Completely Alien Geek Speak

This blog now hosted on...

2013-02-24T21:34:00-05:00

This blog is now hosted on GAE, Github Pages, and Heroku. This means that I am using three free cloud hosting providers hosting my content. They all allow the use of CNAMEs, which is important for using a custom domain. It costs me no money. I don’t have to provision, configure, or maintain a single server. And there are speed benefits and even more redundancy from using three rock solid auto-scaling hosting providers. This should provide me with sufficent resources in the unlikely event that any of my content ever becomes popular enough for the so-called “Slashdot” effect.

If there is enough interest in how I did this I will write up a how-to. Suffice it to say that it is fairly simple and straight-forward. I just wanted to brag a little. :-)

Free, Flexible, Secure, and Redundant Command Line Blogging

2012-03-19T22:49:00-04:00

Introduction

I like free and I like simple. What could be simpler than opening vim, writing a blog post in markdown and publishing via git pushes? I don’t know either. But I can explain my current blogging work flow. It’s free, flexible, secure, and redundant. Best of all I can do it all from the shell never having to open a browser if I don’t want to.

Free

Domain Name

Okay, it isn’t completly free as I currently don’t know how to score a free TLD that I can control. So I do have to pay for that. However, there are free shell accounts out there and with a few modifications of what I’m about to explain you could publish there and get a yourname.freeshelldomain.com address. Get a custom notlong url and I’d say you’re in business, since you can edit the destination url for your notlong url. If you move your shell or hosting provider you can always update your notlong to point to the new location. So maybe I do know how to score a free Top Level Domain after all? Well, it’s more of a work around.

Blogging Engine

So first you need to grab a copy of a static site generator. I currently use Octopress, but I am evaluating Hyde. Octopress is written in Ruby and Hyde in Python. Both allow you to write pages and posts in markdown that you run through one of the processrs and they spit out a site that has a the recognizable blog features. Social integration, categories, tags, and comments (via Disqus. Octoress, Hyde, and Disqus are all free to use.

Hosting

You can host this static blog on pretty much any webserver as there are no server side requirements other than enough space to host your content. But the two I’ll mention that are both free are Github and Heroku. I host my blog with Heroku at the moment. Since it’s a low resource site I’m not required to pay anything. There are tons of free hosting sites out there. Take your pick. I like the two of these because I can publish to either with git push. Which is nice.

Flexible

Hosting a static site offers the most flexibility over any other blogging engine as there are no server side scripting engine requirements. No database requirements. If you use little to no images you can host on one of the many free shell accounts out there. I personally like SDF for this. You get ssh and 200MB of webspace. Which is plenty for this.

Secure and Redundant

All the PHP based blogging engines out there are full of holes and require constant updating. Something that I find rather annoying. Last thing I want to spend my time on is updating Wordpress all the time.

Cloudflare

Cloudflare is also free, but fits better under this heading. From their website:

CloudFlare protects and accelerates any website online. Once your website is a
part of the CloudFlare community, its web traffic is routed through our
intelligent global network. We automatically optimize the delivery of your web
pages so your visitors get the fastest page load times and best performance. We
also block threats and limit abusive bots and crawlers from wasting your
bandwidth and server resources. The result: CloudFlare-powered websites see a
significant improvement in performance and a decrease in spam and other attacks.

It’s free to use and what you get for free is awesome.

Free DNS hosting
Free protection for your website
Free analytics
Free CDN (Redundancy)
Free Content Optimizer
Free Caching

I can’t say enough about Cloudflare. I’ve been using it for about a year now and I’m pretty happy with it. My site loads faster. I can manage all or some of my zone’s records with them. Comment spammers and other known “bad” ips get presented with a captcha page.

Conclusion

Well there you have it. Completly free hosting for your blog that you can manage via git, markdown, and vim.

