These are some of my technology writings. I am a firm believer in the value of open source software and the culture of openness and cooperation that surrounds it. So most of my written work today is about open source rather than proprietary products. If you are looking for information about Microsoft products or anything Windows-based, then you are probably in the wrong place – though please feel free to look around anyway, if you have a few moments to spare.
Back in Hong Kong for a few days. Today we’re in Kowloon visiting the Hong Kong Museum. I must be getting old because I remember seeing a lot of this stuff for sale in Woolworth’s when I was kid
I had Fuji S1, S2 & S3, all of which had dust magnets for sensors! They would get dirty even if I did not remove the lenses, simply from the air that got sucked in by varying the focal length of the lens. However, I cleaned them quite successfully with a vacuum cleaner. However there…
If you do a google search for “disruptrive technology” and the word “Linux”, you’re likely to get over 50,000 hits. Trouble is that many of the articles that appear are quite old, often going back as far as 2001 and further. A lot has happened in the last few years… For a start, today we…
I’m a big fan of WINE and an even bigger fan of CrossoverLinux. This is the commercial implementation of WINE by CodeWeavers. For many Windows apps it works very well indeed. In many ways I prefer it to using a virtual machine (VM) because firstly one does not have to start a VM just to…
I just completed my UK tax return on-line today. At the end of it all, HMRC (Her Majesty’s Revenue & Customs) ask for some feedback. I thought that fans of open source software might be interested in my response:- “This is certainly a great improvement over previous years. It actually saved me a lot of…
We all have our favourite methods of data backup. Certainly DVD is a good archiving and distribution medium. But for routine backup, I look for reliability, low cost, ease of use, high-speed, high capacity and redundancy – so I am not reliant on just one device. One of my favourite methods is a complete off-site…
Note this primarily applies to (K)Ubuntu 8.xx. For (K)Ubuntu 7.xx please visit earlier (and possibly outdated) article:- http://www.garfnet.org.uk/joomla/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=124&Itemid=58 This is a quickand very effective way to beef up your (K)Ubuntu installation. Basically the list below contains most of my favouirite (K)Ubuntu applications complete with their code libraries. The name "Goosebuntu" is not entirely serious –…
Firstly please back up anything that is important – as you would with any major upgrade on any computer system! Then you can either use the Synaptic package manager or in this instance it is probably quicker to install from a Terminal window. First we make sure the system is fully up to date. Simply…
Sometimes in GNU/Linux one needs to set file and directory permissions separately and recursively. This is a way to do it. Set file permissions:- find . -type f -print0 | xargs -0 chmod 644 ; Set directory permissions- find . -type d -exec chmod 755 \{\} \; Note these are powerful commands with which you…
Nowadays, one reads a lot about open source equivalents of proprietary software. Often these are described as poor substitutes for the real thing. However, some open source apps are starting seriously to outperform their proprietary counterparts. Mozilla Firefox is a classic example of this phenomenon. GNUCash is another. GNUCash vs Microsoft Money I was a…
Usually the camera manufacturer will provide software that handles raw files from your camera. However, several problems can arise:– You change computer and loose the original software. You have several cameras made by different manufacturers but want to use the same application to deal with their raw files. You don’t use Micro$oft Windows. So what…
Britain has made a complete hash of metrication whilst failing to teach its young the basic numeracy skills to deal with the ridiculous anomalies that have arisen as a result. E.g… People who think 7.5 lbs is the same as 7 lb 5 oz. People who think of 0 as freezing 0 as boiling and…
I’ve had cheapo cards that I dropped, kicked, trod on, used a squillion times, paid the proverbial tuppence ha’penny for and they are still going. Others, even the expensive ones have failed or become flaky within a few months – or worse, clapped out just outside the warranty. Similarly hard disks can fail in the…
Editor’s note: since writing this article, I have had huge problems with RTools spamming me. I have asked them many times to stop, yet still they persist. My advice is do not use any RTools product. Or that if you must use RTools, do NOT register, otherwise they will pester you forever. Using the free…
Editors note: gOS was very shortlived. By 2011 it was gone. The new gOS operating system certainly would appear to up the ante in the ongoing war between the mighty Micro$haft and that pesky upstart Google. But is it any good and is it really Google? To find out, I just booted from the gOS…
Microsoft has been in trouble for some time – but has taken its executives quite a while to realise it. Vista has been a massive flop. And M$ is becoming increasingly perceived as a company that has ruthlessly exploited its monopoly – fleecing its customers for vast sums of money whilst providing poor quality, insecure…
…and Windows Media, Skype and GoogleEarth One of the problems with (K)Ubuntu (and many other Linux distributions) is that it will not play commercial, copy-protected DVD’s and a number of other proprietary file formats, out-of-the-box. There are complex legal and ethical reasons for this. However, many users just want to play their files and watch…
Note this applies to Ubuntu 7.xx and may be out of date. For Ubuntu 8.xx please visit:- http://www.garfnet.org.uk/joomla/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=136&Itemid=58 These are my favourite (K)ubuntu applications. The name “Goosebuntu” is not entirely serious – it is just a name we coined in the office. However the following apps will turn a standard Kubuntu installation into something really…
Firstly please back up anything that is important – as you would with any major upgrade on any computer system! Then you can either use the Synaptic package manager or in this instance it is probably quicker to install from a Terminal window. First we make sure the system is fully up to date. Simply…
Ubuntu Ubuntu uses the Gnome desktop. This is a very clean, simple environment and is well suited to Linux beginners. In many respects it is much easier to use than any version of MS Windows – though its layout is a little different from Windows. For example, its application menus are at the top of…
Just occasionally one stumbles across a small but very annoying problem, that takes ages to hunt down a fix. However, when you do stumble across the solution, you find it was just one tiny mistake – that should never have been made in the first place. On our site http://www.garfnet.org.uk/coppermine we use a special Coppermine…
Well it’s a cold bleak miserable Southampton winter’s day outside. Decided to take a few “library” snaps of some current favourite bits of kit, including a rather nice pair of wideband communications receivers.
[Reproduced from DEOSS ] Seems that Micro$haft’s corporate enslavement permeates far beyond the English-speaking world. A long and complex legal battle is currently raging in the former Eastern Bloc state of Hungary. APEH (the Hungarian Tax Office) has decided that all Hungarian businesses now have to submit their tax returns on-line. This would not be…
It seems that with a little determination, the CS-R20 for the Icom IC-R20 software can be persuaded to run on Linux. I eventually made the CS-R20 software load under Kubuntu Linux using Crossover (a commercial implementation of WINE). The method in this article should work with many other Debian-derived Linuxes too, perhaps with a little…
Being a geeky type of chap, I generally find that the best way to guarantee that Santa puts a decent geek-friendly Christmas present in my stocking is to buy it myself! So this year I treated myself to an Icom IC-R20 hand-held, all-band communications receiver/scanner. I have always had a penchant for small communications receivers….
