Posts filed under 'Technology'
I upgraded my home server to Ubuntu’s latest release, Edgy Eft, about a week ago.┬á Everything went fine, as expected, except one issue:┬á every time I ran apt-get dist-upgrade, it would say that a bunch of python packages and the hpjis package were being held back.┬á After a quick Google search, I found this forum post, which advised to use the aptitude program.┬á Using aptitude took some getting used to, but after applying updates with it, my package dependency issues were resolved!┬á Thanks goes to Ziox, the ubuntuforums.org member that recommended aptitude.
November 7th, 2006
Welcome to this blog’s new address!!! The move was pretty painless, with the exception of downgrading from MySQL 4 to MySQL 3, but that only produced a few weird characters in my posts which are now gone. Hopefully those that subscribed or visited the old address are now seeing this, and I promise I won’t make another move anytime soon! I’m really excited to have a reliable host now, instead of hosting this from my home server.
October 1st, 2006
Well, I can say that I’m very happy with the switch of my blog feed to FeedBurner. I get to see a much clearer picture of who my “subscribers” are, and I also get a lot of features to play with on my feed. I’m not going to activate or use them all just yet, but some of them do sound intriguing. One that I am going to test out is the Email Subscription Service. Over on my sidebar (currently on the right), I’ve placed a Subscribe section. If you don’t use an RSS feed reader (also called news aggregator), such as Bloglines or Newsgator or even My Yahoo, then you can be notified of new posts via e-mail.
I think this is good for people that just don’t want to take the plunge to use a feed reader. If you are a person that doesn’t regularly check web sites or use the Internet, then this is definitely for you. However, if you are using the Internet as part of your daily routine, then you really need to check out a feed reader. I highly recommend Bloglines, but there are a variety of others that might suit your taste.
September 18th, 2006
Since, I am in the beginning stages of moving my blog and photo gallery off of my current server, I was looking for a way to switch over to using Feedburner as my primary blog feed. This way, if my blog ever changes servers again, no one will have to update their feed. This is assuming I have some sort of reader base, which I’m sure is only up to 1, at this point. 
Anyway, I found a nifty little plugin for Wordpress called FeedBurner Plugin by Ordered List. I simply download, activate, go to my admin page, click Options, fill in my FeedBurner feeds for entries and comments, click Save. So, I’m basically writing this post to see if it works when I check my blog on Bloglines.
If you do subscribe to this blog, please update update your feed reader to point to http://feeds.feedburner.com/milkduds for blog entires and http://feeds.feedburner.com/CommentsForMilkduds for comments. I’ve already updated the feed links on the right as well. Also keep in mind that this blog will soon be moving to a new URL, so updating your reader will help during that transition. Hopefully, I’ll be making a post soon about what that new URL will be.
September 15th, 2006
This is a follow-up to my original post about Firefox 2.0 Beta 2. I decided not to update that post since this post will have quite a bit of information and is basically a separate topic.
After installing the beta and discovering that most of my extensions weren’t compatible, I installed the Nightly Tester Tools extension to make them all compatible. Bad idea. Now, I can only use the beta of Firefox for about 30 minutes, where it will crash on a random action on a random page. I’m certain that one of my extensions is causing the problem, opposed to the browser itself. However, I can not undo the action of clicking the “make all compatible” button that the NTT extension put on my Add-ons window.
So, my first trip is to the mozillazine forums, where I found this post asking for feedback on the beta. I’ve posted a reply to that post and am currently waiting for feedback on my issue. Until then, I’m back to using Firefox 1.5. 
UPDATE: Thanks to a helpful person on the mozillazine forums, I’m back using Beta 2. This reply to the above forum topic explains that all I needed to do was delete the extensions.rdf file in the extensions folder of my profile. After doing that, all of my incompatible extensions were disabled. Now my only job is to enable them one at a time until a culprit is discovered.
