NeutralAxis

Earlier this month I described how to make an image of a drive in a new computer using Clonezilla.  Today, I reversed the process and restored that image onto a new drive.  This thing looks so dangerous, it might eat children. (continue reading…)

I took the plunge and updated to Thunderbird 3  now that the Lightning Calendar (1.0b1) has been updated to work with it.  There are a few differences, both positive and negative, in the change. (continue reading…)

Awhile back, I bought two Western Digital Mybook World Edition 1TB network drives.  The first lasted just over a year before it died.  The second one went today, taking down my office backup.  There’s a redundant backup, so I wasn’t really hurt by the failure but at least this time I was able to use some linux knowledge to recover all the data on it. (continue reading…)

After any new computer purchase, I always use whatever means is offered to make restoration discs since none of the manufacturer’s include them anymore.  But restoration discs actually aren’t enough to get you back to square one in all circumstances, such as if you have to replace a hard drive.  That’s where an actual drive image comes in handy.  Norton Ghost is a common commercial program that can do this.  If you don’t want to spend the money, give Clonezilla a try.  Unfortunately, its not particularly user friendly. (continue reading…)

If you don’t want to depend on an external short URL service like bit.ly or tinyurl.com and you have access to your MySQL database, you can install and run your own with YOURLS.  I managed to get it up and running in about an hour in Linux.  The instructions at yourls.org mentions that an installation alongside Wordpress is a bit different than the one described for a standard site.  I found that to be true, and have described what I found worked after the break. (continue reading…)

Anyone else have trouble with their updates to Ubuntu 9.10? On a dual boot install and on a Virtualbox install, the update from 9.04 went fine through downloading all the packages, and then hung. In each case, after it sat there for several minutes doing nothing, I canceled the upgrade and then restarted it. After restarting the upgrade, it whizzed through downloading and went into the install phase without a problem.

After a rough start, I’ve been successfully running XBMC Live on my Revo.  The instructions on Lifehacker.com either aren’t complete, or they glossed over problems they surely must have had since the software and hardware they used is identical to mine.  First the good news … DVD ISOs and VOBs play great, and that was my main goal.  The bad news is that MP3’s played too fast, and video files like avi, flv, wmv are playing way too fast.

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Dropbox, previously written about here, has a limitation that you can only have one account at a time.  But a workaround has been developed that lets you have as many open accounts as you want.

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XBMC, the media center program originally designed to run on the original Xbox video game system, has been running on an old Xbox of mine for the last year or so.  I find myself not using it as much as I’d like though because the machine’s a bit noisy and big to hide around the TV.  Other drawbacks are that it doesn’t allow for HD video, and downloading updates for it practically require a meeting in a dark alley and knowing the secret handshake.

A new article at Lifehacker.com has detailed how to install XBMC on a tiny, silent, Acer AspireRevo with HDMI output.  And given that its for a computer rather than a proprietary video game system, updates are readily available.  I gave it a try on my existing desktop computer with XBMC Live.

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Have you ever wanted to experiment with a different OS but were afraid to make the commitment?  Virtualization software is your answer.  Its easy, and free.  With it, you can install any OS (except MacOS) inside a working copy of any other OS.  (continue reading…)