Converting Wordpress posts to markdown

2012-03-17T23:02:00-04:00

This is primarily written as a reminder to myself for the next time when I go looking for a tool that converts Wordpress posts to markdown. It is called Exitwp. I find this useful for moving sites away from Wordpress and onto Octopress, which of course is based on jykell. Octopress is appealling for it’s low server-side requirements and resources. It’s a static site generator. Meaning no database, no server-side scripting languages, cgi’s, ssi’s, etc. Plus I can write my posts in vim and manage them in git. All of which means that I’m more likely to blog since I don’t have to open a browser to do so, if I don’t want to.

The tool is called exitwp, as in exit wordpress and can be found here.

Thoughts on Password management

2012-01-02T00:00:00-05:00

History

I stopped using the browser to store my passwords about 8 years ago after I discovered that Firefox stored them in a plain text file on the file system. Even with a master password in place the file was completely unencrypted. That discovery prompted me to find another solution. Only at the time there really wasn’t any other option. A few years latter Firefox started offering to sync passwords and other settings, as well did a few third party services and related extensions. I didn’t try any of the third party ones, but I did allow Firefox to sync some things for me. The automatic syncing was nice for a while. Until the fact that it was all unencrypted started to really get to me. It got to me to the point that I stopped syncing and removed my account. I needed some other way to manage my passwords. I dumped what I had in Firefox to a local file and managed them locally. I figured I couldn’t do worse than what the browser was going but I still wanted some way to encrypt them.

The current strategy

Then I encrypted the file with gpg and told vim to open .gpg files with gnupg. I love the simplicity and control it gives me. I use pwgen to generate really gnarly passwords and save them to the gpg protected file. I’ve been doing it this way for years now. It is very secure and private, but it isn’t very convenient. The inconvenience becomes apparent when using multiple computers and I need access to one of the passwords stored in said file. The problem arises when I try to figure out a way to access the file while away from my primary machine. My options are:

SSH to the other machine (Sure if I want to store the file on a publicly accessible machine or open ports to a private machine).
Rsync the file? (There has to be a copy on a public server somewhere. Also if I forget to rsync after making a change, and I then make another addition elsewhere, how do I reconcile the difference?)
Use dropbox (I’m not a fan, and I’m paranoid about having a file called passwords.gpg in my dropbox with visible file names to dropbox employees)
Carry it around on a USB stick (sure, except I’m not a huge fan of this method either. They get lost. I’d need backups. Which is the latest copy? You get the idea.)
Roll my own password syncing service (interesting, but I have 2 kids now. Time is of short supply. Possible to do with fsync or some type of distributed file system)

I’ve tried each of these methods. None of them work for me the way I’d like them to. Out of the list the one I used most often and for the longest period of time is SSH’ing to the machine with the password file on it. It has the advantage that I only have to maintain one copy and there’s nothing to sync to other computers. But I have to open my machine to the internet. Of course I use denyhosts and adding fwknop or some other port knocker would limit my exposure, but this seems like overkill just to access one file. And then I’m back to carrying around some tool that would allow me to knock and open ports.

Rsyncing never really worked because I actually do work on multiple machines at the same time at times. I frequently have to have my password file open on both machines, and yes I have made additions to the password file from either machine. If I’m particularly busy I don’t always take the time to rsync them. It’s an extra step. And how do I rsync them without stomping on each other’s additions? What I need is a system that does versioning and syncing automatically in a smart way. Better yet would be a system that is transparent to me.

Using dropbox is okay. I know it’s a popular option for a lot of people for a lot of things. I’ve never really cared much for it. The primary issue in this case, though I’ll admit isn’t a huge one, is that since file names are visible to the fine folks at dropbox, it becomes obvious what is contained in the file. They won’t be able to view the contents, but still the context is there. I could, and have, overcome this issue by overlaying my dropbox with ecryptfs. Ecryptfs allows me to have an encrypted file system with optional filename encryption as well. The downside here is again the fact that this set us is not automatic nor transparent. I could make it automount my ecypptfs shares, but that password would have to be stored somewhere and I simply don’t care to have to do that. Seems like doing so kind of misses the point. I also realize that I could simply rename the file, you know a little security through obscurity. That’s always seem kind of lame to me. I mean really.

