Posts
Emacs key bindings in Firefox and Brave
Firefox and the Brave browser can use Emacs key bindings in editable text fields, but the method for enabling this feature has changed over the years.
March 4, 2017
VMware Workstation 11 on Linux Mint 18
VMware Workstation 11 was released before Linux Mint 18 (and its parent, Ubuntu 16.04). Because the Linux kernel has changed, the Workstation installer fails to compile the vmmon and vmnet modules. Fixing this requires some minor patches. Once this is done, Workstation itself won’t start; fixing this requires a minor patch to a couple of shell scripts.
March 1, 2017
Bill and Me
I once spent a weekend with Bill Gates and some of his cronies, including Paul Allen, before either of them became rich and famous. It was just a matter of chance, and it didn’t seem all that big of a deal at the time.
January 22, 2017
Koha on Linode
Koha is an open source library system that is used widely throughout the world, and especially in Vermont. For various reasons (including financial) our library was not able to join either of the two consortia of Koha users in Vermont. So I installed Koha on Linode for the exclusive use of our library. Linode is a hosting service that provides low-cost Linux virtual servers, called “Linodes”. Installing Koha in a Linode is a straightforward process, but it does require that you to be somewhat comfortable with typing commands at a command prompt.
January 18, 2017
Linux Mint on a 2008 Macbook
I have access to an old (2008) white Macbook that is not being used due to the age of its operating system. New versions of Firefox can’t be installed on this machine without an operating system upgrade, and the upgrade path for old MacBooks doesn’t appear to be free or easy. So I decided to see if I could install Linux Mint 17 (LTS) on the MacBook. Supposedly it was possible, but I wanted to see for myself.
January 17, 2017
Linux as an Internet Kiosk
UPDATE May 2020: this procedure has been greatly simplified for Linux Mint 19. For some time I have been looking for a way to use Linux as an internet kiosk in our small local library. The library currently has a number of computers available for use by patrons, ranging from netbooks to desktops, all running some variant of Windows 7. Some of these machines are crippled by not having Office licenses.
November 16, 2016
Housing Bubble 2.0
There’s a new, improved housing bubble going on all across the USA. It is going to end badly, as it did before. But meanwhile prices keep climbing, and that is squeezing both buyers and renters . Take a look at the Culver City crap shack in the article linked to in the previous paragraph. At $782 per square foot, that may seem like a lot to my fellow Vermonters. But to a former Californian like me, it’s peanuts. In 2008 I was living in a mobile home in Palo Alto (in the only mobile home park in the town). Just down the block a 780 square foot house went up for sale with an asking price of $700,000. That’s $923 per square foot. According to Zillow , it sold for $675,000 a few months later, which must have been a huge disappointment to the seller.
July 6, 2016
Fixing disabled TrackPoint after Mint 13 update
Yesterday I did a normal software update on a ThinkPad X200s running Linux Mint 13 (which is based on Ubuntu 12.04 LTS). After the update and reboot, the TrackPoint (belly button mouse) no longer worked. This made working with the GUI desktop nearly impossible. Fortunately, Linux has several virtual text consoles that can be used to make repairs.
May 4, 2016
Creating a resume using Pandoc
One of the tasks that Pandoc can take over from word processors is the creation of printable resumes in PDF format. Because Pandoc uses LaTex to create PDFs, the markup in the source document can contain LaTex commands to tweak the appearance.
February 20, 2016
Fixing "send to" in Shotwell on Linux Mint Mate
I recently set up a ThinkPad T61 with Linx Mint 17 Mate for a long-time Mac OS user. I installed Shotwell as the photo manager. It is the default photo app in Ubuntu, and it seemed the closest to iPhoto due to its ability to organize photos by “events” (grouping by timestamp). I also installed Thunderbird as the email handler. But the Shotwell “send to” feature, which is supposed to allow the user to send a photo via Thunderbird, did not work.
February 15, 2016