Archive for the 'Open Source' Category

Tilda: The gaming style terminal

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?

New Hackergotchi

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

DeadlineExceededError on Google App Engine

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?

number_of_t-shirts = number_of_t-shirts + 1;

I got my Ubuntu Hardy Heron T-shirt Today. I will try and post some pictures soon. Maybe even update with a new hackergotchi.

Wordpress Bugs and My Call For Help

I have been blogging for quite some time. During that time I have used blogspot.com, wordpress.com and now my own wordpress install. The main thing that has made me move from platform to platform is gaining more and more control over my blogging experience. With that said as of late I have been having some really problematic wordpress bugs.

  1. Wordpress republishes my rss feeds when I edit my posts
    I expected this was being caused by the Simple Feed Copyright plugin so I have disabled it. I had a reason for installing it but I would much rather be able to edit my posts and I’m not so sure how bother I am by other sites ripping my content (I would still rather they did not however). Despite my best googling efforts I have still not solved this problem.
    Any ideas? Update: Yup this seems to have solved it!
  2. Wordpress is no longer emailing me when someone comments on my blog
    Google did get me more information on this problem. But I have still not been able to solve it. Whenever someone comments on my blog I would like to be notified by email. Any ideas?

About my Setup

If I left out anything let me know. Hope you guys can help me.

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