#Blog-Import

2456 posts tagged “Blog-Import”

More beach time with the dog #beach

Note: 1 of this post’s 2 links is now broken — mostly deleted or made-private Flickr photos, dead Flickr farmN subdomains, and defunct feed-syndication infrastructure. Left as originally published.


via Instagram instagr.am/p/CFPMS6xlBXE/ September 17, 2020 at 01:18PM https://flic.kr/p/2jHqnbP, September 17, 2020 at 04:08PM
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Bridlington #beach

Note: 1 of this post’s 2 links is now broken — mostly deleted or made-private Flickr photos, dead Flickr farmN subdomains, and defunct feed-syndication infrastructure. Left as originally published.


via Instagram instagr.am/p/CFINrmTl1vi/ September 14, 2020 at 08:15PM https://flic.kr/p/2jGDheD, September 14, 2020 at 10:08PM
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Shape more levels

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Generative image using Processing. Three iterations using levels of grey. https://flic.kr/p/2jEvxJA, September 08, 2020 at 01:46PM
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Shape colour 2

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Running twice the process twice. https://flic.kr/p/2jEfGuv, September 07, 2020 at 03:10PM
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Shapes

Note: 1 of this post’s 2 links is now broken — mostly deleted or made-private Flickr photos, dead Flickr farmN subdomains, and defunct feed-syndication infrastructure. Left as originally published.


Generative random image created with Processing. github.com/alastairhm/processing/tree/master/shapes https://flic.kr/p/2jEbrZR, September 07, 2020 at 11:07AM
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Weave 05


Generated image using Processing. https://flic.kr/p/2jDhHJq, September 04, 2020 at 04:53PM
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Weave 3

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Generative image created with Processing. https://flic.kr/p/2jDgPhB, September 04, 2020 at 03:45PM
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Weave

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Random generative image created by Processing. https://flic.kr/p/2jDcJFT, September 04, 2020 at 03:05PM
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Weave 2

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Generative image created with Processing. https://flic.kr/p/2jDd13E, September 04, 2020 at 03:25PM
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DLA

Note: 1 of this post’s 2 links is now broken — mostly deleted or made-private Flickr photos, dead Flickr farmN subdomains, and defunct feed-syndication infrastructure. Left as originally published.


Diffusion-Limited Aggregation Generated using Processing see blog.0x32.co.uk/posts/processing/ https://flic.kr/p/2jCWCzN, September 03, 2020 at 01:12PM
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Valley Gardens #Harrogate

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via Instagram instagr.am/p/CEcakNflHCB/ August 28, 2020 at 08:01PM https://flic.kr/p/2jB2DAc, August 28, 2020 at 09:57PM
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Whitby cliffs #segulls #whitby

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via Instagram instagr.am/p/CEcayXvlHVQ/ August 28, 2020 at 08:03PM https://flic.kr/p/2jB2DBz, August 28, 2020 at 09:57PM
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Fidget Widget

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New fidget widget https://flic.kr/p/2jvzrMv, August 12, 2020 at 10:38AM
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Birds Vector

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Conversion of my birds doodle into vectors. Original www.flickr.com/photos/doodle_m/49778801002 https://flic.kr/p/2jnbGNw, July 17, 2020 at 03:49PM
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Inkscape WIP1


Work in progress converting doodle into vectors https://flic.kr/p/2jn7MJh, July 17, 2020 at 03:59PM
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Inkscape WIP2


Work in progress converting doodle into vectors https://flic.kr/p/2jnaFQF, July 17, 2020 at 03:59PM
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Sketch 001


Found a drawing course on Udemy. First lesson, one hour sketch of some object. This paint tube was the suggested subject. Fairly pleased with the result as I've not really sketched in too many years. https://flic.kr/p/2jmYWMC, July 16, 2020 at 09:46PM
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Screenshot 2020-07-16 at 14.44.42

Note: 2 of this post’s 3 links are now broken — mostly deleted or made-private Flickr photos, dead Flickr farmN subdomains, and defunct feed-syndication infrastructure. Left as originally published.


Messing about with Processing language environment after watching youtu.be/LG8ZK-rRkXo Added some colour to the example. processing.org/ https://flic.kr/p/2jmS9Ss, July 16, 2020 at 03:45PM
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Sloth Doodle Vector


Converted my sloth doodle into a vector using Inkscape, just playing with it again. https://flic.kr/p/2jmwrAJ, July 15, 2020 at 12:37PM
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Fetch


Betty playing fetch. https://flic.kr/p/2jkswgR, January 08, 2005 at 07:32PM
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Globe light


Globe LED light and spiders webs https://flic.kr/p/2jkwExB, January 08, 2005 at 07:33PM
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Sloth doodle


Sloth doodle based on something that I saw on Pinterest. https://flic.kr/p/2jjUZCP, July 10, 2020 at 06:03PM
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Litle City Grill


Little City Grill, Bolder City. Good burgers and beer. https://flic.kr/p/2jjz4ML, December 06, 2019 at 01:34PM
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Sketching


Feels like the first day of school. https://flic.kr/p/2jjz2m6, July 09, 2020 at 10:24AM
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Glass ball #glassballphotography

Note: 1 of this post’s 2 links is now broken — mostly deleted or made-private Flickr photos, dead Flickr farmN subdomains, and defunct feed-syndication infrastructure. Left as originally published.


via Instagram instagr.am/p/CBqxYLtF1xl/ June 20, 2020 at 08:16PM https://flic.kr/p/2jdJu9J, June 20, 2020 at 10:08PM
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For doodling


Dot matrix notebook and isometric pad for doodling. https://flic.kr/p/2iSpES1, April 20, 2020 at 04:18PM
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Cubes


Cubes doodle, my dad used to draw this all the time. https://flic.kr/p/2iQLhyr, April 15, 2020 at 11:50PM
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Jumble


Jumble doodle. https://flic.kr/p/2iQMnkp, April 15, 2020 at 11:09PM
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I'm helping dad work from home #puppy #bettydog

Note: 1 of this post’s 2 links is now broken — mostly deleted or made-private Flickr photos, dead Flickr farmN subdomains, and defunct feed-syndication infrastructure. Left as originally published.


via Instagram bit.ly/2G99HHs April 12, 2019 at 12:23PM https://flic.kr/p/RK9cna, April 12, 2019 at 02:08PM
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Good steak

Note: 1 of this post’s 2 links is now broken — mostly deleted or made-private Flickr photos, dead Flickr farmN subdomains, and defunct feed-syndication infrastructure. Left as originally published.


via Instagram bit.ly/2HVRrSD April 23, 2018 at 07:18PM https://flic.kr/p/23GXQVf, April 23, 2018 at 08:20PM
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SystemD Puppet ERB Template for Clustered Minio

A Puppet ERB template for generating Minio cluster systemd control script.

@cluster_fqdn is an array of fully qualified domain names of each node in the cluster.

[Unit]
Description=Minio
Documentation=https://docs.minio.io
Wants=network-online.target
After=network-online.target
After=syslog.target network.target
AssertFileIsExecutable=<%= @installation_directory %>/minio
[Service]
WorkingDirectory=<%= @installation_directory %>
Environment="MINIO_ACCESS_KEY=<%= @access_key %>"
Environment="MINIO_SECRET_KEY=<%= @secret_key %>"
User=<%= @owner %>
Group=<%= @group %>
PermissionsStartOnly=true
ExecStart=<%= @installation_directory %>/minio server --config-dir <%= @configuration_directory %> \
<% @cluster_fqdn.each_with_index do |fqdn, i| -%>
<%- unless i < (@cluster_fqdn.size - 1) -%>
http://<%= fqdn %><%= @minio_mount_partition %>/minio-data
<%- else -%>
http://<%= fqdn %><%= @minio_mount_partition %>/minio-data \
<%- end -%>
<% end -%>
StandardOutput=journal
StandardError=inherit
# Specifies the maximum file descriptor number that can be opened by this process
LimitNOFILE=65536
# Disable timeout logic and wait until process is stopped
TimeoutStopSec=0
# SIGTERM signal is used to stop Minio
KillSignal=SIGTERM
SendSIGKILL=no
SuccessExitStatus=0
[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

https://gist.github.com/alastairhm/51eb6f8bb35b8d785639c3e3165b41ac

Doodle's Geek Monkey by Alastair Montgomery
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Sleepy Wilson #dog #bestfriend

Note: 1 of this post’s 2 links is now broken — mostly deleted or made-private Flickr photos, dead Flickr farmN subdomains, and defunct feed-syndication infrastructure. Left as originally published.


via Instagram bit.ly/2j8AknK September 07, 2017 at 07:12PM http://bit.ly/2wc2tf1, September 07, 2017 at 08:12PM
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Reading list automation


Geeky approach to organise my online article reading list. "Read later" articles get added to Pocket either manually or from Feedly. A todo task is created to remind me to go back and read it. Once read if archived from Pocket it gets stored in Evernote. http://bit.ly/2vsvyXt, August 02, 2017 at 12:58PM
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New soap stick day #shaving #arko

Note: 1 of this post’s 2 links is now broken — mostly deleted or made-private Flickr photos, dead Flickr farmN subdomains, and defunct feed-syndication infrastructure. Left as originally published.


via Instagram bit.ly/2ngYElE March 25, 2017 at 09:28AM http://flic.kr/p/TbPNqQ, March 25, 2017 at 09:28AM
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Gingerbread latte #coffee

Note: 1 of this post’s 2 links is now broken — mostly deleted or made-private Flickr photos, dead Flickr farmN subdomains, and defunct feed-syndication infrastructure. Left as originally published.


via Instagram bit.ly/2izgm4z December 27, 2016 at 12:39PM http://flic.kr/p/QBQPsF, December 27, 2016 at 12:39PM
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Building Raspberry PI image using Vagrant

Building your own Raspberry Pi Images


The Vagrant file on https://github.com/alastairhm/pibuild sets up a build environment for building Raspberry Pi images from the repository https://github.com/RPi-Distro/pi-gen.

I am using it to create a custom image minimal with Docker pre-installed based on https://github.com/jonasrosland/pi-gen although you can edit the scripts to pre-install the packages you want in your image.

Doodle's Geek Monkey by Alastair Montgomery
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Twists


Twisted building front in Leeds http://flic.kr/p/LZ12S9, September 08, 2016 at 05:27PM
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Patina


Patina on copper wall plate http://flic.kr/p/LVmjtu, September 07, 2016 at 12:08PM
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Dreams of regeneration #leeds #demolition

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via Instagram bit.ly/2bQYAGn August 23, 2016 at 08:35AM http://flic.kr/p/KvfR9i, August 23, 2016 at 09:35AM
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DSC_6656


Yarn bombing at Saltburn http://flic.kr/p/KwhbUb, July 29, 2016 at 05:19PM
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Ground Hog


Ground Hog at South Lakes Safari Park http://flic.kr/p/KvQtEa, May 17, 2016 at 12:53PM
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Colours


Coloured glass balconies in Leeds. http://flic.kr/p/JfA2bS, June 21, 2016 at 05:26PM
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Maned Wolf


Maned Wolf at South Lakes Safari Park http://flic.kr/p/HrYRAQ, May 17, 2016 at 03:19PM
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Thirsty?


Baby Gibbon stopping for a drink. http://flic.kr/p/GykAuV, May 17, 2016 at 04:56PM
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Pebbles


Pebbles on the beach at Silecroft http://flic.kr/p/HmZLvc, May 18, 2016 at 05:08PM
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Dry stone wall


Drive stone wall on the Ravensglass and Eskdale railway. http://flic.kr/p/H2ntiw, May 18, 2016 at 02:36PM
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ympd - Control MPD player from a Docker Image

Note: 1 of this post’s 5 links are now broken — mostly dead 2008–2013 feed-syndication infrastructure (FeedBurner, Gawker, AOL’s old blog network, Pheedo, Yahoo Pipes). Left as originally published.

After setting up a Streaming radio instance of MPD/Icecast2 running in a Docker image I was looking for a nice front end to control it.

I found ympd a MPD web GUI written in C, so created a Docker image to run it, https://hub.docker.com/r/alastairhm/docker-icecast/ it uses Alpine Linux so the image is only 6mb is size.

You run it linking to your Docker image which is running MPD.

docker run --name my-ympd -d -p 8080:8080 --link your_mpd_container:mpdhost alastair/docker-ympd

Then browse to http://localhost:8080/

For more info checkout this Docker compose file which runs both my icecast and ympd images.

Doodle's Geek Monkey by Alastair Montgomery
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Docker Doku Wiki

Note: 1 of this post’s 13 links are now broken — mostly dead 2008–2013 feed-syndication infrastructure (FeedBurner, Gawker, AOL’s old blog network, Pheedo, Yahoo Pipes). Left as originally published.

Created a small footprint (less than 50mb) Docker image running the Doku Wiki on Lighttpd under Alpine Linux.

Git Hub = https://github.com/alastairhm/alpine-doku
Docker Hub = https://hub.docker.com/r/alastairhm/alpine-doku/

Running

docker run --name "my-wiki" -d -p 80:80 alastairhm/alpine-doku

Browse to install page http://localhost/install.php

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Lighttpd and PHP running on Docker Example

Note: 1 of this post’s 7 links are now broken — mostly dead 2008–2013 feed-syndication infrastructure (FeedBurner, Gawker, AOL’s old blog network, Pheedo, Yahoo Pipes). Left as originally published.

Here is a low resource Lighttpd with PHP Docker image running on Alpine Linux, only ~37MB image.

Github = https://github.com/alastairhm/alpine-lighttpd-php
Docker Hub = https://hub.docker.com/r/alastairhm/alpine-lighttpd-php/

Create an example PHP file in your local directory

echo "<?php phpinfo(); ?>" >> index.php

Then start the Docker image;

docker run --name "my-lighttpd-php" -p 8000:80 -v $(pwd):/var/www alastairhm/alpine-lighttpd-php

Browse to http://localhost:8000/



Doodle's Geek Monkey by Alastair Montgomery
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@alastair_hm: Ghost Blog, Docker compose example Docker Compose Tutorial Running through the Docker… http://bit.ly/1qAp3LG

Note: 1 of this post’s 2 links is now broken — mostly deleted or made-private Flickr photos, dead Flickr farmN subdomains, and defunct feed-syndication infrastructure. Left as originally published.


http://twitter.com/alastair_hm
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@alastair_hm: Owncloud running on Docker Owncloud Running on Docker Just a quick test getting ownCloud to… http://bit.ly/1qeVrD1

Note: 1 of this post’s 2 links is now broken — mostly deleted or made-private Flickr photos, dead Flickr farmN subdomains, and defunct feed-syndication infrastructure. Left as originally published.


http://twitter.com/alastair_hm
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@alastair_hm: RT @linuxtoday: Docker: building and publishing custom docker images: HowToForge: Learn how to build customer docker images. http://bit.ly/1oLRaWC

Note: 1 of this post’s 2 links is now broken — mostly deleted or made-private Flickr photos, dead Flickr farmN subdomains, and defunct feed-syndication infrastructure. Left as originally published.


http://twitter.com/alastair_hm
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Ghost Blog, Docker compose example

Note: 2 of this post’s 8 links are now broken — mostly dead 2008–2013 feed-syndication infrastructure (FeedBurner, Gawker, AOL’s old blog network, Pheedo, Yahoo Pipes). Left as originally published.


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Owncloud running on Docker

 Owncloud Running on Docker

Just a quick test getting ownCloud to run on Docker

Refences

Setup the database connection

Enter details as follows (as setup in the compose file);
  • Choose MySQL/MariaDB
  • Database user : owncloud
  • Database password : password
  • Database name : owncloud
  • Host : mysql

Local Volume

Create a local directory for your ownCloud files /var/www/owncloud

Running

Clone the repo then run the following in the directory

docker-compose -d up

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Other side #Geek #starwars #mug

Note: 1 of this post’s 2 links is now broken — mostly deleted or made-private Flickr photos, dead Flickr farmN subdomains, and defunct feed-syndication infrastructure. Left as originally published.


via Instagram ift.tt/20WFvpU February 15, 2016 at 09:49PM http://flic.kr/p/Ddqzkp, February 15, 2016 at 09:50PM
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Finished for the day.

Note: 1 of this post’s 2 links is now broken — mostly deleted or made-private Flickr photos, dead Flickr farmN subdomains, and defunct feed-syndication infrastructure. Left as originally published.


via Instagram ift.tt/21RVWBY December 10, 2015 at 04:15PM http://flic.kr/p/BtQBMH, December 10, 2015 at 04:15PM
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Day 4 of my advent calendar

Note: 1 of this post’s 2 links is now broken — mostly deleted or made-private Flickr photos, dead Flickr farmN subdomains, and defunct feed-syndication infrastructure. Left as originally published.


via Instagram ift.tt/21AvlZV December 04, 2015 at 06:38AM http://flic.kr/p/AS5csx, December 04, 2015 at 06:38AM
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ThinkPad

Note: 1 of this post’s 2 links is now broken — mostly deleted or made-private Flickr photos, dead Flickr farmN subdomains, and defunct feed-syndication infrastructure. Left as originally published.



via Instagram ift.tt/1y4EIA7 March 25, 2015 at 06:38AM http://flic.kr/p/qQJZvk, March 25, 2015 at 07:02AM

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Mount Teide



Mount Teide is a volcano on Tenerife in the Canary Islands. Its 3,718-metre summit is the highest point in Spain and the highest point above sea level in the islands of the Atlantic http://flic.kr/p/rzYhcG, March 04, 2015 at 12:09PM

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Mount Teide



Mount Teide is a volcano on Tenerife in the Canary Islands. Its 3,718-metre summit is the highest point in Spain and the highest point above sea level in the islands of the Atlantic http://flic.kr/p/riBYrV, March 04, 2015 at 12:06PM

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Mount Teide 3



Mount Teide is a volcano on Tenerife in the Canary Islands. Its 3,718-metre summit is the highest point in Spain and the highest point above sea level in the islands of the Atlantic http://flic.kr/p/rivt6c, March 04, 2015 at 10:09AM

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Mount Teide 1



Mount Teide is a volcano on Tenerife in the Canary Islands. Its 3,718-metre summit is the highest point in Spain and the highest point above sea level in the islands of the Atlantic http://flic.kr/p/qCWjGY, March 04, 2015 at 12:09PM

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Mount Teide 2



Mount Teide is a volcano on Tenerife in the Canary Islands. Its 3,718-metre summit is the highest point in Spain and the highest point above sea level in the islands of the Atlantic http://flic.kr/p/rimsts, March 04, 2015 at 12:23PM

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Testing Docker Puppet Module

This module https://github.com/garethr/garethr-docker lets you install and control Docker using Puppet.

For example this Vagrant setup spins up an Ubuntu VM and then using the Docker module spins up a Jenkins build server Docker container with a few simple commands;

include docker
docker::image { 'jenkins': }

docker::run { ‘some-jenkins’:
image => ‘jenkins’,
ports => ‘8080:8080’,
volumes => ‘/vagrant/jenkins’,
use_name => true,
}


Doodle’s Geek Monkey by Alastair Montgomery

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LED Matrix Arduino Nano







Testing a LCD Max7219 Matrix with an Arduino Nano, thank to http://tronixstuff.com/2013/10/11/tutorial-arduino-max7219-led-display-driver-ic/



#include <LedControl.h>

LedControl lc=LedControl(12,11,10,1);
// pin 12 is connected to the MAX7219 pin 1
// pin 11 is connected to the CLK pin 13
// pin 10 is connected to LOAD pin 12
// 1 as we are only using 1 MAX7219


void setup(){
  lc.shutdown(0,false);
  lc.setIntensity(0,8);
  lc.clearDisplay(0);
}
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Which to choose?

Note: 1 of this post’s 2 links is now broken — mostly deleted or made-private Flickr photos, dead Flickr farmN subdomains, and defunct feed-syndication infrastructure. Left as originally published.



via Instagram ift.tt/1zVVOmb December 25, 2014 at 02:07PM http://flic.kr/p/qwWh2e, December 25, 2014 at 02:19PM

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Monkey

Note: 1 of this post’s 2 links is now broken — mostly deleted or made-private Flickr photos, dead Flickr farmN subdomains, and defunct feed-syndication infrastructure. Left as originally published.



via Instagram ift.tt/1xEio1J November 16, 2014 at 11:28AM http://flic.kr/p/p8xt7w, November 16, 2014 at 11:52AM

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Back lane

Note: 1 of this post’s 2 links is now broken — mostly deleted or made-private Flickr photos, dead Flickr farmN subdomains, and defunct feed-syndication infrastructure. Left as originally published.



via Instagram ift.tt/1pEr0p3 November 09, 2014 at 01:55PM http://flic.kr/p/pZpRnr, November 09, 2014 at 02:29PM

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Ripon Cathedral

Note: 1 of this post’s 2 links is now broken — mostly deleted or made-private Flickr photos, dead Flickr farmN subdomains, and defunct feed-syndication infrastructure. Left as originally published.



via Instagram ift.tt/1pEqZBz November 09, 2014 at 01:56PM http://flic.kr/p/p3NbqA, November 09, 2014 at 02:29PM

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Ripon sign

Note: 1 of this post’s 2 links is now broken — mostly deleted or made-private Flickr photos, dead Flickr farmN subdomains, and defunct feed-syndication infrastructure. Left as originally published.



via Instagram ift.tt/1pEr08t November 09, 2014 at 01:53PM http://flic.kr/p/pHdAyn, November 09, 2014 at 02:29PM

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Dog walk in Ripon

Note: 1 of this post’s 2 links is now broken — mostly deleted or made-private Flickr photos, dead Flickr farmN subdomains, and defunct feed-syndication infrastructure. Left as originally published.



via Instagram ift.tt/1o4NG0E November 02, 2014 at 01:12PM http://flic.kr/p/pUkZ9r, November 02, 2014 at 01:39PM

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Stuck leaf

Note: 1 of this post’s 2 links is now broken — mostly deleted or made-private Flickr photos, dead Flickr farmN subdomains, and defunct feed-syndication infrastructure. Left as originally published.



via Instagram ift.tt/1o4NGxB November 02, 2014 at 01:14PM http://flic.kr/p/pC9D8i, November 02, 2014 at 01:39PM

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Hells Wath

Note: 1 of this post’s 2 links is now broken — mostly deleted or made-private Flickr photos, dead Flickr farmN subdomains, and defunct feed-syndication infrastructure. Left as originally published.



via Instagram ift.tt/1t119SF November 02, 2014 at 01:06PM http://flic.kr/p/oXLak2, November 02, 2014 at 01:06PM

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Linux Tux earrings?

