:00

The Secret Of Monkey Island on DosBox
Originally uploaded by Alastair Montgomery

Finally got round to installing DosBox on my Ubuntu laptop, now I need the time to play Monkey Island.

USB 2.0

2009-06-18T10:20:00.001+01:00

USB 2.0
Originally uploaded by Alastair Montgomery

You've got to love cheap Chinese eBay electronics. If they work that is :)

Finally caved and got a USB 2.0 card for my aging Dell machine.

LG SDK Test

2009-06-17T12:15:00.001+01:00

LG SDK Test
Originally uploaded by Alastair Montgomery

My first LG "Hello World" application.
Just need to test it on my phone now ;)

I wonder if my Java skills are too rusty to come up with anything useful.

Dell PowerEdge 2950

2009-06-17T12:10:00.002+01:00

Dell PowerEdge 2950
Originally uploaded by Alastair Montgomery

When I'm bored I go and play with the servers.

Windows 7 VM Online

2009-06-15T11:27:00.002+01:00

Windows 7 VM Online
Originally uploaded by Alastair Montgomery

Thanks to the comment on my previous post I have got the network card on the Windows 7 VM working.

After installing the VMWare tools I had to remove and re-add the "virtual" network card to get it working.

Here it is running our application without problems it seems.

Windows 7 Problems on a VM

2009-06-11T16:02:00.001+01:00

Windows 7 Problems
Originally uploaded by Alastair Montgomery

The Windows 7 problems start.....

It can't find a driver for the VMWare's virtual network or sound cards, even although other people haven't had issues with installing it on VM Fusion.

Same on VirtualBox as well.

Fedora 11

2009-06-10T15:45:00.002+01:00

Fedora 11
Originally uploaded by Alastair Montgomery

First install of Fedora 11, pretty painless, joys of a VM I suppose.

VirtualBox guest utils didn't like it, will probably have to hack the install for the new kernel version.

VMWare Fusion lapped it up.

Converting a Virtualbox virtual machine to VMWare

2009-06-04T13:49:00.003+01:00

This covers converting from VirtualBox to VMWare not the other way around.
I've search the net and all the instructions seemed to be long winded using third party products as a middle step. Things have moved on this might be easy now.

With VirtualBox 2.2.2 you can export your machine as an Appliance using the Open Virtualization Format (OVF). The VMWare vCenter Converter 4.0.1 (free download) imports OVF Appliances.

Sounds too good to be true?

I am just exporting my VM from VirtualBox at the moment to see if it works “like it says on the tin”

Doodle's Geek Monkey by Alastair Montgomery

Opera 10 Beta

2009-06-04T09:06:00.002+01:00

Opera 10 Beta
Originally uploaded by Alastair Montgomery

Been trying out Opera 10 Beta on my Mac.
So far I'm impressed with it, so much I've made it the default browser for now.
It kick the Safari 4 beta off this spot.

My Workspace

2009-06-03T14:26:00.001+01:00

My Workspace
Originally uploaded by Alastair Montgomery

Too big to fit into a single photograph, here's a video of my workspace.
Its a bit messy I know o_O

Saving data

2009-06-02T08:38:00.001+01:00

Saving data
Originally uploaded by Alastair Montgomery

Saving the docs off my broken hard disk (bad sectors) to an old 30GB disk.
Windows refused to start even in safe mode so I used Puppy Linux to copy the files between the disks.

Now need to get a new(ish) 80+GB IDE disk to put in the machine.

Geek Chart

2009-05-28T07:00:00.002+01:00

A Geek Chart is a web badge that shows where you share stuff online.
Each slice of the Geek Chart is a link to your profile on sites like Flickr, Twitter, Youtube and more.

Here is my chart.

Alastair_hm's Geek Chart

Doodle's Geek Monkey by Alastair Montgomery

Embed Flash games on your site with Heyzap

2009-05-27T18:00:00.000+01:00

Sent to you by Alastair via Google Reader:

Embed Flash games on your site with Heyzap

via Download Squad by Jay Hathaway on 5/25/09

Filed under: Fun, Games, Social Software, web 2.0, Web

It's easy to add videos, music and images from around the Internet to your website, but what about games? Heyzap is a way to place any of over 12,000 casual Flash games on your website. It's as simple as copying and pasting a widget code .

Heyzap bills itself as a way to engage with your audience and get them to spend more time on your site. This has an effect on advertising revenue for big players, but I'm not sure it's the most appealing thing about Heyzap when you're just a little guy. I think this could turn into something like the YouTube of games -- instead of sending friends a link to the games you like, just post them right on your blog.

Embed Flash games on your site with Heyzap originally appeared on Download Squad on Mon, 25 May 2009 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Subscribe to Download Squad using Google Reader
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Dream Linux = Identity crisis

2009-05-27T13:23:00.002+01:00

Dream Linux = Identity crisis
Originally uploaded by Alastair Montgomery

Comparing the Mac like Dream Linux desktop with the real thing.

Doom + Heretic + Hexen (in your browser) = Epic Win - Time Waster

2009-05-26T18:00:00.000+01:00

Doom + Heretic + Hexen (in your browser) = Epic Win - Time Waster

via Download Squad by Lee Mathews on 5/22/09

Filed under: Fun, Games, Time-Wasters

A while back we shared the Flash version of Doom with you as a Time Waster. What could be better than Doom in your browser? How about single-page access to Doom, Heretic, and Hexen?

Yep. All three demo games have been open sourced, and some heartless bastard decided it was a good idea to roll them into a single Flash-powered ball of awesome that we can play in our browsers instead of getting any actual work done. They're Flash 10 only, so make sure you're up to date before you try to play.

Thank god these are just the demos and not the full games, or this would quite possibly become the biggest Friday Time Waster ever.

There's no music, and you may have trouble getting some cheat codes to work (not that you'll try, of course), but who cares? You'll notice some gripes in the comments about control as well, but come on - Hexen in your browser while at work? 'Nuf said.