USB stick? No thanks. Loosing it isn’t so much a problem in that I’m worried someone would find it and open my password store. Though they could attempt a brute force attack. But here again, if I haven’t been making regular and frequent backups and I loose the stick, I’ve lost all my passwords since the last backup. I am prone to loose little things and I’m lazy and don’t always backup like I should.

I seriously looked at rolling my own password syncing service. Using something like fsync makes this a real possibility. It would take care of the rsyncing automatically anytime I made an edit to which ever copy I was currently working on. The one issue I couldn’t work out was notifying a client that the server contains changes that need to be pulled down. I suppose I could use a hashsum and a cron job. It’s on the back burner for now. Perhaps I’ll get around to it one of these days. It does seem like a cool thing to try and do.

So for the most part I make all edits and lookups from one machine that isn’t internet accessible. I’ve been doing this for years now and even with the total lack in convenience I’ve kept using it as it offers maximum privacy and security. Privacy and security are high up on my list of important things. One thing this system lacks is the browser integration. I’ll admit that it is very nice to have the browser offer to store passwords and fill them in for me automatically. No matter how insecure the implementations have been. I do miss this, but not enough to cause me to abandon my system just to have this feature.

Ideal Password Management System

My idea password management system would provide these features in the order of importance:

Maintain my privacy through the use of encryption or by not storing my data
Maintain the integrity of my passwords again through the use of real encryption or by not storing my data
Allows me to choose the pass phrase protecting the encryption key
Automatically sync my passwords between multiple machines, in a secure and encrypted fashion of course
Has browser integration ie. auto form filling and offer to store username/password combos
Offers a way to generate randomly long passwords that utilize all the character sets, bonus for being able to specify length

So with these things in mind I decided it might be time to start looking for some other option.

About the same I heard about LastPass so I started to check them out a little bit. I was skeptical though because it’s a service that essentially hosts my data on their servers. I created an account and stored a few passwords in it just to get my feet wet. But I didn’t really understand how their system worked. I forgot about them and moved on.

Sometime later LastPass had the network anomaly. I was not worried as I did have a decently complex pass phrase and I only had a few sites stored.

Password Maker

Password Maker works by hashing several pieces of information about a site. In it’s simplest form it takes a password you provide and the hostname of the site your on and hashes that into an md5 string. You can limit the length of the output string and presto, you have a decently hard to guess password. You then use this as the password for the site. If you do this for every site you log into you’ll have a unique password for each and every site you visit and you can continue to remember only one password. Since giving the same inputs to a hashing algorithm will always result in the same output you will always get back the password for each site.

It comes as a browser extension for Firefox, Chromium, and Opera so you can have access to your site’s password across browsers. There are various applications for desktop and mobile phones as well. A command line client and an html/js only version that you can throw on a usb stick and off you go. There’s even a version for my outdated n900.

I very much liked the idea of not having passwords stored any where at all. There are no servers to get compromised. There’s nothing I have to share with companies that I don’t fully trust. And it doesn’t cost anything. That’s always icing on the cake. It’s open-source too!

So I decided to give it a spin. It worked and it worked well. I was quickly falling in love with the simplicity of password maker and could soon see the end of my gpg protected container. It offered maximum privacy, maximum security, and a decent amount of convenience in the form of portability.

I tried it for a 3 months. I gave it a fair go. But I found an issue that I couldn’t easily resolve. The problem I ran into is that I didn’t leave it set at it’s default hashing options. This caused problems when I was on other machines and was trying to recreate the password that I had set a site to. Particularly when I tried use it on my n900 I had trouble reproducing the hashed password. I had so much trouble in fact that I was locked out of one very important account. The issue was that the gui for the n900 didn’t provide all the options as the Chromium extension and the command line version on the phone. The gui was just a wrapper around the command line version. I had so much trouble reliably producing results on my phone that I resorted to using the command line version. Due to the fact that I was using a bunch of non-default options and more than just the host name part of the url it quickly became a real pita as I had to type a lot of command just to get a password. Sure I could write a quick bash script and maybe I will. There were other issues with the hashing of passwords. For what ever reason, some sites reject passwords that contain special characters. They only allow alpha-numeric characters to be used in the password. In order to get Passwordmaker to do this you must change the hashing options for this one particular site. This becomes problematic again to recall and reproduce for the specific sites across devices and platforms. All of this still left me unsatisfied and wanting more from my password management strategy.

