– Are you mad at your computer?
– I type with purpose.
Is a mechanical keyboard really better to type on?
I’m not sure yet but it certainly is louder. It’s really loud. I washed this keyboard this morning, getting rid of 20 years of dust and grime. Hopefully I didn’t damage the electronics with all the water. It seems OK now, but earlier I was getting some double letters. The model M is a buckling spring keyboard. Some say that’s the best type of mechanical keyboard. Never tried others myself – Cherry MX switches and the like. Those fancy keyboards from Filco and Das Keyboard look great, but I still can’t see myself paying $100 for an input device. I suppose I don’t really spend enough time actually typing for it to be worth it. This particular Model M was salvaged from the trash bin. It’s a cool white colour and not the usual grey/beige. It’s also branded Ambra (a Canadian IBM brand) rather than IBM or Lexmark. Manufacturing date is 1993. I’m also currently using an IBM PS/2 mouse. It’s actually a fantastic quality “ball” mouse, way better than the late cheap OEM mice that came with PCs in the early ’00s before optical mice became the norm. The mouse is light, the cursor responds great… if only this thing had a scroll wheel.
OK, now that I’ve typed a few lines on the mechanical keyboard, let’s try the total opposite.
Here we go, typing on an Apple Aluminium keyboard. Chiclet-style keys, virtually flat – identical to MacBook keyboards. Very different feel when typing, obviously. Hands are also in a different position, this keyboard is very low to the table. I’m actually not sure which one I prefer. I feel like there are a lot more “shocks” going through my hand when my fingers hit the keys on the Apple keyboard, since the key travel isn’t very far. This keyboard is actually surprisingly loud, especially the space bar. Having volume function keys is nice.
Let’s try the IBM again.
Back on the Model M. A lot more noise. How about the typing feel? It feels pretty good. More natural to type on here than on the Apple. I had read online something about not having to press the keys as far since the keys actuate before actually being pushed in all the way. Not sure if that’s how I’d describe the feeling of typing on here. The thing that strikes me most is the really springy feel – which is to be expected, after all, the keys each have a physical spring underneath them. I’m going to have to try a typing test using both keyboards to see how many WPM I get. The model M seems to have issues with Backspace sometimes. Probably due to the PS2 to USB adapter I had to use to connect it to the laptop.
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.
The correct way to write numeric dates: 2013-02-27. No ambiguity, sorts correctly, easily legible.
Source: http://xkcd.com/1179/
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:
Tomorrow on CityTV Breakfast Television!
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! |
#!/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!
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
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