[via Inquisitr]

Doom + Heretic + Hexen (in your browser) = Epic Win - Time Waster originally appeared on Download Squad on Fri, 22 May 2009 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Addicted to statistics, average MPG

2009-05-06T14:47:00.000+01:00

My average MPG (UK)

Doodle's Geek Monkey by Alastair Montgomery

The Beginner's Guide to Creating Virtual Machines with VirtualBox [How-to]

2009-04-17T03:00:00.001+01:00

Virtual Machine basics

The Beginner's Guide to Creating Virtual Machines with VirtualBox [How-to]

via Lifehacker by Kevin Purdy on 4/10/09

Virtual machines can seem juuuuust a bit too geeky for most otherwise computer-friendly people. That's sad, because it's an easy, free way to try or use a separate OS without messing with your hard drive.

What's virtualization? Why get that nerdy?

Virtualization is a whole computer concept unto itself, at least on the server/enterprise/big-fancy-corporate level. For home users, talk about "virtual machines" generally refers to x86 virtualization. Basically, it's software that allows an entire operating system (the "guest") to run on another OS (the "Host"), whether in a container window, or full-screen, or in what's sometimes called a "seamless" mode, where just one application is run from the "guest"

Why would you want to run a virtual machine on your computer? Plenty of reasons:

You like using one OS, but need just an app or two from another running in their natural environments—Office or Photoshop in Windows (nine times out of 10), a light-on-resources game, or maybe even some uber-cool Linux app.
You want to try out some new software, but would rather not chance it mucking up the pretty decent system you've got right now.
Web sites that don't play nice with the operating system you're running (we're looking at you, almost every streaming site except Hulu and YouTube).
You're intrigued at the idea of trying out a Linux desktop, but the word "partitioning" doesn't sound like how you want to spend a Saturday afternoon.

For those and many other good reasons, we're going to walk through installing VirtualBox, a free, open-source virtualization tool offered for Windows, Mac, and Linux desktops, and then get virtual copies of Windows XP and Ubuntu running inside them. Installing Windows Vista (Ultimate or Business only, unfortunately) or the Windows 7 beta is about the same process, and almost any Linux distribution is friendly as a virtual machine, but this will give you an understanding of the basic process. Before you even ask, by the way, you can't run OS X as a guest system on Windows or Linux, but the VirtualBox can run most anything else—including those pre-rolled virtual images you find laying around the internet.

I have to note here that VirtualBox is far from the only competitor in this field—in fact, many in the tech community report that VMWare's Workstation offers more features and handles multiple virtual machines better. But VirtualBox is relatively easy to set up, free to install, and works on all three major operating systems.

Setting up

First off, head over to VirtualBox's Download page and grab the right copy for your system. The only real choice falls on Linux users having to choose between 32- and 64-bit versions for their particular distribution—you don't want to run a 64-bit guest on a 32-bit host machine, if you can avoid it. Linux users should note that while there may be a version of VirtualBox available in their repository, it's usually the Open Source Edition, which may not be as up-to-date as the VirtualBox download page, and doesn't offer support for USB devices, along with a few other odds and ends.

Click through the install screens; in most cases, you won't have to stop and change anything. You'll probably get a warning that VirtualBox will have to disconnect and re-connect your network connection for a few seconds while it's setting up, so finish up any crucial net transfers.

During setup on Windows, you'll be asked to install "device software" or "drivers"—hit "Install" for each, or check the box that indicates you'll "Always trust ..." Sun's drivers.

Once VirtualBox is installed, launch it and you'll arrive at a tauntingly empty screen:

Setting up

Let's get something running in there. One big advantage of virtual machines over partitioning, dual-booting, and all that other hard-drive-tweaking stuff is the ability to install a system right from an ISO file. So if you're testing out a Linux system, just download the ISO from Ubuntu, Fedora, or wherever. And if you've got an older XP installation disc, you can slipstream the latest service pack into it to create a minimal-hassle installation ISO image, and never bother burning it. While you're at it, check out Adam's guide to trimming down Windows to the bare essentials for a real speedy virtual installation ISO. If you've got your installation CD or DVD, however, that'll play, too.

Hit "New" and you'll be asked to give your system a name you'll recognize—in my case, an XP system I'll unleash all my morning Lifehacker test downloads on—and let VirtualBox know generally what variety and flavor it is. Linux users trying out a funky remix can head for Linux->Other Linux.

This next screen asking for a memory allocation seems imposing—I won't give it enough! I'll kill my host system with too much!—but you can entirely change it later on. VirtualBox will recommend a minimum amount, based on the OS you said you were installing, but your common sense will pay off here. I'm usually not running anything intensive on my system with 2GB of memory, so if lost half a GB, or 512MB, I'd probably not notice much. Your mileage will certainly vary, but try peeling off as much as you can at first, then scale it back if you notice your system becoming unstable, or bump it up if you get frustrated with a lag-tastic system-in-a-system.

The next screen asks you to either create a new hard disk image or use an existing one. Assuming this is a first install, keep Boot Hard Disk checked and hit Next to create the image. Hit Next again at the start of the "New Virtual Disk Wizard" (they keep changing the name from "Virtual" to "image," but it's all the same), then you'll be asked to choose a dynamically expanding image or a fixed-size storage. This depends on how much space you're willing to give your virtual OS. Do you have just 8GB you want to give over, and don't want it reaching past that? Choose the fixed-size option, set a size amount in gigabytes, and relax. Or you can choose "dynamically expanding," which, just like it sounds, allots only a little bit of space at first, but will re-report itself to the virtual system as bigger if the OS needs a bit more space.