Note: 1 of this post’s 2 links is now broken — mostly deleted or made-private Flickr photos, dead Flickr farmN subdomains, and defunct feed-syndication infrastructure. Left as originally published.



via Instagram ift.tt/1s2lRlV November 01, 2014 at 10:08AM http://flic.kr/p/pBeBuV, November 01, 2014 at 10:21AM

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Dacre North Yorkshire

Note: 1 of this post’s 2 links is now broken — mostly deleted or made-private Flickr photos, dead Flickr farmN subdomains, and defunct feed-syndication infrastructure. Left as originally published.



via Instagram ift.tt/1pdHAMh November 01, 2014 at 09:48AM http://flic.kr/p/pTzYs8, November 01, 2014 at 09:49AM

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Pineapple

Note: 1 of this post’s 2 links is now broken — mostly deleted or made-private Flickr photos, dead Flickr farmN subdomains, and defunct feed-syndication infrastructure. Left as originally published.



via Instagram ift.tt/1wKOPfm October 30, 2014 at 08:29PM http://flic.kr/p/pAcqFv, October 30, 2014 at 08:36PM

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Selfie

Note: 1 of this post’s 2 links is now broken — mostly deleted or made-private Flickr photos, dead Flickr farmN subdomains, and defunct feed-syndication infrastructure. Left as originally published.



via Instagram ift.tt/1wKORUy October 30, 2014 at 08:30PM http://flic.kr/p/oVQc6a, October 30, 2014 at 08:36PM

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Updated the Nexus 7

Note: 1 of this post’s 2 links is now broken — mostly deleted or made-private Flickr photos, dead Flickr farmN subdomains, and defunct feed-syndication infrastructure. Left as originally published.



via Instagram ift.tt/1wKOVn3 October 30, 2014 at 08:30PM http://flic.kr/p/pAbs2j, October 30, 2014 at 08:36PM

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Short backside please

Note: 1 of this post’s 2 links is now broken — mostly deleted or made-private Flickr photos, dead Flickr farmN subdomains, and defunct feed-syndication infrastructure. Left as originally published.



via Instagram ift.tt/1sjWkIz October 10, 2014 at 11:54AM http://flic.kr/p/pBdKpH, October 10, 2014 at 12:54PM

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Rocket fuel #coffee

Note: 1 of this post’s 2 links is now broken — mostly deleted or made-private Flickr photos, dead Flickr farmN subdomains, and defunct feed-syndication infrastructure. Left as originally published.



via Instagram ift.tt/1rPJ2Ue October 02, 2014 at 05:51PM http://flic.kr/p/psEqCN, October 02, 2014 at 06:51PM

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Wood

Note: 1 of this post’s 2 links is now broken — mostly deleted or made-private Flickr photos, dead Flickr farmN subdomains, and defunct feed-syndication infrastructure. Left as originally published.



via Instagram ift.tt/1uTpUD4 September 28, 2014 at 12:58PM http://flic.kr/p/p9uyUj, September 28, 2014 at 02:14PM

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Rocket fuel

Note: 1 of this post’s 2 links is now broken — mostly deleted or made-private Flickr photos, dead Flickr farmN subdomains, and defunct feed-syndication infrastructure. Left as originally published.



via Instagram ift.tt/1vdB9bU September 27, 2014 at 08:46AM http://flic.kr/p/p8qibZ, September 27, 2014 at 10:07AM

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Another day, another coffee shop

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via Instagram ift.tt/1tVYtvE September 15, 2014 at 12:31PM http://flic.kr/p/pegNgv, September 15, 2014 at 01:31PM

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Coffee time

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via Instagram ift.tt/1tTD4TX September 14, 2014 at 03:03PM http://flic.kr/p/oVQv8Q, September 14, 2014 at 04:20PM

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Carrot cake and coffee

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via Instagram ift.tt/1sIHye4 September 13, 2014 at 01:32PM http://flic.kr/p/pc3MNF, September 13, 2014 at 02:32PM

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Ripon church

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via Instagram ift.tt/1ptpq7X August 30, 2014 at 02:53PM http://flic.kr/p/oWLNf3, August 30, 2014 at 03:53PM

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Ripon waste ground

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via Instagram ift.tt/1n8IC5w August 30, 2014 at 01:52PM http://flic.kr/p/oGgGKm, August 30, 2014 at 02:53PM

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Poorly puppy

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via Instagram ift.tt/1v40ZNY August 17, 2014 at 12:11PM http://flic.kr/p/oLneNF, August 17, 2014 at 01:11PM

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Rocket Plane 2



Not quite enough fuel to make it into space, tops out at 47K http://flic.kr/p/oEF6du, August 12, 2014 at 11:31PM

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Rocket Plane 2



Not quite enough fuel to make it into space, tops out at 47K http://flic.kr/p/oGGWJP, August 12, 2014 at 11:31PM

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Rocket Plane 2



Not quite enough fuel to make it into space, tops out at 47K http://flic.kr/p/oqddF7, August 12, 2014 at 11:31PM

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Plane 1



First plane which didn't crash and burn on take off http://flic.kr/p/oDixXs, August 08, 2014 at 11:16PM

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Plane 1



My 1st successful plane design http://flic.kr/p/oF6ask, August 08, 2014 at 11:16PM

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Plane 1 flying



First plane which didn't crash and burn on take off http://flic.kr/p/omRhki, August 08, 2014 at 11:16PM

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Plane 2



My 2nd successful plane design http://flic.kr/p/oDkeBt, August 08, 2014 at 11:16PM

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Doggy chill out

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via Instagram ift.tt/1shOIaq August 07, 2014 at 09:33PM http://flic.kr/p/oCquDh, August 07, 2014 at 10:44PM

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Thistle

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via Instagram ift.tt/1swzEDi August 06, 2014 at 07:50PM http://flic.kr/p/oBC97p, August 06, 2014 at 08:58PM

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Geek mug and coaster

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via Instagram ift.tt/1xLpDTn August 01, 2014 at 06:52PM http://flic.kr/p/ogD9We, August 01, 2014 at 07:52PM

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Chilling

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via Instagram ift.tt/1u5pGg5 July 20, 2014 at 12:49PM http://flic.kr/p/ooyMiz, July 20, 2014 at 02:10PM

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Charity cake day :-)

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via Instagram ift.tt/1wDyu8X July 18, 2014 at 12:05PM http://flic.kr/p/onuCsg, July 18, 2014 at 01:19PM

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Smashing

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via Instagram ift.tt/1t8hNlV July 17, 2014 at 12:33PM http://flic.kr/p/ooD2in, July 17, 2014 at 02:11PM

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20p at car boot sale for retro #coffee

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via Instagram ift.tt/1mn0xrq July 06, 2014 at 05:59PM http://flic.kr/p/nWEn7G, July 06, 2014 at 07:19PM

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Dog walk

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via Instagram ift.tt/1qy1sqP July 05, 2014 at 02:39PM http://flic.kr/p/obgC3w, July 05, 2014 at 03:43PM

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Poppies

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via Instagram ift.tt/1qy1qzl July 05, 2014 at 02:37PM http://flic.kr/p/nVPup4, July 05, 2014 at 03:43PM

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Le Tour cars in Leeds

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via Instagram ift.tt/1xeUB7Q July 02, 2014 at 06:39AM http://flic.kr/p/nTLyVC, July 02, 2014 at 07:54AM

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Squats

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via Instagram ift.tt/1voyWaH June 30, 2014 at 06:20PM http://flic.kr/p/oa8T3u, June 30, 2014 at 07:20PM

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Birthday dog

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via Instagram ift.tt/1wZkYPb June 29, 2014 at 12:25PM http://flic.kr/p/o8WjQv, June 29, 2014 at 01:25PM

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Runaway



Trying to rescue a runaway fuel tank didn't end well. http://flic.kr/p/o7htZW, June 26, 2014 at 01:45PM

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Bucket of wake up #coffee

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via Instagram ift.tt/1qvbESf June 19, 2014 at 12:31PM http://flic.kr/p/o2iF34, June 19, 2014 at 01:33PM

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Posh lager

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via Instagram ift.tt/1pgPWh5 June 18, 2014 at 09:54PM http://flic.kr/p/nJM7uk, June 18, 2014 at 10:55PM

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Old police

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via Instagram ift.tt/1l2Vk84 June 10, 2014 at 02:51PM http://flic.kr/p/nVFMP6, June 10, 2014 at 04:20PM

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Whitby

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via Instagram ift.tt/1pe1suE June 06, 2014 at 12:46PM http://flic.kr/p/nQM9Yw, June 06, 2014 at 01:57PM

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Whitby

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via Instagram ift.tt/1pe1rH2 June 06, 2014 at 12:46PM http://flic.kr/p/nSPz3M, June 06, 2014 at 01:57PM

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Billy ocean

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via Instagram ift.tt/1o5Shg4 June 03, 2014 at 08:41PM http://flic.kr/p/nyFa8S, June 03, 2014 at 09:59PM

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Fence painted, BBQ ready

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via Instagram ift.tt/1oJUQq3 June 01, 2014 at 02:34PM http://flic.kr/p/nwWFkz, June 01, 2014 at 03:38PM

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Munar Landing



He's not going home, broke the rocket engine on landing :( http://flic.kr/p/nLRvmR, May 28, 2014 at 04:28PM

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Sea grass

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via Instagram ift.tt/1m4CQDZ May 09, 2014 at 06:46AM http://flic.kr/p/ngf9tz, May 09, 2014 at 08:09AM

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Feed me..... Again

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via Instagram ift.tt/R4NbV7 May 01, 2014 at 06:44PM http://flic.kr/p/nsdN2o, May 01, 2014 at 09:19PM

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Three baby seals

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Natureland Seal Sanctuary, three baby rescue seals. http://flic.kr/p/nmERd7, April 16, 2014 at 12:42PM

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Baby Seal

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Rescued baby seal at Natureland Seal Sanctuary http://flic.kr/p/nmtr4Y, April 16, 2014 at 12:35PM

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Baby Seal



Rescued baby seal at Natureland Seal Sanctuary http://flic.kr/p/nmMSd1, April 16, 2014 at 12:42PM

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Butterfly



In the butterfly house at Natureland Seal Sanctuary http://flic.kr/p/nmtaJi, April 16, 2014 at 02:20PM

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Cheap fisheye lens

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Cheap eBay fish eye lens mobile phone attachment http://flic.kr/p/njco9e, April 18, 2014 at 02:07PM

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roboLinux



Debian Linux bases Disto with a MacOSX look and feel. http://flic.kr/p/mHMY2t, April 03, 2014 at 01:09PM

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Painted Windows

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Painted windows in Knaresborough http://flic.kr/p/mBXHxH, March 29, 2014 at 01:14PM

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Pink Bike

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High Vis bike in Knaresborough http://flic.kr/p/mBVjTk, March 29, 2014 at 01:00PM

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Sinclar C5



Modified Sinclar C5 no longer electric powered http://flic.kr/p/mBVAMz, March 29, 2014 at 01:01PM

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365 Project Slide Show

Note: 6 of this post’s 10 links are now broken — mostly deleted or made-private Flickr photos, dead Flickr farmN subdomains, and defunct feed-syndication infrastructure. Left as originally published.

365, One a day, a set on Flickr.

Finished my 365 project yesterday, who needs to start on 1st Jan eh?

Here is a set with all the pictures from March 2013 to March 2014.
Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

Alastair Montgomery's Photography

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Big T

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Sign for the Trinity Shopping Center Leeds http://flic.kr/p/mvY4tF, October 31, 2013 at 10:26AM

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Day 365 and exit



Last day of 365 project some days have been easy others a real struggle. Good exercise though http://flic.kr/p/muQYWV, March 27, 2014 at 08:23PM

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Day 364 Stained Glass

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Sun at the right angle http://flic.kr/p/msnM18, March 26, 2014 at 01:33PM

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Doggy Nose

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Wet and snuffly http://flic.kr/p/mson5i, March 26, 2014 at 01:32PM

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Day 360 Vintage Car 365

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via Instagram ift.tt/1nNeVvL March 22, 2014 at 12:44PM http://flic.kr/p/miNw4N, March 22, 2014 at 01:15PM

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Vintage Car 2

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via Instagram ift.tt/NCzOsE March 22, 2014 at 01:15PM http://flic.kr/p/miNww1, March 22, 2014 at 01:15PM

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Leeds

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via Instagram ift.tt/PYPKrs March 21, 2014 at 09:32PM http://flic.kr/p/mhHURZ, March 21, 2014 at 09:58PM

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Day 352 The Small Smoke

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Walking back from dropping the car off from its MOT http://flic.kr/p/m2ux3o, March 14, 2014 at 08:06AM

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Stars tumblr

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via Instagram ift.tt/1dMhbJK March 01, 2014 at 01:31PM http://flic.kr/p/kzVHB6, March 01, 2014 at 01:51PM

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Installing Ruby Rails on Manjaro Linux

Thought I'd give Rails another go on my newly created Manjaro Linux VM.






After filling in a couple of required packages the above screenshot shows it firing through the Rails install.

To get to this stage I did the following;

  • sudo pacman -S base-devel ruby sqlite3 nodejs
  • Added /home/alastair/.gem/ruby/2.1.0/bin to my path in .bashrc
  • gem install rails
  • gem install execjs
After a few minutes got the following successful install




Now to dig out that Rails tutorial I was working through.

Update,
Turns out can't start a rails server do it a missing JavaScript Runtime, bit more searching require.

Update2,
Found the answer on the Arch Linux Wiki which worked updated the instructions above.
  • sudo pacman -S nodejs 
Success


Doodle's Geek Monkey by Alastair Montgomery
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Day 336 Queens Hotel Leeds 365

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via Instagram ift.tt/Mx3TJC February 27, 2014 at 09:40AM http://flic.kr/p/kw4vrv, February 27, 2014 at 09:58AM

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Sabayon 14.01

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Another day another Linux distro to try. http://flic.kr/p/kbpCvH, February 17, 2014 at 01:31PM

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Android-x86



Android X86 running on Virtual Box http://flic.kr/p/kbc6u7, February 17, 2014 at 10:10AM

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Day 323 St John&#39;s 365

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via Instagram ift.tt/1lKqHmd February 13, 2014 at 06:56PM http://flic.kr/p/k42mU8, February 13, 2014 at 06:57PM

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Day 310 must used piece of office equipment 365

Note: 1 of this post’s 2 links is now broken — mostly deleted or made-private Flickr photos, dead Flickr farmN subdomains, and defunct feed-syndication infrastructure. Left as originally published.



via Instagram ift.tt/1nvYelO January 31, 2014 at 04:16PM http://flic.kr/p/jDrHj1, January 31, 2014 at 04:33PM

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No static external IP on Raspberry Pi

My Internet provider doesn't supply me with a static IP address with my broadband, so my Raspberry Pi external web address can wander if my router or connectigets reset. There are third party sites which will provide you with a static URL which follows your wandering IP address but its fun to do it yourself.

To keep me updated on the current IP I wrote a Ruby script which I run via crontab to check and Tweet me is the IP address changes.


#!/usr/bin/ruby



require 'open-uri'



require 'twitter'







twitDM = "twitter_username"







remote_ip = open('http://whatismyip.akamai.com').read



old_ip = File.open('remote_ip.txt', 'r').read







if (remote_ip != old_ip) then



    File.open('remote_ip.txt', "w") { |file|  file.write(remote_ip)}







    client = Twitter::REST::Client.new do |config|



      config.consumer_key        = "xxxx"



      config.consumer_secret     = "xxxx"



      config.access_token        = "xxxx"



      config.access_token_secret = "xxxx"



    end







    client.update("D #{twitDM} My IP address is now #{remote_ip}")







else



    puts "IP addresses match"



end

You can clone the script at Github https://github.com/alastairhm/myip it uses a Ruby Twitter API library which can be found at https://github.com/sferik/twitter to do the direct message with the new IP.
Full details about getting your Twitter API keys can be found at https://dev.twitter.com/


Doodle's Geek Monkey by Alastair Montgomery
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Day 279 Dumbo rats

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Processed with VSCOcam with p5 preset http://flic.kr/p/iMeqvr, December 31, 2013 at 02:17PM

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Day 278 Ears

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Processed with VSCOcam with m3 preset http://flic.kr/p/iJVpuM, December 30, 2013 at 10:40AM

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Day 277 Stopper

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Just a small one? http://flic.kr/p/iGXUWk, December 29, 2013 at 11:31AM

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Day 274 New office mug

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Got myself a new office mug in the sales http://flic.kr/p/iBUhdB, December 26, 2013 at 01:10PM

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Nexus 5

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Screen shot of my Nexus 5 http://flic.kr/p/iyZvKc, December 24, 2013 at 02:01PM

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Day 269 post cinema dinner 365

Note: 1 of this post’s 2 links is now broken — mostly deleted or made-private Flickr photos, dead Flickr farmN subdomains, and defunct feed-syndication infrastructure. Left as originally published.



via Instagram ift.tt/1cdSxnG December 22, 2013 at 01:48PM http://flic.kr/p/ivR9im, December 22, 2013 at 01:52PM

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Day 267 Xmas tree 365

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via Instagram ift.tt/1fq0qWP December 19, 2013 at 07:39PM http://flic.kr/p/iseyhc, December 19, 2013 at 08:10PM

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Day 266 Xmas booze

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Free booze from work hic http://flic.kr/p/iqpwLX, December 18, 2013 at 12:30PM

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Day 254 Leeds church



On way from hotel to the office this morning, first use of the Google Photo Sphere http://flic.kr/p/i7PCA2, December 06, 2013 at 08:40AM

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Day 251 barrels of fun

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via Instagram ift.tt/1cWv0FC December 03, 2013 at 02:17PM http://flic.kr/p/i3PjpQ, December 03, 2013 at 02:27PM

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BitCoin QR Code

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1KhgTFv662pPpkeKobTiXrsQFRHAzqo2j7 http://flic.kr/p/hWv1NN, November 29, 2013 at 04:12PM

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Like this blog?

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If you enjoyed looking at this block would you consider leaving a BitCoin Tip?

1KhgTFv662pPpkeKobTiXrsQFRHAzqo2j7

 

Alastair Montgomery's Photography
In association with Zazzle.com
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Day 246 all about the cocoa

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New choccy shop in Leeds http://flic.kr/p/hUMaVX, November 28, 2013 at 10:51AM

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Day 238 Leeds wharf

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View from the Hilton double trees http://flic.kr/p/hHgzyV, November 20, 2013 at 09:14AM

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Day 237 Frosted



365 Project Image via Dropbox on November 19, 2013 at 04:36PM http://flic.kr/p/hFkQDC, November 19, 2013 at 07:01AM

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Day 236 lunch



365 Project Image via Dropbox on November 18, 2013 at 04:14PM http://flic.kr/p/hDEpCF, November 18, 2013 at 12:36PM

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Nexus 5 One Week On

Day 222 Nexus 5


After my first week with my 32gb Nexus 5 here are some initial thoughts compared to my previous phone Samsung Galaxy S2. Nothing major to complain about.

Likes
  • Camera App and its better integration with Google Plus and on phone picture editing.
  • The screen is very good.
  • Feels very fast, good response in switching apps, swiping between screens and scrolling.

Dislikes
  • You can assign custom ringtones from Google Play Music, had to resort to a third party app to get ringtones assigned.
  • Alarm has some functionality removed like the smart alarm "soft" wake up.

