Category Archives: Geek
Got Ubuntu 12.04 Precise Pangolin? Now what?
Here are the steps I have taken to install Ubuntu 12.04 Precise Pangolin with the Gnome 3.4 desktop. Of course, everyone has their own preferences for behaviour – but these are mine. These steps begin after rebooting at the end … Continue reading
Why I don’t use enum columns in MySQL database design
I used to be a fan of ENUM columns in MySQL databases. They’re lighter-weight than explicit lookup tables and, I presumed, led to less expensive operations than foreign key checks on a lookup table. But I’ve changed my mind: Changes … Continue reading
Ubuntu Maverick 10.10 on the Lenovo ThinkPad X100e
I’m running Ubuntu Maverick 10.10 on a Lenovo ThinkPad X100e. Everything runs well. I thought I’d share the steps I went through in order to set up Ubuntu on the machine. Some of these steps are personal preferences rather than … Continue reading
Why the iPad sucks: a flame-war invitation
The iPad is a beautiful piece of kit, following in the Apple tradition of making beautifully designed hardware that also brings with it compelling unique selling points. But with the iPad, has the company got the balance wrong and does … Continue reading
Joel Spolsky on twitter…
It’s my cheap approach to blog-journalism, but I cannot resist repeating some of Joel Spolsky‘s thoughts on Twitter, declared during his penultimate blog post: “Although I appreciate that many people find Twitter to be valuable, I find it a truly … Continue reading
Bugzilla API: an example using PHP and Zend Framework
Bugzilla has a rudimentary API for driving it from code. To do this from PHP is reasonably trivial, but using Zend Framework (for the cookie jar primarily) makes the task very simple. Here is some example code: 1 2 3 … Continue reading
Windows 7 for an Ubuntu devotee
There are three reasons I know of for spending money on an operating system at a time when free Ubuntu is now such a viable option. Those reasons are not Internet Explorer, the Microsoft Office paperclip and the excitement gained … Continue reading
Bug Tracking in the Open
In the inspiring Google blog post The Meaning of Open, Jonathan Rosenberg cites the Google Web Toolkit as using “a public bug tracker”. And it is this small mention (in the midst of a post discussing much bigger themes) that … Continue reading
Picasa on Ubuntu
I’ve recently taken a shine to Picasa as an alternative to F-Spot on Linux. Installing Picasa 3 Beta for Linux is straightforward on Ubuntu: download the .deb from Google’s site and then install it (sudo dpkg -i picasa_3.0-current_i386.deb). Having done … Continue reading
Ubuntu Karmic – now better than Mac OS X
Ok. The subject of the post is deliberately provocative and the chances of me changing the allegiance of die-hard fans of Apple’s “beauty-in-a-box” are remote to say the least. But I think it right to encourage everyone (whether Windows, Mac … Continue reading