If you happen to have multiple SATA hard drives in your system, or a fast external SATA, the How-To Geek recommends placing your virtual machine image (the "guest") on a separate physical drive from the machine running it (the "host") for better multi-tasking and performance speed, plus a little less wear on a single hard drive. If not, don't worry about it too much, and don't go creating separate partitions for your machines, because you aren't fooling anybody, least of all your system's I/O bus.

Booting up

Assuming everything went well, you'll see your new virtual system in the left-hand pane of the VirtualBox window. Huzzah! But before you hit "start," let's hit "Settings" and get it ready to roll the right way. The first category from the left-hand menu, General, lets you change how much base memory (or RAM) and video memory is given over to the virtual machine. Unless you're planning to enable 3D effects, the default chosen for video memory should be fine, and the 3D acceleration box can remain un-checked. Let's move down to "CD/DVD-ROM."

Make sure "Mount CD/DVD Drive" is checked. If you're going to install your virtual system from a boot CD or DVD, put it in your computer's drive, then select "Host CD/DVD Drive." If you're using a downloaded or custom-made ISO file, select "ISO Image file," hit the folder icon to the right of the drop-down box, and then hit the "Add" button and browse for the ISO you're using. Once you've added an ISO file to this menu, you can mount it in any virtual machine you're running at any time—kind of a nice feature for files you need to get at often. Hit "Select" to close this dialog.

Back at the main Settings window, head down to the Audio and/or USB menus and enable them if you're going to be needing sound or access to thumb/external drives while you're in your OS-in-a-box. Before we get to the "Shared Folders," which is pretty darned convenient, let's boot our system. Hit OK and close out your Settings window, then hit Start back at the main box to get rolling.

Whatever ISO or disc you've supplied VirtualBox with will load just like it's on a machine for the first time, and you'll go through the same installation process as if you were loading Windows/Linux/whatever on a hard drive for the first time. You'll get occasional pop-ups from VirtualBox, "notifying" you that a mouse pointer is now in such-and-such a mode, the video display has changed, yada, yada—just hit OK and check the boxes so it doesn't bother you further. Click through all the usual name/username/password/registration jazz you're used to ... All done? Great. After however many reboots, you'll arrive at your fresh, clean desktop, which you could start using right away. You might notice, however, that the resolution is limited, the mouse might be jerky, and your sound or USB might not work out of the box. That's where the Guest Additions come in.

Fine-tuning

Head to the "Devices" menu at the top of the virtual OS window (if you've accidentally gotten into full-screen mode, hit right-Control+F to switch out) and choose "Install Guest Additions." In a virtual Windows, you'll get a prompt like you were installing software you just downloaded; if not, you can open My Computer, open up the CD drive named "VirtualBox Guest Additions," and run the auto-run software in there. In a virtual Linux, you may just get a CD or DVD mounted and displayed on the desktop. Each Linux system will be slightly different, but the Tombuntu blog's instructions for installing VirtualBox Guest Additions in Ubuntu hold mostly true: head to where the ISO is mounted as a CD/DVD drive, then run VBoxLinuxAdditions-x86.run (or the -amd64 version for 64-bit systems). Click through everything, restart your system, and things should be a lot more convenient: Your virtual desktop resizes itself to however big you make its window, the mouse doesn't get "captured" and require un-locking when you click around, and everything should be a bit smoother.

You've got a well-oiled virtual machine at this point, but let's make it real easy to pass files between your host and guest systems (terminology should be making sense at this point, no?). The VirtualBox makers have described the process for Windows and Linux users in a FAQ post, and I've described the virtual-Windows-inside-Linux process in more detail in our guide to running Windows apps seamlessly inside Linux. Giannis Tsakiris has also explained setting up sharing from an XP guest, and the process is much the same for any virtual Windows (although some of the network tools have changed names). Need a bit more? Here's a quick video guide for a Windows guest system:

Now you're up and running with a machine you don't have to feel bad about messing with, or which lets your run the few apps you need in one OS while enjoying the benefits of the one you really want to work in. Wanna explore what kinds of systems you can install, and save yourself some install time while you're at it? Head over to VirtualBox Images, where you can download and run pre-compiled VDI files (i.e. VirtualBox hard drive images, like the dynamic/fixed kind you created above) for some swap-and-run fun. (Thanks to CherylIshabunny for the link!).

Are you an experienced virtual machine user with suggestions on making the process smoother for beginners? Just starting out and need something clarified? Drop your questions and suggestions in the comments, and we'll update the post as the good stuff trickles in.

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xPUD is a light weight Linux distro that boots in just 10 seconds

2009-04-15T00:00:00.000+01:00

xPUD is a light weight Linux distro that boots in just 10 seconds

via Download Squad by Brad Linder on 4/9/09

Filed under: Linux

xPUD may not be the first light weigh Linux distribution to take up less than 50MB of disk space. But it's certainly one of the simplest, fastest Linux distributions I've seen. And that's largely because it's still in the early stages of development and doesn't support a ton of hardware or software yet. But it's still pretty nifty watching a computer boot a full operating system complete with a web browser, media player, and BitTorrent client in just about 10 seconds. You can see it for yourself after the break.

The operating system has a kiosk-style user interface. In other words, there's no start menu and desktop. Instead, there are a few tabs on the left side of the screen that let you tweak the settings, launch applications, or access files. Right now there are only a handful of applications available and when you click the utility for adding new apps, you get a message telling you the feature hasn't been implemented yet.

You can install xPUD to your hard drive, although I wouldn't really recommend it. Or you can download a ZIP file and prepare a bootable USB flash drive to boot the OS without installing it.

There's also an unimplemented feature labeled "Switch Mode" that lets you "toggle into other OS," which makes me think the goal is to develop xPUD as a quick-boot style operating system like Splashtop or HyperSpace. It could coxisting peacefully on a hard drive with Windows, Ubuntu, or another operating system and give you access to a handful of programs a few seconds after you hit the power button. If you need more power, you'd toggle operating systems and boot into a full desktop environment.