One last issue I ran into was how to go about changing a password for a site that periodically requires you to change your password. If the same inputs always produce the same output how does one create a new password for a given site? At the time I was unable to find a solution. Turns out though that they have already worked on out and they make it available on their Wiki. However, I think this is describing the Firefox extension’s usage only. I’m using the Chromium extension. I have not tried this.

LastPass

I decided it was time to give LastPass another look. Since there was an unexplained anomaly that adds validity to my concern over giving anyone a copy of my data I started with their extensive documentation instead of their marketing. I wanted to get my head around how the system really works and weather or not it measures up to their claims. LastPass stated after the anomaly that if you had a decently strong password you had nothing to worry about. They forced everyone to change their master password and recommended that you change the passwords on your stored accounts. Personally I think this was the responsible thing to do. I wonder how many companies would not have said anything at all. Now, if I didn’t act upon their recommendation and the accounts I had stored in their system were compromised who do I have to blame? Myself really, if I didn’t heed the warning. It isn’t fair to expect that their system will never be compromised. Even Google has experienced breeches.

What I found out is that the design of the system is very secure and similar to the geek trusted online backup system of SpiderOak. I’ll write in more detail about the design of the system in a future post, but for now go read their extensive documentation.

It is secure. It encrypts everything on the client side with a pass phrase that I’ve selected and is only known to me. It’s convenient as it offers to populate sign-in forms for me and it notices logins and offers to store those passwords for future use. If even notices password changes and offers to update previously stored passwords. It syncs across platforms, devices, browsers, and operating systems.

Let’s see if it meets the criteria I set above.

It maintains my privacy in the sense that the data is encrypted client-side using a pass phrase chosen and known only to me.
They do store my data on their servers but never in an unencrypted form. Everything is encrypted/decrypted locally. So this point is a yes/no. Yes it’s secured by properly using encryption, but it is stored on servers I don’t control.
Obviously and as already mentioned I not only can, but am required to choose my own pass phrase that is used to encrypt the data.
Automatically syncing my passwords between systems, browsers, and devices is the primary benefit LastPass has to offer over the other password management strategies I’ve tried.
Again, here is one of the primary features of LastPass. It has tight integration into the browser. It offers to fill login forms with known username/password combinations and to store any new ones. This allows for easy management of multiple logins to the same site. Especially useful for Twitter ;-).

I’ve been using LastPass for several months now and I have made significant productivity gains as all the issues I experienced with my gpg method have disappeared. My passwords are automatically synced between browsers and any additions I make on one system are available within minutes on another. Currently, I’m in love with this product and I can’t recommend it enough, I have no idea how I got along without it before. One feature that caused me to take another look at LastPass was the password sharing feature. I needed to share a password with my wife. LastPass allowed me to do this very easily and securely. Anytime I update the password she’ll get the latest copy.

The one and only down-side to LastPass is that my data is stored on their servers. I’m comforted by the fact that all encryption/decryption happens locally with my pass phrase, and the fact that they offer many two-factor and one time password options.

One other thing worth mentioning here is that LastPass’s real strength comes from the fact that it will generate complex passwords for you. You specify the requirements (length and character sets) and it will generate one for you. Using this feature makes it possible to have different passwords for every single site you log into. If one of your accounts is compromised the chances that others will get pwnd as well diminishes. Unless of course the account getting compromised is your LastPass account.

If you have previously written off LastPass because of the anomaly or because of your paranoid mistrust of companies I encourage you to take another look. Look deeper. Try to understand the design goals. Test out the system. Study it, Share what you find. Then let me know where you have posted your findings as I’m really interested in knowing more. I plan to do more study and I will share what I find out in the future. For now LastPass has greatly simplified my password management strategy. Barring any huge hole or vulnerability in their design I’ll continue to use and endorse them.