Doodle's Geek Monkey by Alastair Montgomery
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Day 219 Bond End Sunrise

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Snapped while waiting at the lights at Bond End in Knaresbourgh. http://flic.kr/p/haiVpf, November 01, 2013 at 07:25AM

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Day 218 Lunch of champions

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When you've forgotten you sandwiches you have to raid your desk drawers and make do. http://flic.kr/p/h973xc, October 31, 2013 at 01:52PM

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3d Mandelbrot

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Created with Mandebulber http://flic.kr/p/h6sz7q, October 29, 2013 at 09:56PM

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Day 215 Coop



Just in time for some knocked down bargains. Two bags of bagels, crusty loaf and quiche for £2.15. http://flic.kr/p/h4EzeC, October 28, 2013 at 08:37PM

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IMG_2538



Upload from Dropbox October 28, 2013 at 03:20PM http://flic.kr/p/h4bRJQ, October 24, 2013 at 10:33AM

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IMG_2539



Upload from Dropbox October 28, 2013 at 03:20PM http://flic.kr/p/h4bR4m, October 24, 2013 at 10:35AM

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IMG_2540



Upload from Dropbox October 28, 2013 at 03:20PM http://flic.kr/p/h4c1u3, October 24, 2013 at 10:35AM

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IMG_2541



Upload from Dropbox October 28, 2013 at 03:20PM http://flic.kr/p/h4bNTE, October 24, 2013 at 10:36AM

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Day 205 Updates



When you've not been on WIFI for a few days on your Nexus 7 http://flic.kr/p/gL6BQQ, October 18, 2013 at 12:45PM

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Day 202 Harrogate



365 Project Image via Dropbox on October 16, 2013 at 09:48AM http://flic.kr/p/gGKYqd, October 15, 2013 at 08:09PM

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Day 199 metal flowers

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Wall art http://flic.kr/p/gzKVXP, October 12, 2013 at 05:10PM

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Day 193 Early start

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Last nice day of the year? http://flic.kr/p/gpPjg2, October 06, 2013 at 12:38PM

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Day 189 Drips

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Break in the rain? http://flic.kr/p/gkxXnd, October 02, 2013 at 06:22PM

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Majorca 2013 IMG_2478

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Majorca 2013 Holiday via Dropbox http://flic.kr/p/ggtJg3, September 23, 2013 at 03:50PM

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Majorca 2013 IMG_2496

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Majorca 2013 Holiday via Dropbox http://flic.kr/p/ggvuok, September 23, 2013 at 04:03PM

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Majorca 2013 IMG_2498

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Majorca 2013 Holiday via Dropbox http://flic.kr/p/ggvs1K, September 23, 2013 at 04:04PM

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Majorca 2013 IMG_2506

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Majorca 2013 Holiday via Dropbox http://flic.kr/p/ggvj1M, September 23, 2013 at 04:09PM

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Majorca 2013 IMG_2507

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Majorca 2013 Holiday via Dropbox http://flic.kr/p/ggviXS, September 25, 2013 at 11:37AM

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Majorca 2013 IMG_2515

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Majorca 2013 Holiday via Dropbox http://flic.kr/p/ggx1nB, September 25, 2013 at 12:56PM

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Majorca 2013 IMG_2518

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Majorca 2013 Holiday via Dropbox http://flic.kr/p/ggwGwL, September 25, 2013 at 01:10PM

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Day 178 Chillies



365 Project Image via Dropbox on September 30, 2013 at 12:33PM http://flic.kr/p/ggfXB8, September 21, 2013 at 12:42PM

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Day 179 Pool Day



365 Project Image via Dropbox on September 30, 2013 at 12:33PM http://flic.kr/p/gggoKH, September 22, 2013 at 11:44AM

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Day 179 Sunset



365 Project Image via Dropbox on September 30, 2013 at 12:33PM http://flic.kr/p/ggfVYt, September 22, 2013 at 08:30PM

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Day 182 Shutters



365 Project Image via Dropbox on September 30, 2013 at 12:33PM http://flic.kr/p/gggkEe, September 25, 2013 at 09:23AM

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Day 184 Hometime



365 Project Image via Dropbox on September 30, 2013 at 12:33PM http://flic.kr/p/gggj5a, September 27, 2013 at 07:52AM

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IMG_2337



Upload from Dropbox September 13, 2013 at 10:26PM http://flic.kr/p/fQzbaj, September 12, 2013 at 10:00AM

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Day 163 Laptop



365 Project Image via Dropbox on September 06, 2013 at 04:46PM http://flic.kr/p/fKQ5bH, September 06, 2013 at 05:54PM

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IMG_2317



Upload from Dropbox September 05, 2013 at 01:25PM http://flic.kr/p/fKpeqd, September 05, 2013 at 09:26AM

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Day 159 Invaders

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Insert coin... http://flic.kr/p/fHvach, September 02, 2013 at 10:02PM

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Day 158



365 Project Image via Dropbox on September 01, 2013 at 03:20PM http://flic.kr/p/fGqBPy, September 01, 2013 at 02:56PM

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Day 156 Down



365 Project Image via Dropbox on August 31, 2013 at 07:53AM http://flic.kr/p/fFaT2i, August 31, 2013 at 08:49AM

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Day 148 Bridgewater Leeds

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Snapping on the way back from the office. http://flic.kr/p/fzT2Mj, August 22, 2013 at 06:29PM

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Day 147 Light corner

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Light corner in the stairwell http://flic.kr/p/fzjFuu, August 21, 2013 at 08:37PM

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Day 146 silhouettes

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Leaves against the sky. http://flic.kr/p/fyn54P, August 20, 2013 at 09:01PM

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Day 143 Harrogate HDR

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About and about in Harrogate http://flic.kr/p/fw6HL4, August 17, 2013 at 02:22PM

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Day 138 Leeds hotel view

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Another view from the Puppet labs course http://flic.kr/p/fsZz7g, August 12, 2013 at 08:26PM

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Day 132 hotel view

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View from Puppet labs training room in a leeds hotel. http://flic.kr/p/fpNTCk, August 07, 2013 at 09:06PM

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Appleton&#39;s

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Ripon http://flic.kr/p/fnoCSm, August 03, 2013 at 01:34PM

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Day 128 Ripon parade

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Today's parade in Ripon http://flic.kr/p/fn8Uht, August 03, 2013 at 04:00PM

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Day 127 pods

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Invasion of the body snatchers? http://flic.kr/p/fmEzV6, August 02, 2013 at 11:06PM

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Bare bones Arch Linux Install

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Something to do at lunchtime to get you more familiar with Linux, create a barebones Arch Linux VM. Taken from this article at Lifehacker I've compressed it into the following steps.

  1. Download image from https://www.archlinux.org/
  2. Partition hard drives /dev/sda1 /dev/sda2 with GParted as ext 4
  3. Boot from ISO and check, setup network https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Beginners%27_Guide#Wired
  4. Mount partitions mount /dev/sda1 /mnt ; mkdir /mnt/home; mount /dev/sda2 /mnt/home
  5. mkswap /dev/sda3 ; swapon /dev/sda3
  6. Edit Mirror List vi /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist
  7. Install base pacstrap -i /mnt base
  8. genfstab -U -p /mnt >> /mnt/etc/fstab
  9. arch-chroot /mnt
  10. nano /etc/locale.gen
  11. echo LANG=en_GB.UTF-8 > /etc/locale.conf
  12. export LANG=en_GB.UTF-8
  13. ln -s /usr/share/zoneinfo/Europe/London /etc/localtime
  14. hwclock --systohc --utc
  15. systemctl enable dhcpcd@eth0.service
  16. passwd
  17. useradd -m -g users -G wheel,storage,power -s /bin/bash alastair
  18. passwd alastair
  19. pacman -S sudo
  20. visudo to uncomment wheel group sudo access
  21. pacman -S grub-bios
  22. grub-install --target=i386-pc --recheck /dev/sda
  23. grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg
  24. exit, unmount, reboot
  25. sudo pacman -S alsa-utils
  26. alsamixer ; speaker-test -c 2
  27. pacman -S xf86-video-vesa
  28. pacman -S xorg-server xorg-xinit xorg-server-utils xorg-twm xorg-xclock xterm
  29. sudo pacman -S ttf-dejavu
  30. pacman -S xfce4 xfce4-goodies
  31. systemctl disable fam.service
  32. pacman -Rd fam
  33. pacman -S gamin
  34. cp /etc/skel/.xinitrc ~/.xinitrc ; vi .xinitrc
  35. pacman -S openssh
  36. startx
Doodle's Geek Monkey by Alastair Montgomery
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Charity shop Batman

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"I'm Batman" http://flic.kr/p/ffVyyc, July 24, 2013 at 07:23PM

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Charity shop Batman

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"I'm Batman" http://flic.kr/p/fgaATo, July 24, 2013 at 07:23PM

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Day 116 Take a load off

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Leeds bench http://flic.kr/p/feEPLn, July 22, 2013 at 09:41PM

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Day 114 Clouds

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Clouds at Bedale. http://flic.kr/p/fd9ERt, July 20, 2013 at 06:21PM

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Day 112 City Walk

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The other office http://flic.kr/p/fc4RwB, July 18, 2013 at 06:33PM

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Day 109 Sore back

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Stuck at home with a bad back. http://flic.kr/p/f9Sn4t, July 15, 2013 at 11:16AM

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Day 102, post gym session

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Sun going down after a good gym session. http://flic.kr/p/f5uQjr, July 08, 2013 at 08:58PM

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http://flic.kr/p/f4WX1s, July 07, 2013 at 01:01PM

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http://flic.kr/p/f4Gutv, July 07, 2013 at 01:59PM

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Day 101 Pick me, pick me..

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Window shopping in Pets @ Home. http://flic.kr/p/f4W4Vh, July 07, 2013 at 04:33PM

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Day 097 Wired for sound

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One small wire protects my office sanity. http://flic.kr/p/f27kVU, July 03, 2013 at 02:34PM

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Chester Zoo Elephants 2

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Baby elephants at Chester Zoo, http://flic.kr/p/eZBEAw, June 05, 2013 at 02:39PM

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Tiny Tiny RSS

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Tiny Tiny RSS by Alastair Montgomery
Tiny Tiny RSS, a photo by Alastair Montgomery on Flickr.
Running Tiny Tiny RSS News Feed reader on my Raspberry Pi.

Setup on Lighttpd and MySQL using the instructions on http://tt-rss.org/redmine/projects/tt-rss/wiki as a replacement to Google Reader.

Working well so far.
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Day 89 X marks the spot

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Reflections this morning in Leeds http://flic.kr/p/eV6SYR, June 25, 2013 at 09:51AM

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Day 088 Clouds

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Cloudy http://flic.kr/p/eUwu2r, June 24, 2013 at 09:10PM

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1940s Day Jeeps

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Army Jeeps at 1940s Day in Valley Gardens Harrogate http://flic.kr/p/ePph32, June 16, 2013 at 02:24PM

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1940s Day Jeeps

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Army Jeeps at 1940s Day in Valley Gardens Harrogate http://flic.kr/p/ePpeN8, June 16, 2013 at 02:24PM

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1940s Day Jeeps

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Army Jeeps at 1940s Day in Valley Gardens Harrogate http://flic.kr/p/ePoATa, June 16, 2013 at 02:03PM

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1940s Day Jeeps

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Army Jeeps at 1940s Day in Valley Gardens Harrogate http://flic.kr/p/ePA3xq, June 16, 2013 at 02:03PM

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Vintage Car

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Vintage Car at the 1940s Day http://flic.kr/p/eNKQ8m, June 16, 2013 at 02:22PM

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Day 079, Ripon Market Place

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Ripon market place doing bits and pieces. http://flic.kr/p/eMJyd1, June 15, 2013 at 03:00PM

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Cheetah



Cheetah at Chester Zoo http://flic.kr/p/eLSgzZ, June 05, 2013 at 12:36PM

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Day 077, mini JD

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Early start or late finish? http://flic.kr/p/eLhu2b, June 13, 2013 at 02:37PM

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Chester



Chester building art http://flic.kr/p/eJ22dp, June 06, 2013 at 12:26PM

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Shopping center

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Chester shopping center http://flic.kr/p/eJ83GG, June 06, 2013 at 01:00PM

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Day 074, Hooked



365 Project Image via Dropbox on June 10, 2013 at 02:28PM http://flic.kr/p/eHPDLr, June 10, 2013 at 03:39PM

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Cheetah



Cheetah at Chester Zoo http://flic.kr/p/eG7AXg, June 05, 2013 at 12:37PM

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Giraffe



Giraffe at Chester Zoo http://flic.kr/p/eG7o1g, June 05, 2013 at 02:08PM

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Robin



Robin at Chester Zoo, looking for crumbs. http://flic.kr/p/eG5wDp, June 05, 2013 at 12:29PM

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Peek a boo

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Elephant at Chester Zoo http://flic.kr/p/eFF7ZU, June 05, 2013 at 04:15PM

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DSC_4456

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rock hyrax http://flic.kr/p/eFDP8A, June 05, 2013 at 11:58AM

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DSC_4470

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Painted dog http://flic.kr/p/eFDNC5, June 05, 2013 at 12:05PM

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Day 068, Nantwich

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Short tour around Nantwich. http://flic.kr/p/eCXbYW, June 04, 2013 at 07:00PM

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Day 066, lotta bottle

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Bottle sale bottle http://flic.kr/p/eAqMLt, June 02, 2013 at 12:50PM

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Day 062, Lilly

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Lilly close up. http://flic.kr/p/ewJwh8, May 29, 2013 at 11:55AM

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IMG_2298



Upload from Dropbox May 28, 2013 at 07:29PM http://flic.kr/p/evLcac, May 25, 2013 at 09:49AM

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IMG_2300



Upload from Dropbox May 28, 2013 at 07:31PM http://flic.kr/p/evLbxp, May 28, 2013 at 06:20PM

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Raspbmc



Raspberry Pi running Raspmbc. Setup with a wifi usb adapter. http://flic.kr/p/euGMkh, May 27, 2013 at 02:30PM

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Raspbmc

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Raspberry Pi running Raspmbc. Setup with a wifi usb adapter. http://flic.kr/p/euGNpE, May 27, 2013 at 02:23PM

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Raspbmc

Got my second Raspberry Pi setup as a media center with Raspbmc.
Wifi setup was painless just a case of connecting it and entering the wifi connection details.
Just need a new powered USB hub as the power supply died on the one I've got.

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Day 056, Early start sunrise



Up early for a software release, view from "home office". 365 Project Image via Dropbox on May 23, 2013 at 05:19AM http://flic.kr/p/eosrit, May 23, 2013 at 06:24AM

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Day 055, St Johns Church



365 Project Image via Dropbox on May 22, 2013 at 03:33PM Church round the corner from the office. http://flic.kr/p/enQeVi, May 22, 2013 at 04:26PM

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Day 050, AngryBirdsSpace



You have played the game, now eat the sweets. 365 Project Image via Dropbox on May 17, 2013 at 12:52PM http://flic.kr/p/ejZMpq, May 17, 2013 at 01:17PM

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DSC_4414



Upload from Dropbox May 12, 2013 at 03:59PM http://flic.kr/p/eiwZig, May 11, 2013 at 01:54PM

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Day 042, Reflections

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From when the sun was out this morning. http://flic.kr/p/ehRj2G, May 09, 2013 at 02:27PM

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Leeds

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Unprocessed images http://flic.kr/p/efXNNq, January 02, 2008 at 10:08AM

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Leeds



Unprocessed images http://flic.kr/p/efXNJL, January 03, 2008 at 01:05AM

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Leeds

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Unprocessed images http://flic.kr/p/efS3yM, January 03, 2008 at 01:12AM

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Leeds



Unprocessed images http://flic.kr/p/efS3CF, January 03, 2008 at 01:12AM

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Leeds



Unprocessed images http://flic.kr/p/efXNKU, January 01, 2008 at 10:17AM

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Leeds

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Unprocessed images http://flic.kr/p/efXNHN, January 02, 2008 at 01:16AM

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Leeds



Unprocessed images http://flic.kr/p/efXNM3, May 01, 2013 at 12:06PM

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http://flic.kr/p/eeS7Da, April 27, 2013 at 11:03AM

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http://flic.kr/p/eeSan2, April 24, 2013 at 11:58AM

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http://flic.kr/p/eeXSPw, April 26, 2013 at 09:24AM

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http://flic.kr/p/eeXVCw, April 23, 2013 at 06:19PM

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http://flic.kr/p/eeXSAG, April 26, 2013 at 08:32PM

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http://flic.kr/p/eeXTxE, April 25, 2013 at 02:18PM

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http://flic.kr/p/eeSaAc, April 24, 2013 at 06:07AM

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http://flic.kr/p/eeSb1K, April 23, 2013 at 06:19PM

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http://flic.kr/p/eeS9EZ, April 25, 2013 at 01:55PM

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Day 029, Leeds River

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Crossing the river on the way to work. http://flic.kr/p/eedxT2, April 26, 2013 at 10:38AM

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Day 023, nerd&#39;s wet dream

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£1 each in local charity shop http://flic.kr/p/ecK3qh, April 20, 2013 at 01:26PM

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Day 022, home office

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My office for the day. http://flic.kr/p/ecpiTx, April 19, 2013 at 09:19AM

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Day 021, Rear view

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We and windy http://flic.kr/p/ecofSJ, April 18, 2013 at 07:44PM

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Day 021, Rear view

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We and windy http://flic.kr/p/ecoeVf, April 18, 2013 at 07:44PM

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Raspberry Pi Media Center

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I had a quick look at the openELEC ( http://openelec.tv/)  media center for the Raspberry Pi last night using Berryboot ( http://www.berryterminal.com/doku.php/berryboot ) to install it along side Debian on my card.

Looks pretty good, lots of plugins you can install to be able to access online content like 4oD and YouTube.

Might need to buy another Pi for the front room :)


Doodle's Geek Monkey by Alastair Montgomery
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Day 017, F1 buddy

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My F1 buddy, something tells me that he's not paying attention. http://flic.kr/p/ebcsXb, April 14, 2013 at 09:58AM

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Setting up Piwigo on Raspberry Pi

Installed the gallery software Piwigo on my Raspberry Pi, screenshots below.

After installing lighttpd and MySQL5 and the other prerequisites you can install it using

sudo apt-get install piwigo

Although this is an older version, if you want the latest you'll need to go through the manual installation route which is detailed on their web page.

On my Ubuntu desktop, I did a trial run updating the version installed with apt-get using the Piwigo's internal upgrade option but this failed so might not be a viable option. More upgrade information here.

Setting Up

External access from Internet using No-Ip, you'll need to configure your router to pass HTTP requests to the Raspberry Pi.

Local network access from Ubuntu desktop.

Doodle's Geek Monkey by Alastair Montgomery
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Day 12, no where fast

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Sometimes you go nowhere fast. http://flic.kr/p/e9TJcH, April 09, 2013 at 10:13AM

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Day 11, Web based

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Web based email client, not happy. http://flic.kr/p/e9GUXY, April 08, 2013 at 10:10AM

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Day 10, coffee time

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It's good to have a vice http://flic.kr/p/e9jh8R, April 07, 2013 at 10:44AM

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Day 7, Yellow Boxes



Yellow Boxes, something most drivers don't know how to deal with it seems. http://flic.kr/p/e8CxQ7, April 04, 2013 at 09:42AM

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Day 4, Kia

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Waiting in the car http://flic.kr/p/e7PjfL, April 01, 2013 at 12:05PM

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Day 2, salt and pepper

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Lunch out in North Allerton http://flic.kr/p/e7egYY, March 30, 2013 at 11:39AM

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Ruby Script to send Twitter mentions over serial port

Short script to send Twitter mention messages to a serial port using Ruby and the gems twitter and serialport.

# Find your Twitter Mentions and send them to Arduino on Serial Port

require “rubygems”
require “twitter” #https://github.com/sferik/twitter for config details
require “serialport” #http://rubygems.org/gems/serialport
require “pp”


prevID = 0
puts “Setting Up Serial Port”
myport = SerialPort.new("/dev/ttyACM0",“9600”.to_i)
sleep(10)
while true
puts “Checking for mentions”
latestMention = Twitter.mentions(:count => 1)[0]
if prevID != latestMention.id
msg = latestMention.user.screen_name + " " + latestMention.text
puts “-” + msg
bytes = myport.write(msg)
puts “-” + bytes.to_s
prevID = latestMention.id
else
puts “-No new updates”
end
sleep 60
end
myport.close

Doodle’s Geek Monkey by Alastair Montgomery

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Arduino LCD Message Scroller working

Got my Arduino LCD message scroller working last night, will post a video later when I do an end to end test with my Twitter mentions.

Here is the code (also at GitHub https://github.com/alastairhm/arduino.git)

// Auto scroll a message on the LCD and receive new messages via Serial port.
// Alastair Montgomery (c) 2013
// Version 1.02
 
// include the library code:
#include <LiquidCrystal.h>
#include <string.h>

// initialize the library with the numbers of the interface pins
// below for SainSmart LCD Shield
LiquidCrystal lcd(8, 9, 4, 5, 6, 7);
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Some Debug Required

First test of Twitter updates getting written to the Arduino from Ruby didn't go quite right as seen from the video below, some debugging required.

Testing writing the same message from the Arduino IDE gives the same results so looks like problem is in the Arduino code. Maybe the message is too long for the LCD's buffer?



The Twitter to Serial port Ruby script can be found at https://github.com/alastairhm/arduino/tree/master/SerialMessage

Doodle's Geek Monkey by Alastair Montgomery
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Ruby Script to get Twitter mentions

Here is a short Ruby script to check for mentions on Twitter, it uses the Twitter Gem.
Plan to use this to send messages to my Arduino, looking for a good Ruby Serial Port Gem now.
 
 
# Find your Twitter Mentions

require “rubygems”
require “twitter” #https://github.com/sferik/twitter for config details
require “pp”


prevID = 0
while true
latestMention = Twitter.mentions(:count => 1)[0]
if prevID != latestMention.id
msg = latestMention.user.screen_name + " " + latestMention.text
#puts msg.size
puts msg
prevID = latestMention.id
else
puts “No new updates”
end
sleep 60
end
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Sending Arduino messages over serial port

Note: 1 of this post’s 6 links are now broken — mostly dead 2008–2013 feed-syndication infrastructure (FeedBurner, Gawker, AOL’s old blog network, Pheedo, Yahoo Pipes). Left as originally published.

Video of sending a message to the Arduino over the serial port which then gets scrolled on a SainSmart LCD shield.

 Idea was to use it to display tweets, just need to write the Ruby code to get the tweet and send it over the serial port now.


Here is the first version of the sketch uploaded to the Arduino.
All code can be found at https://github.com/alastairhm/arduino.git

 




// Auto scroll a message on the LCD and receive new messages via Serial port.
// Alastair Montgomery (c) 2013
// Version 1.00
 
// include the library code:
#include <LiquidCrystal.h>
#include <string.h>

// initialize the library with the numbers of the interface pins
// below for SainSmart LCD Shield
LiquidCrystal lcd(8, 9, 4, 5, 6, 7);
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Sainsmart LCD Shield Test

Testing my Sainsmart LCD Shield.



/*
  LiquidCrystal Library - Hello World
 
 Demonstrates the use a 16x2 LCD display.  The LiquidCrystal
 library works with all LCD displays that are compatible with the 
 Hitachi HD44780 driver. There are many of them out there, and you
 can usually tell them by the 16-pin interface.
 
 This sketch prints "Hello World!" to the LCD
 and shows the time.
 