Note: The xPUD download servers were extremely slow when I last tried them. But the files are mirrored at the following site (you'll have to copy and paste the URL, clicking doesn't work):

http://www.hp-umpc.com/xpud/

Check out the xPUD boot sequence after the jump.

[via Liliputing Forums]

Continue reading xPUD is a light weight Linux distro that boots in just 10 seconds

Useful projects tin.

2009-04-07T11:31:00.001+01:00

Extra Ice Mints
Originally uploaded by Alastair Montgomery

The new Extra Ice Mints, okay mints, excellent tin.

The tin would be useful for all those home electronic projects you've been meaning to try.

Doodle's Geek Monkey by Alastair Montgomery

Which Ubuntu Derivative Is Right For You?

2009-04-03T12:06:00.002+01:00

Studio for me I think :)

Which Ubuntu Derivative Is Right For You?

via gHacks technology news by jack on 4/2/09

If you're interested in Linux then most likely you have taken a look at Ubuntu. And if you have taken a look at Ubuntu then you know there are a lot of derivatives out there that specialize in one cross section of society or another. But which one is right for you? That is where gHacks comes in.

In this article we will examine the different Ubuntu Linux spin offs, highlight what each spin off is about, and decide who that spin off would suit. Hopefully, in the end, you will know exactly which *buntu ISO to download, burn with your CD or DVD burning, and install on your computer.

What is a derivative and why would I want to use one?

A derivative takes the original (in this case Ubuntu Linux) and alters it to fit a particular need or audience. As for Ubuntu there are quite a few derivatives and each one targets a very specific need. That specific need is why you would want to use a derivative. Say, for example, you are a teacher and you have specific needs from your operating system. There is a derivative for you. Or say you want KDE instead of GNOME. There i a derivative for you.

With that in mind, let's take a look at what derivatives are out there and who they are for. First we will look at the officially supported Ubuntu derivatives.

Edubuntu

If you are in the business of education as either a teacher or a student, and you need software to fit those specific needs, Edubuntu contains everything you would need to teach a class, be in a class, or learn about a class. Edubuntu contains software for math, science, writing, educational games, and more. As for target age, Edubuntu is useful for elementary school through graduate school.

Kubuntu

The default Ubuntu "ships" with GNOME. Although GNOME is an outstanding desktop environment, there are those that will prefer the KDE desktop environment. For those fans of KDE who do not want to have to spend the time installing KDE, Kubuntu is for you. Kubuntu is now defaulting to KDE 4.x.

Ubuntu Server Edition

If you are looking for a reliable and fast server installation that contains nearly everything you need for a server by default, the Ubuntu Server Edition is for you. But be warned, this is a text-based install as well as a GUI-less operating system. So to use the Ubuntu Server Edition you best bone up on your command line skills.

And now for the Recognized derivatives.

Xubuntu

If you're looking for a full-blown Ubuntu installation that has smaller hardware requirements than the stock GNOME or KDE based Ubuntu, Xubuntu might be for you. Xubuntu uses the Xfce window manager to keep system requirments as low as possible while still offering as much user-friendliness as possible.

Gobuntu

If you long to have an operating system completely free of restrictive licensing then Gobuntu is for you. Gobuntu endeavors to hold true to the Free Software Foundations' four freedoms:

The freedom to run the program for any purpose.
The freedom to study how the program and adapt it to fit it to your needs.
The freedom to redistribute your modified program.
The freedom to improve the program.

So using Gobuntu you can rest assured that the included software will ahere to the four freedoms. This can cause problems if you have hardare that depends upon restricted drivers (such as NVidia cards).

Ubuntu Studio

If you have serious multimedia needs Ubuntu Studio is for you. This derivative includes: Ardour (professional-level audio tools); Gimp, Inkscape, and Blender (Graphics tools), PiTiVi, Kino, and Cinepaint (Video tools). What Ubuntu Studio does is install all of these tool for you so the end results is an outstanding distrubtion ready to fulfill your multimedia needs.

MythBuntu

If you need a media center PC and you want it based on an open source operating system, Mythbuntu is the OS you've been looking for. Once you have met all of the hardware requirements for your media setup, this Ubuntu distribution makes creating a stand-alone PVR system a snap. And because your media center will be powered by Ubuntu, you can bet that media center will serve as a standard desktop or a server. With MythBuntu you can meet many needs with one distribution.

And some unofficial derivatives

Eeebuntu

Eeebuntu replaces the default operating system on your Eee PC. But Eeebuntu isn't just a replacement for your Eee operating system, it is definitely an upgrade. Eeebuntu will make your Eee PC seem more like a standard PC than many other Netbook respins.

CrunchBang

I hadn't heard of Crunchbang, but with a name like that I had to look. Of course CrunchBang is a relevant derivative because it uses the OpenBox window manager and GTK+ applications. That means an incredibly light weight distribution (even more so than Xbuntu.)

OpenGEU

This is my favorite Ubuntu derivative because it uses the Enlightenment (E17) window manager. It's sleek, well done, and chock full of eye candy.

Final Thoughts

Have you found a derivative that would match your needs yet? The above list includes all of the officially supported and the recognized (as well as some unrecognized) derivatives. If one of these derivatives does? not meet your needs you could either roll your own or look at a different distribution. Fortunately Ubuntu and its derivatives cover a lot of ground.

Tags: edubuntu, eeebuntu, gobuntu, kubuntu, Linux, ubuntu, ubuntu derivatives, ubuntu server, ubuntu studio

AarLogic C10/3 - the matchbox sized Linux PC

2009-03-30T09:53:00.002+01:00

Looks cool

AarLogic C10/3 - the matchbox sized Linux PC

via The Red Ferret Journal - gadgets, cool sites, freeware and tech trivia by Nigel on 3/27/09

The AarLogic C10/3 is a Linux PC which is the size of a box of matches.

