Category: Uncategorized

Cost savings: Follow-up

By , June 14, 2013 6:01 pm

It’s been a few months, probably a good time to see how I’m doing with my cost savings goals.

1. Cancel Fibe TV. Haven’t done it. I seriously made an effort though, but I can’t receive OTA HDTV in my apartment. Turns out despite being on the 29th floor, I have no line of sight with the CN tower or any other local broadcast tower. I did however cut down my subscription package to the absolute minimum and got the Fibe Internet “dependency” reduced to $0 monthly.
2. Cancel landline. Well, I didn’t do this one either. It kind of ties in with the first point; I did get the price reduced enough that it costs less than the dry loop I’d need if I did cancel.
3. Be more energy conscious. I’ve been making sure to switch off any electric service when not necessary. I don’t leave my desktop computer on all the time anymore, my home server is a low power, compact system.
4. Move to the cloud. Nothing done on this front yet.
5. Cancel personal smartphone. Done. I no longer carry two smartphones, I’ve settled on an HTC One (great device) as my only phone. Saving more than $50/month.
6. Stop buying random stuff. Well I haven’t really bought random tech, but I did go on a trip to Greece… Expensive, but so worth it!

So, overall, not doing too well. But I think it’s a start.

PSA: ISO 8601 – Numeric Dates

By , February 27, 2013 6:00 am

 

The correct way to write numeric dates: 2013-02-27. No ambiguity, sorts correctly, easily legible.

ISO 8601

Source: http://xkcd.com/1179/

Getting Windows 8 to work with Windows 7 and Samba

By , January 24, 2013 10:20 pm
  • Don’t sign in with a Microsoft account during initial setup of PC. Create a local account, then linkĀ a Microsoft account if necessary later.
  • Add credentials for network in the “Credential Manager”
  • Change setting in “Advanced sharing settings” to use user accounts and notĀ Homegroup.
  • (Mac OS X) Edit /etc/smb.conf, add workgroup = WORKGROUP and master browser = auto.

Skip OOBE on Nook Simple Touch (NST)

By , December 9, 2012 11:25 pm

I’ve been having issues with the OOBE on my Nook Simple Touch. It will simply not register to my BN.com account.

Fortunately, there is a way to skip the OOBE and get the device to a mostly-working state:

Skip OOBE:

On the first screen that appears on the NST without tapping any button.
1.Hold the right top button and move your finger from left to right on the top of the screen.
2.The factory button will appear at the bottom right of the screen, tap it.
3.Hold again the right top button and tap the right bottom part of the screen, where the factory button appeared
4.A button labeled skip oobe will appear, tap it, your done

For the Nook Simple Touch with Glowlight and Nook Simple Touch with 1.2 firmware, the “Factory” button appears on the top left, and the “Skip OOBE” button will appear in the blank space at the bottom right.

References:

Shirley and Britta in the Morning!

By , September 3, 2012 5:59 pm

Tomorrow on CityTV Breakfast Television!

Syncing config files to a subversion repository automatically

By , July 18, 2012 11:05 am

Here’s a script I cooked up for syncing my Web server’s config to a subversion repository.

Before running the script, initialize an svn repo at /root/subversion/serveurs-web.

#!/bin/bash
# Path to the previously created SVN repo
svnpath=/root/subversion/serveurs-web
 
# use rsync to copy config files from /etc to svnpath. Allow delete, but don't touch the .svn folder
rsync -auz --delete --exclude=.svn /etc/lighttpd $svnpath/web1/etc/
rsync -auz --delete --exclude=.svn /etc/php5 $svnpath/web1/etc/
 
#svn status $svnpath
 
# svn auto delete, add and commit script stolen from http://blog.sosedoff.com/2009/01/16/svn-auto-add-and-delete/
echo "processing files to add..."
svn status $svnpath | grep "^?" | sed -r 's/^\?[ ]+//' | xargs -r svn add
echo "processing files to delete..."
svn status $svnpath | grep "^!" | sed -r 's/^\![ ]+//' | xargs -r svn delete
echo "processing commit..."
svn commit $svnpath -m "automatic commit from $HOSTNAME"
 
# done!

Union Station subway replacement buses

By , June 9, 2012 7:40 pm

Fix file open and “Open containing folder” on KDE/Kubuntu 12.04

By , April 12, 2012 4:02 pm

Kubuntu 12.04 is no longer a Canonical-maintained distribution. As such, support for the firefox-kde-support package has been discontinued.

Here’s a workaround to get firefox’s downloaded file handling to work correctly:

Here is a workaround for the Firefox problem from Canonical support:

1) stop firefox
2) rm ~/.mozilla/firefox//mimeTypes.rdf
3) start firefox
4) download a file
5) open it from the downloads menu and choose the application. Browse to /usr/bin/xdg-open. then check to remember your choice

Source: http://askubuntu.com/a/113090

Toronto 8-bit

By , April 1, 2012 9:36 am

My name is Alex

By , April 1, 2012 9:02 am

 

Source: http://outlinedsilver.tumblr.com/post/20170703918/the-pillow-fort-comes-down

Custom theme by me. Based on Panorama by Themocracy

His followers called him Mahasamatman and said he was a god. He preferred to drop the Maha- and the -atman, however, and called himself Sam. He never claimed to be a god. But then, he never claimed not to be a god. Circum- stances being what they were, neither admission could be of any benefit. Silence, though, could. It was in the days of the rains that their prayers went up, not from the fingering of knotted prayer cords or the spinning of prayer wheels, but from the great pray-machine in the monastery of Ratri, goddess of the Night. The high-frequency prayers were directed upward through the atmosphere and out beyond it, passing into that golden cloud called the Bridge of the Gods, which circles the entire world, is seen as a bronze rainbow at night and is the place where the red sun becomes orange at midday. Some of the monks doubted the orthodoxy of this prayer technique... -- Roger Zelazny, "Lord of Light"