  The circuit:
 * LCD RS pin to digital pin 12
 * LCD Enable pin to digital pin 11
 * LCD D4 pin to digital pin 5
 * LCD D5 pin to digital pin 4
 * LCD D6 pin to digital pin 3
 * LCD D7 pin to digital pin 2
 * LCD R/W pin to ground
 * 10K resistor:
 * ends to +5V and ground
 * wiper to LCD VO pin (pin 3)
 
 Library originally added 18 Apr 2008
 by David A. Mellis
 library modified 5 Jul 2009
 by Limor Fried (http://www.ladyada.net)
 example added 9 Jul 2009
 by Tom Igoe
 modified 22 Nov 2010
 by Tom Igoe
 
 This example code is in the public domain.

 http://www.arduino.cc/en/Tutorial/LiquidCrystal
 */


// include the library code:
#include <LiquidCrystal.h>


// initialize the library with the numbers of the interface pins
//LiquidCrystal lcd(12, 11, 5, 4, 3, 2);
LiquidCrystal lcd(8, 9, 4, 5, 6, 7);
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Green power



View of wind turbine from Madejski Hotel Reading http://flic.kr/p/e19ZxW, February 13, 2013 at 08:08AM

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Creating a Ruby/ Sinatra dev environment

Note: 1 of this post’s 8 links are now broken — mostly dead 2008–2013 feed-syndication infrastructure (FeedBurner, Gawker, AOL’s old blog network, Pheedo, Yahoo Pipes). Left as originally published.

To work my way through the book Cloning Internet Applications with Ruby I've created a development environment using Vagrant and Puppet.

You will need the following installed;

VirtualBox VM https://www.virtualbox.org/
Vagrant http://www.vagrantup.com/

These pages are also helpful
http://net.tutsplus.com/tutorials/php/vagrant-what-why-and-how/
http://titusd.co.uk/2010/04/07/a-beginners-sinatra-tutorial/

You can see my setup files at https://github.com/alastairhm/vagrant.git

Doodle's Geek Monkey by Alastair Montgomery
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Quarry Moor nature park

Note: the only link in this post is now broken. Left as originally published.



Dog walking yesterday http://flic.kr/p/dLrnBc, January 14, 2013 at 10:22AM

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Mystery pie

Note: the only link in this post is now broken. Left as originally published.



Taste of my youth, mystery meat Scottish pie. http://flic.kr/p/dKPS3i, January 12, 2013 at 01:12PM

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Refuel #coffee

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Refuel #coffee via Instagram instagr.am/p/SydkraN-i-/ December 03, 2012 at 08:52PM http://flic.kr/p/dyhwhg, December 03, 2012 at 08:53PM

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Dog walk 5

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Dog walk 5 via Instagram instagr.am/p/SvAIEjt-kU/ December 02, 2012 at 12:37PM http://flic.kr/p/dxSh7H, December 02, 2012 at 12:39PM

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Dog walk 2

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Dog walk 2 via Instagram instagr.am/p/Su8Yjct-iw/ December 02, 2012 at 12:04PM http://flic.kr/p/dxRXjT, December 02, 2012 at 12:05PM

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Counting up to 1023

Decided in the end to wire up all 10 LEDS in the LED bar graph.
Using the sketch below get the results shown in the video.



int numLed = 10;
int ledpins[] = {
  13,12,11,10,9,8,7,6,5,4};
int mask[] = {
  1,2,4,8,16,32,64,128,256,512};
int counter = 0;

void setup() {             

  // initialize the digital pin as an output.
  for (int i=0;i<numLed;i++){
    pinMode(ledpins[i], OUTPUT);
    digitalWrite(ledpins[i], HIGH);
    delay(250);
  }
}
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Arduino Binary second counter

Next step with my Arduino is to set up a binary second counter.
Basic using the LED Bar Graph or six single LEDs to count seconds in binary




/*
Binary Second Counter
 
 Created Alastair Montgomery 22/11/2012
 
 */

int ledPins[] = {
  7,8,9,10,11,12};
int mask[] = {
  1,2,4,8,16,32};
int ledCount = 6;


void setup() {
  for (int thisPin =0; thisPin < ledCount; thisPin++) {
    pinMode(ledPins[thisPin], OUTPUT);
  }
}
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Sanity Checking my new Arduino Uno Board

Quick sanity check of my new Arduino board using a LED Bar Graph.



Here is the sketch I will be using.

int led1 = 8;
int led2 = 9;
int counter = 0;

void setup() {             

  // initialize the digital pin as an output.
  pinMode(led1, OUTPUT);
  pinMode(led2, OUTPUT);

}


void loop() {


  if (counter & 1) {
    digitalWrite(led1, HIGH);
  }
  else {
    digitalWrite(led1, LOW);
  }
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Leeds lights

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Leeds lights via Instagram instagr.am/p/RxqKC9N-ra/ November 08, 2012 at 04:51PM http://flic.kr/p/drHbyE, November 08, 2012 at 05:19PM

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Ripon Clock Tower

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Ripon Clock Tower via Instagram instagr.am/p/RnVB97t-pU/ November 04, 2012 at 04:34PM http://flic.kr/p/dqz8qn, November 04, 2012 at 04:35PM

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Free mug at #Starbucks this morning for some reason

Note: 1 of this post’s 2 links is now broken — mostly deleted or made-private Flickr photos, dead Flickr farmN subdomains, and defunct feed-syndication infrastructure. Left as originally published.



Free mug at #Starbucks this morning for some reason via Instagram instagr.am/p/RexXd-t-qX/ November 01, 2012 at 08:49AM http://flic.kr/p/dpEubH, November 01, 2012 at 08:50AM

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Bulls, no walking dog through that field then

Note: 1 of this post’s 2 links is now broken — mostly deleted or made-private Flickr photos, dead Flickr farmN subdomains, and defunct feed-syndication infrastructure. Left as originally published.



Bulls, no walking dog through that field then via Instagram instagr.am/p/RUv1Uft-gz/ October 28, 2012 at 11:23AM http://flic.kr/p/dotjwr, October 28, 2012 at 11:23AM

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Moth other side

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Moth other side via Instagram instagr.am/p/RNQG1Vt-m-/ October 25, 2012 at 02:31PM http://flic.kr/p/dnHRFQ, October 25, 2012 at 04:17PM

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Happy cat

Note: 1 of this post’s 2 links is now broken — mostly deleted or made-private Flickr photos, dead Flickr farmN subdomains, and defunct feed-syndication infrastructure. Left as originally published.



Happy cat via Instagram instagr.am/p/RIyaIit-rR/ October 23, 2012 at 08:55PM http://flic.kr/p/dngZ99, October 23, 2012 at 10:29PM

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Using Ruby to send commands over SSH


Doing a lot of work on remote Linux servers lately, lots of login in over SSH running commands logging out.

So wrote this simple script to use Ruby to send a single command or a file of commands to a Linux server over SSH. Needs some error trapping etc but functional at the moment.

It requires the Ruby Gem net-ssh installed.

#!/usr/bin/ruby
require 'rubygems'
require 'net/ssh'
require 'optparse'

 opts = OptionParser.new
opts.on("-h HOSTNAME", "--hostname NAME", String, "Hostname of Server") { |v| @hostname = v }
opts.on("-u SSH USERNAME", "--username SSH USERNAME", String, "SSH Username of Server") { |v| @username = v }
opts.on("-p SSH PASSWORD", "--password SSH PASSWORD", String, "SSH Password of Server") { |v| @password = v }
opts.on("-c SHELL_COMMAND", "--command SHELL_COMMAND", String, "Shell Command to Execute") { |v| @cmd = v }
opts.on("-f FILE_COMMAND", "--command FILE_COMMAND", String, "File containing shell Commands to Execute") { |v| @fileCmd = v }
begin
  opts.parse!(ARGV)
rescue OptionParser::ParseError => e
  puts e
end
raise OptionParser::MissingArgument, "Hostname [-h]" if @hostname.nil?
raise OptionParser::MissingArgument, "SSH Username [-u]" if @username.nil?
raise OptionParser::MissingArgument, "SSH Password [-p]" if @password.nil?
raise OptionParser::MissingArgument, "Command to Execute [-c/-f]" if @cmd.nil? and @fileCmd.nil?

 begin
    ssh = Net::SSH.start(@hostname, @username, :password => @password)
    if @cmd != nil then
        ssh.exec!(@cmd) do |ch, stream, data|
          if stream == :stderr
              puts "ERROR: #{data}"
          else
              puts data
          end
        end
    else
    puts "Processing file #{@fileCmd}"
    file = File.new(@fileCmd, "r")  
    file.each {|line| 
        ssh.exec!(line) do |ch, stream, data|
          if stream == :stderr
              puts "ERROR: #{data}"
          else
              puts data
          end
        end
        }
    file.close
    end
    ssh.close
rescue Exception => e
    puts "Unable to connect to #{@hostname} using #{@username}/#{@password}"
    puts e
end


Doodle's Geek Monkey by Alastair Montgomery
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Fountains Abbey

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Fountains Abbey via Instagram instagr.am/p/RBVFaBN-iW/ October 20, 2012 at 11:24PM http://flic.kr/p/dmn227, October 21, 2012 at 12:24AM

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Ripon Sun Rise



Upload from Dropbox October 05, 2012 at 01:16PM http://flic.kr/p/dgVgKs, October 05, 2012 at 02:23PM

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Old Van

Note: 1 of this post’s 3 links is now broken — mostly deleted or made-private Flickr photos, dead Flickr farmN subdomains, and defunct feed-syndication infrastructure. Left as originally published.


Old Van
Originally uploaded by Alastair Montgomery

Via Flickr:
Old van seen when out walking the dog.

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Blackpool bokeh

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Blackpool bokeh
Originally uploaded by Alastair Montgomery

Blackpool illuminations 2012

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Drift wood

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Drift wood
Originally uploaded by Alastair Montgomery

Driftwood at Thornton-cleveleys beach.

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From the tower

Note: 2 of this post’s 3 links are now broken — mostly deleted or made-private Flickr photos, dead Flickr farmN subdomains, and defunct feed-syndication infrastructure. Left as originally published.


From the tower
Originally uploaded by Alastair Montgomery

Fake tilt & shift shot from Blackpool Tower.

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Funny papers

Note: 1 of this post’s 3 links is now broken — mostly deleted or made-private Flickr photos, dead Flickr farmN subdomains, and defunct feed-syndication infrastructure. Left as originally published.


Funny papers
Originally uploaded by Alastair Montgomery

Blackpool seafront

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Winter sun face

Note: 2 of this post’s 3 links are now broken — mostly deleted or made-private Flickr photos, dead Flickr farmN subdomains, and defunct feed-syndication infrastructure. Left as originally published.


Winter sun face
Originally uploaded by Alastair Montgomery

Blackpool illuminations 2012

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reflections

Note: 2 of this post’s 3 links are now broken — mostly deleted or made-private Flickr photos, dead Flickr farmN subdomains, and defunct feed-syndication infrastructure. Left as originally published.


reflections
Originally uploaded by Alastair Montgomery

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Raspberry Pi SD Card problems

Raspberry Cry

Was going to fire up my Raspberry Pi for the first time yesterday but had issues creating boot SD card for it on Windows 7. As you can see here from my post at the Pi Forum.

Looks like it was either problems with my desktop or the SD Card reader I was using as it was getting write errors when using the two Windows methods of creating the boot image.

Hopefully I can get the SD card reformat with GParted so I can try again, most annoying that I tripped up at the first hurdle.

Doodle's Geek Monkey by Alastair Montgomery
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Refuelled

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Refuelled
Originally uploaded by Alastair Montgomery

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Bunny Droid

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Bunny Droid
Originally uploaded by Alastair Montgomery

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Dream machine

Note: all 2 links in this post are now broken. Left as originally published.

199991819

My dream machine, if only.
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Felix

Note: all 2 links in this post are now broken. Left as originally published.

-877363457

Felix the cat
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Wall moss

Note: all 2 links in this post are now broken. Left as originally published.

578030746

From dog walk yesterday
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Android

Note: all 2 links in this post are now broken. Left as originally published.

-1147353133

Android snap
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Wilson

Note: all 2 links in this post are now broken. Left as originally published.

379186678

I want a walk look
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Gibraltar

Note: all 2 links in this post are now broken. Left as originally published.

-303049779

Nice view heading to the bar.
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Dogs

Note: 2 of this post’s 3 links are now broken — mostly deleted or made-private Flickr photos, dead Flickr farmN subdomains, and defunct feed-syndication infrastructure. Left as originally published.


Dogs
Originally uploaded by Alastair Montgomery

What you looking at?

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Dogs

Note: 1 of this post’s 3 links is now broken — mostly deleted or made-private Flickr photos, dead Flickr farmN subdomains, and defunct feed-syndication infrastructure. Left as originally published.


Dogs
Originally uploaded by Alastair Montgomery

Crazy Dotty

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Gibraltar

Note: 2 of this post’s 3 links are now broken — mostly deleted or made-private Flickr photos, dead Flickr farmN subdomains, and defunct feed-syndication infrastructure. Left as originally published.


Gibraltar
Originally uploaded by Alastair Montgomery

View from my hotel room in Gibraltar

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Car frost

Note: 1 of this post’s 3 links is now broken — mostly deleted or made-private Flickr photos, dead Flickr farmN subdomains, and defunct feed-syndication infrastructure. Left as originally published.


Car frost
Originally uploaded by Alastair Montgomery

Car frost

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Reflections

Note: 1 of this post’s 3 links is now broken — mostly deleted or made-private Flickr photos, dead Flickr farmN subdomains, and defunct feed-syndication infrastructure. Left as originally published.


Reflections
Originally uploaded by Alastair Montgomery

Reflections

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Office Pond

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Office Pond
Originally uploaded by Alastair Montgomery

Via Flickr:
Pond at our new office building

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Lemur pick pocket

Note: 1 of this post’s 3 links is now broken — mostly deleted or made-private Flickr photos, dead Flickr farmN subdomains, and defunct feed-syndication infrastructure. Left as originally published.


Lemur pick pocket
Originally uploaded by Alastair Montgomery

Via Flickr:
Lemur pick pocket at North Yorkshire Wildlife Park.

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Problems running Firefox 5 from watir-webdriver on Mac OS 10.5

Finally decided it was time to update my watir-webdriver development environment to the latest version of Firefox. I have been happily using Firefox 3.6.19 on my 64bit Intel Mac 10.5 and yesterday made the jump to Firefox 5.

To my horror there is a bug in Firefox 4 and 5 which causes problems when attempting to start Firefox from the command line (basically what watir-webdriver does).

Thankfully with the help of Jarib Bakken I was able to use the workaround detailed on this blog post.

The work around is to strip the x86_64 part from firefox-bin using ditto:

cd /Applications/Firefox.app/Contents/MacOS
mv firefox-bin firefox-bin.original
ditto --arch i386 firefox-bin.original firefox-bin 

This will solve the problem until we can upgrade to a later version of Mac Os.

Doodle's Geek Monkey by Alastair Montgomery
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Ruby and RSS

Note: 1 of this post’s 4 links are now broken — mostly dead 2008–2013 feed-syndication infrastructure (FeedBurner, Gawker, AOL’s old blog network, Pheedo, Yahoo Pipes). Left as originally published.

Started looking into access RSS from Ruby discovered it pretty much already built in as described in this article Consuming RSS Feeds with Ruby, full docs are available in the Ruby Standard Library.

Accessing an RSS Feed is as simple as the following code snippet.

require "rss"
rss_feed = "http://meekgonkey.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?alt=rss"
rss_content = ""
open(rss_feed) { |f|
rss_content = f.read
}
puts "Bytes read #{rss_content.length} from feed"
rss = RSS::Parser.parse(rss_content,false)
puts "Title: #{rss.channel.title}"
puts "RSS URL: #{rss.channel.link}"
puts "Total entries: #{rss.items.size}"
rss.items.each { |item|
puts item.title
puts item.link
puts item.date
puts "---"
}

Which when run produces something along the lines of;
Bytes read 115009 from feed
Title: Geek Monkey
RSS URL: http://meekgonkey.blogspot.com/
Total entries: 25
Twitter from Ruby
http://meekgonkey.blogspot.com/2011/07/twitter-from-ruby.html
Thu, 21 Jul 2011 13:20:00 +0100
---
Github
http://meekgonkey.blogspot.com/2011/07/github.html
Mon, 18 Jul 2011 13:59:00 +0100
---
Google Plus
http://meekgonkey.blogspot.com/2011/07/google-plus.html
Fri, 01 Jul 2011 10:50:00 +0100
---
WATIR makes a tester's life easier.
http://meekgonkey.blogspot.com/2011/06/watir-makes-testers-life-easier.html
Wed, 29 Jun 2011 14:36:00 +0100
---
Setting browser size and position with watir-webdriver
http://meekgonkey.blogspot.com/2011/06/setting-browser-size-and-position-with.html
Thu, 23 Jun 2011 09:22:00 +0100
---




Doodle's Geek Monkey by Alastair Montgomery
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US Army Jeep Detail

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US Army Jeep Detail

Via Flickr:
US Army Jeep detail, taken at the Wath Street Fair 2011


Available as a post card.
US Army Jeep postcard
US Army Jeep by doodle_m
Shop for another postcard design from Zazzle
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Studley Royal, Near Ripon

Note: 12 of this post’s 22 links are now broken — mostly deleted or made-private Flickr photos, dead Flickr farmN subdomains, and defunct feed-syndication infrastructure. Left as originally published.

A few photographs from a recent dog walk round Studley Royal near Ripon.

Studley Royal

IMAG0332

IMAG0331

IMAG0328

IMAG0327

IMAG0330

IMAG0333

IMAG0334


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Getting in close

Note: 6 of this post’s 12 links are now broken — mostly deleted or made-private Flickr photos, dead Flickr farmN subdomains, and defunct feed-syndication infrastructure. Left as originally published.

Some result of playing with my +4 macro filter.

Jelly Babies
Jelly Babies

Fruit and Nuts
Nuts and Fruit

Orange Lily Macro
Lily Macro

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Android Argus

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Log 2

Note: 1 of this post’s 3 links is now broken — mostly deleted or made-private Flickr photos, dead Flickr farmN subdomains, and defunct feed-syndication infrastructure. Left as originally published.


Log 2
Originally uploaded by Alastair Montgomery

Via Flickr:
Close up of a log seen during walking the dog in Ripon.

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Converting scripts from Watir to Webdriver, Table size


I am starting the process of converting my WATIR scripts to use WATIR webdriver.
There a couple of table methods I was using in my WATIR scripts to check the size (rows and columns) of a HTML table.
myTable.row_count
myTable.column_count
These methods don't exist in webdriver so I was looking for a good way of doing the same check.
For rows this seems to give the same result as the row_count method
myTable.rows.length
For column count of the table I've tried converting the table to an array of strings and getting the length of the first row, but the conversion to the string array is taking a while.
myCols = myTable.strings[0].length
After asking the question on StackOverFlow the solution to find the number of columns in the table was to use;
myCols = myTable.row.cells.length
This assumes that the first row has the correct number of columns, which in our application should always be the case.

To avoid rewriting all the unit tests I've extended the Watir::Table class at the start of the script so that it contains the missing row_count and column_count methods.


class Watir::Table
    def row_count
        return self.rows.length
    end
    def column_count
        return self.row.cells.length
    end
end

The unit tests now run unaltered.

If your table has a uniform number of columns for each row then you could check the whole table by doing something like.


        myTable.rows.each { |myRow|
            myCols = myRow.cells.length
            assert_equal(validColumnCount,myCols,"Column count mismatch")
        }




Doodle's Geek Monkey by Alastair Montgomery
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Tide marks

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Tide marks

Via Flickr:
High tide marks in my coffee cup.

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Mazda RX8

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Mazda RX8
Originally uploaded by Alastair Montgomery

The car to buy when you are having your mid-life crises?

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White Indian Tiger

Note: 8 of this post’s 13 links are now broken — mostly deleted or made-private Flickr photos, dead Flickr farmN subdomains, and defunct feed-syndication infrastructure. Left as originally published.

White Tiger at a park near Bangalore.

White Tiger Orton Effect

This has the Orton Effect applied the original image can be seen below
DSC_2741

Buy this picture White Tiger Postcard or White Tiger T-shirt

Alastair Montgomery’s Photography

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York Pictures

Note: 10 of this post’s 18 links are now broken — mostly deleted or made-private Flickr photos, dead Flickr farmN subdomains, and defunct feed-syndication infrastructure. Left as originally published.

Pictures from my recent trips to York. Flattr this

Woolly Hats
Wooly Hats

Flower sale
Flower market

Having Lunch
Having Lunch

Minster View
Minster View Sepia

York Station
York Station

Alastair Montgomery’s Photography

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FxCamera App

The iPhone guys at work have been talking about a retro camera app for their phones, so I’ve decided to look at what’s available for the Android platform.

The second one I’ve checked out is Fx Camera


FxCamera enables you to take a picture with various effects,

  • ToyCam (number of colour mode and vignetting settings available with randomizer)
  • Polandroid (number of colour mode and film type settings available)
  • Fisheye
  • SymmetriCam
  • Warhol
  • Normal
It works quite well for the ToyCam and Polandroid but the other three modes are more of a novelty than something you’d use all the time. Downside it has a maximum picture resolution of 960 by 640 pixels. It is 1524kb in size and can be moved to the SD card.

Toy Cam Examples
Salt and pepper
In case of fire
FxCam_1297760008932

Polandroid Examples
FxCam_1297785164077
FxCam_1297797110700

SymmetriCam Example
FxCam_1297797504909

Doodle’s Geek Monkey by Alastair Montgomery

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Retro Camera App Android

The iPhone guys at work have been talking about a retro camera app for their phones, so I’ve decided to look at what’s available for the Android platform.