Eee Keyboard PC

2009-03-24T19:28:00.000Z

I want one of these

Video of the Eee Keyboard PC - http://tinyurl.com/cr789n

Doodle's Geek Monkey by Alastair Montgomery

Construct Game Maker - free Open Source Game Maker for all

2009-03-14T00:00:00.000Z

Construct Game Maker - free Open Source Game Maker for all

via The Red Ferret Journal - gadgets, cool sites, freeware and tech trivia by Nigel on 3/13/09

Construct is a free Open Source game maker program which will have you churning out hit titles faster than you can shake a stick.

Best Home Server Software

2009-03-13T00:00:00.000Z

Another cool article from Life Hacker

Best Home Server Software [Hive Five]

via Lifehacker by Jason Fitzpatrick on 01/03/09

Media files, data synchronization, and remote backups, oh my! Home computing has advanced to a point where it's practical to run your own home server, and we're running down the five best tools for the job.

Photo by Rudolf Schuba.

Earlier this week we asked you to tell us what software you used to power your home servers and add that extra kick of convenience and power to your home networks. After tallying up the votes we're back to share the top five contenders for the home server championship belt. The following server implementations cover a broad spectrum of solutions ranging from install-it-and-forget-it to tinker-your-way-to-perfection and everything in between.

FreeNas

FreeNAS is by the far the most bare bones home server software in the top five. More specifically, FreeNAS is an extremely minimal distribution of FreeBSD. How minimal, you ask? You can run FreeNAS off a 32MB flash drive. Designed to be an absolutely skeletal operating system to maximize the resources devoted to storage FreeNAS is great for when you want a simple operating system that leaves every hard drive bay and disk platter wide open for file storage goodness. Despite being so slim, FreeNAS is still feature packed, including support for BitTorrent and remote web-based file management via QuiXplorer; it even serves as the perfect iTunes music server. You can boo FreeNAS off nearly any media: hard drives, optical discs, floppy disks, and flash-based media. It has support for both hardware and software based RAID, disk encryption, and management of groups and users via local authentication or Microsoft Domains. Even an old dusty Pentium III can become a headless file-serving powerhouse with the addition of a basic $20 SATA PCI card to pack it full of modern hard drives, thanks to FreeNAS's scant 96MB of RAM requirements.

Ubuntu Server Edition

Ubuntu Server Edition shares the ease of use that has catapulted its desktop-edition sibling to popularity. The automated LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP) installation makes installing the core components of a robust server a walk in the park compared to manually configuring each component on your own. While configuring Ubuntu isn't going to be as easy as grabbing a pre-configured Windows Home Server off the shelf at your local Best Buy and plugging it in, there are a wealth of applications to help you integrate your Linux based home server with the rest of your network. It won't be as straight forward as using Windows Home Server or a Time Machine backup, but Ubuntu is more than powerful and capable enough to handle all your media streaming, remote back up, and file serving needs. We've covered using Ubuntu as the basis for a home media server before, so if you're considering trying it out check out how to build a Linux media server and build yourself an affordable media server to get an idea of what you're in for.

Apache

Apache is the only entry in the top five that isn't a completely stand alone server package. Apache is, however, open source and cross platform; it support a dozen operating systems; and it's the backbone of many of your fellow readers' home server operations. Because of its widespread adoption and extreme compatibility with a variety of platforms, we're including it here. No matter what operating system you throw on your home server, you're almost guaranteed that you can run Apache on it. Nearly four years ago we covered how to set up a personal web server using Apache, and it's still relevant and worth a look for getting an idea what the setup entails. While you're at it, you may also want to try setting up a home Subversion server with your Apache installation for keeping track of file revisions.

Debian

Why use Debian for a home server? There are over twenty five thousands software packages available for Debian, and the operating system supports 12 unique hardware architectures. There's a a slim-to-none chance you've got a computer that can't run it. Like Ubtuntu—a Debian derivative by the way—you can configure this flexible operating system to do nearly anything you can imagine, from serving media and remote backups to running your own web server with a wiki and running your own mail server. Like other Linux distributions, Debian can be used to run a low-power and headless server when run without a GUI and using remote administration. Along with FreeNAS, Debian is a prime candidate for turning an aging computer into a quiet, tucked-in-the-basement server.

Windows Home Server

If your home is filled with Windows-based computers—which the average American home certainly is—it's tough to go wrong with Windows Home Server. It isn't free, and until recently you couldn't even buy it separately from the home servers sold by Hewlett Packard and others—but even though it has the distinction of being both the only commercial and closed-source software package on the list, that doesn't mean you should dismiss it out of hand. Windows Home Server stands definitively as the most Average Joe-friendly server implementation on the list. Not only is it the only server package you can buy pre-configured and installed in a ready to go off-the-shelf server, but Microsoft has gone out of their way to make the experience of using Windows Home Server as transparent and painless as possible for the end user. In fact, many Lifehacker readers expressed the "It just works" sentiment when logging a vote for Windows Home Server. Once you have all your computers connected to your Windows Home Server, you'll have a centralized backup location that supports up to 10 remote PCs and indexed remote file storage. Printers are shared and there is easy to use remote server access to log into your archives from anywhere in the world. Files are no longer lost in a mass of drives, add a few terabyte drives to a Windows Home Server and you'll never wonder if that movie file is on the F, G, or H drive again. Windows Home Server spans drives using Drive Extender so that files are located in a single folder namespace, sans drive divisions. The most recent update of Windows Home Server even adds an option to backup the server itself to external drives for extra data redundancy. Since the Microsoft site for Windows Home Server is heavy on promotion but low on actual screenshots, check out our screenshot tour for more.

Now that you've seen the contestants vying for the title of best home server, it's time to log your votes to see who will go home with the belt—and the task of storing your mountains of media files and remote backups.

