earobinson.org

Well its been ages since my last real post, but life and twitter have been keeping me busy. Ever since I started using computers every 5 months or so I get board of my current computer setup and start to look at my other options, this can be anything from replacing a program, to changing my OS. This makes Ubuntu’s six month release cycle perfect for me because I can get get tired of my current setup in 5 months start messing with my computer then reinstall with the latest release of Ubuntu. I have found many grate programs this way like Miro, and Geany, and I love both of them dearly. Well I have found a new love to add to that list: tilda.

While the tilda website sucks including unfound images on the homepage the program is great. The idea of tilda is to provide the user with a “terminal taking after the likeness of many classic terminals from first person shooter games, Quake, Doom and Half-Life (to name a few)”[1]. The great thing about this is that it lets you collapse a lot of your terminals into one terminal (I’m sure I will still have a few terminals open to monitor things that I’m running) but in general it lets you map a hot key to pull down a notebook of terminals (like the tilda(~) would do in the games mentioned above).

Before Tilda

After Tilda

I really do love this application and it gives me a neat new way to interface with my computer. It is perfect for when I am programing and I want to then quickly switch to the terminal to compile my program now instead of <Alt> + <Tab> I can use <Super> + <Space> and bring down my terminal.

For those of you still running hardy you may want to upgrade to the latest version (yes those instructions will work with the latest version) but even then there are still a few features I would like to see mostly I would like each desktop to have its own terminal’s (right now they all share the same ones).

What apps do you love?

Tags: app, love, program, review, terminal, tilda, ubunut

Well here is another one.

• Take a picture of yourself right now.
• Don’t change your clothes, don’t fix your hair…just take a picture.
• Post that picture with NO editing.
• Post these instructions with your picture.

Full discloser the picture was taken yesterday morning when I read about this post but I only am just uploading it now.

Tags: me, meem, photo

Well there is another meme on planet ubuntu and this one is about the name of your computers. I typically name my computers after different ways of saying NULL in different programing languages. I currently have:

• MinusOne - This is my main computer. -1 is a way sometimes used to mark an int as NULL.
• NaN - This is my laptop, a dell inspiron 1300 … also my battery is dead if anyone knows where I can get a cheap one in Canada that would be great. NaN stands for not a number in matlab.
• Void - This is my current test box. I’m not really sure if void is used in any programing languages but it seemed to me like a synonym to NULL.

In the past I have also had:

• NULL - This was my first linux computer and the mother board died.
• Zero - A laptop that no longer works. Zero is also used as a NULL value.

I also have three devices that currently do not follow this naming convention:

• xo - This is my OLPC XO this computer came whith that name and I have not changed any of the default settings on it.
• Neo - This is my work computer, named after Neo from the matrix. When I have more than one work computer I use other matrix character this helps me keep my work machines seperated from my personal computers since some of them travel with me and spend a lot of time on my home network.
• DD-WRT - This is my router and yes it is using the DD-WRT firmware. The DD-WRT firmware is a great way to get all the power out of your router. I only just started using this and would love to get some neat tips and tricks or other recomendations that people find better and why.

Lastly I have one virtual computer:

• earobinson-PC - This is my vista box, this is the name vista gave it, and I hardly use it so it can stay like that. (Well the last time I used it was to check out google chrome)

So what do you name your computers? Also I do intend to recycle the no longer used names but if anyone has any ideas for more ways of saying NULL I would love to hear them so far the only unused one I have is None from python.

Tags: dd-wrt, matrix, meem, MinusOne, my computers, name, NaN, Neo, NULL, olpc, planet ubuntu, Void, xo, Zero

With the release of wordpress 2.6.1 I have once again updated my hackergotchi. This will be my third hackergotchi since 2006, and the original image was taken by my mother at our cottage in Pointe au Baril, and yes I am sitting on the barrel that markes the site of the original barrel that the town gets its name from.

New Hackergotchi

Tags: 2.6.1, earobinson, hackergotchi, me, new, picture, Ubuntu, wordpress

A while back I wrote a post about using Google docs as an expense tracker. The post received a lot of great feedback and so when I wanted to learn about Google App Engine I decided the best way was to create a Google app that connects to my Google docs to let the user easily add expenses. This would solve the problem I had with the original Google expense tracker that anyone could add an expense to my spreadsheet. The result of this is eyecost released under the gpl (I had wanted to use the agpl but I don’t think that that is an option since it connects to Google servers) you can download eyecost here. The problem I am having is that if I do a lot of spreadsheet editing the Google App Engine times out.

Anyone know how I can get around this?