Loosing Teeth

2012-01-01T20:56:00-05:00

Everytime I think about the tooth that my dentist had to pull I think about this scence in the Fight Club. I suppose on some level it makes me feel better about it all. It makes me laugh about something that otherwise makes me sad.

An exercise in thought

2010-09-22T01:19:50-04:00

Here’s a thought exercise for ya. Suppose I’m ask for your input about something. And that each time you try to provide your input I knock it down. Was I ever really interested in your input? Was I just looking to be right? What does that say about me? How would you have preferred I approach you about the issue? If I never had any intention of considering your input was my mind already made up? How do you feel after providing the input that I solicited yet didn’t care to hear? Would you be willing to take part in a conversation with me the next time I ask for input? Would it have been better that I just state the decision I’ve already made then to give you a false sense that I care about what you think?

Is this type of interaction normal in healthy relationships? Is it ok to make up my mind about something, ask someone what they think about it and constantly tell them, “Not a chance.” ? What am I trying to prove by doing such a thing? Am I trying to prove that I’m better than you?

How-to remove a solid color background from images using the Gimp

2009-06-03T16:00:24-04:00

Jump to the video

Every so often I need to remove a solid color from the background of an image in order to use the image with what ever background I apply. Since I don’t do this everyday I end up fiddling around with the GNU Image Manipulation Program for some time before I remember the easy way to remove the background color. I could always ask my wonderful Graphic Designer wife to do it for me, but sometimes I just like to do it myself. So this is as much of a reminder post for me as it is intended to help others who may be looking for an easy way to remove a solid color background from an image. A quick search only turned up many how-tos to remove an actual background from an image which involve masking and painstaking use of the pencil. I just don’t have the patience for this. So this is how I remove the solid colored background from an image, and replace it with a transparent alpha channel.

Let’s use The Computer Deconfuser logo as our example as it has a nice solid white background.

Download it to your hard drive and open it in the Gimp.
Right click the only layer and add an alpha channel.
Select all of the image.
Select the bucket fill and change the mode to “color erase”.
Change the foreground color to the one you want to remove, in our case it’s white. Make your settings look like those in the screenshot.
Click on the color you want to remove. The entire solid color background should have been removed and replaced with a transparent background. If not, make sure you set the threshold to the 255 max value. If your background color appears elsewhere in the image it’s likely to get removed as well. In that case just tweak the threshold until you get what you want. Now just save the new image and you it on any color background.

And here is the finished product. Notice that it’s using the background color of the page.

Ode to the beard!

2009-02-17T21:11:23-05:00

This is awesome. I’ve had my beard for almost a year now. So far I keep it somewhat trimmed. Over the last year I have been noticing more beards on men. I thought it was due to the same reason that once you buy a car you start to notice that same car everywhere. But this article suggests that there could be a growing trend here. No pun intended. If so, I find it very exciting. Maybe I’ll allow mine to grow a bit longer.

Looking for a recliner that sports a laptop table

2009-01-24T21:59:34-05:00

I’ve been wanting a recliner for a while now. The other day I decided I would look for one with a laptop stand built into it. A quick Google search turns up something from the WebTV era. Which is sad. There should have been advances in the field of mouse potatoes (I have never heard that term before) by now. I couldn’t find anything else that even came close to what I was looking for. Just a bunch of different variations of these stands that work on the bed, couch, and arm chair. So I search for lay-z-boy Explorer since that was the name of that particular model. Then I found this. Too funny! Very perplexing. Looks legit, including the logo link in the upper left. I have to admit. I thought it was real until I looked at the address bar. Very clever. If anyone is aware of a recliner for the home that also offers a built-in sturdy laptop stand please add a comment.

Charter Internet Connection Flaking

2008-12-18T00:09:53-05:00

All day today my internet connection has been flaking out. I noticed it when I was trying to stream some music. It was choppy. I figured it was the server I was streaming from. So I tried another one, same result. I knew something was up when I tried to stream some video and it just wasn’t happening. Then I decided to check my speed over at Speakeasy Speedtest. The result made me sad.

