Deskbar – The Katapult equivalent for Gnome

I have been seeing a surge in people searching for ‘launchy linux’ in my stats from one of my previous posts. I love seeing new ideas that change the way we use something that was considered just a normal part of life. Launchy, Quicksilver and Katapult are great examples of this. I was reading the …

Using wine to support transparent backgrounds in Linux for flash

As I have said before, I am a wannabe web design, developer – I’m actually a wannabe everything but that’s another story. Anyway, I have a few sites I have implemented using Sifr fonts by Mike Davidson. If you don’t know about Sifr fonts, essentially it gives you the ability to use antialiased fonts by …

A case for learning python

Disclaimer: I am not a programmer ;) In my last entry, I had a dig at Microsoft’s Silverlight for not being cross-platform and referenced python as an example of a truly cross-platform language. I’ve been wanting to collect many of my thoughts and research on the topic and want to put it all together in …

Microsoft’s Silverlight “Cross-platform” – who are they kidding?

As part of our MSDN subscription, I am subscribed to MSDN Flashes.. newsletter blurbs about how Microsoft are doing great things. Today’s story is about “Silverlight” – the sound of which has a textmate, expose, finderish ring to it to me.. but anyway. At the Microsoft blurb, it seems Microsoft want to take on the …

What sucks about Scribefire / Performancing Plugin

Well, I just spent over an hour writing a post about my switch from PCLinuxOS to Ubuntu Feisty that was wiped in an instant by clicking on history inside Scribefire (previously Performancing) and it instantly wiped what I had type. No backs, no undos.. just instant deletion of everything I typed. So word for the …

Reputation-based Antispam – Is it flawed?

I hate spam, it’s the needless bane of my existence. Spam, spammers and Microsoft vulnerabilities are the scourge of the internet. I spend way more time trying to stop spam than I want to. It’s not like it’s exciting work or anything. Anyway, onto the story. A mail server that I administer recently started getting …

My Favourite Grep / Bash Combo’s

Just a quick build up of my most commonly used bash commands lsof | grep ‘searchterm’  – List open files and search for specific handlehistory | grep ‘searchterm’ – Search for a term in my bash history (I now have this setup as an alias ‘ghistory’ps -ef | grep ‘process’ – Much the same as …

Dribbling Traffic: A Nomachine / FreeNX rant

Anyone who knows me, knows I am very keen on Network / Server Based Computing. As a part of my daytime lila I run a small Windows Terminal Server ‘farm’ that supports 300 remote desktop sessions across 40 branches in a 2500km radius. It’s not completely without it’s faults but it’s pretty damn good. The …

VMware as a (Joomla) web development server.

**This is a setup for my PERSONAL use and works well as such. I would suggest something different in a team environment. In my afterlife as a try-hard Joomla web developer who only ever dreams of having my sites getting a full validation at www.wc3.org, I have tried a number of different setups to get …

Color Themes for Wine on Linux

I became a fulltime Linux DESKTOP convert approx 8 months ago even though I have been administering, using, toying and playing with it for years. There were two programs holding me back from the changeover: 1. Dreamweaver 2. Fireworks I finally made that changeover by keeping both programs available on my Wife’s windows PC that …