Monday, 8 Fecruary, 2010
I did some software installs on a friend’s computers on Sunday. I installed DeVeDe and gdvdslides on two computers and Windows XP Service Pack 3 on a third. The Linux installs went fine, as usual, but Service Pack 3 seriously broke the XP box. I finally had to get into Safe Mode and restore it back to the restore point that was taken just prior to installing the service pack. Just another example of how well Microsoft writes software, I guess.
While testing the gdvdslides install, I found a couple of bugs, so I will be looking at those this week.
I spent a lot of time on Saturday rewriting my bookmarks page. That page allows me access to links of interest to me while I am not at home. The problem with it was with maintenance. It was laid out well, but to add or remove items from the page was really hard. This is because the page was laid out as a two column table with sections. If you adjusted the size of one section, you had to do something with the adjacent section to make up for the adjustment. It was just too much trouble to add and remove links.
I redid the page into unordered lists with a twist. The twist is that the lists can be collapsed into their headings. So what you see is about 20 lines instead of several hundred. There are four topic headings: News, Entertainment, Technology and Miscellaneous. You can expand subheadings by clicking on them. It works well and doesn’t take up the real estate of the original design, but you really have to know what you are looking for to find something. Check it out at http://blogicalthoughts.com/bookmarks.html
Silly sign of the day:

Free/Open Source Software
- TestDrive Automatically Downloads And Runs The Latest Ubuntu Development Snapshot In A Virtual Machine
- Linux Advocacy: The Right Way
- 8 of the Best Free Linux Geometry Software
- Canonical plucks Matt Asay from Alfresco - is it ‘go time’ for Ubuntu?
- A fresher Linux desktop
- 13 Ways To Customize Ubuntu Netbook Remix For Better Usability
- Record your Desktop with Linux Tools
- Open Symbian: New World Order or Big Yawn?
“It’s Mine, and You Have to Pay (and Pay and Pay) For It”
- Appeals Court Says Internet Content Should Be Held To Standards Of Strictest Jurisdiction
- Do Patents Slow Down Innovation?
- Because When MetroPCS Says ‘No Contract,’ It Actually Means ‘Well, Of Course There’s A Contract’
- No, Copyright Has Never Been About Protecting Labor
- Comcast CEO Argues Rules Will Protect Customers In Merger, While Comcast Lawyers Argue Rules Are Unconstitutional
- Patent Office to Review VoIP Patent
- Authors Guild: ‘To RIAA or Not to RIAA’
- The Pirate Bay To Be Censored in Italy, Again
- Patent nonsense
Local and Other News
- UK Whistleblowers Highlight The Dangers Of Widespread Police Surveillance/Database
- Barnes & Noble rolls out second Nook update
- Microsoft to patch 17-year-old computer bug
- PayPal halts ‘personal payments’ to, from India
- FBI calls for two year retention for ISP data
- Gov tempts young London onto ID database with booze, ‘games’
- Top 50 Funny Computer Quotes