The first one I’ve checked out is Retro Camera


The free ad supported version gives you five retro camera types to play with, see example shots below. The application is a fairly chunky 6179 kb but can be moved to the SD card. It has a novel interface which replicates the retro camera but this reduces the viewfinder size which can be a problem.

shot_1297759851285
shot_1297759831165
shot_1297759809485
shot_1297759726138
shot_1297759684747

Doodle’s Geek Monkey by Alastair Montgomery

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Retro Camera App for Android

Note: 8 of this post’s 19 links are now broken — mostly deleted or made-private Flickr photos, dead Flickr farmN subdomains, and defunct feed-syndication infrastructure. Left as originally published.

The iPhone guys at work have been talking about a retro camera app for their phones, so I’ve decided to look at what’s available for the Android platform.

The first one I’ve checked out is Retro Camera


The free ad supported version gives you five retro camera types to play with, see example shots below. The application is a fairly chunky 6179 kb but can be moved to the SD card. It has a novel interface which replicates the retro camera but this reduces the viewfinder size which can be a problem.

shot_1297759851285
shot_1297759831165
shot_1297759809485
shot_1297759726138
shot_1297759684747


Alastair Montgomery’s Photography

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Dog Walk 30th Jan 2011

Note: 10 of this post’s 17 links are now broken — mostly deleted or made-private Flickr photos, dead Flickr farmN subdomains, and defunct feed-syndication infrastructure. Left as originally published.

Walked the dog around the sights of Ripon, he was more interested in the ducks than anything else.

Ripon Ducks
Dissapointed Ducks, no bread.

Ripon Riverside
Riverside path

Ripon Cathedral
Ripon Cathedral

Ripon Cathedral
Ripon Cathedral

Ripon Spa Gardens
Ripon Spa Gardens

Alastair Montgomery’s Photography

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Christmas Dog Walks

Note: 7 of this post’s 12 links are now broken — mostly deleted or made-private Flickr photos, dead Flickr farmN subdomains, and defunct feed-syndication infrastructure. Left as originally published.

Some pictures from dragging the dog out in the cold over the Christmas period.
IMAG0198

IMAG0207

IMAG0208

Alastair Montgomery’s Photography

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Snowy Rusty Sign

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A couple of shots of the snow covered rusty sign at Henshaws in Knareborough.

Snowy Rusty

Snowy Rusty 2

Alastair Montgomery’s Photography

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Coffee break

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Coffee and scone

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Pretties

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Rachel's hard at work with beads.

Cheesy bread

Nom nom nom

Sleeping dog.

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Iron Man 2

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Tonight's viewing

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Pill popper

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Lots of vitamins.

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Linux Mint 10

Installing Linux Mint 10 (Julia) on a VirtualBox VM with BTRFS filesystem.
Using the release candidate 1 CD

Initial install disk
Linux Mint 10 Install Disk

Hard disk configuration
You have choose the advanced disk setup to create a small boot partition of either ext3 or 4 and a larger BTRFS partition.
Linux Mint 10 Drive Setup

Post Install
Post install after enabling the VirtualBox tools as detailed here.
Linux Mint 10 Post Install

Installing Websphere 7
Linux Mint 10, Installing WebSphere 7
Installing WebSphere 7 on Linux Mint 10, make sure the /bin/sh is
linked to bash not dash before you start.
Linux Mint 10, Installing WebSphere 7

Doodle’s Geek Monkey by Alastair Montgomery

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Got his spot

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Wilson has reserved his winter spot.

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Wilson

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Wilson

Wilson

Wilson

Wilson

Wilson

Wilson

Tired dog

Lots of ball chasing

Doggy nose

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Earrings

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At Henshaws

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Tweet

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I tweet too dam much!

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Wilson

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Dog

Sleeping dog

Rainy gym day

Channel 6

Mouse

Beer

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Recent Flickr Shots

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Bikes, boots and barkers

Mod Mirrors

Red Sky At Night

On The Beach

Alastair Montgomery’s Photography

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Ubuntu 10.10 RC


Ubuntu 10.10 RC
Originally uploaded by Alastair Montgomery
The Ubuntu 10.10 release candidate running on VirtualBox.

Need to work out how to install the guest additions so I can get a proper screen resolution.

Found a solution,

Solution to VirtualBox guest problem
1. Open terminal and enter the following command:
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install build-essential linux-headers-$(uname -r)
sudo apt-get install virtualbox-ose-guest-x11
2. Once installation is finished, restart your virtualBox machine.
3. Go to System -->Preferences -->Monitors and change the resolution of your screen.

Ubuntu 10.10 Release Candidate
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Tortoise

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Tortoises
Originally uploaded by Alastair Montgomery

Slow and steady?

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Saltburn Cliff Lift

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Saltburn Cliff Lift
Originally uploaded by Alastair Montgomery

Detail of the stained glass in the cliff lift at Saltburn-by-the-sea

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On the Bench

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On the Bench
Originally uploaded by Alastair Montgomery

Seaside bench at Saltburn-by-the-sea

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Pile of Pigs

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Pile of Pigs
Originally uploaded by Alastair Montgomery

Bacon in the making? ;)

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Old Bentley

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Old Bentley
Originally uploaded by Alastair Montgomery

Taken with my HTC Desire

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Hanging on

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Hanging on
Originally uploaded by Alastair Montgomery

Toft Gate Lime Kiln

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Experiments in HDR

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Here is my first real attempt at an HDR image, taken from three shot with a 1.3+- exposure bracketing.
The foreground is a bit blurry as the wind was moving the plants and I wasn’t using a tripod, notes for next time.

Ripon Sunset HDR


  • After converting from the RAW files I arranged the three images as separate layers in Photoshop.
  • The layers where arranged as +1.3 exposure,normal,-1.3.
  • Then I added layer masks to the top two layers.
  • Painting on the top layer mask I removed the “burnt out” sections from the top layers so the correctly exposed section from the layer below showed through.
  • I repeated this again on the second layer.
  • I ran a low Gaussian blur on the layer masks to soften the edges of the masks to reduce the halo effect.
  • Then I merge each layer into the one below to create the finished image.


Alastair Montgomery’s Photography

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Lilly

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Lilly
Originally uploaded by Alastair Montgomery

From our front garden

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Experiments in Photoshop

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Been playing with this tutorial in Photoshop, using Dragan and David Hill Effects

Here is the before


and the after
DSC_0905p

Alastair Montgomery’s Photography

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Life with an HTC Desire part 3

Applications


Having more fun with apps, couple of my current time wasters are,

A collaborative, evolutionary-drawing app, the hook is that you can upload your doodles to the web and other people modify them. Some examples can be seen on their website at http://superfiretruck.com/sketchabit/ surprisingly you don’t see too many “adult” doodles.

Fractoid
Generates fractal images. Pinch zooming works well on the HTC Desire and the 1GHz snapdragon renders the images at an acceptable speed. Examples of the image can be seen on this Flickr group

Simple but addictive tilt control game

Problems

Couple of issues I’ve noticed with the phone, battery life, with everything turned on (wifi, gps, etc) I seem to be getting around a days use out of the battery when I’m using apps a lot. Take a bit of getting used to since my old phone used to last a couple of days, guess price you pay.

The SD Card becomes unusable, this seems to be a common issue with the HTC Desire, a co-worker has the same problem and its mentioned around the web a lot.
A simple reboot of the phone brings it back to life, according to HTC I should back up the data and reformat the SD card to solve the problem, not tried it yet.

I got round to installing the Android SDK and went through the classic “Hello World” app tutorial, step one done :)

1. Install Android SDK
2. Write Killer app
3. Profit!!!


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Puppy Linux 5


Puppy Linux 5
Originally uploaded by Alastair Montgomery
The new Puppy Linux 5, showing the browser selection screen for easy install of your favorite browser.

So far it seems as quick as previous version running on a VM, need to try it with older hardware at home.
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Rusty Pipes

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Pipes
Duo Tone Pipes

A couple of shots of some rusty pipes at York University Science Park




Buy postcard




Alastair Montgomery's PhotographyMain Page,My Shop at Zazzle Follow me at @alastair_hmIn association with Zazzle.com

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Easy flickr uploads with Postr

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A must for every Flickr Linux user.


via gHacks technology news by Jack Wallen on 5/12/10

For those that use Flckr, it’s always easiest when you have a simple tool that allows quick and painless file uploading. Although logging onto the web site and using the built-in Flickr uploader isn’t difficult, when you have a number of images, or when you upload frequently, this can be a real hassle. So having a stand-alone tool for this purpose is always nice. There are plenty of these tools for the Windows desktop. But what about Linux? You bet there are. There are Flickr uploaders for KDE for GNOME and everything in between.

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Weeds on wall

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Weeds on wall
Originally uploaded by Alastair Montgomery

Weeds and moss growing on a church yard wall



Alastair Montgomery’s PhotographyMain Page,My Shop at Zazzle Follow me at @alastair_hmIn association with Zazzle.com

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Bramble Bokeh

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Bramble on wall, Bokeh

A Bokeh style picture of a bramble shoot growing on a church yard wall in York.

Buy this picture in various formats


Buy art


Alastair Montgomery's PhotographyMain Page,My Shop at Zazzle Follow me at @alastair_hmIn association with Zazzle.com

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Photographs taken with my HTC Desire

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Here are some photographs taken with my HTC Desire






BMW
Sleeping dog
Sky high
Objects may appear closer.
Heslington Church
IMAG0004


Alastair Montgomery’s PhotographyMain Page,My Shop at Zazzle Follow me at @alastair_hmIn association with Zazzle.com

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Life with an HTC Desire part 2

Time rolls on and I’m getting used to finding my way around my HTC Desire.

I’m still trying out lots of apps, for this site http://www.appbrain.com which helps you keep track of the apps you’ve got on your phone. You download an app for your phone and it syncs your apps to the website, suggests other apps you might like etc. Useful so far.


Here is what I’ve got on my phone at the moment


Doodle’s Geek Monkey by Alastair Montgomery

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Life with a HTC Desire Part 1 Apps

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On Tuesday of this week I upgraded my mobile phone to an Android handset. After a long drawn out process of reading reviews and getting peoples advice from Twitter etc I finally decided on an HTC Desire.

I am amazed with the phone and have hardly been able to drag myself away from the handset.

Thing I like the most is the seamless integration with my Google accounts for email, contacts and calendar syncing. I think it is going to make me much more organized.

I’ve been busy trying out application since I got the phone and here are is a list of the ones I’ve found useful so far.

Aldiko is an ebook reading application that runs on any Android phone and which enables you to easily download and read thousands of books right on your smartphone.

Scan barcodes on CDs, books, and other products, then look up prices and reviews, or search for a word in a book and find where it occurs. You can also scan QR Codes containing URLs, contact info, calendar events, and more

The only battery application that tells you how much time is left on your battery.

Jamendo Free Music Streaming
Easily browse through 20,000 albums by 9500 artists, thanks to an elegant and ergonomic interface. All of Jamendo’s main features, such as free download of all the tracks, playlist creation, access to album reviews and managing favorites, are of course integrated. Carry the best of jamendo in your pocket!

Your personal radio station on your phone: Choose an artist or genre and Last.fm builds the perfect playlist just for you, fresh every time, featuring your favorites and new discoveries powered by millions of Last.fm users sharing the music they love. You can skip any song and find out about concerts, too.

My Tracks is an application for your AndroidTM phone that enables you to record GPS tracks and view live statistics – such as time, speed, distance, and elevation – while hiking, biking, running or participating in other outdoor activities. Once recorded, you can share your tracks, upload them to Google Spreadsheets and visualize them on Google My Maps.

Perfect your pictures with the Photoshop.com Mobile App on your Android phone. Simply drag your finger to crop, adjust color, apply effects—you name it.

twidroid is the industry-standard twitter client for android, the only one I’ve found so far with list support.

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Bread

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Picture of my homemade bread

You can see the recipe I use here.

Bread Monster Mrk 3 number 3

Alastair Montgomery's Photography
Main Page,
My Shop at Zazzle
In association with Zazzle.com

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Thistle Head

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Thistle Head
Originally uploaded by Alastair Montgomery

Taken outsite my gym last night on my LG RENOIR

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Thirsk Market

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Some street photography of Thirsk market.

Thisrk Market 1 Pigs Ears

Thisrk Market 2

Thisrk Market 3

Thisrk Market 4

Thisrk Market 5

At least no one approached me to stopped taking pictures under "terror laws".

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Call of the Python

I started learning Python last year to do some scripting at work for testing, I recently discovered the game libraries (pygame, pyglet, etc) so have started looking into writing a game.

This is something I’ve been wanting to do from an early age back when I got my first 8-bit computer and never had the time or the skills to achieve.

After just a week of using pyglet during my lunch hour at work and a couple of hours at night I’m well on my way to finishing my first game, a breakout/ arkanoid clone.

Enjoying every minute of it.



Doodle’s Geek Monkey by Alastair Montgomery

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Le Mans 1968

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I’m in the process of scanning in some of my Dad’s old slides and I came across a selection he took from his visit to Le Mans in 1968, two years before I was born.

Here’s what I’ve scanned so far, can’t wait to see what else is in the slide box labeled “Le Mans Sept 1968”

Le Mans 1968 IMG_0081

Le Mans 1968 IMG_0082

Le Mans 1968 IMG_0084

Le Mans 1968 IMG_0083

Le Mans 1968 IMG_0085

Le Mans 1968 IMG_0086

The full set can be seen on Flickr

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Installing Repton 1 under Wine

Installing the Windows Repton 1 under Wine running on Ubuntu 9.10 using XCFE window manager.

Good news that it works apart small issues with the responsiveness of the pointer in the menus.

Download and buy at http://www.superiorinteractive.com/repton/

You can run it full screen or in a window as shown below.
Repton1

Even after 25 years away from the game I still remembered how to do the first level, scary or what.
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Poster Printer

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via gHacks technology news by Martin on 2/10/10

Easy Poster Printer is a free software program for the Windows operating system that enables a user to create a poster out of an image or photo that is loaded into the software. Veteran users might already know the concept that is applied to those images from services such as Rasterbator or Block Posters which we reviewed earlier.

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Arcade Puppy


Arcade Puppy
Originally uploaded by Alastair Montgomery
While hunting about of instructions to install Python on Puppy Linux I came across Arcade Puppy.

Basically a version 4.2 variation with a lot of retro game system emulators installed.

Picture shows Arcade version of Puppy Linux running on a VirtualBox VM; running the game "Thrust" on the Spectrum emulator.
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Linux Distro hunting

I’m looking for a new Distro to run on my old PCs at home.

Previously I’ve been running Puppy Linux on it, which so far has been okay, but it doesn’t come with some packages I want installed out of the box (mainly Python).

Basically the bases I need covered are,
  • Low profile, able to run in small amount of RAM
  • Fast booting
  • Python
  • Firefox 3.x, Opera 10.x or Chromium browser
  • Mplayer or similar for video playback
So the contenders so far are,

Speed, performance, stability – these are attributes that set VectorLinux apart in the crowded field of Linux distributions.The creators of VectorLinux had a single credo: keep it simple, keep it small and let the end user decide what their operating system is going to be. What has evolved from this concept is perhaps the best little Linux operating system available anywhere. For the casual computer user you have a lightning fast desktop with graphical programs to handle your daily activities from web surfing, sending and receiving email, chatting on ICQ or IRC to running an ftp server. Power users will be pleased because all the tools are there to compile their own programs, use the system as a server or perhaps the gateway for their home or office computer network. Administrators will be equally as pleased because the small size and memory requirements of the operating system can be deployed on older machines maybe long forgotten.


CrunchBang Linux is an Ubuntu based distribution offering a great blend of speed, style and substance. Using the nimble Openbox window manager, it is highly customisable and provides a modern, full-featured GNU/Linux system without sacrificing performance.


Zenwalk is a GNU/Linux operating system, designed to provide the following characteristics:

Modern and user-friendly (latest stable software, selected applications)
Fast (optimized for performance capabilities)
Rational (one mainstream application for each task)
Complete (full development/desktop/multimedia environment)
Evolutionary (simple network package management tool - netpkg)

Find and install the missing resources on Puppy

More involved installs which would require more work to setup would be,

I will be downloading the ISO images and be playing with them over the coming weeks, any other suggestions are welcome.

Doodle’s Geek Monkey by Alastair Montgomery

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Remote control using Twitter

I have been thinking about running task on a Ubuntu Linux machine remotely using Twitter. Why you ask, due to firewall restriction where the machine is located I can’t get direct access to it but it has connection out to the internet.


So I thought I could send coded messages to it using Twitter and have it run certain tasks. Should be fairly easy to do in Python I thought, but what do use it for? Kicking off test runs, downloads or other system tasks?

Downloads seemed a simple place to start, why max out my home broadband usage limit when I can get the remote machine to download things off-peak.

For the proof of concept I decided to code it for using WGET and a command line YouTube down loader.

Using this Python Twitter API I was able to get a proto-type running in a short time.

Basically it should work like this,

  • I send a direct message to a Twitter account which only follows me and I follow on my main account.
  • This contains the code for type of download and the URL of the download.
  • The Python script is started by cron at scheduled times.
  • The script connects to Twitter and checks for direct messages.
  • It parses the direct message and either spawns a WGET or youTube-dl command to get the resource.
  • If its a video it then runs a command is run to convert it to divX ready for upload it to my phone.
  • If its a file then it is virus checked.
  • Finally the direct messages are deleted from the Twitter account and a reply sent to my Twitter account.
So now without physical or remote access to the machine I can queue up downloads to retrieve during off peak hours.

Now I’ve got it work, need to fine tune it to run other remote tasks, like restarting Weblogic or deploying new version of the application and running test suites.

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Converting MP4 files to other divX and mp3 formats

I find myself often converting MP4 video files to divX and mp3 format to play on my LG phone.

I used to do this with VLC application but this required too much button poking on my part.

So after reading up on the Linux command line ffmpeg and mencoder utilities I’ve created this basic shell script to do it automatically.


#!/bin/bash
echo “MP4 Conversion”
for f in *.mp4;
do
echo “…Processing $f file…"
ffmpeg -i “$f” -vn -ac 2 -acodec libmp3lame -ab 128k echo $f|cut -d. -f1.mp3 > /dev/null 2>&1
mencoder “$f” -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg4:vpass=1 -oac mp3lame -lameopts vbr=3 -o echo $f|cut -d. -f1.divx > /dev/null 2>&1
done

This will convert all the mp4 files in the local directory to both divx and mp3 format ready to be transferred to my phone. Obviously you need to have the ffmpeg, mencoder and lame mp3 encoder installed on your Linux machine for this too work.

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Create and manage databases in Linux with Glom

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Might be worth a look.


via gHacks technology news by Jack Wallen on 11/25/09

If you’ve ever had to work with a database in Linux you most likely are aware of three or four tools that can handle the task: MySQL, PostgreSQL, PhpMyAdmin, and OpenOffice Base. These are all outstanding applications, but the first two are complex command-line only tools, the third requires a web server, and the last isn’t as robust as some admins will need. But there is another tool that is very flexible and makes creating databases a simple task.

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Wave Graph

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Wave Graph
Originally uploaded by Alastair Montgomery
Music Listen Stats from Last.FM

Made with Lastfm Extra Stats
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Tweet from the command line with Twidge

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via gHacks technology news by Jack Wallen on 11/13/09

For the longest time I refused to see the value in Twitter. Over the last six months I have changed my tune on that. Now I use Twitter primarily as a PR tool for my articles. And since my renewed belief in micro-blogging, I have found plenty of tools with which to enact with Twitter.

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Free Image Editors

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via TrustedReviews Site-wide Feed by Cliff Smith on 11/16/09
Good image editing software doesn't have to cost hundreds of pounds

 
 


 
 
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13/52 Car Frost

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13/52 Car Frost
Originally uploaded by Alastair Montgomery

The roof of my car this morning taken with my LG RENOIR.
Week 13 of my 52 week project.

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Vanity

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Vanity
Originally uploaded by Alastair Montgomery

Self portrait taken with my LG RENOIR, then edited in The Gimp

Just found a 365 self portrait group on Flickr so going to give it a try.

http://www.flickr.com/groups/365days/pool/

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York University Pictures

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Off White Bridge
Footbridge at York University

BioCentre
BioCentre at York University

Model Cars
Tilt and Shift effect on a car park at York University


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11/52 Basket of Nuts

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11/52 Basket of Nuts
Originally uploaded by Alastair Montgomery

Snapped during my wander around York University this lunch time, bike basket full of chestnuts.
That’s going to be some conker match.

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Uploads for 26th October 2009

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Just clearing out my mobile phone and other places uploading pictures I’ve forgotten about.

Taken at the side of the road on the drive home last Friday.

On the Drive Home

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10/52 Car Park Blur

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10/52 Car Park Blur
Originally uploaded by Alastair Montgomery

Messing with the manual focus,liked the blur on the lights and their reflections

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Jelly Beans

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Jelly Beans


Taken by sticking the camera lens into the end of the lock & lock box.

Alastair Montgomery’s Photography
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9/52 Fashion

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Some close up shots of fashion jewelry
Rings

9/52 Pretties



Alastair Montgomery’s Photography
Main Page,
My Shop at Zazzle Sign My Guestbook
In association with Zazzle.com

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What's Inside a Cup of Coffee?

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via Wired Top Stories by Patrick di Justo on 10/4/09

Caffeine
This is why the world produces more than 16 billion pounds of coffee beans per year. It's actually an alkaloid plant toxin (like nicotine and cocaine), a bug killer that stimulates us by blocking neuroreceptors for the sleep chemical adenosine. The result: you, awake.

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This Is a Photoshop and It Blew My Mind [Graphics]

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This is amazing, just imagine if you could hook it up to Flickr.

