Updated Windows XP Install disk’s!

Posted by on April 24, 2011 2 comments

This has probably been on my to do list for years, but I have just now completed it! I have made a USB stick with the installation disks of XP Home (OEM/Retail) and XP Pro (OEM/Retail/Corp) on it! Now that’s nothing fancy, but having them completely updated to a few days ago and pre-done with almost every driver out there is! Not only that, but it also has the mass storage drivers built in to use when you first install it. What’s that mean? It means it can be installed on RAID and some special SATA interfaces without having to load drivers from a floppy!

Doing this was not a easy task. It took me 3 days of messing with a lot of programs to find the right ones and doing it in the right combinations. That being said I can now do a full reload with updates and drivers in under 30 min depending on the system 🙂 I also found a way to pre-load applications in there, but only added a few like 7zip, defraggler and VLC player.

Next step is doing it for Windows Vista and Windows 7! O yea, did I mention I also have Ubuntu 10.04-2 install ISO on there? 🙂 One usb stick to install them all! … Minus Vista and 7 due to lacking space…

Ubuntu 11.04!

Posted by on April 18, 2011 No comments

10 days away now and I’m a bit excited about this release. I have been using the beta for awhile now, and although it was pretty buggy at first (lots of crashes), it seems to be pretty stable now. There are a lot of things I like about the Unity interface and think its the right direction for sure. That being said I have also tried the new gnome3 and actually like it a little bit more (maybe because it was more stable at the time) but in time I’m sure they will both become very attractive for varying reasons.

I’m interested to see how the community reacts to this release, since its the first that will come default with unity.

New Remote Administration program

Posted by on March 21, 2011 No comments

I should be more specific, new to me remote program 🙂 I was first introduced to it when I was working for another company, and at the time it seemed… kinda clunky and the interface could use some work, but a lot of the options where there and pretty awesome. I have been using and still do use Team Viewer, mostly because of the ability for it to connect without the need to port forward and I could pay for it once and use it for ever… well 10 years at least. That being said it is lacking some features, such as the ability to do things beyond just a remote desktop. You have to connect every time you want to do anything like file transfers.

So what is this new program and what can it do you ask? It’s called Kaseya and the new version is pretty sleek. Some of the abilities are scheduled tasks, registry editing, command line access, event viewer and task manager. These are all accessed remotely without having to interrupt the user! It also has some nice tiers to it, such as a pay as you go at low costs, like $10 a month plus $1.50 per month for each computer you manage, a good way to start off with it. Some of the more advanced editions have things like image backup and update managers for groups of machines, as well as very detailed lists of software and hardware in the machine.

For now I’m sticking with Team Viewer because I have paid for it and don’t utilize the extra features enough to justify the cost, but when I start to get more managed services clients I will definitely switch them to it.

If you do remote computer work you won’t regret checking it out. There is also a free version with limited features. Kaseya

Invoicing Software

Posted by on February 24, 2011 No comments

As most people probably know… well some, I run my own business, and until just recently I did all my invoicing with excel sheets to keep it simple. Well I decided to move up in the world and find something better, cause even with the few jobs I get, I found I was actually spending a fair bit of my time writing up the bills and typing in all the client info as apposed to spending time doing actual work.

Being the open source lover that I am, I wanted something Free and Linux friendly. I looked a bit and found some meh ones and a few that didn’t quite work with my setup … but then… out of a user comment… I found … wait for it… SOMETHING! More specifically Bamboo Invoice! It was simple, easy to setup (for a tech) and was pleasant enough to look at.

Bamboo Invoice

The first thing you’ll probably want to know if your considering it, is that it is actually a web app, meaning it needs a web server and database program to run; not a problem for me, but probably will be for some one who doesn’t run their own web server, but if your interested just look up windows LAMP server or something and you’ll find some pretty good and simple web server software that you can run off your own computer and get this thing running.

Any way long story short, I can now just click on “New invoice”, select a client, and put in some amounts and its good to go. It also shows me who has and has not paid as well as if they are overdue on payments. When I have to do taxes at the end of the year it also just show’s me the numbers for the year so I don’t have to manually add them up anymore (not to mention some fancy graphs ^_^).

I realize this is probably pretty boring stuff, but it’s been awhile since I updated my blog so… here it is ^_^ Also its exciting for me cause its making my billing easier and I got to setup a new web app on my server.

Ubuntu moving away from X?

Posted by on November 5, 2010 2 comments

An interesting move Here. I’m all for moving things forward, so it will be interesting to see how this goes. I like the ideas that mark mentions in here, like taking advantage of the newer graphics cards. Hopefully this will encourage video card manufactures to open source their drivers or a variant of them too. Also if its easier to develop on top of Wayland as apposed to X, this will help improve the development process and get better UI’s out sooner!