September 12th, 2006
2 posts in 1 day?!?!?! Ok, just a bit of info to share and to record in case I forget someday. I am switching from using ClarkConnect to Ubuntu for my home server, and have also decided to put my printer on the computer that will always be on, instead of my heat-generating AMD 64. I thought installing a printer and sharing it on my network would be easy as pie with Ubuntu. Well, only half of that was easy, which was the installing part. The other half was almost as easy, and only took a bit of Googling. After following the instructions on this page, I was printing from every machine in my house easier than with Windows XP!
September 11th, 2006
Firefox 2.0 Beta 2 was released recently, so I decided to check it out. I’m mainly writing this for Trey, since I know he thinks I should blog more when I have shareable information! Anyway, here are my first impressions of the new beta:
- I hate the fact that most of my extensions don’t work when I install a beta. Thanks to the Nightly Tester Tools extension, though, everything is working fine.
- I really like the fact that the beta doesn’t overwrite my stable release’s program directory. They are in separate directories under Program Files (in Windows), but share the same profile information.
- The updated theme is nice, though I miss the old Home icon. I think the new one is barely noticeable and blends in too much with the background.
- I haven’t tested this yet, but I think the beta starts faster.
- The location of the list of extensions has changed. It is still under Tools, but now you have to click on Add-ons. From there you can access extensions AND themes.
- Session recovery looks nice - This looks like it will basically replace the Crash Recovery extension I just recently installed. If you start Firefox after a crash, it asks if you want to recover your session, or start a new one.
- Maybe it’s just the way I’ve laid things out, but I don’t like the way the quick search bar has gotten longer. It used to be so nice and compact, but is taking up more real estate now.
- I like the new spell check feature. Oh, look at that, I just misspelled spell check and misspelled! Haha!
- This is my biggest complaint, but I think I’ll have to live with it: The close tab button has been moved from the far right of the tab bar to a close button on each individual tab. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve moved my mouse to the far right to close a tab today! Trey brought up a good point about this. He liked the old way because he could close a bunch of tabs very quickly. Now, he’ll have to either close all but the current tab, or click on each tab’s close button. They’ve also changed the close function so that you go to the last tab you had open instead of the last tab in the list.
That’s all I have for now. If I find something mind blowing, then I’ll update this post.
September 11th, 2006
Every time I upgrade Wordpress, I always get a little treat. This might have been included in previous versions, but I just noticed it with my upgrade from 2.0.2 to 2.0.4 - the Backup plugin. All you do is activate it, go to Manage, click Backup, tell it where to go (I chose send by e-mail) and click Backup. 10 seconds later and I hate a fresh backup in my gmail inbox! That makes me smile! 
August 12th, 2006
A friend of mine sent me this link today and I thought it sounded very interesting. I was suprised to see that nobody had put this on Digg.com yet.
Basically, from what I can tell, Phalanger will allow you to use and create PHP code in Visual Studio (currently only .NET 1.1), but will then compile it into a DLL which makes execution time faster. The benchmarks on the site speak for themselves.
From the feature list:
- Extends the .NET language family with PHP version 5
- Enables creation of ASP.NET applications made of existing PHP scripts
- Compiles PHP scripts to achieve a significant speed-up of application execution
- Provides .NET application developers with all the PHP libraries
- Integrates the PHP language into Microsoft Visual Studio .NET
read more | digg story | 
July 26th, 2006
My family and I are about to go on our annual lake house vacation. Every year on my way out of town, I think, “I really need to make a good summertime/lake house mix cd”. Well, this year, I’m on the ball and my wife is assisting me with the song selection. Those that know me may be thinking this will be a rock n’ roll or alternative mix, but this is not that case. When I’m at the lake, all I want to listen to is country music. So, we are using Tadalist to brainstorm our ideas for a mix cd. Here’s our list so far:
http://podious.tadalist.com/lists/public/342713
The rule for song selection is that it has to mention or be about summer, the beach, fishing, the lake, or growing up in the country. If you have any suggestions, please post them in the comments!
July 6th, 2006
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