 
 

via Gizmodo by Jesus Diaz on 10/5/09

PhotoSketch is an internet-based program that can take the rough, labeled sketch on the left and automagically turn it into the naff montage on the right. Seems unbelievable but—as the video shows—it works:

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The 80s Now Have One More Cassette Tape Measure To Be Proud Of [Cassette Tape]

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This is retro cool, just don't try using it in your walkman :)

 
 

via Gizmodo by Jason Chen on 10/5/09

Only Gama-Go would be able to take a Cassette Tape and make it into a pun-based product that's both useful and compact. Plus, it's only $8. [Gama-Go]

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Getting in Close

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Playing with an old 4X Macro filter I had which I found out fitted my new Nikon D50.
Beads Close Up

Death Star


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7 Best Free and Open Source Vector Graphics Editors for Linux

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via TECH SOURCE FROM BOHOL by noreply@blogger.com (jun auza) on 9/29/09
A software application that gives users the ability to compose and edit vector graphics images interactively on a computer is called a vector graphics editor. CorelDRAW and Adobe Illustrator are some of the most popular proprietary vector editors for Windows. But if you are looking for a capable free alternative that can also work on your Linux box, there are a lot to choose from.

Here are some of the best Free and Open Source vector graphics editors that you should check out:


Inkscape
Inkscape is a well-known, full-featured vector graphics editor application for Linux. It has a main goal of becoming a powerful graphics tool while being fully compliant with the XML, SVG, and CSS standards. One of the prime concerns of the Inkscape project is interface consistency and usability. This involves efforts to follow the GNOME Human interface guidelines, universal keyboard accessibility, and convenient on-canvas editing. Inkscape has achieved important advancement in usability since the project started.



Xara Xtreme (Linux Edition)
Xara Xtreme was originally developed for Windows but an open source version was later released for Linux. Xara Xtreme is known for its usability and fast rendering. It is also notable for being among the first vector graphics software applications to provide a fully anti-aliased display, advanced gradient fill, and transparency tools, features now common to many vector graphics editors. With interface almost identical to that of Inkscape and CorelDRAW, Xara Xtreme is considered to be quite easy to learn.



OpenOffice.org Draw
OpenOffice.org Draw is a powerful graphics package that is part of the OpenOffice.org office suite. It features "connectors" between shapes, which are available in a range of line styles and facilitate building drawings such as flowchart. Currently, OpenOffice.org Draw officially supports exporting to SVG format, though with some limitations to be resolved. It is anticipated that as SVG and SVG filters evolve, users will be able to use Draw to edit the large-scale collection of SVG samples from Open Clip Art Library.



Skencil
Skencil is a unique drawing application in the sense that it is implemented almost completely in Python, a very high-level, object oriented, interpreted programming language, with the rest written in C for speed. In addition to the standard features (rectangles, ellipses, curves, text etc.) that you can expect from a vector graphics editor, Skencil also has some more advanced attributes like the possibility to bend text along a path.



sK1
From its project website, sK1 is described as an open-source illustration program that can substitute proprietary software like Corel Draw or Adobe Illustrator. It supports professional publishing features like CMYK color, separations, ICC color management and press-ready PDF output. It also has CorelDRAW formats importers and tabbed multi-document interface. sK1 is a fork of Skencil and was started by a small team of Ukrainian professionals.



Karbon14
Karbon14 (formerly known as Kontour) is part of the KDE office suite (KOffice). The name is a play on KDE and the radioactive isotope Carbon-14. Karbon14 boasts a user interface that is easy-to-use, highly customizable and extensible. It is also loaded with great features making it ideal for anyone who wants to create clipart, logos, illustrations or photorealistic vector images.


Xfig
Xfig is an interactive drawing tool that runs under the X Window System. In xfig, figures may be drawn using objects such as circles, boxes, lines, spline curves, text, etc. It is also possible to import images in formats such as GIF, JPEG, EPSF (PostScript), and many others. Xfig saves figures in its native Fig format, but they may be converted into various formats.



 
 


 
 
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Waiting for the throw

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Waiting for the Throw

Wilson waiting for me to throw his ball and to stop messing about with that camera.

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Nikon D50, try before you buy

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Nikon D50, try before you buy
Originally uploaded by Alastair Montgomery

My friend Adrian has kindly let me try before I buy on his Nikon D50.

He’s doing me a cracking deal with two lens since he’s bought himself a new D3000.

Taken with my LG Renoir

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4/52 Wild flower

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4/52 Wild flower
Originally uploaded by Alastair Montgomery

Week 4’s picture, feels good to get it under my belt on the first day of the week.

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Get Better Black and White Conversions from Your Shots [Photoshop Tip]

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via Lifehacker by Kevin Purdy on 8/25/09

Converting to black and white can be a saving grace for concert shots and other photos, but you can get better, crisper results by veering off the default options. Photoshop tinkerer Helen Bradley explains which sliders to pull on.

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2/52 Screw loose

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2/52 Screw loose
Originally uploaded by Alastair Montgomery

Week 2 of my “post a picture a week for a year” project and already we have proof I have a screw loose.

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URL Shortening Rant


URL shortening is a great idea for Twitter’s 120 character limit but it does have its problems. Most annoying, you find an interesting link and click on it and get presented with the screen above. There is nothing you can do to get to the article you clicked on until the server load goes down.

Other problems include you don’t know what site you will end up on so can end up on a phishing site or something NSFW, although TinyURLs preview option kind of helps that problem.

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Day trip to Saltburn by the sea

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Here are some pictures from my birthday day trip to Saltburn by the sea.
More pictures are available in my Saltburn set on Flickr

Saltburn Pier
saltburn pier 013

Surfers under the Pier
surfing under saltburn pier

Surf and cliff view
saltburn 020

Saltburn pier 005

See more Saltburn pictures

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Dusty Keyboard


Dusty Keyboard
Originally uploaded by Alastair Montgomery
Keyboard to the PC I've reused as a Ubuntu Linux automated test box.

As you can see its been under my desk for a while.

Guess you could work out the password from the clean keys?

I've installed Synergy mouse and keyboard sharing on my three active desktops so I don't have to use this keyboard much. If you use more than one desktop computer I'd recommend you install it, saves you having to change between input devices. You just move your cursor off the edge of the screen and you are controlling the pointer on your other machine.

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10 Essential UNIX/Linux Command Cheat Sheets

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Cool article from Tech Source work repeating.

 
 

via TECH SOURCE FROM BOHOL by noreply@blogger.com (jun auza) on 8/4/09
Linux has become so idiot proof nowadays that there is less and less need to use the command line. However, the commands and shell scripts have remained powerful for advanced users to utilize to help them do complicated tasks quickly and efficiently.

To those of you who are aspiring to become a UNIX/Linux guru, you have to know loads of commands and learn how to effectively use them. But there is really no need to memorize everything since there are plenty of cheat sheets available on the web and on books. To spare you from the hassles of searching, I have here a collection of 10 essential UNIX/Linux cheat sheets that can greatly help you on your quest for mastery:


UNIX Tutorial for Beginners
This is a quick and easy UNIX/Linux tutorial page that is aimed at beginners. It gives a subtle introduction to some of the most important UNIX/Linux commands.



Learning the Shell
Aside from showing you how to apply the most basic UNIX/Linux commands, "Learning the Shell' will teach you the utmost importance of using the command line.



Learn UNIX in 10 Minutes
From the page: This is something that I had given out to students (CAD user training) in years past. The purpose was to have on one page the basics commands for getting started using the UNIX shell (so that they didn't call me asking what to do the first time someone gave them a tape).



FOSSwire Unix/Linux Command Cheat Sheet
A one page UNIX/Linux command reference that you can download in PDF format. You can easily print it, and then paste it on your wall.

UNIX Toolbox
From the page: This document is a collection of Unix/Linux/BSD commands and tasks which are useful for IT work or for advanced users. This is a practical guide with concise explanations; however the reader is supposed to know what s/he is doing.


Practical Linux Command Line Reference
This is another handy one-page cheat sheet for common command line operations. All of the commands have been tested on Fedora and Ubuntu.


How to Look Like a UNIX Guru
From the page: This lecture takes you through the basic commands and then shows you how to combine them in simple patterns or idioms to provide sophisticated functionality like histogramming. This lecture assumes you know what a shell is and that you have some basic familiarity with UNIX.



A Directory of Linux Commands (in alphabetical order)
From the O'reilly book "Linux in a Nutshell, 5th Edition", it features an alphabetical list of 687 commands and a short description on each one of them.

Linux Security Quick Reference Guide
This quick reference guide (in PDF) will serve as your aid on improving the security of your Linux system. It provides some pointers to more in-depth security information that could help you become a good UNIX/Linux system administrator.


Bash Programming Cheat Sheet
From the page: A quick cheat sheet for programmers who want to do shell scripting. This is not intended to teach programming, etc. but it is intended for someone who knows one programming language to begin learning about bash scripting.



Through comments, feel free to share some links to other essential UNIX/Linux cheat sheets that I failed to include here.


 
 
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Ubuntu 9.04 painfully slow screen redraws, any ideas?

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Tried the Live CD version of Ubuntu 9.04 on my new laptop (Compaq Presario CQ60-305EA) last night, screen redraw was painfully slow. It was almost like a window blind effect opening or moving a Firefox window.

Most confusing, wonder if it has problems with the NVIDIA GeForce 8200M?

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Nibbo Search

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Nibbo Search
Originally uploaded by Alastair Montgomery

Been testing a new search engine http://www.nibbo.com/ so far I like it.

Its really a nice front end on existing search engines so you can search a number of things at the same time.

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Holding an Owl

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Rachel & Misty

David & Misty

Annette & Misty

Stupid me forgot to hand my camera off so no picture of me holding it.


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Windows 7 VM Online

Thanks to the comment on my previous post I have got the network card on the Windows 7 VM working.

After installing the VMWare tools I had to remove and re-add the "virtual" network card to get it working.

Here it is running our application without problems it seems.
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Fedora 11


Fedora 11
Originally uploaded by Alastair Montgomery
First install of Fedora 11, pretty painless, joys of a VM I suppose.

VirtualBox guest utils didn't like it, will probably have to hack the install for the new kernel version.

VMWare Fusion lapped it up.
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Converting a Virtualbox virtual machine to VMWare

This covers converting from VirtualBox to VMWare not the other way around.
I’ve search the net and all the instructions seemed to be long winded using third party products as a middle step. Things have moved on this might be easy now.

With VirtualBox 2.2.2 you can export your machine as an Appliance using the Open Virtualization Format (OVF). The VMWare vCenter Converter 4.0.1 (free download) imports OVF Appliances.

Sounds too good to be true?

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Saving data


Saving data
Originally uploaded by Alastair Montgomery
Saving the docs off my broken hard disk (bad sectors) to an old 30GB disk.
Windows refused to start even in safe mode so I used Puppy Linux to copy the files between the disks.

Now need to get a new(ish) 80+GB IDE disk to put in the machine.
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Audi DKW F 12

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This was parked outside the office the other day, took a couple of quick snaps.

Audi DKW F 12

Audi DKW F 12

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The Beginner's Guide to Creating Virtual Machines with VirtualBox [How-to]

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Virtual Machine basics


via Lifehacker by Kevin Purdy on 4/10/09

Virtual machines can seem juuuuust a bit too geeky for most otherwise computer-friendly people. That’s sad, because it’s an easy, free way to try or use a separate OS without messing with your hard drive.

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Extra Ice Mints

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Extra Ice Mints
Originally uploaded by Alastair Montgomery

The new Extra Ice Mints, okay mints, excellent tin.

The tin would be useful for all those home electronic projects you’ve been meaning to try.

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Which Ubuntu Derivative Is Right For You?

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Studio for me I think :)


via gHacks technology news by jack on 4/2/09

If you’re interested in Linux then most likely you have taken a look at Ubuntu. And if you have taken a look at Ubuntu then you know there are a lot of derivatives out there that specialize in one cross section of society or another. But which one is right for you? That is where gHacks comes in.

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Ripon Clouds

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Some interesting clouds I saw when walking the dog on the 31st March 2009



Clouds 31st March 2009 3
Clouds 31st March 2009 1
Clouds 31st March 2009 2


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Dog Walk 22nd March 2009

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Some pictures from walking my dog in Ripon 22nd March 2009.

Dog Walk 22nd March
Dog Walk 22nd March
Dog Walk 22nd March

And the results of the walk
Dog Walk 22nd March

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Best Home Server Software

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Another cool article from Life Hacker

via Lifehacker by Jason Fitzpatrick on 01/03/09

Media files, data synchronization, and remote backups, oh my! Home computing has advanced to a point where it’s practical to run your own home server, and we’re running down the five best tools for the job.

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York Traffic

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Some traffic shots in and around York
York Traffic
York Traffic 4
York Traffic 3
York Traffic 2
Going no where



Wondering how legal it is to take pictures when you are stationary with your handbreak on?


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Easy Steps to Rip a DVD to ISO in Ubuntu 8.10

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Need this when I make the Linux switch

 
 


 
 

via TECH SOURCE FROM BOHOL by noreply@blogger.com (jun auza) on 2/19/09
An ISO file is the easiest and most universal method for backing up a DVD. The file is an archive file specifically for DVD VIDEO_TS and AUDIO_TS files, and is an exact copy of the disc. ISO files can be quickly burned to a new dvd using standard burning software, making it the optimal choice for storing backups.

In Windows, third-party software is the only way to backup a DVD. Luckily, Ubuntu Linux has removed this need, and as a result, you can backup your dvds using a standard feature built into the OS –no software or Terminal required.

This tutorial is written using Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid Ibex. It will also work with 8.04.

Step 1: Insert the DVD you wish to backup into your optical drive and wait for the dvd icon to appear on your Desktop.

Step 2: Right-click on the DVD icon and choose ‘Copy Disc’ from the menu.

Step 3: A dialog box will appear. In the drop-down box next to ‘Copy to…’, choose FILE IMAGE.


Step 4: Press the WRITE button.

Step 5: Choose a location to save the ISO.


Step 6: Wait for the progress bar to reach the end. It will say ‘Successfully Copied’. Close the window and remove the DVD.


Step 7: You can test the ISO and confirm it works using VLC media player. If you don’t have VLC installed, you can install it via the Terminal and this code: sudo apt-get install vlc .

Step 8: If you want to extract the VOB files from the ISO, right-click and choose ’extract here’. It will take about ten minutes, but the video_ts and audio_ts folders will be extracted to the same location.

Step 9: If you want to convert the ISO into a smaller file, such as an XviD or x264, you can either extract the VOBs and use DVD::RIP, or download Handbrake and rip directly from the ISO–both run smoothly on Ubuntu.

Fair Warning: In some countries, backing up DVDs you legally own is not legal–for example, in the US, copying a commercial DVD violates the DCMA. Be sure to check with the laws in your country before proceeding.

This tutorial was prepared for “Tech Source from Bohol” by Blair Mathis of LaptopLogic.com, your premier source for latest notebook reviews.

 
 

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I love tanks

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Maybe it is the big kid in me, maybe its all the cheesy war films I’ve watch but I love tanks and other military hardware.

Russian T34 tank tracks

Russian T34 Tank

gundetail

aag

T34 Tank Panel 2

T34 Tank Detail

Red Star

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JPEG & PNG Stripper Removes the Metadata from Your Images [Downloads]

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via Lifehacker by Jason Fitzpatrick on 09/02/09

Windows only: JPEG & PNG Stripper an extremely small portable application that strips the metadata out of JPEG and PNG image files.

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Pictures from the weekend

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Here are some pictures I took over the weekend.

Wilson the dog keeping warm
Wilson Keeping Warm

Snowy Hell’s Wath in Ripon
Snowy Hells Wath Ripon
Snowy Hells Wath Ripon 2

Snow covered fallen tree in Ripon
Snow covered tree

Pirates of the 2CV?
Pirates of the 2CV
Pirates of the 2CV 2

All pictures taken on my LG Renoir KC910

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Samsung NC20, one for the wish list.

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More drool worthy kit, just wish I could justify getting a Netbook o_0

Samsung NC20, 3G NC10 now available for pre-order in the UK

02-05-2009

The Russians have already declared their love, and soon you'll be able to get your mitts on the Samsung N20 and see for yourself what all the fuss is about. It's now available for pre-order from UK retailer BT Shop, priced at £390.98 ($565) VAT included, with a white model due out in February and a black iteration in March. Both models sport a 12.1-inch WXGA display, Windowx XP Home Edition, 1.3GHz VIA Nano U225 CPU processor, 1GB RAM, 160GB HDD, Bluetooth, 3-in-1 card reader, 1.3 megapixel camera, and a 6 Cell battery -- no SSD option at the moment. Additionally, the shop is also showing a new NC10 equipped with HSDPA coming next month for £416.63 ($602) with VAT, which is £107 ($154) more than its non-3G equivalent. Not to worry, US readers, we're sure Sammy will be asking for your Benjamins soon enough.

[Thanks, Darpan]
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LG Renoir Subjected to Death by Ice, Water, Wind, and Earth Tests [Cellphones]

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My LG Renoir is in hiding after reading this.


via Gizmodo by Jesus Diaz on 28/01/09

Not happy to test drive this fugly version of the iPhone, the Mobile@Mail.ru crew have pitted the LG KC910 Renoir against all four elements: Ice, Wind, Earth, and Wine! OK, water, but wine too.

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OpenTyrian - The Best DOS Shoot’em Up - Now for Windows XP/...

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I remember playing this old DOS game on a mate’s PC.
Need to download the Nintendo DS version :)


via The Download Munkey by Roys on 28/01/09

Arguably the best DOS-based shoot-em up in my opinion, Tyrian is now available for gamers on Windows, Mac OS X, Linux (and Nintendo DS, PSP, even Wii!), thanks to the dedicated efforts of the OpenTyrian team who modified the source code to use the cross-platform SDL libraries and of course, Jason Emery, who graciously offered Tyrian as freeware back in 2004.

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Find Images by Exact Dimensions, Make Wallpaper Search a Breeze [Google School]

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Just need to devise a Python script to automate this for Windows now :)


via Lifehacker by Adam Pash on 28/01/09

Everyone knows that Google Image Search sports a drop-down menu for filtering results by small, medium, large, and extra large sizes, but if you’re looking for the perfect wallpaper, for example, the imagesize operator is even better.

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CrunchBang is a Speedy, Dark-Themed Linux Desktop [Screenshot Tour]

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More info on CrunchBang Linux

 
 


 
 

via Lifehacker by Kevin Purdy on 1/27/09

CrunchBang, an Ubuntu-based Linux distribution that sports a snappy, low-drag interface and is perfect for thumb drives, live CDs, or speed-obsessed Linux fans. Check out how it looks and runs in our screenshot tour.

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DSTL1 Android Smartphone Is Battlestar Galactica's iPhone [Android]

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I wish I hadn’t just renewed my phone contract now. My LG Renoir now looks like the ugly cousin.

 
 


 
 

via Gizmodo by Jesus Diaz on 27/01/09

This is the Android-based, 3-inch Sharp touchscreen, General Mobile DSTL1. And it is everything the T-Mobile isn’t: A stunning design and features combination that may convince regular consumers to choose the Android platform over iPhone.

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OperaTor Browses with Portable, Tor-Driven Anonymity

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Time to dust of that USB stick and browse in the shadows……

 
 


 
 

via Lifehacker by Jason Fitzpatrick on 23/01/09


Windows only: OperaTor combines a thumb-drive-friendly version of the peedy Opera web-browser with transparent privacy through the Tor network.

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Monitor Folders By RSS

I’m sure I can think of a use for this scratches head

 
 


 
 

via gHacks technology news by Martin on 28/01/09

If you are one of those Internet users living in their RSS feed reader you might like Folder RSS. Folder RSS is a folder monitor that creates a valid RSS feed that can be accessed using any RSS reader. The feed will contain the changes made to specified folders. The software program is fully portable and script driven meaning that it is necessary to write a short batch script or run the software from the command line to create the valid RSS feed. It should also be noted that the feed will be updated locally which is not a problem for desktop feed readers. The use of feed readers like Google Reader on the other hand would require to input the IP of the local computer along with the path to the feed making sure that the remote feed reader is allowed to access the file on the local computer.

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Things I've liked recently, 23rd Jan 2009

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I’ve liked these pictures I’ve recently stumbled across on the web.
Check out their other works on the links below each picture.


Untitled by Andrew Lee, see it on Flickr


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Take two cameras into the shower?

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Some cool video cameras which are muscling in on the stills market. I'm a sucker for multi function devices, why carry a stills & video camera. Now they just have to integrate a MP4 player and cell phone into it. Watch this space.......

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Eee PC Touch Demo

How cool does this look?


Having trouble figuring out how a touchscreen Eee PC could fit into your life? No worries, ASUS just did all the heavy synaptic lifting for you with the release of a near 6-minute video showing its new Eee PC Touch UI. A UI teased at CES and built specifically for ASUS’ new touchcreen Eees. All in all it makes a pretty case for why you should pick up a new Eee PC T91 or T101H convertible tablet later this year. Let’s just hope the processor can cope.
Originally posted at Engadget


Doodle’s Geek Monkey by Alastair Montgomery

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Phillips Making 21:9 TV

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Something to add to your wish list?


cinema.jpg The 56" Phillips Cinema Widescreen LCD is a 21:9 television hitting the streets of selected countries next month. If you want one you can pay an arm and a kidney and watch movies in the proper 21:9 aspect ratio without black barring it. If you don’t want one, forget you ever read this and save that precious brain-space for something useful. Like a tv theme song! Which reminds me – “thank you for being a friend…” Haha, marinate on that one all afternoon, suckers! philips cinema 21:9 ultra widescreen perfect for movie snobs [technabob] Thanks to Julian, who who thought about getting one until he realized he owned a movie theater. An adult movie theater. No, that’s not creepy.


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Rain Drops

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Rain Drops
Originally uploaded by Alastair Montgomery

“Rain drops on my car’s windscreen this morning."

This picture it has had the most hits on my Flickr account.
I don’t know why.