Which Home Server Software is Best?
( polls)

If you have tips or tricks for running a home server, sound off in the comments below. Many readers will be considering running a home server for the first time after reading over the top contenders above, so your experience (and accolades) could help them find a home server package that works for them.

Many Feeds to Feed

2009-03-11T10:17:00.003Z

I sat down and mapped out how all my internet feeds map together.

The main gathering point is my Twitter account.

I also seem to have a Twitter addiction which can be seen from this graph

November 2008 looks like when I discovered TwitterFeed to like my other post through to my Twitter account.

Doodle's Geek Monkey by Alastair Montgomery

Barebone Media PC - living room computer gets the retro VCR treatment

2009-03-03T14:02:00.002Z

Another thing for my wishlist

Barebone Media PC - living room computer gets the retro VCR treatment

via The Red Ferret Journal by Nigel on 03/03/09

This Barebone Media PC comes with an Intel motherboard, 7.1 surround sound, digital TV card, WiFi card and 1GB of RAM in [...]

Pixelmator 1.4 adds new paint engine

2009-02-26T12:00:00.000Z

Pixelmator 1.4 adds new paint engine

via Download Squad by Jay Hathaway on 20/02/09

Filed under: Design, Photo, Macintosh, Productivity

Pixelmator has earned a following by doing the tasks most people use Photoshop for, but doing them much cheaper. That's truer than it's ever been in the new version 1.4, which adds a new painting engine, new brushes, and support for Photoshop brush formats. If you're a professional photographer, Photoshop CS4 might be worth $700 to you, but if you're someone who just needs powerful drawing and image editing tools, Pixelmator's $60 price tag looks pretty tempting.

With Pixelmator's existing tablet support, and the new brush customization features, you should be able to use Pixelmator for just about any drawing task. It's compatible with practically every image format, and has lots of intuitive little shortcuts that make it behave the way you'd expect from a good Mac app. The main gripe I've seen from commenters on the Pixelmator blog is the lack of a Photoshop-like "save for web" feature. Word on the street is that it will implemented in the next version, but that one feature should hardly deter you from checking out this great app.

Pixelmator 1.4 adds new paint engine originally appeared on Download Squad on Fri, 20 Feb 2009 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Easy Steps to Rip a DVD to ISO in Ubuntu 8.10

2009-02-20T00:00:00.000Z

Need this when I make the Linux switch

Easy Steps to Rip a DVD to ISO in Ubuntu 8.10

via TECH SOURCE FROM BOHOL by noreply@blogger.com (jun auza) on 2/19/09

An ISO file is the easiest and most universal method for backing up a DVD. The file is an archive file specifically for DVD VIDEO_TS and AUDIO_TS files, and is an exact copy of the disc. ISO files can be quickly burned to a new dvd using standard burning software, making it the optimal choice for storing backups.

In Windows, third-party software is the only way to backup a DVD. Luckily, Ubuntu Linux has removed this need, and as a result, you can backup your dvds using a standard feature built into the OS --no software or Terminal required.

This tutorial is written using Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid Ibex. It will also work with 8.04.

Step 1: Insert the DVD you wish to backup into your optical drive and wait for the dvd icon to appear on your Desktop.

Step 2: Right-click on the DVD icon and choose 'Copy Disc' from the menu.

Step 3: A dialog box will appear. In the drop-down box next to 'Copy to...', choose FILE IMAGE.

Step 4: Press the WRITE button.

Step 5: Choose a location to save the ISO.

Step 6: Wait for the progress bar to reach the end. It will say 'Successfully Copied'. Close the window and remove the DVD.

Step 7: You can test the ISO and confirm it works using VLC media player. If you don't have VLC installed, you can install it via the Terminal and this code: sudo apt-get install vlc .

Step 8: If you want to extract the VOB files from the ISO, right-click and choose 'extract here'. It will take about ten minutes, but the video_ts and audio_ts folders will be extracted to the same location.

Step 9: If you want to convert the ISO into a smaller file, such as an XviD or x264, you can either extract the VOBs and use DVD::RIP, or download Handbrake and rip directly from the ISO--both run smoothly on Ubuntu.

Fair Warning: In some countries, backing up DVDs you legally own is not legal--for example, in the US, copying a commercial DVD violates the DCMA. Be sure to check with the laws in your country before proceeding.

This tutorial was prepared for "Tech Source from Bohol" by Blair Mathis of LaptopLogic.com, your premier source for latest notebook reviews.

JPEG & PNG Stripper Removes the Metadata from Your Images [Downloads]

2009-02-10T12:00:00.000Z

JPEG & PNG Stripper Removes the Metadata from Your Images [Downloads]

via Lifehacker by Jason Fitzpatrick on 09/02/09

Windows only: JPEG & PNG Stripper an extremely small portable application that strips the metadata out of JPEG and PNG image files.

Why would you want to strip down an image file? Ask former TechTV host Cat Schwartz, who in 2003 received a rather embarrassing lesson in the power of metadata. In short, a cropped headshot posted on her blog contained an embedded, full-pic thumbnail with, well, a lot more than just a head and shoulders. Even if you're not cropping your mug out of a nude composition, there are others reasons you'd want to remove the metadata from an image. All sorts of information—like exposure time, aperture settings, camera used, and GPS coordinates—can potentially be embedded into an image.

JPEG & PNG Stripper removes every bit of metadata, leaving just the unaltered image behind. Whatever your motivation for sanitizing your image, you'll know that only the image itself remains. The screenshot at right shows a read of some of the metadata for an image I scrubbed in testing and, as promised, the application ripped all the metadata out without altering the appearance of the image itself. JPEG & PNG Stripper is freeware, Windows only.

JPEG & PNH Stripper [via gHacks]

Samsung NC20, one for the wish list.

