Archive for the 'Open Source' Category

Living with PulseAudio via PulseAudio Device Chooser

« 6 January 2010 | 10:30 | Computers & Technology, Hardware, Linux, Open Source, Software, Usability | No Comments »

Telecommuting is a pretty sweet gig with a good number of benefits. To name a few, while I’m working I can:

Toss some laundry in the machine
Start my lunch and work while it cooks
Sign for packages when they are delivered

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. However, to make telecommuting possible, there are some technologies [...]



My Sweet New Laptop

« 11 March 2009 | 20:41 | Computers & Technology, Hardware, Linux, Open Source | No Comments »

I’ve been considering picking up a new laptop for a while now. My old laptop, an ageing Dell Inspiron 8500, had treated me well for a few years, but I really wanted to change to a more portable machine. The Dell weighed in at around 8 lbs., had a battery that lasted about half an [...]



Remote Backups with Amazon’s S3

« 9 February 2009 | 20:40 | Computers & Technology, Linux, Open Source, Software | 2 Comments »

Recently, my SATA controller on my RAID box failed, silently corrupting my entire array. Fun stuff, I assure you. Luckily, I had backed up the array about a month before the failure and was keeping a nightly rsync running. I had a few things that weren’t included in the rsync backup, but I didn’t really [...]



Drupal’s On Hold

« 17 November 2008 | 18:16 | CodeIgniter, Drupal, Open Source, PHP, Software, Symfony, Web Development | No Comments »

I know I said before that I would be replacing Wordpress with Drupal around here, and I did start working on that. However, the more I read about Drupal, the harder it seems to do custom things. Actually, it’s more a problem of poor documentation than it is a lack of flexibility. Still, if I [...]



Media Playback in Ubuntu

« 23 August 2008 | 13:32 | Computers & Technology, Linux, Open Source, Software | No Comments »

So, I had some Real Media (rm) videos that I wanted to view in Linux. But, like so many other sane people out there, I didn’t want anything to do with the official Real Player for Linux. I’ve never been a fan of Real and I’ve always thought their software was a bloated mess. Plus, [...]



Farewell Wordpress

« 18 August 2008 | 22:09 | Drupal, Open Source, PHP, Site News, Software, Symfony, Web Development | No Comments »

In an effort to save time when I put together sites for people, I’ve been working on a universal engine I can use. It is modeled loosely off the MercuryBoard code and, for the most part, has served me pretty well. Recently, I’ve tried to revamp it with more object oriented code, integrating PEAR and [...]



Mootools, I Choose You

« 4 July 2008 | 10:00 | Javascript, MooTools, Open Source, Software, Web Development | No Comments »

I’ve always been a “do it yourself” kind of web developer, but after reinventing the wheel time and time again and struggling to make my code work in the various different browsers out there, I’ve come to appreciate that I can save a TON of time through different libraries and toolkits. I’m no Javascript pro [...]



I’ll Have One of Your Finest Arduinos, Please

« 27 May 2008 | 21:14 | Arduino, Computers & Technology, Hardware, Linux, Open Source, Software | No Comments »

I’ve seen all kinds of really cool projects that use the fancy new Arduino microcontroller. I’m not the biggest fan of C or C++ (to be honest, I hate them both), but the Wiring model and the Processing environment seems interesting. So much so that I decided over this long weekend that I wanted to [...]