Category Archives: Free Software/Open Source

The FSF has put out a 5 minute anniversary video celebrating 25 years of GNU. It’s a pleasant, concise explanation of what free software is all about, why it’s important, and how the GNU project fits in to all this. … Continue reading →

So you’ve done quite a few dapper to hardy upgrades, and you’re ready for the next one. You apt-get update apt-get upgrade apt-get install update-manager-core and then do-release-upgrade -d You go get a cup of tea, and come back to … Continue reading →

So you’re happily developing a rails app, and for whatever reason need to restart your devel server. And then you get this (paths removed to improve readability): $ script/server => Booting Mongrel (use ‘script/server webrick’ to force WEBrick) => Rails … Continue reading →

$ host ftp.us.debian.org. ftp.us.debian.org has address 128.30.2.36 ftp.us.debian.org has address 64.50.238.52 ftp.us.debian.org has address 64.50.236.52 ftp.us.debian.org has address 35.9.37.225 $ telnet ftp.us.debian.org 80 Trying 35.9.37.225… Connected to ftp.us.debian.org. Escape character is ‘^]’. HEAD / HTTP/1.0 HTTP/1.0 200 OK Connection: close … Continue reading →

The SVN FAQ has an entry with the title why aren’t my repository hooks working?. It describes some debugging tips for svn hooks. Unfortunately it does not mention a few very important SVN ‘features’: 1. stdout of all repository hooks … Continue reading →

When I purchased my Dell Inspiron 1420N with Ubuntu pre-installed, bluetooth was not offered as an option. It seems it still is not as of today. The machine does have a nice built-in slot and connector for a bluetooth module. … Continue reading →

Xsane works quite well, even if you want to scan a multipage document into a PDF. Just select ‘multipage’ as the target: and then this window will pop up, where you can select an output format; the default is PDF. … Continue reading →