Dougal Campbell's geek ramblings

WordPress, web development, and world domination.

Blog Archives

Thunderbird 1.0

Dec142004

Get Thunderbird! This is actually old news at this point, but the Mozilla Thunderbird mail/news/rss reader has reached version 1.0. There haven’t been any earth-shattering changes since I discussed version 0.8 back in September. There’s Global Inbox, Message Grouping, Saved Search Folders, and other minor enhancements and bug fixes. But there’s still no import/export of OPML files for the RSS aggregation. Like many geeks, I use an RSS aggregator to track dozens (if not hundreds) … Continue reading →

Living on the Planet

Dec142004

I was browsing through my referers yesterday, and a site that I hadn’t seen before caught my attention. It’s called Living on the Planet, and it’s basically an aggregation of content from all over the world, grouped by topics and by geography. For example, the referer I noticed was from the Living in Georgia section. The Internet is great at helping us find information from all over the world. But sometimes you want to narrow … Continue reading →

Personal networking suite in your pocket

Dec112004

Okay, this is pretty darned cool: Metropipe has a product called Virtual Privacy Machine, which is actually a tiny (82MB) Linux distribution which boots into a virtual machine under Windows. It contains common networking apps like Firefox and Thunderbird, and I assume ssh and friends, as well. Since it’s so small, you can load it onto a small USB drive, MP3 player, or whatever portable media you have, mount it up on a computer wherever … Continue reading →

Planeta WordPress

Dec092004

Planeta WordPress is similar to Planet WordPress, but with the addition of several Spanish blogs. Thanks to Manuel M. Almeida for letting me know about it. Bueno!

Really Slick Screensavers

Dec072004

Euphoria is one of the Really Slick Screensavers While on a search for new eye candy, I found Really Slick Screensavers, which really lives up to the name. There are 10 eye-popping OpenGL Windows screen savers available for free, in both senses of word (free-as-in-beer & free-as-in-speech). If you’re interested in the internals of how the graphics are created, source code is available.

Settling in

Dec072004

My first day at the new job went pretty much as I expected. Filled with introductions, paperwork, mile-high system overviews, and the tedious configuration of a new workstation. The drive to/from the office was a little stressful, since it was raining. It took about an hour for the ~25 mile commute. I’m going to try to start leaving earlier and see if I can beat the rush. I’ve got a desktop PC running Debian Linux, … Continue reading →

Recycling

Nov302004

Does anyone know if WMI in the Metro Atlanta area (specifically: Woodstock, Cherokee county) actually recycles anything? Anything at all? Because the last few times the recycling truck has come by our house, the guy has dumped the contents of our recycling bin into our trash can. And we get charged a $3/month fee for that privilege. Needless to say, we are not happy. We make an effort to segregate our recyclables, only putting in … Continue reading →

New Job

Nov292004

Received in my email this morning: Dougal, Please find attached the formal offer. Sign a copy and bring it with you on Dec 6th, but for now just indicate your acceptance via email and I’ll start the paperwork rolling. