Adventures in Nerdville

It seems like I am the only rails dev who uses windows. I guess it’s because I can get a blazing windows machine for $600 as opposed to the same mac for $3000. The one thing that I see that macs have over the windows environment is textmate, but it’s not worth $2450 for me to get it. I personally use Eclipse Ganymede with the RadRails plugin from aptana (along with subclipse for vc and mylyn for bug tracking integration with trac). The cool thing that textmate has that makes me jealous is the way it does code completion (I believe they are called snippets).
(more…)

How I got a Windows Vista refund from HP | equiliberate

This is beautiful. Now you can get yourself a nice linux laptop without paying the microsoft tax.

Running Debian Etch on my server seems at times like a gigantic step backward from the ubuntu server I used to run. But alas, it has been quite a learning experience. I just set up my server to run the No-IP dynamic update client (which is available as a package for ubuntu hardy), but it didn’t work with the included init script. Searching online I found very little help.

(more…)

I had heard about this service called Open DNS a while back on mailing lists, but never really looked into it until yesterday. This looks like the best, easiest, free service to block your children from objectionable material online! Not only does this free, unobtrusive service block content that you don’t want your family seeing, but it speeds up your internet access as well. It even works on REALLY old machines.

Here’s how it works. When you type in www.vortex-tech.com, it asks a Domain Name Server (DNS) what ‘address’ vortex-tech.com points to. Your computer then asks that address for it’s website. OpenDNS replaces the DNS server that your ISP provides and lets you control how names are resolved. Let’s say that you don’t want your kids on social networking sites and have set it that way in your OpenDNS control panel. Now, whenever your kid tries to go to facebook.com, OpenDNS will send back a different IP address than facebook.com normally points to. It will politely tell your kid that they are not allowed to go to that site.

There is tons more that you can do with OpenDNS, such as create shortcuts to your favorite pages, go check it out.

Update: I have started a project called Fox SIS that will be based off of a once-prominent open source student information system. Please see the blog post and use the comment form on that post to let me know if you would be interested in participating. Comments will be closed for this post. Please post any questions to the Fox-SIS Forum.

Main Article

Focus SIS is an open source student information system hosted at source forge that I was involved with back when I worked at a small school district. I at one time had the download available here, but have been asked by the folks at focus-sis.org to remove it. I will instead, provide instructions on how to download the project named focus-sis from source forge.

Let me disclaim quickly: This is not the software that is available as a service from focus-sis.org although the commercial version spawned from this project. The software available at focus-sis.org is most assuredly more stable, polished and feature-rich than the older, legacy version hosted on source forge.

These are instructions on how to download the GPL project known as focus-sis on source forge.

Windows:

Download TortiseSVN from http://tortoisesvn.net/downloads and follow installation instructions

Make a new folder and name it something like SIS.

Right click on that folder and select SVN Checkout.

Enter this url for the repository: https://focus-sis.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/focus-sis/branches/2.3/

Click OK

Linux

Run (assuming ubuntu or debian - if you are using something else, you can figure it out)

# sudo apt-get install subversion

# svn co https://focus-sis.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/focus-sis/branches/2.3/ sis

This will create a new folder called sis in the current directory with the source code in it.

For all you windows users out there. Just one more reason to make the switch. This article not only gives a great explanation for what defragging actually does, but it explains how files actually get stored on your computer.

Here’s the link

The digg effect took it down, here is the google cache version for now

Yes, I stole it from digg, you’re welcome, now you don’t have to wade through three pages of trash like I did to get the one good article.

Since I am officially laid off with pay until the end of June, I am teaching the computer class at Prairie Baptist School on Wednesdays. Mr. Boomershine, the Principal asked me to show them some gadgets in phun (since I got him interested in it last week). Since they are really cool, I figured I would just post them here. (more…)

You will notice on the comments page of this blog that this thing called an ‘openid’ is accepted in lieu of registering with the site or waiting for your comment to get through moderation. This is one of the cool new things I have been experimenting with and so far it looks promising.

If you are anything like me, you have more usernames and passwords than you know what to do with. (more…)

Get it Here