2009-02-05T14:24:00.001Z

More drool worthy kit, just wish I could justify getting a Netbook o_0

Samsung NC20, 3G NC10 now available for pre-order in the UK

02-05-2009

The Russians have already declared their love, and soon you'll be able to get your mitts on the Samsung N20 and see for yourself what all the fuss is about. It's now available for pre-order from UK retailer BT Shop, priced at £390.98 ($565) VAT included, with a white model due out in February and a black iteration in March. Both models sport a 12.1-inch WXGA display, Windowx XP Home Edition, 1.3GHz VIA Nano U225 CPU processor, 1GB RAM, 160GB HDD, Bluetooth, 3-in-1 card reader, 1.3 megapixel camera, and a 6 Cell battery -- no SSD option at the moment. Additionally, the shop is also showing a new NC10 equipped with HSDPA coming next month for £416.63 ($602) with VAT, which is £107 ($154) more than its non-3G equivalent. Not to worry, US readers, we're sure Sammy will be asking for your Benjamins soon enough.

[Thanks, Darpan]

50 Free Photoshop Brush Sets You Should Bookmark

2009-02-05T12:19:00.002Z

50 Free Photoshop Brush Sets You Should Bookmark

via hongkiat.com by Kay on 05/02/09

If you've got an idea (or concept) but find it hard to present on your artwork because the drawings just don't add up, try Photoshop Brushes. Brushes are designers best friend, particularly web designers who don't illustrate graphics much.

Adobe Photoshop does comes with a basic package of brushes but it has not been updated by folks at Adobe for quite some time. Thanks to the great community of designers out there who constantly distributing and sharing their brushes, you can almost find brushes of any patterns these days. Whether you are working on a nature-related artwork looking for floral and wood graphics, or merely adding some torn, burned and cracked effects to your artwork - there's a free brush pack out there and all you need to do is Google.

In today's post, we attempt to present you some of the high quality and good ones, those we thought would be generally useful in many occasion and definitely worth checking out and bookmark. Here's our hand-picked of 50 Free and High Quality Photoshop Brush Sets You Should Bookmark. Full list after jump.

Some useful Photoshop related entries we've previously written:

Metal Brushes

9 metal texture brush set.
2Bit-Twilight Brushes

A set of 12 abstract pixel brushes for Photoshop. Compatible with Photoshop 8+ / Photoshop Elements 3+.
8 fantasy butterfly brushes

8 really beautiful and fantasy butterfly brushes to spice up your painting.
A3D Pieces of Tape Brushes

Thirty-seven brushes from various torn, wrinkled, pieces of tape brushes made in Photoshop 7.0
Abstract Brushset XIII

13 awesome abstract brushes.
Astral Flora

Pack contains 8 brushes, including 2 different sized leaves, 1 astral rose, 1 astral flowerbud, 1 astral butterfly, an assortment of whispy, starspangled curves.
Barbed wire brush

Two barbed wire brushes.
Brush Stroke Brushes

Made with thick black poster colours. Just great for those pieces needing brush strokes with hard bristles.
Butterflies with Flowers
Zelink's Cataclysm Brushset

Can be used for grunge, stars abstract and smoke/forg effects. This set was based upon the stars of the heavens. This set, cataclysm, was designed to bring violent destruction upon the use of other sets. It has many uses and works very well for sigs.
Cracks and cuts brushes

This pack includes around 80 brushes, all cracks, chips and cuts.
Demolished.Cracks

Demolished.Cracks pack contains 12 brushes compatible with PS 7 and up!
Fractal Brushes

There are ten of fractal brushes in total.
CS4 Brushes

New style of CS4 brushes.
Glow Part I

There are 11 big brushes made with Photoshop 7.0
Floral Frame Brushes

Now with these wonderful brushes all you need is Photoshop and the brush tool selected, you'll create floral frame brushes so awesome that you will love.
Drop Brushes

A set of brushes for photoshop (created in CS3) with sizes range from about 700px to 1600px.
5 Checkered PS Brushes
Label Brushes

The pack contains the the letters of the alphabet, numbers and some extras. Theres a piece of tape and some marks which could be used in white and added to the labels once they're done to make them look authentic and cool.
TI Graphic Pack 152 Ps Brushes

152 Photoshop brushes made on Ps CS4.
Metal Mesh Brush

Metal Mesh Brush by =SocioBunneh.
Hyper Brushes - PS7
10 Very Big Brushes No.30
MOON BRUSHES for PS7 v.2

45 moon brushes for ps7, ps8, ps9, ps10.
25 Tiny Text Brushes 02

It includes 25 tiny text brushes for icons. The .zip contains an .abr file compatible with Photoshop 7.0 and up.
20 high-res-stamp brushes

20 high-resolution stamp brushes.
122 Brushes
Camera-Stuff

8 brushes for lens, film and camera.
Architectual ornaments
Crack Brushes I
Echolalie-stock 32

The package contains 15 different brushes made of different wall pictures. You will find cracks, scratches and dirty brushes.
Floral brushes

8 large floral brushes, for use on headers and wallpapers.
7 100×100 floral brushes, for use on icons.
Holes, Holes, Holes

These hole brushes are higher res so would be good for higher res projects as well.
Girl Brushes
Andantonius' Pencil Brush

With this pencil brush and sketch paper action, you can quickly and easily create natural-looking pencil sketches, without the pencil! The brush takes advantage of both pen pressure and tilt to create a very natural feel and look.
Old brushes 8

Oldies set (8 brushes) for photoshop cs-cs2
Barcodes
Line Brushes

A pack of solid and dotted lines.
My Sweet Diary Brushes

The pack contains 70 cute brushes for lines, random scribbles and drawings, animals and a lot of hearts!
Photography Brushes for PSP

A set of high quality (200dpi scans) 42 photoshop brushes about photography. They are more like illustrations and blueprints of various cameras and photography related processes.
Rainy
Scribbles 4: Musical Notes

20 handdrawn musical note scribble brushes.
Rock Star Brushes
Smoke Brushes Vol II

There are just 3 smokes per vol. All of them are more than 1300 px.
The Krako "Tags brushes"
Smudge Brushes
Syringe

Several different variations and sizes of syringes.
Ischarm Pen Brushes

A set of 7 pen brushes.
Spider Webs
Industrial Brushes

Who needs instant on? Moblin boots in about 15 seconds

2009-01-30T10:49:00.002Z

Maybe I will install this on my old laptop if/when I get a new one.

