edward's blog

I've been wanting to install a "tether" app on my Google G1 phone for some time now.  There are a lot of situations where I'm not in the vicinity of decent wi-fi, or (like when I'm teaching), I don't want to run afoul of content filtering and acceptable-use standards when behind corporate firewalls.  The best solution to that is to use the Internet service I already pay for via my phone. 

I upgraded my laptop, stybba, from Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala) to 10.04 (Lucid Lynx) Tuesday evening.  Some first impressions:

Look-and-feel The purple default background and theme is nice. No complaints on that.

Sound Audacity works with no modifications or adjustments...podcasting continues with less stress.

RhythmBox The combination of OS upgrade and RhythmBox upgrade now recognizes my iPod Touch 3G without jumping through any extra hoops. KK saw the Touch as a storage device, but not as a MP3 player. Now, I plug up the Touch, RhythmBox pops up, and it syncs. The only issue I've encountered so far is that video podcasts from MSNBC (gotta have my Olbermann and Maddow) come in as video files, but RhythmBox syncs them as audio-only files to the device.

OpenOffice.org The 3.2 version has Oracle's logo now. Suppose that was inevitable.

Otherwise, everything is running the way it did prior to the upgrade, and that's a solid endorsement. Will see what else develops in the next few days.

When working with Linux, one is often faced with an interesting dilemma. Do you use the "package" versions of applications that come with your distribution, or do you opt for the cutting edge approach, working with more updated versions direct from the app developer? Usually I just go with a package, because the "apt-get" command is just too easy.

I've used Mozilla Thunderbird for years, and it's an application where I like to see the bleeding-edge capabilities. The package version of Thunderbird for Ubuntu (Karmic) is 2.x, and the most recent is 3.x.

My approach was going to be to find a utility that would export my profile from 2.x and import it into 3.x, but it turns out that 3.x already handles that. While googling for an export utility, however, I came across a quick HOWTO from Russell Mickler that walks through using Ubuntuzilla. The process went great and now I'm using the tabbed layout and "smart folders" of Thunderbird 3.x.

calibre is an open-source e-book library program for Linux, Windows, or Mac OSX.  calibre (pronounced "kuh-LEE-bray," as in libre, or freedom) gives the user the basic functions found in the various proprietary user programs that are included with various e-book reader platforms, as well as a number of other file conversion and import/export capabilities.

(more after the jump)

It's -1C here in Espoo, Finland, so I didn't venture too far beyond the hotel today. That gave me a bit of time to work on the various Drupal sites.

The biggest addition was a block on most of the sites that advertises the other ones, which you can see over in the right-hand column.

Additionally, I've been messing with feed aggregation, and I still can't decide what I want to do. That will be an on-going saga, I fear.

I've changed the theme here to "Social Networking Dream," which is based on the highly-configurable "Zen" set of themes.

Say hello to NOLA Tux:

Never could get into the HDS Extranet with II or JJ, but it works with Karmic. Don't know if it's a function of getting a new .pcf file from HDS or the operating system upgrade, though. I've got my VM for windows XP on the laptop, so I've always just used that for the VPN. I had some time this morning here at the airport, so I gave it a try again and success. Go figure.

I needed to make a transparent GIF, and since my image-editing software of choice these is The GIMP, I found I had no clue how to convert a JPG to the format I needed.  I did a quick search with Teh Google:

gimp transparent gif

and got a hit back to A.P. Lawrence's HOWTO on this subject. Hat tip to Mr. Lawrence for the good article!

Did a bunch of stuff this weekend as part of the migration of the blogs to Drupal. 

• Set up the Amazon module - it's working fine on ebranley.com, for the streetcar book.  I'll set this up on boshbook.com when the new book is out.
• Set up fbconnect for YatCuisine and JestersBanter.  This is a very cool module, allowing Facebook users to access Drupal sites using their FB accounts.  Will blog the process in detail.
• Themes - Still experimenting with various and sundry themes.  The theme I'm so far most impressed with is Twilight.  I've got it on JestersBanter.com, with a purply splash at the top. 
• favicons - changed the favicon.ico file for JestersBanter.com to a futbol and boshbook.com to the crimson-and-gold BMHS shield. 
• cron - set up a multi-site cron script and put it in the /etc/cron.hourly directory set up by hourly. 

The cron setup is on-going.  I think this is the best option, but that may change.

...for Drupal: Weblinks. I was very pleased with Simplepie Blogroll, but they've stopped development of Simplepie Core.Hat tip to Daniel Hanold for the recommendation/review.