TheTrenchcoat Chronicles

Category: Tech

  • Charlotte Wordcamp

    charlotte-wordcamp-2

    I had the opportunity and pleasure yesterday to attend Charlotte WordCamp. Basically, it was a meeting of bloggers to discuss ideas and network. You can read an article about it here.

    If you’re a blogger and you have a chance to attend a WordCamp do it. If you do go I strongly urge you to take at least two things, a notebook (like an actual notebook that you write on), and business cards. If you don’t have business cards get them printed up before you go. I lost count how many people asked me for a card and I felt like a total dweeb not having them.

    It was great to meet a lot of area bloggers and connect with them. I wish I could have remembered everyone’s name. Unfortunately, I have a mind like a wiffle ball. My Asus EEE PC, aka The Stealth Computer, was a real conversation starter too. It was weird having people ask me questions about my blogs only because I’m not used to wearing my blogger pants in public.

    The highlight of WordCamp for me was Mark Jaquith. Not only did he give us an in-depth preview of WordPress 2.7 but the best part was that he knew who I was. Granted we both do work for b5media but still, it was immensely cool.

    There was an afterparty at Ri-Ra but of about 120 participants at WordCamp, only 6 went to the afterparty.

  • An open letter to blog developers

    Can we please get a standard export format for blogs. If I want to export from WordPress to Serendipity or vice versa I should be able to without having to chew off my arm in frustration. Keeping bloggers trapped to your format doesn’t help anyone.

  • Linux help needed

    Ok Linuxheads, I need your help. I have an old Toshiba Portege 7100 that I think is from 1999. It has a 500mhz processor and 99MB of RAM. I need a micro mini Linux distro that will run on it. I’ve tried the following and only one of them worked but I’m not going to tell you which one yet.

    The distros I’ve already tried are Puppy Linux, Mepis Antix, Xubuntu, and Fluxbuntu.

    I challenge you to find me a Linux distro to work on this abomination of a laptop.

  • Asus eee PC

    Thanks to the economic stimulus program I’m the proud new owner of the Asus Eee PC. A 2GB Surf model w/o webcam because I’m a cheap bastard.

    I’m very happy with it. I like the built-in Xandros Linux OS even in basic mode. The keyboard takes a little getting used to. My only real complaint is the touchpad. I wish they would have put one of those pointer stick nubbies on it instead but it’s nothing a USB mouse doesn’t cure.

    The Asus Eee PC 700 series gets the not so coveted Trench Reynolds seal of approval. Bark bark.

  • Trench’s further adventures in Linux

    So when we last left off our intrepid hero said he was going to give PCLinuxOS another try and I did. I’ve upgraded my opinion of it somewhat. I got it customized enough to where it really looked slick. I loved that it used Synaptic as a package manager. However, the latest dealbreaker was that it was missing a vital program that I need from its repository. This really isn’t a knock on PCLinuxOS I’m just not comfortable compiling my own stuff manually yet. I also have to add that if you’re a first time Linux user I wouldn’t start with PCLinuxOS. I found the install process a little confusing. Why does it need two partitions? Anyway, it’s worth checking out.

    Previously I also posted about OpenSUSE and how I couldn’t get past the start menu. Well, I figured out how to change it to basically a generic KDE menu but I’m still not all that impressed. While the install was a snap once everything was updated I found it to be a slow and sluggish OS. I also think their repository is severely lacking. I really wanted to like this too because Novell, the company behind OpenSUSE, has some kind of deal with Microsoft that pisses off the Linux fanboys and I love to do things that piss off fanboys. However, I can not recommend OpenSUSE.

    I actually dropped Mandriva as my main OS as well. I loved Mandriva and I do highly recommend it but I found a Linux install that in my opinion was better. It’s actually kind of an old install for me. Over the weekend I tried out the KDE version of Linux Mint and I’ve never been happier with an installation. I know some of you hardcore Linux fans will deride me for choosing what is basically Kubuntu but I don’t care. I found this install to be more stable and useful than most of the others I’ve tried and since it uses Ubuntu’s repository it has all the programs I need.

    My next foray into Linux won’t be until Fedora 9 drops.