Looking forward to seeing a Ubuntu version using it!

Zeitgeist Newsletters

Posted by on October 21, 2010 No comments

I read through the first newsletter for the zeitgeist movement a little while ago and thought the information in there was excellent. Here are a few lines out of it.

In a sustainable society, human motivation would be driven by contributions to society and hence themselves – not abstractly “making money”. The system would be designed to best facilitate the needs of the population directly. Yes, this is that dangerous phenomenon we hear so much about, with the image of blood engulfing the planet Earth, denoted as “Socialistic”. God forbid society might actually be ‘designed’ to benefit the people which live inside of it. The fact of the matter is, the profit motive incentive and hence our competition oriented system is entirely “antisociety”.

In a sustainable society, a “steadystate” economy would be in order. This would mean that there is no pressure to consume, as labor is not linked into the feedback loop.

There are 2 as of this writing. Check them out here

RedShift GUI

Posted by on July 13, 2010 No comments

Heres something interesting. Its called RedShiftGUI and its a interface for the program RedShift. Essentially it changes your monitors color depending on the time of day, in order to make it easier on the eyes. I just installed it (at like 3 in the morning) and I noticed a difference right away! Granted the colors seem a bit off (more red) but the strain on my eye’s decreased dramatically!

There is a windows and linux version available. So far I have only tried the linux version on ubuntu 10.04.

Get some instructions Here

Download it Here

“Mark Twain To Reveal All After 100 Year Wait”

Posted by on July 11, 2010 No comments

Here’s an interesting post from slashdot.org.

“”The Independent reports that one of Mark Twain’s dying wishes is at last coming true: an extensive, outspoken and revelatory autobiography which he devoted the last decade of his life to writing is finally going to be published one hundred years after his death. Twain, the pen name of Samuel Clemens, left behind 5,000 unedited pages of memoirs when he died in 1910, together with handwritten notes saying that he did not want them to hit bookshops for at least a century, but in November, the University of California, Berkeley, where the manuscript is in a vault, will release the first volume of Mark Twain’s three-volume autobiography. Scholars are divided as to why Twain wanted his autobiography kept under wraps for so long, with some believing it was because he wanted to talk freely about issues such as religion and politics. Michael Shelden, who this year published Man in White, an account of Twain’s final years, says that some of his privately held views could have hurt his public image. ‘He had doubts about God, and in the autobiography, he questions the imperial mission of the US in Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines,’ says Shelden. ‘He’s also critical of [Theodore] Roosevelt, and takes the view that patriotism was the last refuge of the scoundrel. Twain also disliked sending Christian missionaries to Africa. He said they had enough business to be getting on with at home: with lynching going on in the South, he thought they should try to convert the heathens down there.’ Interestingly enough, Twain had a cunning plan to beat the early 20th century copyright law with its short copyright terms. Twain planned to republish every one of his works the moment it went out of copyright with one-third more content, hoping that availability of such ‘premium’ version will make prints based on the out-of-copyright version less desirable on the market.””

AbiWord

Posted by on June 14, 2010 No comments

I came across an article today and thought it was worth mentioning. AbiWord is a word processor similar to open office or MS word, but much much faster. It can be installed on both windows and linux. If you just want a word processor that’s free, light and fast, then give it a try. You wont regret it ^_^

Original article Here

You can read about and download AbiWord Here

Meritocracy not Democracy in Ubuntu

Posted by on June 12, 2010 2 comments

I read this article that reminded me a bit about The Venus Project. It talks about how the founder of the Ubuntu OS, Mark Shuttleworth, made a comment when people where complaining about the close/minimize/maximize buttons being moved to the left hand side in Ubuntu. Here’s what he said.

“(Jono Bacon says) As we discussed different approaches, I recommended that we could hold a vote, to which Mark responded: “No, this is not a democracy.” At first, my reaction was pretty much the same rabbit-caught-in-headlights response that some people experienced recently. Democracy felt like a culturally familiar, comfortable and fair approach to community, so the idea it was not our culture came as a bit of a bolt out of the blue. Mark continued to explain the position:
“In Ubuntu, decisions are not driven by a popularity contest, but instead by informed decision-makers with firm experience of the problem and making solutions.” After he’d clarified what Ubuntu was not, he followed up with what it was: “Ubuntu is a meritocracy.” ”

It reminded me of The Venus Project because they don’t advocate democracy for every decision. Not every one is well enough informed to make an appropriate decision in all areas. Think of it this way, would you ask your mechanic to fix your computer? or your lawyer to to plan your dream wedding? or your plumber to fix your teeth? Of course not, because that is not their area of expertise. Of course input is welcomed and encouraged because you don’t need to be an expert in order to think of something to contribute, but its up to the people who are well informed to interpret your idea’s and suggestions and ultimately make a decision.

Read the full story Here