Category Archives: Technology

WCGBrowser update: http_proxy and more

April 17, 2013 , 2 Comments ,

For users of WCGBrowser…

In the last few days I’ve added a few features:

  • Firstly, proxy server settings. Several people requested this, though none wanted to sponsor development (I only asked $100 US). Turns out I needed it for something I was doing myself, so happy birthday everyone, you get this for free. Proxy settings can be set from the CLI, config file, or environment variables (common on many Linuxes).
  • Secondly, stylesheets. Not that there’s much to style on WCGBrowser (the navigation bar, mostly), but you can now do it with QSS style sheets. A (really tasteless) example stylesheet is included.

Latest code can of course be downloaded from the wcgbrowser github page, or just do a “git pull” if you cloned it from there in the first place.

Enjoy! 😀

Posted in: Free/Libre Open Source Software, General, Programming, Technology , Tagged: , , , ,

Porteus

March 27, 2013 , 6 Comments ,

As I’ve chronicled in “Replacing Windows 98…” and previous posts, I’m always interested in new tools that promise to imbue my mountain of mouldering beige boxen with a glorious desktop experience usable by the modern user. A commenter on that post suggested trying out Porteus, so I’ve been playing with it some this evening. While I haven’t time to work up a serious review, I thought I’d share my impressions of Porteus as a distro for rescuing older computers.

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Posted in: Free/Libre Open Source Software, Old computers, Technology , Tagged: , ,

Building a Linux system for a Child, part 4: a wishlist

March 18, 2013 , Leave a Comment ,

The previous articles in this series helped you set up a Linux-based system for a child, and explored some of the great educational and kid-friendly software available. I’ve based this on almost eight years of experience in setting up GNU/Linux on computers for my own kids, and for their friends. So, based on that experience, what things do I wish the Free software community could come up with to make Linux a better experience for kids (and their parents!)?

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Posted in: Free/Libre Open Source Software, General, Technology , Tagged: , , , , ,

Five reasons why I choose PostgreSQL

February 28, 2013 , 4 Comments ,

I’ve worked with most of the major SQL databases over the last several years, including Oracle, MS SQLserver, MySQL, and PostgreSQL, both as an admin and (more often) as a developer. They’ve all got their ups and downs (some more of one than the other…), but when it comes to choosing a database for my own projects, my choice these days is nearly always PostgreSQL. This amazing, powerful server is unfortunately one of the hidden gems of the relational database world, so I thought I’d share a few reasons why it’s my personal favorite.

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Posted in: Free/Libre Open Source Software, Programming, Technology , Tagged: , , ,

Building a Linux system for a Child, part 3: Security concerns

February 13, 2013 , 6 Comments ,

By now you’ve got that old computer purring along like a panther with your new favorite distribution of Linux, loaded to the brim with educational software, ready to propel your child to the heights of intellectual stimulation. But before we launch this starship, let’s take a bit to make sure the safety equipment is in order and reign in some potential problems.

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Posted in: Free/Libre Open Source Software, General, Old computers, Technology , Tagged: , , , , , ,

From PHP to Python: things I wish I’d known

February 2, 2013 , 18 Comments ,

The story so far…

Back around 2005 I took my first leap into the world of writing useful programs armed only with my laptop, a Pentium II running Debian, and a fat book on PHP5. Though I’d taken a few classes on C++ and tinkered with BASIC on a few different platforms over the years, I’d never managed to produce anything that actually did anything practical (or, did it very well, at any rate); with PHP, though, it didn’t take long to spread my coding wings and take to the air as a novice web developer.

Before long, my skills proved useful in some critical situations at work, and my place as a web developer was cemented. My PHP code became more mature as I learned hard lessons of experience and combined them with the programming theory and computer science I was avidly consuming on the web.

Around the same time, I got interested in Python when I saw a coworker using it to build powerful desktop applications quickly and effortlessly; I wanted to round out my programming skills with a “desktop stack” as quick and simple as PHP, and Python turned out to be a good choice.

So for a few years now I’ve written mainly in these two languages, PHP for the web and Python for the desktop. As my applications have grown bigger and more complex, I began to develop a growing discontentment with PHP on a number of levels. So when people started talking about doing web development in Python, I had to see if I could make the switch.

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Posted in: General, Programming, Technology , Tagged: , , ,

Building a Linux system for a Child, part2: Distros and software

January 31, 2013 , 12 Comments ,

The last article in this series described some of the more general realities of running Linux on a child’s computer. Now that I’ve (surely) convinced you to go ahead an put GNU/Linux on your child’s computer, it’s time to get down to nuts and bolts: which distribution, and what software?

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Posted in: Free/Libre Open Source Software, General, Old computers, Technology , Tagged: , , , , , ,

Building a Linux system for a Child, part 1: What and Why

January 7, 2013 , 5 Comments ,

One of the common suggested uses for old computers is to install GNU/Linux on it and give it to your kids. I have five children, ranging in age from pre-teen to infant, and all but the youngest (naturally) regularly enjoy the use of computers running some variant of GNU/Linux. We’ve been using it at home since about 2005, and over the last eight years I’ve gained a reasonable amount of experience setting up Linux on computers for my children or their friends. This series of articles will cover some of my insights on setting up a Linux computer for kids.

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Posted in: Free/Libre Open Source Software, Old computers, Technology , Tagged: , , , ,

Replacing Windows 98, and other seemingly impossible tasks

December 14, 2012 , 11 Comments ,

Sometime during the last decade, I managed to get a reputation as the guy to whom you can donate your old, dusty computer when you don’t want it any more; and while I must confess that I don’t mind in the least (keep it coming folks – I do have a major weakness for free computer hardware, as well as a profound satisfaction in making “trash” useful again), it’s often a challenge to actually make use of a lot of it.

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Posted in: Fixing stuff, Free/Libre Open Source Software, General, Old computers, Technology , Tagged: , , , , , ,

How and Why to dump your Word Processor

August 8, 2012 , 8 Comments ,

The word processor has been a part of computing platforms since the earliest days of the home computer; I’ve used a number them over the years, including PFS-write on the Apple IIc, WordPerfect (both DOS and Windows versions), Microsoft Word, OpenOffice, and AbiWord.

A couple years ago, though, I got frustrated with the whole word processor concept, and found a way to create text documents that works a lot better for me. This article aims to describe the how and why of that move, for the benefit of others who find they just don’t like working with word processing software.

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