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7 Great Free/Open-source Platform Games for Linux

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via TECH SOURCE FROM BOHOL by noreply@blogger.com (jun auza) on 13/01/09
A platform game (also known as platformer) is a video game genre distinguished by jumping to and from suspended platforms or over obstacles. A very famous example of a platform game is the best selling video game of all time, which is the Super Mario Bros.

If you are exhausted from playing your favorite FPS games like Urban Terror or Alien Arena, how about you relax a little and play some good old "platform games" on your Linux box.

I have here a list of some great free and open source platform games that you may enjoy.

SuperTux
SuperTux needs no further introduction, as it is definitely one of the most famous games for Linux. However, if you want to know more about SuperTux, perhaps you should just read my quick review of the game HERE.


Blob Wars: Metal Blob Solid
Blob Wars: Metal Blob Solid is an open source 2D arcade platform game developed by Parallel Realities. The aim of the game is to rescue Blob MIAs lost while fighting a battle against alien invaders led by their leader, Galdov (the Metal Blob). Metal Blob Solid features numerous different weapons, locations, boss battles and around 9 hours total gameplay.


Secret Maryo Chronicles
Secret Maryo Chronicles is yet another 2D jump-and-run game that's based on Nintendo's Super Mario Series. The game is a SourceForge project that began in 2003. Until now, it is still actively developed and maintained by the Secret Maryo Chronicles development team, led by Florian Richter ("FluXy").


Yo Frankie!
Yo Frankie! is the famous 3D game created by the Blender Institute. The universe and the characters of the game are based on the open source animated short film entitled Big Buck Bunny. Yo Frankie! was recently released this November of 2008 and is currently available for download.


X-Moto
X-Moto is a 2D motocross platform game where physics play an all-important role in the gameplay. Although the game is completely 2D, it uses 3D hardware acceleration (OpenGL) for faster rendering. The game also utilizes the Open Dynamics Engine for a realistic-feel physical simulation. X-Moto is extensible with user-created custom levels that can be automatically downloaded.


Neverball
Neverball is a 3D platform game similar to Super Monkey Ball. Its main gameplay is based on moving a ball using gravity by tilting the game world, not directly controlling the ball. The mouse (or a similar pointing device), keyboard, or joystick tilt the level to help guide the ball to a goal, via an obstacle course, with a set time limit. Moving platforms and other crazy objects get in the way, making levels progressively harder.


XEvil
XEvil is considered as one of the most graphically violent games ever made. Before you play or let your kids touch this game, read this disclaimer first (taken from its website):

"O.K., kids... let's get this straight. XEvil is not for meek, peace-loving, "I love you, you love me..." types of people. The fans of XEvil enjoy it because of its shameless displays of blood and violence, of people getting lit on fire, getting shot, being ripped up by chainsaws, getting high on drugs, and burst open by aliens."


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VirtualC64 for Mac OS X

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Not a machine I had personally but did play on a friends one every now and again.

 
 


 
 

via Holy Shmoly! by Donncha on 12/29/08

VirtualC64 is a new Commodore 64 emulator for Mac OS X. It’s a promising project, let down by the fact that it’s still in beta but by the looks of things development is moving at a steady pace.

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Manipulate Vector Images with Open Source Inkscape [Featured Download]

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Been using this for years, top download tip.

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Manipulate Vector Images with Open Source Inkscape [Featured Download]


All platforms: Inkscape is an open source vector editing program. If you are looking for a free alternative to the Adobe Illustrator, Inkscape has a host of features that make it worth taking for a spin.

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12 days of bugmas

Since it’s holiday season already, let’s keep the tech jokes coming with this parody of a famous song entitled “The Twelve Days of Christmas.” You can sing along if you like:

The 12 Bugs of Software

For the first bug of Christmas, my manager said to say:
“See if they can do it again."

For the second bug of Christmas, my manager said to say:
“Ask them how they did it and
See if they can do it again."

For the third bug of Christmas, my manager said to say:
“Try to reproduce it,
Ask them how they did it and
See if they can do it again."

For the fourth bug of Christmas, my manager said to say:
“Run with the debugger,
Try to reproduce it,
Ask them how they did it and
See if they can do it again."

For the fifth bug of Christmas, my manager said to say:
“Ask for a dump,
Run with the debugger,
Try to reproduce it,
Ask them how they did it and
See if they can do it again."

For the sixth bug of Christmas, my manager said to say:
“Reinstall the software,
Ask for a dump,
Run with the debugger,
Try to reproduce it,
Ask them how they did it and
See if they can do it again."

For the seventh bug of Christmas, my manager said to say:
“Say they need an upgrade,
Reinstall the software,
Ask for a dump,
Run with the debugger,
Try to reproduce it,
Ask them how they did it and
See if they can do it again."

For the eighth bug of Christmas, my manager said to say:
“Find a way around it,
Say they need an upgrade,
Reinstall the software,
Ask for a dump,
Run with the debugger,
Try to reproduce it,
Ask them how they did it and
See if they can do it again."

For the ninth bug of Christmas, my manager said to say:
“Blame it on the hardware,
Find a way around it,
Say they need an upgrade,
Reinstall the software,
Ask for a dump,
Run with the debugger,
Try to reproduce it,
Ask them how they did it and
See if they can do it again.

For the tenth bug of Christmas, my manager said to say:
“Change the documentation,
Blame it on the hardware,
Find a way around it,
Say they need an upgrade,
Reinstall the software,
Ask for a dump,
Run with the debugger,
Try to reproduce it,
Ask then how they did it and
See if they can do it again."

For the eleventh bug of Christmas, my manager said to say:
“Say it’s not supported,
Change the documentation,
Blame it on the hardware,
Find a way around it,
Say they need an upgrade,
Reinstall the software,
Ask for a dump,
Run with the debugger,
Try to reproduce it,
Ask them how they did it and
See if they can do it again."

For the twelfth bug of Christmas, my manager said to say:
“Tell them it’s a feature,
Say it’s not supported,
Change the documentation,
Blame it on the hardware,
Find a way around it,
Say they need an upgrade,
Reinstall the software,
Ask for a dump,
Run with the debugger,
Try to reproduce it,
Ask then how they did it and
See if they can do it again."

Doodle’s Geek Monkey by Alastair Montgomery

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If programming languages were religions

“If programming languages were religions”

C would be Judaism - it’s old and restrictive, but most of the world is familiar with its laws and respects them. The catch is, you can’t convert into it - you’re either into it from the start, or you will think that it’s insanity. Also, when things go wrong, many people are willing to blame the problems of the world on it.

Java would be Fundamentalist Christianity - it’s theoretically based on C, but it voids so many of the old laws that it doesn’t feel like the original at all. Instead, it adds its own set of rigid rules, which its followers believe to be far superior to the original. Not only are they certain that it’s the best language in the world, but they’re willing to burn those who disagree at the stake.

PHP would be Cafeteria Christianity - Fights with Java for the web market. It draws a few concepts from C and Java, but only those that it really likes. Maybe it’s not as coherent as other languages, but at least it leaves you with much more freedom and ostensibly keeps the core idea of the whole thing. Also, the whole concept of “goto hell” was abandoned.

C++ would be Islam - It takes C and not only keeps all its laws, but adds a very complex new set of laws on top of it. It’s so versatile that it can be used to be the foundation of anything, from great atrocities to beautiful works of art. Its followers are convinced that it is the ultimate universal language, and may be angered by those who disagree. Also, if you insult it or its founder, you’ll probably be threatened with death by more radical followers.

C# would be Mormonism - At first glance, it’s the same as Java, but at a closer look you realize that it’s controlled by a single corporation (which many Java followers believe to be evil), and that many theological concepts are quite different. You suspect that it’d probably be nice, if only all the followers of Java wouldn’t discriminate so much against you for following it.

Lisp would be Zen Buddhism - There is no syntax, there is no centralization of dogma, there are no deities to worship. The entire universe is there at your reach - if only you are enlightened enough to grasp it. Some say that it’s not a language at all; others say that it’s the only language that makes sense.

Haskell would be Taoism - It is so different from other languages that many people don’t understand how can anyone use it to produce anything useful. Its followers believe that it’s the true path to wisdom, but that wisdom is beyond the grasp of most mortals.

Erlang would be Hinduism - It’s another strange language that doesn’t look like it could be used for anything, but unlike most other modern languages, it’s built around the concept of multiple simultaneous deities.

Perl would be Voodoo - An incomprehensible series of arcane incantations that involve the blood of goats and permanently corrupt your soul. Often used when your boss requires you to do an urgent task at 21:00 on friday night.

Lua would be Wicca - A pantheistic language that can easily be adapted for different cultures and locations. Its code is very liberal, and allows for the use of techniques that might be described as magical by those used to more traditional languages. It has a strong connection to the moon.

Ruby would be Neo-Paganism - A mixture of different languages and ideas that was beaten together into something that might be identified as a language. Its adherents are growing fast, and although most people look at them suspiciously, they are mostly well-meaning people with no intention of harming anyone.

Python would be Humanism: It’s simple, unrestrictive, and all you need to follow it is common sense. Many of the followers claim to feel relieved from all the burden imposed by other languages, and that they have rediscovered the joy of programming. There are some who say that it is a form of pseudo-code.

COBOL would be Ancient Paganism - There was once a time when it ruled over a vast region and was important, but nowadays it’s almost dead, for the good of us all. Although many were scarred by the rituals demanded by its deities, there are some who insist on keeping it alive even today.

APL would be Scientology - There are many people who claim to follow it, but you’ve always suspected that it’s a huge and elaborate prank that got out of control.

LOLCODE would be Pastafarianism - An esoteric, Internet-born belief that nobody really takes seriously, despite all the efforts to develop and spread it.

Visual Basic would be Satanism - Except that you don’t REALLY need to sell your soul to be a Satanist…


Doodle’s Geek Monkey by Alastair Montgomeryions

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Install Linux on a USB drive with UNetbootin

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Finally a use for my 4GB thumb drive

gHacks technology news
A technology blog covering software, mobile phones, gadgets, security, the Internet and other relevant areas.

Install Linux on a USB drive with UNetbootin

By jack on unetbootin

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Extensoft Free Video Converter - flexible, functional and competent

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Might be worth a try.

http://www.extensoft.com/?p=free_video_converter

Extensoft Free Video Converter - flexible, functional and competent

By Nigel on freeware

Extensoft's Free Video Converter is a nice example of the genre. There are a load of these programs on the market, but I like the interface and speed of this one in particular. I also like the fact that you can combine multiple clips together in a rudimentary fashion (e.g. no transitions etc) and make [...]

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Picture : Friend

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Friend
Originally uploaded by Alastair Montgomery

Here’s a picture of Wilson taken with my new LG Renoir KC 910 phone.



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Five Best Media Center Applications [Hive Five]

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Need to set one of these puppies up....one day...

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Five Best Media Center Applications [Hive Five]

The past ten years have completely changed the way we listen to music, watch movies and television, and take photos, and one thing is abundantly clear: The future of your media lies undeniably in the digital realm. Now you just need to find the perfect media center application to pull it all together. Earlier this week we asked you to share your favorite media center applications, and today we're back with the five most popular answers. Keep reading for a closer look at the favorites, then cast your vote for the media center app you count on to manage your digital media life. Photo by Aaron Escobar.

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Build Your Own Paper Airplane Launcher

his is what you buy the man who has everything....oh and a ream of A4 paper.

Geekologie - Gadgets, Gizmos, and Awesome

Build Your Own Paper Airplane Launcher

In wheels

plane-launcher.jpg Want to launch paper airplanes but don't have any arms? Then good luck folding one in the first place. But for those of you that are lazy or just don't know when to let go comes the $18 Electric Paper Plane Launcher from Urban Outfitters.

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7 Best Free/Open-source Image Viewers for Linux

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7 applications to view images on your Linux box.

Some Rights Reserved   TECH SOURCE FROM BOHOL
Source for technology hacks, insights, tutorials, news, reviews and more...

7 Best Free/Open-source Image Viewers for Linux

By noreply@blogger.com (jun auza) on free/open-source

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10 of the Best Songbird Add-ons

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Is SongBird the way to go?

Some Rights Reserved   TECH SOURCE FROM BOHOL
Source for technology hacks, insights, tutorials, news, reviews and more...

10 of the Best Songbird Add-ons

By noreply@blogger.com (jun auza) on free/open-source

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60 Really Cool and Creative Error 404 Pages

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Some cool 404 pages :)

hongkiat.com
Online Tips For Tech Users, Bloggers and Designers

60 Really Cool and Creative Error 404 Pages

By hongkiat

Having a good Error 404 page is perhaps as important as having great contents. Sometimes it may not be your fault visitors landed on error pages, but being able to communicate and direct them back to the home page is as good as a second chance to re-engage a visitor. Error 404 page helps you does that.

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Picture : Snow in York

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“Blizzard conditions” in York, well that’s what you assume by listening to all the people with their panties in a bunch on phoning into local radio.

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50 Greatest Computer Workstation (PC/Mac) Setups

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hongkiat.com
Online Tips For Tech Users, Bloggers and Designers

50 Greatest Computer Workstation (PC/Mac) Setups

By hongkiat

Whether you are working on a Mac, a PC, or even both, the way your workstation is setup tells more or less about your attitude and style of working. The workstation could also be your source of inspiration, therefore you might want to put in more thoughts on the place that you’ll spend most of your time at.

We crawled through the net, checking out at how people setup their workstations, focusing how what machines they use, how they are positioned, the decorations, and how other peripherals come in order. Some might think setting up a cool workstation is nothing much but an ‘ego-thing’ but we’ll like to add a point - lots of great ideas and inspiration came from great working environment, particulary the workstation.

Now if you agree, or maybe just curious to see how other people’s workstations look like, here a compilation of 50 Greatest Computer Workstation Setups. Full list after jump.

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Fuzebox, open source gaming

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Take me back to my 8bit gaming youth?

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Fuzebox, open source gaming


fuzebox

Adafruit has just put their Uzebox based console into production. The Fuzebox is an 8bit game console based around the ATmega644-20PU microcontroller. Full 256 color 240×224 resolution video output is provide by either a composite connection or svideo. There is an SD card slot on board for future expansion. The chip takes care of all the I/O, so you just need to write your game code in C on top of it.

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Melt Mail is Another Quick, Disposable Email Service

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I’m melting, melting………

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Melt Mail is Another Quick, Disposable Email Service [Email]

Melt Mail is a free email forwarding service that creates a temporary email address that forwards all incoming mail to your real email address. To use it, just enter the email address you want messages forwarded to, select how long you want it to work, then hit Create. Melt Mail generates a random address that you can use with impunity to register on spam-likely sites, for example, and after 3, 6, 12, or 24 hours, the forwarding will stop. We’ve coveredboatloads of similar disposable email applications, so Melt Mail isn’t breaking any new ground, but since some services won’t allow you to register with popular temporary email addresses, it’s worthwhile to have another option in your arsenal. Besides, the dead-simple interface is a nice touch.

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Processing 1.0

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Woooo, right up my street

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Processing 1.0


Processing, the open source programming language designed for artists and other creative types, finally went 1.0. Processing inspired numerous outpourings of creativity and beauty, from interactive art installations to sound sculptures. Improvements to Processing include OpenGL anti-aliasing, an extensible Tools menu, and the XML library included by default. You can read up on the changes or download Processing and start playing with it yourself.

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Foxit Reader 3.0 Released

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My PDF viewer of choice.


CyberNet Technology News CyberNet
Technology News

Foxit Reader 3.0 Released

By Ryan on Performance

foxit reader 3.jpg

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Lunascape Is Firefox, Chrome, and Internet Explorer Rolled Into One [Featured Windows Early Adopter Download]

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Going on my download list.

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Lunascape Is Firefox, Chrome, and Internet Explorer Rolled Into One [Featured Windows Early Adopter Download]

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Image Editing Tutorial - Focal Plane Effects

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I love this effect, used it in the past.

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Image Editing Tutorial - Focal Plane Effects

Make everyday scenes look like tiny intricate models with this fun Photoshop technique

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Faster browsing with RAM disks

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Faster browsing with RAM disks


esperancedv

A coworker approached us today wondering if they could get a performance boost using Samsung’s newly announced 256GB SSD. Most of their work is done in browser, so we said “no”. They’d only see benefit if they were reading/writing large files. Their system has plenty of RAM, and we decided to take a different approach. By creating a filesystem in RAM, you can read and write files much faster than on a typical hard drive. We decided to put the browser’s file cache into RAM.

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Spice up Your Desktop With Lightweight Wallpaper Shifter [Featured Windows Download]

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Spice up Your Desktop With Lightweight Wallpaper Shifter [Featured Windows Download]

Windows only: Wallpaper Shifter is a lightweight wallpaper randomizer. The installation is 8.11MB which by portable-application standards isn’t super light, but the system resources consumed by Walllpaper Shifter are extremely lightweight.

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Hybrid 3d rendering on GPU

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Hot hot hot…….sweet eye candy.

The Amusement Machine

The Latest Creation From The Amusement Machine

By 1Green Thumb


Ever wonder what it would be like to be inside a UFO? Well wonder no more, this is a preview of hybrid 3D rendering on the gpu…aka your graphics card. You are on a terraforming ship. For more info and videos check out our site here!

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Talentless Hack

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Here are links to my collections of other peoples work on Deviant Art. Most of these make me feel like a talentless hack, lol.


Photobucket Cats People some NSFW

Cityscapes Graphic Art some NSFW

Traditional Art Dogs

Other favorites

Alastair Montgomery’s Photography
Main Page,
My Shop at CafePress, My Shop at Zazzle Sign My Guestbook
In association with Zazzle.com

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Liberate Yourself from Old Email Addresses [How To]

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I really need to do this.

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Liberate Yourself from Old Email Addresses [How To]

If you’ve been on the internet for any substantial amount of time you’ve likely accumulated your fair share of email addresses. Old school addresses, an assortment of free web-based addresses from Hotmail and Yahoo, and so on all contribute to you having too many addresses and little desire to keep checking the old ones. What can you do to cut down on your email excess? Wired Magazine has a how-to guide to help you consolidate your past email addresses without simply abandoning them into the digital void.

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Social Network Status Generator

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Social Network Status Generator

Have we come this far already? Desperate times require desperate measures it seems. To impress, one has to be witty. This is especially hard on social networks with millions of other users who want to impress as well.

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Slot machine game features mug-shots of Japan's most wanted

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Sounds like a cool idea

BBC News & Tech
News, Tech and Sport

Slot machine game features mug-shots of Japan’s most wanted

In Asia-Pacific

A Japanese company launches an online slot machine game featuring the mug-shots of the country’s most wanted.

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BBC E-mail: Urine passes Nasa taste test

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Alastair Montgomery saw this story on the BBC News website and thought you
should see it.

** Urine passes Nasa taste test
The space shuttle Endeavour is delivering a urine recycling device to the astronauts aboard the International Space Station.
< http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/em/fr/-/2/low/science/nature/7729085.stm >


 BBC Daily E-mail
Choose the news and sport headlines you want - when you want them, all
in one daily e-mail
< http://www.bbc.co.uk/email >


 Disclaimer **
The BBC is not responsible for the content of this e-mail, and anything written in this e-mail does not necessarily reflect the BBC's views or opinions. Please note that neither the e-mail address nor name of the sender have been verified.

If you do not wish to receive such e-mails in the future or want to know more about the BBC's Email a Friend service, please read our frequently asked questions. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/help/4162471.stm

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Nintendo DS Homebrew

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I’ve been getting extremely excited about the Nintendo DS home brew scene. The Spectrum and SNES emulators look like a win, also there is a Doom and Quake port available. Happy days……..


Doodle’s Geek Monkey by Alastair Montgomery

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Photo Filter Software

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gHacks technology news
A technology blog covering software, mobile phones, gadgets, security, the Internet and other relevant areas.

Photo Filter Software

By Martin on windows software

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Install Mythbuntu 8.10 from Windows with Wubi

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This looks like a good way to try out Mythbuntu.



 DownloadSquad Download Squad
Download Squad

Install Mythbuntu 8.10 from Windows with Wubi

By Brad Linder on wubi

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Baumhauser : Amazing Prefab Treehouses by Baumraum

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I always wanted a tree house as a kid, this looks like an idea one :)

Furniture, Interior Design, Architecture, Decor and Home & House Design
Freshome is the perfect source of inspiration for home design, furniture inspiration, interior design, architecture, advices and tips.

Baumhauser : Amazing Prefab Treehouses by Baumraum

By Alex Ion on trees

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Opera 9.6 released

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My browser of choice for my aging home laptop and desktop computers.


DownloadSquad Download Squad
Download Squad

Opera 9.6 released

By Brad Linder on opera-browser

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MediaMonkey

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I found the intelligent tag editor really useful.

MediaMonkey 3.0.5.1187

MediaMonkey is a music manager and jukebox for serious music collectors and iPod users. It catalogs your CDs, OGG, WMA, MPC, FLAC, APE, WAV and MP3 audio files. It offers an intelligent tag editor which looks up missing Album Art and track information…

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Gaming grub

“Gamer Grub is a great tasting snack that boosts your core gaming systems, such as visual input, cognitive processing, signal transmission and muscle reflexes for maximum gaming performance."

Basically a meal in a can, kinda like those weight loss drinks. So you can keep gaming all night long. In my day we had to make do with pizza, crisps, chocolate and fizz drinks!

Doodle’s Geek Monkey by Alastair Montgomery

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Tooth Tunes - get that song out of my head!

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Plays “Can’t Get You out of My Head” by Kylie perhaps?



The Red Ferret Journal - gadgets, cool sites, freeware and tech trivia
Gadgets, cool sites, freeware, tech trivia and the neatest free music wiki this side of the western ridges!

Tooth Tunes - get that song out of my head!

