Economy Size Geek

I’m going to do more of a wrap up than usual - mostly because there is a lot of ground to cover and none of them justify their own post. Once I get back in the groove I’m hoping I’ll be in shape to really crank out a good technical post or two (and who knows maybe even a movie review)
Let’s Start with the light stuff.
My camera didn’t make it back from Defcon in one piece

I was seriously bumbed - I figured I was going to be shelling out for a new camera until I did some goggling and found this article
Basic with some elbow grease, and a $60 part - I get

Seriously cool!

Windows XP - Permission Denied

I chose this weekend to re-install my windows workstation. Did I mention I hate working in Windows? It turns out that I’ve been struggling with permissions. I couldn’t wrap my brain around the fact that I could be administrator on a box and still not be able to read a frigging file. Which when you’re trying to copy around files from a previous install gets pretty frustrating. Well it turns out it’s all related to simple file sharing. As long as you have that turned on, you can’t see the permission tool. Once you turn it off - boom - you get full access - lesson learned - Simple != Better (In windows).

Is It Getting Hot In Here?

I’ve stumbled into a deep vat of new technology toys to play with in the last two days. The one that has the best eye candy appeal for the layman are Heat Maps.
Read The Definitive Guide
Basically this tech generates a transparent image you cal overlay on your website. It then allows you to see where users held their mouse or clicked. It basically gives you a cool visual guide to where your interface succeeds (and fails).

Back From The Dead?

I got the strangest email today - it was from the Mulberry News list - apparently Mulberry is alive again - well sort of - Learn more Here It’s free (as in beer - he’s trying to figure out if he is going open source). I was a huge fan of Mulberry! I’m not sure if I’m going to play with it now that I’ve broken away (even though truth be told I think Thunderbird and Evolution are nice but don’t handle my 500 mail box imap account half as well), but I have a feeling i won’t be able to resist the temptation.

Finally Released

I’ve been a heavy user of GnuCash for a number of years. 2.0 is now out there. It looks like it is already listed as an offical package in Edgy. We’ll see if I wait until Oct to run it when I upgrade to Edgy or if I recompile the package. For some reason I’m in no hurry to upgrade and break my accounting system.

Last Thing

Edgy Eft is the next release from Ubunutu. Don’t ask me what an Eft is - I have no idea. According to Edgy Release Schedule we can expect it in late Oct. This is one of the things I really love about Ubuntu. They continue to crank out big releases on a pretty much regular schedule. I don’t have to upgrade to Edgy - but it is nice to know I will be able to - especially since I use Dapper on my workstations and the desktop world just evolves a heck of lot faster than the server world (Rails being the exception)