Image captcha
May 17, 2012 3 Comments
I got this as a captcha image today. I didn’t know that images were being used like that (if they actually are), and I’ve no idea what it actually is…any suggestions?
Google Summer of Code 2012 – Fedora JBoss Spin
April 24, 2012 2 Comments
So yesterday I found out that I got accepted into the Google Summer of Code program. It’s really exciting news for me, being enthusiastic about free software and open source, and also because I’ll be getting money to contribute to a project that I’ve been hoping to get more involved with anyway. I’ll be working with the Fedora project, to help with the packaging of JBoss software, and eventually I’ll create a JBoss spin, which will include JBoss Application Server 7, JBoss Tools for Eclipse, and JBoss Forge. I’m currently doing exams in university, so my activity on this will be limited until they’re finished. Then the hard work begins! I look forward to learning from all of the talented people who are already involved in the Fedora community. For more info on what I’ll be doing, the proposal is available on the wiki. I’ll update here with any interesting progress!
what time do you call this??
December 9, 2011 Leave a Comment
I borrowed a book from the library today, not sure if I’m ever supposed to give it back! Seriously though, is 24:00 a real time? WHAT ELSE HAVE YOU KEPT FROM ME, WORLD?
Please return this book on or before the 6th day of January, 2012, at Hammer Time.
Adjust screen brightness on fedora 16 – try this if it’s not working
November 28, 2011 Leave a Comment
Just in case this can help anyone on the fedora planet or other, who doesn’t visit fedoraforum.org or ask.fedoraproject.org very often. Admittedly I don’t visit there very often myself. A quick search in bugzilla shows some possibly related bugs.
If you don’t seem to be able to alter the screen brightness in fedora, either with the Fn keys, or through the gnome-control-center, try reinstalling bash. I rarely have the screen brightness on full on my laptop, so when I couldn’t change it on f16, it was ever so slightly annoying! I honestly wouldn’t know what to file a bug report against, so I started searching. First stop was that shiny new ask.fedoraproject.org instance, which led me to forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=272500
So with the Fn keys not working, which had always worked previously; and the slider in the screen settings in gnome-control-center having no effect, doing a simple
sudo yum reinstall bash
was the answer.
Update:
It’s listed in the ‘Common F16 Bugs’ here:
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Common_F16_bugs#Bash_entry_in_.2Fetc.2Fshells_disappears_after_update
this post isn’t specific enough to have a title…
October 12, 2011 Leave a Comment
Hello there, internet. Sorry I’ve kept you in the dark for a while now, I will try to improve on that in the future. So what’s the situation, you ask? Well, I will fill you in with what GOOG et al. are most likely already familiar with. I’ve returned to Ireland from my home away from home: Québec. I will be back, don’t worry, Canada.
On a more interesting note, I’ve also returned to university to study something of interest (to me, at least) this time. It’s a H.Dip in Software Design and Development, and I’m quite enjoying it. It forces me to do some of the not-so-interesting parts of IT study, while also allowing me to do lots of the fun stuff! For the moment, I’m keeping my head well above the water with regards to coursework, but I fully expect and look forward to things becoming more difficult rather than easier.
As some of you know, my email habits have been somewhat erratic for the last while, while I was getting settled back in here, but by now I feel I’ve dealt with most of the backlog; if you’ve sent me an email (or other online comm), and I haven’t replied, then I’ve probably forgotten about it. Please, remind me, and keep me on my toes!
If you’re following me on any social network or microblogging platforms, you’ve probably noticed that the bulk of my spam is now tagged with [D*] or something similar: this means that the post is being forwarded from my Diaspora* seed. If you’ve got one, add me!! – grdryn@diasp.org
So, being back at university, I’ve sometimes got short periods of time where I’m idle, and it’s time that I’m often not very productive with; so I might be able to use it to find something of actual interest to put here! I will try at least. If there’s anything in particular you would like me to rant/review/talk about, let me know! OTOH, if you want me to STFU, please let me know with equal fervency! That’s all for now folks, expect more boring stuff here soon. I figure the more I write, the more mindless nattering I will obviously do, but it will also increase the chances of me posting something of actual value or interest to someone!
bitcoin: what is it, and how to get started.