I ran it 2 or 3 times before I gave Charter’s tech support a call. I calmly explained the problem and the tech asks me all the standard questions. There was one in particular that she was having an especially difficult time with. The conversation went something like this:

Charter Tech: “Are you running Windows XP or Vista?”
Me: “Neither, I’m running Linux. Well…Ubuntu.”
Charter Tech: “Excuse me?”
Me: “I said Linux.”
Charter Tech: Silence…..

A few minutes pass and she’s still trying to troubleshoot the problem. She sends me to Charter’s Speedtest to test my connection.

Oh wow! They fixed it quick. Now that’s the kind of speeds I expect and pay for. She begins wrapping up the call and I decide to try another speed tester. This time it’s Speedtest’s Speedtest. I’m sad again.

Interesting. I then explain to her that I don’t trust their results. That the only speedtest that reported good results was Charter’s. Then…

Charter Tech: “Can you shut down your computer?”
Me: “Do you want me to shut it down or reboot it?”
Charter Tech: “Reboot it and hold down the F8 key then select Safe mode with networking.”
Me: “I’m not running Windows.”

We exchange some more words and I calmly try to explain to her that the problem is with Charter’s service and that I’ve already performed all tests on my end and that I’m only calling because it is occurring on hardware outside of my control. She checks for outages in NC. None have been reported. This goes on for a while. Then she puts me on hold while she discusses it with her supervisor. Then…

Charter Tech: “There have been many reports of slow connections in NC. We’ll have to schedule a tech to come out unless the problem has been resolved prior to the appointment. In which case the appointment with be canceled.”
Me: “Ok.”
Charter Tech: “Did you say you were using a Mac?”
Me: “No I said Linux.”
Charter Tech: “Can you spell that?”
Me: “L-i-n-u-x”

These first-line techs are there to prevent common people with common misconfiguration problems from wasting the time of the highly paid second level techs. But there really should be a flag in the customer database that allows certain knowledgeable customers to bypass these techs and go straight to the second tier techs. This kind of conversation is frustrating for both of us. I only want someone to tell me, “Yes, we’re experiencing problems in your area and we’re working on it.” Instead I get someone who only knows to tell me to reboot my computer, router and modem until you hit the right combo or waste enough time that the problem has been resolved. I’m expecting that the problem is magically resolved before the tech arrives on Saturday in which case that appointment will automatically be canceled.

Comments on Seth Godin's Breakage

2008-09-13T14:29:00-04:00

Seth Godin has been forced into action by a company that he patrons. The action was one of no longer doing business with a current provider.

At some point “maximizing profits” and “satisfying the customer” no longer line up. An insurance company discovered the point at which Seth Godin was no longer satisfied with their pursuit of profits.

This is exactly why I left my previous insurance company, over a year ago, for Geico. With the other insurance company my bill was increasing with every renewal. I had made no changes to my policy and there was not any negative strikes accruing against me. Since I’ve been with Geico, my premium has been steadily decreasing. :-)

If I could compare notes with Seth I bet we’d discover we were dealing with the same company.

The supply and demand curve isn’t a curve. It’s an abstraction of lots of individual behaviors.

And so, lots of organizations end up hitting a wall with no warning…read more

Exposing passwords behind the asterisk

2008-09-09T22:27:13-04:00

Occasionally I need to know what password I have saved. In FF You have to go through a series of dialogs in the preferences. A DKN uses Unhide Passwords (I believe, he’ll correct me if I’m wrong), which was interesting one afternoon when the boss wanted to log into a site and was on the overhead. Anyway, I found show password ondblclick greasemonkey script. The advantage here is that to reveal a password one would have to double click inside input box. This should reduce the chances of accidentally revealing a password.

Road Rage

2008-06-22T19:00:00-04:00

Carolina Choclate Drops

2008-06-20T18:18:43-04:00

rjmolesa posted a photo:

30 Hornets vs 30000 bees

2008-06-16T15:51:00-04:00

My boss showed this to me today. 30 Giant Japanese Hornets attack 30,000 European Honey Bees.

