Worzie's blog

One of my favorite Firefox extensions I have been using for a year and a half is called Foxmarks. Foxmarks is a bookmark synchronizer that keeps your different Firefox installs all updated with the same set of bookmarks. For me there is nothing more frustrating than not having that one cool link you saved on your computer at home and for the life of me, can't remember how or where I got it to begin with.

I had been a non-conformist in many ways with regard to installing my own tarball of Thunderbird and Firefox instead of using the packaged RPMs Fedora already built. I mainly did this because they are considered stable by Mozilla yet one version ahead of RPMs.

Late last year I had run into problems with my system dieing for various reasons and I had suspected Firefox. I knelt down and installed the RPM leaving the tarball version in place and changing my app links to point to the correct bin. Soon to follow was Thunderbird as well.

I have a Canon S2 IS camera. It is a mid-level camera which I am happy with. In my resent family migration to full throttle Linux this past month; I have been the only one to have fired up XP one time to access pictures from this camera. Back in Fedora Core 6 and I think even up to resent kernel updates, I was able to mount my camera. The PowerShot S2 is not a mass storage device so you can't just mount it to get the pictures. Instead it uses the Picture Transfer Protocol (PTP).

Last summer I had it with HP support. My first dealings with them proved to be successful back in 2006, but something terrible has happened since. My brother who lives in Oregon needed help with getting his HP PC up and running after it had been infested with "Internets". I felt bad that I instructed him to to re-partition his box without checking with him first if he had his OEM cd's. Okay... secretly I wanted to get him to use those LiveCD's I sent him the year prior; just kidding, but that was what was left for him at that time.

Following the usual 'make uninstall' prior to upgrading my clamav doesn't always ensure I will have no further problems. Generally the next step after you 'make install' your new clamav. Then you want to run a 'freshclam'. But here is where I constantly forget and am now documenting how I fix this LibClamAV Error:

[root@soyo clamav]# freshclam
ClamAV update process started at Wed Nov 14 09:14:50 2007
main.inc is up to date (version: 44, sigs: 133163, f-level: 20, builder: sven)
daily.inc is up to date (version: 4783, sigs: 35144, f-level: 21, builder: ccordes)

Day one cleared up all the FUD! Kids are happy, wife is happy, I'm happy. I really didn't doubt the outcome. Am glad for it to have been received so well. It is key to get them to sit down and just use it.

My family computer is the second Dell we have had with XP Home for the kids gaming entertainment and dual booting Linux mainly for my doing the books. Under XP we have used open source applications for the most part: Firefox, Thunderbird, OpenOffice.org. So off to a great start for migration.

Prior to allowing kids to play on the computer my wife had been using Linux with our first Dell. Then she just stuck with XP instead of having to keep rebooting for the kids. They had acquired many educational and gaming CD's over the years.

As usual with any show, the last day on the exhibit floor is very light. Both Marc and I were scheduled for the morning and Scott was not scheduled at all Thursday. We didn't always stick to the schedule though. Marc didn't get in until after 1pm and Scott was there most of the time anyway. Both Kir and Kostya made their rounds to see other exhibits as well did Scott. Not much swag was left, but it was fun to speak with others. In some cases it turned into just a cold-calling out on the floor.

OpenVZ Volunteers
Today Scott and I had plenty of time to get breakfast at Burger King on the way to the Mascone Center! Food at the food court is not very cheap. So I just didn't eat much yesterday. Had planned to eat with the OpenVZ/SWsoft group Tuesday evening but the location they were at when they called was about 1.4 miles away and we were on foot having just finished walking a mile already back to the apartment. So we had to bag out of going. The offer was up again for dinner tonight but Kir and Kostya needed to go to the airport (SFO) to try extending their stay here in SF. Before departing I let them know it would probably be a bit late for us to be out walking the streets. We are not in the better neighborhoods to be out and about on foot.

For several years now I have used SmoothWall Express as a personal firewall on my cable modem connection. I have been very pleased with it and have never had any successful breaches that I have been aware of. Having kids, I knew I would soon need some form of nanny filtering. Early on I investigated Dansguardian and found great support in the Homebrew forums of the SmoothWall community.