Peter’s Soapbox

(Medi)Fasting - Day 3

My wife started a new diet a couple of weeks ago. I decided that weight loss was something I too was interested in, so I started it too. We are doing the Medifast plan, a diet that consists of a lot of pre-packaged foods (shakes, soups, etc.) with minimal preparation required. Continue reading (Medi)Fasting - Day 3…

Stop Stealing My Focus!

A few weeks ago, my friend Dave Yates announced in his podcast how he accidentally typed his IRC password into the chat room that he was in. I can easily see how this could happen, while someone was trying to identify themselves to the server. To prevent this, he could have taken a couple of steps to ensure that he was not typing into an active chat window, so that even if he had made the same typo, his password would not be exposed. Alternately, just being careful might have prevented this.

Then again, it might not have… Continue reading Stop Stealing My Focus!…

Installing Ubuntu Netbook Interface

I decided to give the (recently much-ballyhooed) Ubuntu Netbook Remix a try on one of my virtual machines. Here are the steps I followed to get it installed:

sudo su
cat >> /etc/apt/sources.list
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/netbook-remix-team/ubuntu hardy main
Ctrl-C
apt-get update
apt-get install go-home-applet window-picker-applet maximus human-netbook-theme \ ume-launcher

Once installed, I logged off, then logged back in and wham! I was in the new interface. Except, I wanted to see what it would look like on a small screen. I changed my resolution to 800×480, and it fits great, but the fonts did not scale accordingly, so they were unreadable.

I figured the quick fix might be to uninstall the packages I added, set my resolution to 800×480, then install them, because presumably it would detect and choose the correct font size then.

That didn’t work so well. I was able to remove and re-install the packages, but now the new interface won’t come up, and all I have is a little GNOME desktop.

Apology to the Woman I Offended - Rescinded

In this week’s episode of the podcast, I made a comment which offended one of our listeners. She emailed us anonymously and stated she would be unsubscribing from our podcast.

After further consideration over the weekend, I decided that I was wrong, not in my initial comments to which she chose to be so offended by, but in the rendering of my apology. Continue reading Apology to the Woman I Offended - Rescinded…

It’s Official: Funpidgin is Now Carrier Instant Messenger

Justin Hayes has just confirmed that Funpidgin has officially been renamed to Carrier Instant Messenger!

I wonder if I’ll get a mention in an obscure footnote of the release docs that no one will ever see.