  • PCLinuxOS MiniMe

    Yesterday I complained about PCLinuxOS and how I thought it was a buggy and ugly distro and how I couldn’t even get MiniMe to boot to my laptop. On the urging of a commenter (which is rare around here), I gave PCLinuxOS, specifically MiniMe, another try.

    I found the command I needed to get it to boot properly fairly easily. When I got it installed and changed the ugly ass wallpaper it started looking like a cool distro. I love the fact that it uses Synaptic as a package manager. Synaptic is a lot better than Mandriva’s package installer. So it’s got that going for it.

    However, MiniMe did one thing that no Linux Distro has ever done on my laptop. It froze. That was a dealbreaker for me.

    But in its defense, MiniMe has convinced me to give the full PCLinuxOS distro another try.

  • My Linux weekend

    Ok, so I spent most of my weekend trying out some new Linux distros. New to me anyway.

    First up was PCLinuxOS and their 2007 release. I don’t know why PCLinuxOS is so highly touted. I found it to be clunky, buggy and ugly. Then I realized I’m supposed to be trying PCLinuxOS MiniMe. I couldn’t even get that to boot on my laptop. Not even halfway through the boot process it would lock up and cause my caps lock light to blink then it would freeze.

    Then I tried DreamLinux. It really wants to be Mac’s OS-X. What attracted me to DreamLinux was its shortcut bar down at the bottom just like OS-X. I’ve never used OS-X so I don’t know how it actually compares. What I didn’t like is that the shortcut bar wasn’t customizable at all and half the tools on it I would never use anyway.

    I finally settled on Mandriva’s latest release, Spring 2008. I liked it so much I installed it on my main hard drive. Dual booted with Windows of course. I got addicted to the KDE desktop and I’ve adapted to using RPMs. I also thought that Mandriva was more aesthetically pleasing that PCLiunuxOS. Now, this isn’t a knock against Linux Mint my former distro of choice. I just get bored after 6 months or so and I need a change. I would recommend Linux Mint to anyone who asked what the best Ubuntu based distro was.

  • OpenSUSE

    So last night I gave OpenSUSE a try. Trying Linux distros has become my new smoking. Anyway, I didn’t care for it. I couldn’t get past the start menu, or quickstart, or whatever it’s called. I’m too used to not having to click on a start menu to get it to drill down. If someone could tell me how to drill down just by hovering the cursor then I may be willing to give it a second try.

    However, I am starting to come around on Mandriva and I’ve officially become a KDE konvert. (See what I did there.) It hasn’t replaced Linux Mint as my main distro yet but I’m becoming highly addicted to Mandriva.

    I tried PCLinuxOS too but now I can’t remember why I didn’t like it. I’ll have to give that another shot. I just remember something it did pissed me off.

  • Linux Mint

    If anybody cares what OS I’m running at home I use Linux Mint. It’s like Ubuntu only not as ugly.

  • FastMail FTW revisited

    On yesterday’s post about FastMail I made sort of a jargon related error when talking about aliasing.

    When I speak of aliasing I mean being able to send out your e-mail as any e-mail address you wish. With the account I have at FastMail that allows me to have 8 ‘personas’ in FastMail’s parlance. However, Rob, one of the top dogs at FastMail was kind enough to send me the following tips…

    Do you know about sub-domain addresses? If you have the username sam@fastmail.fm, or even an alias myalias@fastmail.fm, then you can send email to:

    anything@sam.fastmail.fm

    or

    anything@myalias.fastmail.fm

    And it will go to your account. Whenever I have a webform to fill in, I use an address of the form:

    companyname@robm.fastmail.fm

    Over time, I can see which companies have been selling my email addresses, and if needed, block them via a rule. Unfortunately it’s usually not an issue, the spam filter gets it all anyway.

    Additionally, if you send to:

    xyz@sam.fastmail.fm

    And if you have a folder named “xyz” (or “XYZ” or “xYz”, eg capitalisation not important), then email will go straight to that folder. Useful for mailing lists.

    There are hundreds of other little tricks like that in FastMail, it’s just hard to document + find them all sometimes! 🙂

    Thanks, Rob. Not only are these tips extremely useful it also shows how great FastMail’s customer service is. I don’t think I’ve ever heard from anybody at Gmail.