Archive for the ‘tech’ Category
I’m giving Flock another shot. I’ve been with it off and on for a while and always returned to Firefox for one reason or another.
Being able to blog via a browser window is pretty cool. Still, I imagine the lack of del.icio.us extension support will drive me back again. I really can’t live without that tag button…
I wish everyone used del.icio.us to share bookmarks. It’s such a great service that I’ve been thinking of doing a few posts on some of the more useful features.
I never understood why I might want to save my bookmarks online as the browser does a great job. However, once I discovered the del.icio.us extension for Firefox my eyes were opened to how easy it was to quickly save a bookmark for future reference. Bookmarks are saved and a tag is assigned to the link in order to categorize it. As with Flickr, it’s tagging that makes del.icio.us so powerful and easy to use.
Andrea and I send each other links and it’s great. See a site you think might be of interest to your buddy? Save it with the for:username tag and that person will see it on their personal del.icio.us page. Very handy and easier than sending an email.
So, take the above video as entry 1 in the del.icio.us series. To get started browse to the Popular page and get your feet wet. If you already use del.icio.us, send me your username and I’ll add you to my network.
Clearing out the old drafts…
October is turning out to be an excellent month for new operating systems. Ubuntu 7.10 is being released on Thursday. I’ve been using Ubuntu at work for a while now and I can’t wait to update. Price is free.
Apple has finally announced the release date for Leopard 10.5 is October 26th. I decided to do the pre-order thing and that means I’ll have my copy on the 26th. Well, hopefully. Purolator are not exactly good at delivering things which is odd given that is what they do.
Bonus points to Apple for charging Canadians the same price as they do ‘Mericans. Now if only they would do the same thing with their hardware… I also took advantage of my educational discount to get it for $115.
So Ubuntu is free and Leopard is $129. What does Microshaft charge? $499 And it sucks… If you decide to go with the 5 year old XP Professional, you’re still looking at $440
To be fair, my Media Center runs Vista and Media Center works just great. I’m sure my happiness has a lot to do with the fact that I never actually use Vista. Anyway I needed to bank an October post plus I’m all excited about the new OS’s coming out. I hate to miss a chance to slam Microshaft 
So that is all. See y’all in November…
This is my our new media box! Woohoo! I’ve noticed that HP machines have been on sale everywhere lately and after seeing the quality of Mom’s HP laptop, I figured what the hell. The price was more than right at $650…
[geek] It’s a 64bit, Dual core, AMD 4800+ (!!), 320GB drive and 2 GB’s of RAM. Damn, it’s a nice machine! Sadly, it came with Vista on it and surprisingly, it still has Vista on it. It’s to be a media appliance so I’m trying not to think about it.
I carried it home on Saturday, tweaking my neck in the process and losing a package of cigarettes along the way. Not one to let pain and nicotine deprivation get in my way, I got to work setting it up. No less than 7 times I found myself cursing Bill Gates and wondering aloud where my Ubuntu disk was. In any event, I got it set up and Media Center is super slick. *Click, click, click* Done. It doesn’t have all the features of MythTV but it’s close. Set up was a lot less work if nothing else.
Sunday, I got down to connecting it to the TV. Again, more cursing and searching for my Ubuntu disk. In the end I gave up on Composite and ran out to get an s-video cable. Ah, much better [/geek]
So, I we now have a P4 2.6GHz for sale along with one computer desk Any takers?
If you aren’t me and/or don’t have a remote server, please move along. There’s nothing to see here. Unless you also would like to backup your files to a remote box or you are me and know that you will forget all of this goodness as soon as it’s done. In that case, read on…
Enable [tag]SSH[/tag] access to the server without having to supply a password:
generate an [tag]RSA[/tag] private key: ssh-keygen -t rsa
copy your public key to the server: scp ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub user@example.com:~/
ssh to account: ssh user@example.com
append the public key to your authorized keys file and delete the file you uploaded:
mkdir .ssh
cat id_rsa.pub >> .ssh/authorized_keys
rm id_rsa.pub
set permissions:
chmod go-w ~
chmod 700 ~/.ssh
chmod 600 ~/.ssh/authorized_keys
You should now be able to ssh into the server without a password.
Run [tag]rsync[/tag]
rsync -avz ~/source/ USER@SERVER:/foo/bar/destination
An [tag]AppleScript[/tag] to run rsync automatically
do shell script “rsync -avz –delete-after ~/source/ USER@SERVER:/foo/bar/destination”
(“delete-after” tells rscync to delete anything on the remote server that no longer exists on your local computer)
Save as “remote_backup.scpt” in /Library/Scripts
Use [tag]iCal[/tag] to run the AppleScript backup:
1. Launch iCal
2. Create a new calendar called “Scripting Cal”
3. Create a new event called “Remote Backup”
4. Set time to run
5. Set the alarm to “run script”
6. A new line will appear, asking you to point to the script you want to use. Navigate to “remote_backup.scpt” and click “select”
7. Set it to run 1 minute before the event
8. Set the event to repeat daily