Technorati Tags: beekeeping bees honey

Beginning Beekeeping Part 2

2008-05-11T05:00:00-04:00

Today I went over to Howard’s house and he helped me get my hive together. He showed me how the hive body went together, how to square them up nice and tight. How to secure the joints with glue and nails. Then we move on the the super, then the frames, then a few good coats of paint. Howard’s a bit of a perfectionist, like me. So everything had to be just so. It was nice getting to spend some time with him and learned a bit from such a knowledgeable man.

After my hive was finished we switched the frames of bees out of his hive for the new frames in my hive. With this, I became a beekeeper.I really appreciate Howard for taking the time to ignite a new interest in me.

Technorati Tags: beginning beekeeping

Beginning Beekeeping Part 1

2008-05-08T05:00:00-04:00

I’ve been interested in beekeeping all my life, but until about a year ago I didn’t know anyone who kept bees. I’ve been attending The Wilkes County Beekeepers Club since the spring of 2007. But it wasn’t until today that I went and purchased the necessary supplies from Miller Bee Supply to begin this exciting new hobby. Howard Blackburn, a local Master Beekeeper, helped get me started. He brought over a hive of his, and told me what to purchase. Below is the list of supplies he told me to purchase. They do offer beginners kits, but this is what Howard recommeded, and I trust him.

Item Code	Quantity	Description	Price
M342	1	Ventilated Helmut	12.75
M351	1	Square Veil	14.25
M927	1	4 x 7 SS Smoker	29.80
M315	1	Frame Grip	12.95
M314	1	Hive Tool	4.95
W920C 1-9	1	Complete Hive Commercial Grade	50.40
F515	1	8 1/2 10 Sheets	9.40
W520 1-9	1	5 11/16 Shallow Super	7.70
W503	10	5 3/8 Frames Slotted	6.80
F525	1	4 3/4 10 Sheets	5.95
M188	1	Queen Excluder Metal	7.20
		Total (Tax not incld.)	162.04

Technorati Tags: beginning beekeeping

Remove icons from Gnome Desktop

2008-04-29T20:38:58-04:00

Gnome uses Nautilus as it’s file manager and ultimately the desktop manager. And Ubuntu uses Gnome. I like a clean desktop. But every time I mount a drive, a new icon is added to my desktop. This just will not do. It seems that on at least one of my installations recently I was able to disable them by checking a box somewhere. For the life of me though I can not retrace my steps. Some Googling turned up this which did just what I was looking for, but my memory still fails me.

gconftool-2 --type boolean --set /apps/nautilus/desktop/volumes_visible false
gconftool-2 --type boolean --set /apps/nautilus/desktop/computer_icon_visible false
gconftool-2 --type boolean --set /apps/nautilus/desktop/trash_icon_visible false
gconftool-2 --type boolean --set /apps/nautilus/desktop/home_icon_visible false

Technorati Tags: gnome desktop remove icons ubuntu

Firefox 3 Beta Broken Plugins

2008-04-28T14:02:22-04:00

The latest Ubuntu 8.04 just shipped with Firefox 3 beta. It has disabled many of my beloved plugins. Completely by accident I ran across a workaround for broken firebug and thought this was a workable solution. Other than the time involved in modifying all my plugins and reinstalling them in all of my firefox profiles.

Then when viewing the download page for a favorite plugin I learned that I could just enter

about.config

into my address bar and

change app.update.incompatible.mode = 1

instead add new entry

extensions.checkCompatibility

set it to

false

Technorati Tags: firefox 3 broken extension plugins

Get Growl Like notifications on Linux for irssi using mumbles

2008-04-17T19:00:00-04:00

A little over 2 weeks ago I brought you Growl for Linux. I still think it’s pretty slick.

For those that know I’m a command line junkie but has to co-exist in a desktop world I have managed to get my favorite irc client to report highlights to the desktop using Mumbles.

To make this all possible grab mumbles.pl and place it into your .irssi/scripts folder. Then symlink it in .irssi/scripts/autorun. Edit mumbles.pl to contain the machines you want to notify.

I’m looking forward to this.

Technorati Tags: growl linux mumbles irssi