sandwichesandapples

An update on the netbook:

I’ve been using my Dell Mini 9 pretty much as my main machine. Even coding on it. I just like the portability of it. This past weekend however, things went awry.

A batch of routine updates caused my install of the Java Runtime Environment (JRE) to break. At the same time, my network connections broke. No wireless and no ethernet. And though Ubuntu has a different way of managing packages and updates than Windows and it’s frustrating to have to open another machine and look up the instructions for Ubuntu, I gotta say, it’s nothing compared to the frustration of dealing with Windows’ blue screens and broken .dll files.

After much struggle and many choice words, I got the network connections back up. And after several attempts, I got JRE repaired and properly installed. But Firefox was acting crazy. The back and forward buttons didn’t work. The search bar didn’t work. And the Ubuntu toolbar was busted. When I’d click on the power switch to shut down or restart, the whole toolbar would just disappear. (I eventually found the Terminal command to shutdown so I didn’t have to do hard shut-downs.)

I decided to move from Ubuntu 8.04 which came pre-installed on the Dell Mini to 8.10 and 9.04 to try to fix all these remaining problems. The hiccup here was that the 8.04 version installed was a Long Term Support (LTS) version and not automatically updated with every new release. To change this I needed to go to Software Sources and change the Update option. But my Updates tab had also disappeared.

So after all these hours of working on it, I finally decided this combination of problems was a Dell-created error and not Ubuntu.

Today, I bought a new 2GB USB stick, downloaded the Netbook Remix of Ubuntu 9.04 on my Windows machine, used the Disk Imager to create a disk image on the USB stick, booted up the netbook from the USB stick, played with the Netbook Remix for a while and did the full install, wiping my machine of Dell’s version of 8.04.

So far, it’s working like a charm and I love the Remix desktop.

One further note: when I bought the netbook, I wanted the netbook qua netbook so I went with Dell’s default 4GB harddrive. Little did I know that Ubuntu 8.04 took up 3.5GB. Ubuntu 9.04 uses 3.8GB. Though I’m not planning to keep any files on the netbook, I have few resources left for additional applications which I might one day want. This annoys me. It’s bad service from Dell. Just as their custom version of Ubuntu is bad service.

But their hardware is top-notch. So I’m torn.

I heard today that Dell is actually going to discontinue the Mini. I wonder what the reasons behind that are. If a Mini 9 with 16GB harddrive goes on sale for less than $200, would I buy?

A few weeks ago a friend asked me out of curiosity if her IT department could see everything she was doing online. Yes, they can. A friend of mine who handled IT for a law firm once told me that he and his manager had a record of every employee’s passwords to personal accounts (seriously, like bank accounts) and routinely watched their activities by opening employees’ screens on their own. They would follow IM conversations between employees and literally knew everything that was “secretly” happening in the firm. Terrifying.

If IT wants to open your screen on theirs and watch what you’re doing, there’s not much you can do about it. But here are three things I do to allow a modicum of privacy. Bear in mind, I’m not an IT guy. This is just information from an amateur who digs privacy. (continue reading…)

First a disclaimer, I browse TechCrunch though I don’t read a lot of posts. Also, I am not a Digg user. Just never really cared. So I don’t understand the hoopla about the DiggBar or its uses. But TechCrunch is covering it of course.

Evidently the DiggBar puts any site within a frame and creates a shortened URL making it easy to Digg it or share it or whatever. (Just check out digg.com/techcrunch.com for an example.) That has its uses obviously.

Frames, though. Frames are exactly what they sound like. The content of your site appears within a code frame of another site. So though the user sees your content, the address bar shows their URL.

I’m not going to make any claims that frames are bad user experience because I don’t know that’s really universally true. The DiggBar looks unintrusive and pretty. But as a website owner, I hate for my site to be displayed in someone else’s frame so for years, I’ve used a short “break out of frames” script that checks to make sure my website is in the top frame and if not, makes it so.

Go ahead try to view S&A in the DiggBar: digg.com/sandwichesandapples.org. See what happens?

Now I don’t mind missing the Digg traffic so this works out fine for me.

Here’s the script if you want it. I didn’t write it so I leave in the credit. Put it in your <head> tags:


<script>
<!--
/* Break-out-of-frames script
By Website Abstraction (http://wsabstract.com)
Over 400+ free scripts here!
Above notice MUST stay entact for use */

if (window!= top)
top.location.href=location.href
// -->
</script>


A few years ago, an elementary school, having made the awful decision to switch to Windows machines, was selling off their fleet of Mac iBooks but only to employees and their relatives. They originally tried to get a couple hundred dollars for each iBook but the cheap machines had a huge caveat — they were running OS 9 and would probably need a memory upgrade to run OS X. Also, the batteries sucked. Since upgrades to make it run like a decent laptop would cost me as much as a new machine, I passed. (continue reading…)

Hack A Day directed me to an Instructables post on building a Tube Screamer clone. The Tube Screamer is one of those classic old guitar pedals.

PS — Does anyone else find it amusing that Hack A Day is copyrighted?

How to make hyperlinks is probably the most common HTML question I get from non-coding types. Bloggers and other web content managers just need to know how to make links. And though most Content Management Systems or blog software have an easy way to add a link to your content, they don’t always have an easy way to make an image into a link.

So here it is:

(continue reading…)

Sometimes a body might want to download a Flash Video .flv file (like a YouTube video) for playback later. Or an .mp3 file that’s embedded in a Flash Player (like the mp3s played in MySpace audio players; even when the MySpacer has “not enabled downloading”). A Firefox Add-On called Video Download Helper will grab these media files embedded on pages.

The Add-On places a small button between your Address Bar and Search Bar. When there is download-eligible media on a page it is colored-in and moving. Click the little arrow next to the Download Helper button to select what media on the page that you’d like to download. It will add the media to the standard Firefox download queue.

Incidentally, the Violent Femmes recently released a version of Gnarls Barkley’s “Crazy” via MySpace.