Who needs instant on? Moblin boots in about 15 seconds

via Download Squad by Lee Mathews on 29/01/09

Filed under: OS Updates, Linux, Open Source

I've read about moblin before, but when it resurfaced in my newsreader this morning I decided it was time to take a look at the project a bit more closely. The moblin OS is built on Linux and optimized for Intel-based notebooks, netbooks, and MIDs. It is currently in alpha testing, but already looks very promising.

Most of the other Linux distributions I've tested on my MSI Wind were "customized" for netbooks, but they ultimately ended up feeling like a standard desktop distribution with an interface tweaked for small displays.

One thing immediately sets moblin apart from the others.

After installing it to the hard drive and rebooting my system, it took a mere 16 seconds to get from the Grub menu to the XFCE desktop. Holy boot times, Batman! That's impressive.

I'm aware that users have gotten times like this before with distros like Arch, but Moblin will be easier to deal with for most netbook users.

The pre-installed applications are kept to a minimum - Firefox is included and you'll be able to enjoy your music and videos with Movie Player. There are also lightweight GTD apps for managing contacts, tasks, and a calendar. You can, of course, add whatever other packages you like through yum or add/remove software.

If you want to take moblin for a test drive you can download an iso file, or a virtual machine for VMware or KVM. Keep in mind this is an alpha release. Moblin's finished form may look nothing like this, but it's an intriguing project even at this stage of the game.

LG Renoir Subjected to Death by Ice, Water, Wind, and Earth Tests [Cellphones]

2009-01-29T14:19:00.002Z

My LG Renoir is in hiding after reading this.

LG Renoir Subjected to Death by Ice, Water, Wind, and Earth Tests [Cellphones]

via Gizmodo by Jesus Diaz on 28/01/09

Not happy to test drive this fugly version of the iPhone, the Mobile@Mail.ru crew have pitted the LG KC910 Renoir against all four elements: Ice, Wind, Earth, and Wine! OK, water, but wine too.

As you can see in the test, the LG Renoir survived without any problem all the tests: freezing it to almost 0º F, being centrifugated at 500rpm in a washing/drying machine for 15 minutes, put into a car compartment fool of dust and keep it there for a while, and finally being submerged in water and wine. [Mobile Mail.ru—Thanks Kalle]

OpenTyrian - The Best DOS Shoot’em Up - Now for Windows XP/...

2009-01-29T12:05:00.001Z

I remember playing this old DOS game on a mate's PC.
Need to download the Nintendo DS version :)

Games Thursday : OpenTyrian - The Best DOS Shoot’em Up - Now for Windows XP/Vista and Other OSes

via The Download Munkey by Roys on 28/01/09

Arguably the best DOS-based shoot-em up in my opinion, Tyrian is now available for gamers on Windows, Mac OS X, Linux (and Nintendo DS, PSP, even Wii!), thanks to the dedicated efforts of the OpenTyrian team who modified the source code to use the cross-platform SDL libraries and of course, Jason Emery, who graciously offered Tyrian as freeware back in 2004.

Installation for Windows users is fuss free : Just grab the pre-compiled Win32 version from the OpenTyrian forums (direct link), the SDL libraries - both SDL and SDL_NET (look under Runtime Libraries) and the original Tyrian 2.1 data files from the OpenTyrian site and unzip them into the same folder in the following sequence : data files, OpenTyrian, SDL, then double-click Tyrian.exe and enjoy!

I don't think I need to go into how good Tyrian is : old-time shoot'em up fans should already know this classic which comes complete with fully upgradable ships, weapons and equipment, retro tracker-ish music and a storyline to boot (via datacubes collected within missions) while newer fans of genre should not miss this definitive icon of DOS shoot-em up history.

Datacubes - one of the pioneering forms of in-game advertising, courtesy of EPIC MegaGames

To toggle full screen mode, go to the OpenTyrian option in the main menu and set it from there. You might also want to set the game speed under Options (press Esc in-mission).

Download and play OpenTyrian.

Geek Monkey

Problems running Firefox 5 from watir-webdriver on Mac OS 10.5

Ruby and RSS

Twitter from Ruby

Github

Google Plus

WATIR makes a tester's life easier.

Setting browser size and position with watir-webdriver

Android Argus

Converting scripts from Watir to Webdriver, Table size

Kensington Orbit Optical TrackBall

FxCamera App

Retro Camera App Android

Android Alastair

CentOS 5

Linux Mint 10

Ubuntu 10.10 RC

Life with an HTC Desire part 3

Approaching 9000

Puppy Linux 5

Life with an HTC Desire part 2

Linux Geek Tux T-shirt and other stuff

Life with a HTC Desire Part 1 Apps

The bread monster visits for a third time.

1. Mix Water & Yeast

3. Stir Into A Heavy Batter

4. Set It And Nearly Forget It

5. Preheat Oven & Prepare Your Pan

6. Pour Out The Batter

7. Add Spices (If Needed) & Place Bread Into 400F Oven

8. Remove Your Ciabatta From The Oven

Baker Tweet

crunchbang linux Statler 10

Call of the Python

Chuckie Egg in DHTML

Installing Repton 1 under Wine

Poster Printer

Arcade Puppy

Linux Distro hunting

Remote control using Twitter

Converting MP4 files to other divX and mp3 formats

LinCity-NG – the open source city simulation game

Odroid: all the open, none of the contract

Ubuntu 10.04

Create and manage databases in Linux with Glom

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