Category: Geekdom

Just a collection of links that are mostly for my reference, but somebody might find it interesting.

• New project: Ubuntu Home Server (directly in response to Windows Home Server).
• Remote control somebody’s desktop with Crossloop.
• Get Vista-style drive icons in XP with Vista Drive Icon (just yet another reason you don’t need Vista, no matter what Barney says on KTVZ).
• What does a billboard printer look like? Something like this.
• Build your own Hackintosh Mac for under $800 (anybody want to send me $800 so I can try this?). Or I guess I could just try running it on the PC I already have, though it’d still be nice to have a dedicated box for the experiment.
• Essential Tools for a Placeless Office (great collection of ideas and thoughts on if you have a company with no office).
• Fedora 8 Games Spin Live DVD (this is going in the laptop bag for those times when I’m stuck somewhere).
• Is It time for 64-bit on the desktop?
• Identifying slow MySQL queries.
• Getting Redhat Enterprise or CentOS to support 4GB (or more) of RAM using the PAE Kernel.
• The KDE Education project — great linux distro for students and teachers.
• For my reference: To see if any IP addresses have a ton of connections to your server quickly and easily, run “netstat -ntu | awk ‘{print $5}’ | cut -d: -f1 | sort | uniq -c | sort -n”.
• Reserve off part of your desktop for docked applications with DesktopCoral.
• Disable wget if you don’t need it.
• Free software to find your security flaws.
• Mandriva’s open letter to Steve Ballmer.
• Your desktop is not a destination.
• Having a hard time convincing your boss to use encrypted e-mail? This might do it.
• Salvage an old system with Damn Small Linux.
• How to See What Pages a Traffic Source is Linking in Google Analytics.
• How to recover a deleted Word document.
• Top ten off switches.

Update on 11/14: A few more I just found (many from here):

• 1GB 20 years ago versus today.
• A sign I really need in my office.
• A lighter look at PageRank.
• Speed up Google IMAP in Outlook.

If you get your DSL service via an independant ISP over DSL, there’s a good chance your service might get expensive soon. Or just start to really be crappy and slow. Or just not work entirely. All this, thanks to the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.

A few Firefox extensions that I came across the last few days that seem interesting.

• Screengrab! for making screenshots of an entire web page.
• JSView for viewing the source of linked files.
• Autocomplete Manager, which enhanches the autocomplete functions of the address bar.

And it case anybody’s curious, here are the extensions I currently have installed in Firefox (using the Smoke theme):

• About This Site Bookmarks 1.5
• Allow Right-Click 0.4
• BugMeNot 1.3
• ColorZilla 1.0
• Configuration Mania 1.08.2007013001
• DOM Inspector 1.8.1.8
• Download Manager Tweak 0.7.2
• DownThemAll! 1.0b2
• ErrorZilla 0.2
• Google Toolbar for Firefox 3.0.20070525W
• IE Tab 1.3.3.20070528
• Java Console 6.0.01
• Linky 2.7.1
• Live HTTP Headers 0.13.1
• MR Tech Local Install 5.3.2.6
• Popup ALT Attribute 1.3.2005092702
• Remember Mismatched Domains 1.4.3
• Search Marker 1.0.4
• Stylish 0.5.3
• Tabbrowser Preferences 1.3.1.1
• UnPlug 1.6.06
• User Agent Switcher 0.6.10
• VideoDownloader 1.1.1
• Web Developer 1.1.4

When I get some free time at the office (doubtful), I’m going to start playing with the default “Ready” messages on our HP printers.

Some more random geek links, mostly for my reference:

• Create a simple invisible folder (not secure) for your porn collection private files.
• The worst thing about Macs is their fans (agree with this 1000%).
• Sync your schedule with Google Calendar, including a few shareware options for syncing with Outlook and iCal (the GCalDaemon is also a popular choice and is freeware). Now if I could just figure out an easy to sync up Outlook, my Blackberry and GCal…
• 25 Tools to Compile an In-Depth Dossier on a Competitors’ Site (most of these I knew about, but there were a few I didn’t).
• Installing an Ubuntu monitoring system with Cacti, Zenoss and Smokeping.
• Need to crack any password from about 100 file formats and programs? Here’s your program.
• More uses for old PCs.
• Most computer repair companies don’t know what they are doing.
• Installing Domainkeys on a cPanel server.
• Dump Outlook and Your Smart Phone.
• Find updates for programs on your systemTemporary e-mail PHP script (based on Guerrilla Mail).

PC World has a great article about 13 applications it thinks should’ve just been left alone. Thanks to sites like Old Version and Old Apps, we can still get copies of those older, much more functional, muss less annoying applications.

Getting rid of some links, mostly for my reference here.

• What is ctfmon.exe and why is it running?
• MySQL Tuning Analyzer Script.
• Monospace (read: programmer) font comparison.
• PatchOnClick, an interesting little patch tool.
• An explanation of SQL joins using Venn diagrams.
• Pushing operating system limits.
• Computer display calibration 101.
• Install Ubuntu on a flash drive and run it from Windows.
• Stealth Windows Update prevents XP repair, but there are ways around it.
• Upgrading Perl on cPanel to 5.8.8.
• Change the registered owner in Windows.
• Windows XP Shutdown Troubleshooter.
• Great duplicate remover for Excel.
• Top 10 WiFi Boosts, Tweaks, and Apps.
• Universal wireless repeater with dd-wrt.
• Nintendo DS Homebrew card comparison.
• Obscure and rarely used HTML tags.
• Handy cPanel scripts.
• “img” hack to detect browsers — though I don’t know how useful this is.