Last month I ditched rdiff-backup (which saved my bacon on a number of occasions) for CrashPlan+ with the Family Unlimited plan so I can backup all of our computers (one Ubuntu desktop, two Macs) locally and offsite. Used their seed service. Already had to do a small restore. Love it. Works great. The only problem I’ve [...]

I’ve been itching for this for a long time but never got up the steam to actually go find out how to do it until today. You can type special characters (accented characters, special punctuation, etc.) directly from the keyboard by following this handy guide. (Shift+AltGr means press the Left Shift and Right Alt key [...]

Update: Thanks for your help, everybody. No more testers needed. I’ll be releasing it soon. Over the weekend I created a photo uploader for Linux, specifically for Gnome desktop users: I’m looking for some people who can install and try the package out before I release it publicly. Ideally I’d like several people to run [...]

Last November, after around 25 years of computing, finally, I setup a reliable, automatic backup system for all of my important files, documents, photos, and music. And today I needed it (timing, eh?). A bunch of important files took collateral damage from a program I was writing. And I almost panicked. But then the backup [...]

A to-do list in Tomboy Last week I asked for some help finding a new note taking application. I was becoming frustrated with BasKet Note Pads because, despite all of its great features, it would intermittently delete notes when I moved them (obviously, unacceptable). Otherwise, BasKet is a very good application for general note taking [...]

For a long while I was using Tadalist which I absolutely adored because of its simplicity. It made lists and you checked things off and it was wonderful. I migrated to Remember The Milk and liked it much better, presumably because my list making was getting more complicated. In particular, I liked the ability to [...]

I’ll try to keep this brief but I wanted to post it because I couldn’t find exactly this procedure anywhere online. Here’s my situation: when I installed Ubuntu I didn’t just repartition my Windows drive—I added a whole new hard drive for it. So I ended up with Windows XP on /dev/sda1 and Ubuntu on [...]

On January 30th 2007 I installed Ubuntu Linux on my computer intending to use it as my primary operating system. I wrote about the surprises of that switch (both happy and vexing) in a four-part series (part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4) in March. It’s been very nearly a year now and I’m [...]

[ On January 30th I installed Ubuntu Linux and decided to give it a serious try. Read Part 1 for an introduction including my reasons for doing this. Part 2 covers my installation experience. And Part 3 was all about finding and using replacement applications. ] Folks, it’s been a fun and sometimes woolly ride. [...]

[ On January 30th I installed Ubuntu Linux and decided to give it a serious try. Read Part 1 for an introduction including my reasons for doing this. Part 2 covers my installation experience. ] I’ve heard that installing software on Linux is very difficult. That may have been true once but it is a [...]