Tech & Geekery

Ok, so last night I was writing some code and I started to drift off. When I woke up in the morning, I found the following oddness in my comments for one of my methods... What's funny to me about this is that there are no wizards or warlocks in this code. In fact, this is a pretty mundane plugin manager. I probably should have been sleeping instead of trying to hack out those last few lines of code...

To fix the ugly Plymouth resolution problem on Ubuntu 10.04, I did the following: echo FRAMEBUFFER=y > /etc/initramfs-tools/conf.d/splash update-initramfs -u It might very slightly slow down the boot. Also, I changed the boot resolution using Start Up Manager from the repository.

Well, this week was a bit of vacation for me, so I had fun with the LTS Lucid release on my new machine. After customizing the desktop, I came up with a gnome + copiz + emerald theme that certainly runs circles around the win 7 desktop that came preinstalled.* One thing I'd like to point out is that with full compiz desktop magic working + chrome running, the ram meter in the upper right hand corner is reading 20%. What's amazing to me about this is that this machine has only 2 GB of ram -- pretty low spec by current standards. On win 7, on a simple desktop with no apps running ( except, of course, anti-virus ) the ram usage is ~50%. I can hardly figure out how linux can run so much lighter while still doing so much ( more )! Pretty awesome. I've also finally got linux working again on my old Toshiba P4000, Xubuntu 10.04. There was a problem for a few kernels that made the fan not spin up enough and the machine would overheat and freeze (oops). After lots of frustrat...

Today I did something interesting. Well, interesting for a geek like me. I have an old toshiba laptop that my brother gave me a few years ago. I love it dearly, but it is nearly obsolete. It runs Windows 2000, which I've been really happy with but hits end-of-life this July. I've tried to get various Linux distros running, and with some success -- but a recent problem with overheating seems to be plaguing some laptop models in Linux. It's also had Open Solaris ( can't get the wifi working...), Windows XP ( too sluggish ), and FreeBSD ( you say what, now? ). I'm back to Windows 2000... I decided to use Windows Updates Downloader to get all the W2K updates and used groovy to script up a nice automated updater. Not knowing what will happen when EOL happens this summer, now I have all the installation packages that I need to bring the system back up to speed in less than an hour. I realize that it will no longer be receiving security patches, but since I use it...

Well, for the past couple of weeks I've been working on a ridiculous side-track that has actually sort of been panning out into something cool. Before the winter holidays, I hacked up a simple app for my mother to keep track of her recipes. I used python and a simple web server that runs on localhost and coughs up the pages very reliably. While the source for the app is pretty messy, the project gave me an idea for a nice framework to build web apps specifically for the client machine. Introducing... Goose. Goose is a simple web browser and server that run on the local machine and serves up html or php pages. It's a very slim setup, with only basic php-cgi functionality + sqlite3 module. I think it's perfect for people who want an easy environment to get started with php, or to create desktop applications that are built using web technologies. Anyway, Goose is not quite ready for the public, but I should have an initial release... soon? Runs on .net 2.0 or higher. A...

Hello, my name is Matthew. I am the general manager of a book superstore. In some form or another, I've been helping to run bookstores for 14 years. During the rest of my time, I like to hang out with my wife and son, and I am also an avid computer enthusiast. I really am super geeky (bookstore nerd + computer geek) == gnerd?. A few years ago, I picked up Jesse Liberty's Teach Yourself C++ in 24 Hours, and somehow the programming bug really bit me ( pun intended ). I immersed myself in the world of computers, picking up a lot of knowledge just by reading and writing lots of code. I love the experience of writing code, reading about code, refactoring code -- pretty much every aspect of programming. I consider my strongest languages to be: Java, Python, C++, PowerBasic I also have a fair amount of experience in these: C, C# , VB .net, Groovy, VBA, Euphoria, Ruby, Perl I really enjoy the variety of languages that are available, and believe that broadening my experience in...