Posts

This is a test for BlogRefs

Had an upgrade to Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon go badly. Now I’m digging out from under. Part of what was lost was my /etc directory getting scrambled so I couldn’t read my old /etc/fstab entry. Been fighting to remember how things worked to mount my SimpleShare for backup and access to my ripped CDs. I finally found this article on Ubuntu Linux, SimpleShare NAS, and NFS which includes this key part: mediaserver:/shares/SimplePool/Photos/ /mnt/photos nfs rsize=8192,wsize=8192,timeo=14,intr ...

Looking for a way to speed up recurring DNS lookups on my Ubuntu box. I found a reference to Local DNS Cache for Faster Browsing on Ubuntu Blog. Works like a champ. I like that dnsmasq allows me to configure the size of the cache easily. I don’t like that I had to chattr +i /etc/resolv.conf to make it immutable so that the system wouldn’t drop looking at 127.0.0.1 (localhost) first. I tried using the package resolvconf but it caused all lookups to fail. So I used apt-get again to remove it and stayed with just the dnsmasq package.

Seriously good article on why we don’t think of other people as “people”. Inside the Monkeysphere is terrific.

Found a link to this Kodak video from Jason Calacanis’ blog. His article about winds of change has one word: genius. It is a phenomenal video. Too bad that Kodak’s web site is messy and confusing and has nothing of interest to me. For me, the video just brought home how much they don’t matter to me. I can’t remember the last time I bought a Kodak product. I suppose that they do sell paper and stuff like that to Walgreens or Costco or wherever I get the few photos I want on paper printed out. ...

I found printing to a PDF file useful occasionally useful under Windows. Neat to have a way to do it in Ubuntu: 5 steps to create a PDF printer (print to PDF) in Ubuntu

Love this quote from Violent Acres about Celebrity Worship and the American Dream Speaking of the American dream, has anyone noticed how much it’s changed? The American dream used to be about owning a modest home, having a happy family, and supporting yourself with honest, hard work. No one vies for things like that anymore. She certainly expresses herself in ways that I wouldn’t. But like the way so many of her posts cut to the heart of things. Recommended reading.

I’d referred to using CSS to make Google Reader look better. If you’re using Google Reader, OS X Style Google Reader makes it much more usable. The font’s better, it’s much prettier in layout, etc., etc. Great stuff.

I’ve been using Google Reader more and more. I’m not thrilled with the layout, so I was really pleased to see that I could modify it either using the Stylish FireFox Extension or via Greasemonkey Google Reader Optimized I started out with Stylish but am trying to cut down on the number of extensions I have. Of course, whether it’s better to have it as a Greasemonkey script seems more open to problems than an extension. You’re one level away from the scripts and they don’t go through the official Mozilla check-in process.

This is one of the things I meant to investigate. I know I have a password and can use sudo to do almost anything … but what’s root’s password? How to change the root password on Ubuntu was one of those “duh” moments but I’m glad to have this as a prompt to change the password. You should, too.