Saturday, March 11, 2006
AutoHotkey Takes Names, Kicks Ass
Just wanted to take a moment to give props to my new favorite open-source program, AutoHotkey. It's basically a scriptable global macro program. You can set it up so that it sends certain combinations of keypresses or mouse-clicks to other programs, and the scripting features make this even more powerful. I use it at work when I have to type out long, repetitive strings of text, and to type in the current date quickly. It's great. I hold the Window key down and hit N (for "now"), and out comes the date: 03/11/2006. Basically, this is the sort of thing you're either going to think is entirely useless, or the most useful thing ever invented by anyone, ever. I'm of the latter opinion. (Well, okay, that may be overstating things a little. But only a little.)
Bienvenidos a Miami
Well, Thursday morning I returned home from a three-day vacation in beautiful South Beach area of Miami, Florida. The downside of the trip: I came down with Laura's cold about a day into it, and now my ears are kind of messed up (thanks a bunch, airplane); also, it was a little expensive. The upside: blue skies, warm sunshine, 75-degree weather, sandy beaches, good food, and the conspicuous lack of any need for me to work. Oh, and topless sunbathers. Yeah, it was a compromise worth making. ;)
-Will
-Will
Sunday, January 01, 2006
Saturday, December 17, 2005
Installing Apache on Ubuntu
A certain someone I know asked in a comment to the previous post how easy it is to get the Apache webserver running under the sublime Ubuntu. Turns out it’s pretty easy indeed. Here’s what I did:
Check this screenshot for proof. Piece of cake!
In fact, it was a lot harder just uploading the screenshot to my iDisk under Linux. Well, okay, it wasn’t that hard. I just installed (again, using Synaptic…tasty) a utility called davfs2 that lets you mount a WebDAV server under your filesystem. Works like a charm…in fact, I think I like it even more than the lousy WinXP utility from Apple that serves the same purpose.
Allow me to reiterate: Ubuntu kicks ass. Thank you.
- Fired up Synaptic Package Manager, which is really “just” a lovely front-end for apt-get.
- Marked “apache2” for installation.
- Inserted Ubuntu install CD when prompted and clicked “OK.”
- Done!
Check this screenshot for proof. Piece of cake!
In fact, it was a lot harder just uploading the screenshot to my iDisk under Linux. Well, okay, it wasn’t that hard. I just installed (again, using Synaptic…tasty) a utility called davfs2 that lets you mount a WebDAV server under your filesystem. Works like a charm…in fact, I think I like it even more than the lousy WinXP utility from Apple that serves the same purpose.
Allow me to reiterate: Ubuntu kicks ass. Thank you.
Thursday, December 15, 2005
Ubuntu: Linux…for People
I’m sure everyone is waiting with baited breath to hear more of my computing adventures since the apocalypse a couple of weeks ago. What’s that? You weren’t? Tough. I’m going to tell you anyway.
As I said in an earlier comment, I installed CentOS on the advice of my dad, who is wise in the way of such things. It was nice – very polished, and it installed super-smoothly. However, I couldn’t get the drivers for my wireless network card, an Intel PRO/Wireless 2200, installed; I was never even able to successfully compile them from source. Then I tried to install a media player, and found myself wandering the excruciating labyrinthine halls of what Windows users refer to in hushed, frightened voices as “DLL Hell.” I can’t install this component without these six dynamically-linked libraries, which won’t install without six more libraries, and so on until you just don’t care anymore.
I whined about this to my old boss from work, Luke, who is one of the smartest sons of a gun I’ve ever known. He chastised me for not using Debian, whose package management system, he said, was the bee’s knees. All right, I made up the “bee’s knees” bit, but he did indeed speak very highly of it. So I burned a copy of the network install disk, and away I went.
It installed less smoothly than CentOS. It had a text-mode interface, rather than a nice X-based GUI like CentOS had, and I got confused at some point; it started asking questions about my “monitor,” which didn’t really apply to my laptop’s LCD screen, and I think it interpreted my attempts to go back a few steps in the install process as a desire to just go with the defaults, and so once the installation was complete, I couldn’t even start X up. Bleah.
OK, so then I thought I’d try Ubuntu like Ross and Scott suggested in their comments to my previous post. I went to their home page, and immediately started laughing. Don’t get me wrong – I love the site…I think it’s put together very well. But Ubuntu’s slogan, “Linux for Human Beings,” brought to my mind the fake charity fabricated by George Costanza in an episode of Seinfeld as a way of giving Christmas presents to his office coworkers without spending a dime. “A donation has been made in your name to The Human Fund. Money…for People.”
Anyway, enough tomfoolery. I burn the install disc and give it a whirl. It’s got a text-mode installer like Debian -- which, incidentally, Ubuntu appears to be based on, which means you still get the sexiness of apt-get -- but without all the questions. Let me tell you: it installed like a dream. Not only that, but it detected all my hardware and installed all the drivers without even asking me. Including the wireless adapter driver, which works, by the way, like a charm.
The aesthetics are nice, too. I like the default Gnome theme, with its earthy browns and simple composition, but I like the feel of kubuntu, Ubuntu’s customized KDE package, even better.
I also like the MacOS X-like approach to administration. Instead of su-ing your way up to root when you need super-user privileges, you just use sudo, and enter your normal account password to gain access. It’s part of the “root accounts are dangerous” meme, and I think it’s a good one. Also, fewer passwords to remember = good.
Anyway, it’s up and running and flat-out awesome. I haven’t tried to get my printer, a stupid, old Brother HL-1440, working yet, but I’m sure it’ll work out with a little elbow grease.
In conclusion, I’d like to send out a big “thank you” to my homeys for recommending Ubuntu, and I’d like to propagate that recommendation. Ubuntu kicks ass, and unlike The Human Fund, it exists. Use it.
Ubuntu. Linux…for People.
As I said in an earlier comment, I installed CentOS on the advice of my dad, who is wise in the way of such things. It was nice – very polished, and it installed super-smoothly. However, I couldn’t get the drivers for my wireless network card, an Intel PRO/Wireless 2200, installed; I was never even able to successfully compile them from source. Then I tried to install a media player, and found myself wandering the excruciating labyrinthine halls of what Windows users refer to in hushed, frightened voices as “DLL Hell.” I can’t install this component without these six dynamically-linked libraries, which won’t install without six more libraries, and so on until you just don’t care anymore.
I whined about this to my old boss from work, Luke, who is one of the smartest sons of a gun I’ve ever known. He chastised me for not using Debian, whose package management system, he said, was the bee’s knees. All right, I made up the “bee’s knees” bit, but he did indeed speak very highly of it. So I burned a copy of the network install disk, and away I went.
It installed less smoothly than CentOS. It had a text-mode interface, rather than a nice X-based GUI like CentOS had, and I got confused at some point; it started asking questions about my “monitor,” which didn’t really apply to my laptop’s LCD screen, and I think it interpreted my attempts to go back a few steps in the install process as a desire to just go with the defaults, and so once the installation was complete, I couldn’t even start X up. Bleah.
OK, so then I thought I’d try Ubuntu like Ross and Scott suggested in their comments to my previous post. I went to their home page, and immediately started laughing. Don’t get me wrong – I love the site…I think it’s put together very well. But Ubuntu’s slogan, “Linux for Human Beings,” brought to my mind the fake charity fabricated by George Costanza in an episode of Seinfeld as a way of giving Christmas presents to his office coworkers without spending a dime. “A donation has been made in your name to The Human Fund. Money…for People.”
Anyway, enough tomfoolery. I burn the install disc and give it a whirl. It’s got a text-mode installer like Debian -- which, incidentally, Ubuntu appears to be based on, which means you still get the sexiness of apt-get -- but without all the questions. Let me tell you: it installed like a dream. Not only that, but it detected all my hardware and installed all the drivers without even asking me. Including the wireless adapter driver, which works, by the way, like a charm.
The aesthetics are nice, too. I like the default Gnome theme, with its earthy browns and simple composition, but I like the feel of kubuntu, Ubuntu’s customized KDE package, even better.
I also like the MacOS X-like approach to administration. Instead of su-ing your way up to root when you need super-user privileges, you just use sudo, and enter your normal account password to gain access. It’s part of the “root accounts are dangerous” meme, and I think it’s a good one. Also, fewer passwords to remember = good.
Anyway, it’s up and running and flat-out awesome. I haven’t tried to get my printer, a stupid, old Brother HL-1440, working yet, but I’m sure it’ll work out with a little elbow grease.
In conclusion, I’d like to send out a big “thank you” to my homeys for recommending Ubuntu, and I’d like to propagate that recommendation. Ubuntu kicks ass, and unlike The Human Fund, it exists. Use it.
Ubuntu. Linux…for People.
Tuesday, December 06, 2005
Happy 100 Page Views!
Granted, most of them were me. I think somebody should buy me a present anyway.
Saturday, December 03, 2005
Deja vu
No luck. Found a few viruses and spyware "programs," but I'm still having wonderful problems with the Windows svchost.exe process consuming 100% of my CPU resources. Also, Firefox keeps opening random webpages. Bugger.
To hell with it -- I'm backing up my documents over the LAN and wiping the hard drive. My poor, immaculate laptop has been defiled; time to make it a born-again virgin. This time, with a nice, healthy Linux partition for me to dwell in while I'm not playing games or developing Windows software.
To hell with it -- I'm backing up my documents over the LAN and wiping the hard drive. My poor, immaculate laptop has been defiled; time to make it a born-again virgin. This time, with a nice, healthy Linux partition for me to dwell in while I'm not playing games or developing Windows software.
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