By Dan on hmm..interesting

Image Toy behemoth Hasbro hase released a music-playing toothbrush called Tooth Tunes. The idea being you keep brushing your teeth until the music runs out. The freaky part is the music is transmitted into your ears via bone conduction through your jaw so you can only hear the music if you’re […]

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Geeky Comics

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“So you’ve decided to steal the Internet”

chainsawsuit by kris straub
comix five dayz a week

October 3, 2008 - chainsawsuit

By kris straub

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Yama Vac Pot

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I want one, love the retro look, maybe its the coffee geek in me.

Life GH Com
Pipes Output

Yama Vac Pot

In Kitchen

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GIMP 2.6 open source image editor launched

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Cut my photo editing teeth using this, need to download the new version.

Life GH Com
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GIMP 2.6 open source image editor launched

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New Blog : Doodle's Geek Monkey

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I’ve started a new blog (okay I’m an addict) for all the geeky and techie things I’ve found interesting.

So satisfy your inner nerd and head over to http://meekgonkey.blogspot.com/



Doodle’s Dawdle by Alastair Montgomery

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Firefox Universal Uploader Is Like an FTP Client for Popular Web Sites [Featured Firefox Extension]

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Another Firefox addon to add to my growing collection.

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Firefox Universal Uploader Is Like an FTP Client for Popular Web Sites [Featured Firefox Extension]

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VLC 0.9 Revamps Interface, Playlist Features [Featured Download]

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One for the download list


Lifehacker
Lifehacker
Computers make us more productive. Yeah, right. Lifehacker recommends the software downloads and web sites that actually save time. Don’t live to geek; geek to live.

VLC 0.9 Revamps Interface, Playlist Features [Featured Download]

By Kevin Purdy on Windows

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T-Mobile G1 First Google Android Phone

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Could be a replacement contender for my aging K800i

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T-Mobile G1 First Google Android Phone

The mobile phone company T-Mobile announced a first version of a new phone called T-Mobile G1 just a few days ago. The mobile phone will be the first to make use of the Google Android Open Source plattform. The G1 will be manufactured by Taiwanese company HTC and hit shelves on October 22 in the United States in colors white, black and brown. Europeans have to wait a little bit longer - as usual - before they can get their hands on the phone that is also known as the gphone.

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Simplify Your Life: Send Photos to Different Sites at the Same Time

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Looks like a good idea.

Photojojo
The most kick-ass photo tips, DIY projects, and gear

Simplify Your Life: Send Photos to Different Sites at the Same Time

By kelly on Websites

pixelpipe
Thanks to returning sponsor MailChimp
for making this week’s Photojojo possible.

Mail Chimp
~
Have a cool photo product or site?
Reach 220,000 photo fans

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Convert &amp; Extract Audio from Videos

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Music from video

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Convert & Extract Audio from Videos

pazera.png
(Click to Enlarge)

There have been a few times where I've wanted to extract audio from video files, but it's not always easy to find a free tool that can successfully do that. I highly recommend grabbing the free Pazera app if you ever find yourself in a similar situation. To make it even more useful the program also doubles as an audio conversion utility.

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Disposable Email Address Yopmail

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Could be useful for signing up to dodgy sites :)

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Disposable Email Address Yopmail

Disposable email addresses provide the user with an easy to access temporary email address that they can use to register to services on the Internet without having to think about protecting their main email address from spam. While most Internet services are legit and do not sell the email addresses of their users some do sell them. Once an email address is on a spam list it is close to impossible to prevent spam from arriving in the mail inbox.

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Xirrus Wi-Fi Monitor Detects Wireless Networks [Featured Download]

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Looks like a cool Wifi finder.

Life GH Com
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Xirrus Wi-Fi Monitor Detects Wireless Networks [Featured Download]

Windows/Mac/Linux: Free application Xirrus Wi-Fi Monitor is a cross-platform Wi-Fi tool that displays available networks on a very cool radar map. More specifically, the app searches for Wi-Fi networks, displays strength, detects rogue access points, and helps you tweak your network for the best signal. The downside: Xirrus Wi-Fi monitor is only available in widget/gadget/desklet form. That means that in order to use it, on XP and OS X you have to install the Yahoo Widget framework, on Linux you have to install the Desklet framework, and on Vista you’ll need to re-enable the sidebar gadgets. That’s all somewhat of a bummer considering the whole widget craze generally went out the door circa-2006. However, Xirrus remains a worthwhile application with an unquestionably fun execution. Then again, if eye candy isn’t all that important, give previously mentioned NetStumbler (Windows) or iStumble (Mac) a try.

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How-To: Web server on a business card (Part 2)

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I wish I had the time to make stuff like this.

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How-To: Web server on a business card (Part 2)

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Battle of the Linux Distros [Lifehacker Faceoff]

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Tried them all at one point, not sure which I like the most.

Life GH Com
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Battle of the Linux Distros [Lifehacker Faceoff]

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Picture : Old Barn water colour

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Old Barn water colour
Originally uploaded by Alastair Montgomery

This was painted years ago by my Dad, William Montgomey.

I can’t believe he passed away 9 years ago now, still miss him lots.

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Picture : Dog Walk 20th August 2008

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More cloud pictures from walks with the dog, captured on my Sony Ericsson K800i

All pictures from Hell's Wath in Ripon.


DSC00440

DSC00442

DSC00443

DSC00445

DSC00444


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River Forth's Bridges collection

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A collection of my pictures of the Forth Road/Rail bridges in Scotland.

Taken from North and South Queensferry.

Click here to see the rest of the collection

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Vector : Doodle 1 4th August

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doodle
Originally uploaded by Alastair Montgomery

A vector version of a previous doodle, created using the Inkscape program.

Full view also available at my DeviantArt page.

Alastair Montgomery’s Photography

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7 Best Linux Distributions for Multimedia Enthusiasts

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Free operating systems tailored towards being creative.


Some Rights Reserved TECH SOURCE FROM BOHOL

7 Best Linux Distributions for Multimedia Enthusiasts

By noreply@blogger.com (jun auza) on free/open-source

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Gym Bunny?

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I think I’m becoming a gym bunny, sad but true.
I won a three months free trial at a new local gym so I went along to try it out.
Now I’m going three times a week and have joined up.
Also I caught myself check my muscle sizes in the mirror.

After many years of being a desk jockey and proud couch potato it is a sad fall from grace.

Now if I could just increase my bench press reps I would be fine……….

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Picture : Kilnsey Stream

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Kilnsey Stream
Originally uploaded by Alastair Montgomery

Picture of a stream bouncing over rocks at Kilnsey Trout farm, taken August 2007.

Full view at DeviantArt

Buy this as a postcard

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Picture : Hill

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Hill
Originally uploaded by Alastair Montgomery

Another view of Clifford’s Tower Hill, York.



Here is the before shot, I think I like the cropped version (above) better.


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Fractal Blog

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I’ve started a new blog to show off some of my fractal pictures which I have had online for a while. The old HTML based page wasn’t going anywhere these days so I’ve been posting them to http://alsfractals.blogspot.com/

Here’s a slide show of some of the images going online soon


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Picture : All Fenced In

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All Fenced In
Originally uploaded by Alastair Montgomery

Usual wire fencing around a factory, Polbeth West Lothian



Available as a postcard on Zazzle

Also on Deviant Art

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Picture : Union Canal from bridge

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Union Canal from the bridge in Broxburn
Originally uploaded by Alastair Montgomery

Union Canal from the bridge in Broxburn, West Lothian, Scotland

Available as a postcard and on DeviantArt

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Picture : Iowa Morning

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Iowa Morning
Originally uploaded by Alastair Montgomery

Taken outside the Super 8 motel Anamosa one cold morning in Jan 2007.
It was about -16C at the time.

Available as a postcard



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Old Valve

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Old Valve
Originally uploaded by Alastair Montgomery

West Yorkshire

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Cloudgate

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Cloudgate
Originally uploaded by Alastair Montgomery

Cloudgate A.K.A Chicago Bean

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Calibrate Your Monitor with Screen Check [Monitors]

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Calibrate Your Monitor with Screen Check [Monitors]

screen-check.pngCalibrate your monitors for consistent tone and color with web site Screen Check. The site displays two bars, one white-to-black for adjusting tone and the other covers the red/green/blue spectrum for adjusting color. Just follow the Screen Check instructions and by the end you should have a reasonably well calibrated monitor. My Dell comes with a very similar built-in calibration tool, but if your monitor doesn't, Screen Check is worth a look.

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Camera Has Whole Bunch Of Megapixels

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Geekologie - Gadgets, Gizmos, and Awesome

Camera Has Whole Bunch Of Megapixels

In ridiculous

160mp-camera.jpg Is 10 or 12 megapixels just not enough for you? Looking for something with a little more resolution? How about 160MP? That’s what the new Seitz D3 6 x 17 is packing. The 4.5 lb camera takes 60 x 170 mm images with 7,500 x 21,250 pixel resolution. An uncompressed file is just under a gig in size and the thing is so nasty that it functions through a little tablet PC attached to the back. Pretty sweet. I’m thinking this is probably the logical step up from the 1MP HP digital camera I’ve been rocking for nine years now. Unfortunately the $44,414 pricetag made me throw up and soil my pants at the same time. Seitz 160-Megapixel Camera Is An Arm Full [gearfuse] Product Page (with full specs) Thanks to Lincoln, who is very photogenic because he’s so handsome, for the tip

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Flickr Mass Downloader

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gHacks technology news
A technology blog covering software, mobile phones, gadgets, security, the Internet and other relevant areas.

Flickr Mass Downloader

By Martin on pictures

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Useful tools, Namexif

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Namexif™ is a tool to automatically rename photos with the date they were shot.
Digital cameras have their own clock and record the date to each photos with a precision of a second. Since the date and time is recorded for each photos (provided it is an EXIF compliant digital camera), Namexif™ is able to rename these photos according to the date.
# Doing so will: make chronological order same as alphabetical one,
# set a unique name to your photos
http://www.digicamsoft.com/softnamexif.html

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HDR Images

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Layers
Originally uploaded by smarti77

This is one of the better HDR images I’ve seen, it doesn’t look unnatural like some of the other examples.

I need to get a tripod so I can attempt the process :)

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Create online photo albums

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PhotoOnWeb is a software to create your online photo albums. Easy for sharing your pictures on internet with your friends and familly.

Sort your photos in multiple albums, pick a template and click on the Publish button. PhotoOnWeb will resize the photos, build the web site and publish a photo web album. You can host the pictures yourself with your own ISP web space by FTP or create an account on VSO’s server. No computer programming knowledge is required, HTML editing can be used for custom albums.

The navigation in the online gallery is so easy you can browse through the pictures with the keyboard or mouse using your current web browser. Using Flash technology, you can use the full screen of your display to enjoy the details of the pictures: elegant and professional look and feel.
http://www.photoonweb.com/en/

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Picture : Candle Frames

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Edit of the picture Candlemaker Row, Edinburgh image.
Done in Photoshop CS3 for a competition at my local camera club.

Full view at http://sicklittlemonkey.deviantart.com/art/Candle-Frames-68658368

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Picture : Dog Walk 27th August 2007 1

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Full view at http://sicklittlemonkey.deviantart.com/art/Dog-Walk-27th-August-2007-1-63484742


Pictures taken with my Sony Ericsson K800i while walking the dog last night.




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TrustedReviews - Digital Photography Tutorial – Photo Printing

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TrustedReviews - Digital Photography Tutorial – Photo Printing

With the popularity of digital cameras, more and more people are taking more and more photographs. In fact despite scare-mongering stories about “the end of history” and “the death of photography”, the truth is that there are more photos being taken today than ever before. However most of those photos will never be seen by anyone except the person who took them, because hardly anyone prints their photos any more. This is very odd, because many people have home computers with photo-quality printers that are more than capable of producing first-class prints from almost any digital photograph. Printers are ludicrously cheap, to the point that when your printer runs out of ink it’s almost cheaper to throw it away and buy a new one than it is to buy more ink.
Read More…

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Generating Fractals: A benchmark comparison of PDL and other Tools

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A decent introduction to creating fractals with PDL. “Whether you are a professional or amateur scientist, engineer or mathematician, if you need to make numerical calculations and plots quickly and easily, then PDL (Perl Data Language) is certainly one of the best free software tools to use."

read more | digg story

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The Orton Effect

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The Orton Effect is named after Michael Orton who first used the technique is a sandwich of two images, one in focus the other out of focus. Freeman Patterson and Andre Gallant have both used the technique successfully in their work as well.

This tutorial show you how to recreate this in Photoshop etc.

The Orton Effect - Digital Photography Tip of the Week at PCIN.net Update


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Great Yorkshire Show 2007

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Pictures taken at The Great Yorkshire Show 2007

Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket
http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/59553334/

Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket
http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/59552953/

Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket
http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/59551631/

Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket
http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/59550956/

More too follow….


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Chicago Skyline Postcard

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Other products with views of Chicago

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More walks with the dog

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Some more pictures taken from walks with Wilson.












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Armed with camera phone and dog

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Short video clip and a couple of photos taken while walking Wilson on Sunday in Ripon.



Not much water in the stream.



In the grass

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EcT_Obl2YPE

Result, one tired dog

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Backing up your pictures

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With a computer’s tendancy to become unusable through physical damage, virus attack etc. It is a very good idea to backup your digitial pictures.

The article examines some of the online and external backup options available.

Read more……http://tinyurl.com/2g6p4

Alastair Montgomery
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Create your own photo album website using Photoshop

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You can create your own photo album to host your picture collection on the web in just a few simple steps. The Digital Photography School has a short (six minute) video tutorial that demonstrates how to create your own web-based photo album using Photoshop. The process is all graphical and automated, so you don’t have to be a techie to get this done.
Read more….http://tinyurl.com/2aq6pf

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Picture : Forth Bridges

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Forth Bridges, South Queensferry, Scotland


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Picture : Earth to sky

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Taken from Hancock Tower, Chicago



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CleVR Panoramas

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I thought this was pretty neat - a site which allows you to stitch photos together into a panorama online, and also hosts them there for your guests to view. The flash viewer has a pretty neat feature - it allows for clickable hotspots, which will take you to a new panorama.

http://www.clevr.com

View this panorama for example - which will give you a full 360 degree tour of someone’s home.
http://www.clevr.com/pano/434

Click and drag to pan around inside the panorama, and click on the hotspots to move to another room… neat!

Alastair Montgomery
Main Page, My Bookmarks

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Create an online scrap book of your pictures

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Web site Scrapblog lets you create online scrapbooks with a powerful flash editing tool and tons of templates. Scapblog is one of the most robust, desktop application-like web apps I’ve seen in a long time; working in Scrapblog has a similar look and feel to working in Picasa. Scrapblog has tons of options for personalizing your scrapbook, from templates and stickers and shapes to your own photos.
Get creating……http://www.scrapblog.com/

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360 Still Life Photography on the cheap

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360 Made Easy

So I’ve been meaning to do this project for quite a while. You can spend tons of money on a professional rotation tray to create 360 photography, or you can build one yourself essentially free.

Read more…….

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GIMP Tutorials

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The GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP) is a free piece of software available for Windows, Mac and Linux Operating systems for tasks such as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring. If you don’t want to pay for Photoshop, it is a viable alternative. To help you get to grips with it, we have dugg out the best Tutorials for you…

http://tutorialblog.org/gimp-tutorials/

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Film Poster Quiz

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Name the films from their posters, I’ll tell you the answers later….



Free Image Hosting at www.ImageShack.us

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Cast Shadow in Photoshop

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What do you do when a drop shadow isn’t realistic enough? Create a cast shadow. When you see an object in a spotlight or a setting sun, you will notice the long shadows that are created behind them, this technique will teach you how to add realism to your images.
Create a case shadow in Photoshop

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Adobe to take Photoshop online


Adobe to take Photoshop online


Hoping to get a jump on Google and other competitors, Adobe Systems plans to release a hosted version of its popular Photoshop image-editing application within six months, the company’s chief executive said Tuesday.

Read More…

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Online Photo Editing

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As great as it is, there are times when Photoshop is just plain overkill.

Maybe you simply need to nuke some red-eye before emailing a photo, or fix the exposure on a snap you’ve already put on Flickr. Picnik to the rescue!

Crop, rotate, resize, one-click fix, color adjustments, sharpening, saturation, even histograms. 95% of the stuff you’d do in Photoshop, you can do in Picnik more easily. Grab photos straight from your Flickr (and replace them with edited versions), from your computer, or the web; send your edited photos to your blog, to email, photo sharing sites, make a nifty slideshow, or even have them printed.

Picnik is fast. Better, it’s easy peasy, free, and filled with friendly features. (Example: Unlimited undo. Even for photos you edited months ago. Not even Photoshop can do that.)

http://www.picnik.com/

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Packet Garden

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Packet Garden





Packet Garden captures information about how you use the internet and uses this stored information to grow a private world you can later explore.

Link
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Touring the GIMP

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Touring the GIMP



The GNU Image Manipulation Program (the GIMP) has been called
"Photoshop for Linux". While the GIMP is not just for Linux and is not
an Adobe Photoshop clone, it is a very powerful image manipulation
program. It is clearly on the other end of the spectrum from TuxPaint
as far as capabilities.


In this first article, Micheal offers a tour of the cabilities. If
you are like me, the GIMP seemed intimidating because it has so many
capabilities. This article will help you get more comfortable with all
the possible things you can do without getting buried in details. In
subsequent articles we will explore some specific capabilities.

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Screengrab Addon for Firefox 2

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What it does is to save a website as an image. Everything is saved in the process which means that the image can become really big. I love it because I think it is so much easier and better to save a website as an image instead of saving the htm files with all the other elements using Save Page As.


From http://www.ghacks.net

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Ultimate List of over 150 (!) Free Windows Software from Microsoft

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Microsoft has over 150 FREE Windows & Office Programs available for download – finding them all is extremely difficult . . . until now. My favorites: FolderShare (a P2P application to synchronize folders with other users (or your devices)), Virtual Desktop Manager, Alt-Tab Replacement (however I think that TaskSwitch XP is better) and ISO recorder

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ExifTool - Read and Write Meta Information!

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ExifTool is a Perl module with an included command-line application for reading and writing meta information in image, audio and video files. It recognizes EXIF, GPS, IPTC, XMP, JFIF, GeoTIFF, ICC Profile, Photoshop IRB, FlashPix, AFCP and ID3 meta information (and more!) as well as the maker notes of many digital cameras .

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Digital Light Studio

This looks so cool, I want one :)

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Paint.NET

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Pegged for users that want more power than with MS-Paint but can't afford Photoshop.
Image Hosted by ImageShack.us

Paint.NET is image and photo manipulation software designed to be used on computers that run Windows. It supports layers, unlimited undo, special effects, and a wide variety of useful and powerful tools.
Paint.NET
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Amazing Trick Shot

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Someone with too much time on their hands!


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A Brief History of Star Trek Games

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From a cult classic of 1960s television to present-day blockbuster, Star Trek has managed to maintain a sizable audience over the decades; and add to it consistently with strategic changes to the formulae that makes it so popular. One of the most prominent reasons for Star Trek’s success is its ability to cobble together so many different facets of storytelling into one neat package to appeal to a broad, but not disconnected, audience.

Link

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Media Monkey

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MediaMonkey manages your music collection like no other program. It
helps you organize your audio files, edit tags, and easily retrieve
missing album art. It can rip CDs to any number of formats (including
cult faves like FLAC and OGG), convert existing audio files to any
number of formats, normalize volume levels across all your tracks, and
much more.

Download of the Day: MediaMonkey (Windows) - Lifehacker

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Share any size file with MediaFire

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mediafire.png

Web site MediaFire is a free file hosting service that allows
unlimited file sizes and uploads, as well as unlimited downloads of
files.



The service is really well made, especially the upload progress
page, which gives you a nice view of your upload progress, speed, and
estimated time to complete the upload. Add to that the unlimited
everything for free, and you’ve got what looks like a pretty saucy file
sharing service. In the wake of YouSendIt migrating to more of a pay
service, a lot of readers have been looking for a new host; while there
are a lot of options available (see the comments), MediaFire is the only one I’ve seen with the unlimited upload size. -Adam Pash

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How to Turn Tin Cans into Photo Frames in 15 minutes

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Cool idea but don’t forget what was in the tin!

Tutorial on turning cans and bottles into really simple and neat-looking photo frames.


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Drink milk.

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Drink milk
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MasterCard: MacGyver

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Entitled "MacGyver," the ad finds Richard Dean Anderson's character - MacGyver - in typical fashion: held hostage in a remote warehouse with time running out on a self-destructing bomb. Cleverly, MacGyver uses the purchases he had made with his Debit MasterCard card - everyday items at a convenience store - to free himself and escape to safety. At the end of the spot, consumers are encouraged to visit www.priceless.com, a new website containing behind-the-scenes footage and interviews from the filming of the spot.
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Builders from heck

Don’t hire these guys!

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Belly Bump

How not to impress the ladies!

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Going for gold

Not quite Olympic standard

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Get out

One way to break up with your girl friend.

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Piano Duet

Don’t slam the lid shut ;oP

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Check your shoes

Watch were you are stepping

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Greased Lightbox

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Greased Lightbox is a Greasemonkey/Creammonkey user script designed to enhance browsing on websites that link to images such as Google Image Search, Flickr, Gmail, Facebook, and MySpace.

Just been trying this out, works great a must for all Firefox users.

Download it now from http://shiftingpixel.com/lightbox/

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Plasma Eye Source Material

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Here’s the unflattened file for Plasma Eye so you can see how its done.

This was originally done using The Gimp but I’ve included it converted to PSD file as well.

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Amazing Circles

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Here’s a great tutorial on creating amazing circles in Photoshop. Useful for wallpapers etc.

For an example on what you can do look here.

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101 Free Games

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media.jpg

Computer Gaming World and 1up.com have compiled a list of the top 101 free games on the Web. With 101 you can bet there is lots of variety. These games range from the traditional to the downright wacky.

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First Post

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First post to my blog here.

Here’s a picture for you to look at.

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