May 17, 2011 Leave a Comment
There’s a very interesting project called bitcoin, which has started to gather momentum recently, and pop up in more and more places. Bitcoin is a currency, but it has the following properties which distinguish it from what we might call a ‘physical’ currency:
- digital - Bitcoin doesn’t exist in a physical sense; the coins are stored on your computer, and are transferred over the internet.
- decentralized – There is no central governing body in control of the currency
- distributed – Transactions are made across the globe, without the need for banks or other financial institutions.
Here’s a little infomation video from weusecoins.com (CC-BY 3.0)
There is a lot of speculation going on about what will happen next. Will bitcoin be a success or a failure? Will the masses begin to use bitcoin on a regular basis? What will that mean for other currencies? Will bitcoin be able to fit into the current economic model and live alongside the legal currencies of the countries of the world? I’m not an expert on the technology behind it, and I’m certainly not an expert on economics; but maybe that is a good thing. I know that everyone using bitcoin at the moment hopes that it is given a fighting chance, and not just outlawed by governments around the globe. Should a currency not be used to give people control, rather than be used to control the people? It is unrealistic to think that it could replace all of the currencies being used around the world, but I do think it will become quite popular for certain purposes, and it will have a significant impact on the way on-line transactions are carried out around the world.
Getting started with Bitcoin: your first steps and cents.
If you are curious about all this, I would encourage you to try it out. The first step is to download the software, from here. Once installed and running on your computer, you will surely want some bitcoins. Rather than buying some straight away, there are ways to get a few freebies, to get a feel for it and decide if it’s worth your time and/or money (your other money, that is…). You can sign up at bitcoinbonus.com and earn a small amount of the currency just for signing up. You can see that further small amounts can be gained by just shopping on-line through the sites listed on the page. You can also get a tiny amount of bitcoins here, although this wasn’t working at the time of posting. The coins are then yours to do as you please with. You can buy goods or services, or sell your bitcoin for legal tender. If you want more bitcoins, you can offer goods or services to people, or buy some at an exchange. For those of you with high-end GPU’s, you can try to ‘mine’ bitcoins (think mining gold, only on your computer), although I think that unless you have a lot of resources, this really isn’t worth it.
How this will eventually turn out is anybodies guess, but I think bitcoin is destined to become increasingly more popular and controversial in the not-so-distant future. If you have any thoughts on this, let me know in the comments!
Add applications to autostart on login, in GNOME 3
May 14, 2011 6 Comments
Since I started using GNOME 3 a while back, one feature that I’ve wanted to see is an option to have certain programs start up when I login. Unfortunately I haven’t had time to look into this until now, and a quick look in the release notes pointed me in the right direction. There are two ways of doing this; neither of which I find very obvious, and both do essentially the same thing. The easiest way is by using gnome-session-properties. Unfortunately, this is something that the shell in GNOME 3 doesn’t seem to know much about. Entering it in the search bar in the shell doesn’t provide anything useful, apart from a wikipedia or google search possibility. To open the dialog, we must either open a terminal and enter gnome-session-properties, or hit the trusty Alt+F2 and enter it there. At this point, I would like to point out that the Alt+F2 command launcher now has tab auto-completion (I’m not sure if that was a feature before or not, but I’ve only noticed it now)!
As you can see, this presents us with the familiar Startup Applications Preferences dialog, where we can add/remove applications to our hearts content! As you can see from the screenshot, the first application I added was RSIBreak. This is a handy little utility to help prevent Repetitive Strain Injury.
The alternative way to add something to startup on login is to manually create the.desktop files in ~/.config/autostart. Some examples can be found in /usr/share/applications.
Same blog, different domain!
May 10, 2011 1 Comment
Welcome to my new blog! As you can see, it isn’t new at all. It’s the same blog as before, just with a cool new domain name.
The new domain is something I’ve been thinking about for a while now, not so much for the blog, but to give me more control over my email address. My main email address up until now has been a free ‘@gmail.com’ one. With my own domain, I can use my new address just like gmail, using google apps, but if for some reason in the future I would like to move away from that provider to an alternative, I have that flexibility. Reasons for moving away from a provider could include anything from a CEO shooting elephants, or even just a competitor comes up with some cool new feature.
For those of you who didn’t catch it, the reference to the CEO shooting elephants, is related to the debacle caused by Bob Parsons, CEO of GoDaddy.com, causing many people to look for alternatives. One such alternative that I would like to recomment is gandi.net.
- you're just colourblind.