Archive for April, 2008

Cool URIs Should Not Change, But I Never Said They Were Cool

Monday, April 28th, 2008

According to some, URIs should not change. And I agree with that notion. However, the problem I have is that I didn’t give much thought into what I wanted to do. I thought this would a purely developmental blog (which is why I hosted it on the domain name that I will be releasing software under), however it quickly turned into a general computer science blog, which I am okay with. So yeah, moved it to my personal domain. It won’t happen again! I hope…

Happy Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron Day

Thursday, April 24th, 2008

Finally the day I’ve been waiting for, Ubuntu 8.04 LTS has been released and ready for public consumption! 3 years of updates for desktops and 5 years of updates for servers! Please be sure to download the latest version or upgrade from whatever version you currently have.

Moving a Family to Ubuntu – Part 1

Wednesday, April 23rd, 2008
The Back Story

Since I am the token computer scientist of my family, of course everyone comes to me for all their computer problems, which most of the time is due to spyware/malware. It happens. I get it, despite my best efforts it happens. I tell them to use Firefox, someone slips up and uses Internet Explorer the one day they go to a bad site. Even if they use Firefox, someone downloads something and runs it there-by borking (technical term) their system. Files get deleted, changed, what have you. Things just go wrong. Yes it is ultimately the user’s fault, however I do believe the operating system takes some of the blame for allowing things like this to be done in the first place. Well it has come to that time again for format another laptop and reinstall everything. Fine. I don’t mind it at all. They are family. However I am not going to just reinstall Windows again. It is time for an experiment. This time I am going to install Ubuntu 8.04.

(more…)

Facebook Chat – A Review

Wednesday, April 23rd, 2008

It has been about 8 days since Facebook Chat was activated for me and as far as I am concerned, it is a winner. One of my biggest concerns is that the service would feel tacked on and very intrusive. Thankfully this is not the case.

(more…)

Wordpress 2.5 File Upload Error: “HTTP Error”

Wednesday, April 16th, 2008

While creating the previous post about Facebook’s new Chat functionality, I came across a problem with my blog that prevented me from uploading any files. Every time that I tried to upload an image, the uploader would error out and report an error that stated “HTTP Error.” Obviously, this cased me to freak out a bit, however a quick google of the problem came back with Wordpress 2.5 Image Upload Error [Wordpress Fix]. Needless to say that with this quick fix, I was back to uploading images without any problems. Thank you very much Kongkiat!

Facebook Chat – An Overview

Wednesday, April 16th, 2008

Yesterday, Facebook activated the new chat functionality in my network, and I think it is fantastic. When I first heard about the possibility of a Facebook chat being rolled out, I thought back about the terrible failure that is Myspace Messenger. However I come before you to say, this is not the case with Facebook. Continue reading for an overview of the functionality.

(more…)

Connect Ubuntu to a Windows-based VPN

Monday, April 7th, 2008

Now one of my biggest problems with having any GNU/Linux-based operating system is that, for work purposes, I need to connect to a Windows-based VPN (Windows Server 2003). About a year and a half of on again and off again searching lead me to many dead ends. That is until I found Happy Linux Thoughts and the post about using network-manager-pptp called connecting to a Windows VPN server with Debian-based distros a few weeks ago. I was going to reiterate the steps, but I doubt I’d do a good of job as the author.

(more…)

Apturl – Apt-get Inside Your Browser as Links

Sunday, April 6th, 2008

Between long stints of playing offline VS mode in Super Smash Brothers Brawl to unlock all the characters and stages, I found this article about apturl on Digg (this seems to be the link for the project). From the blog post:

Imagine the next time you are trying reading a great list of Ubuntu programs. One of them catches your eye, and you want to try it. Instead of either using Add/Remove or opening a terminal to install the program, you simply click a link. A message box pops up asking you if you want to install the program, and then you enter your password,

Upon first gaze, this may seem like a sort of security hazard, however this is not the case.

(more…)

Wordpress 2.5… GO!

Wednesday, April 2nd, 2008

After reading about the release of WordPress 2.5, I quickly downloaded the new version. I have never been one to jump onto the new version bandwagon, but I really wanted to check out the new administrator section. The administrator section, you see, has caused me much grief with it’s use.

Now that I have just completed the upgrade process from WordPress 2.3.2 (I think) to WordPress 2.5 and I must admit that the upgrade was rather painless. WordPress provided multiple options for the upgrade process (a “simple” 3-step process, and an extended process, which I followed). Now that I have WordPress 2.5 installed, I can say that, so far, so good.

(more…)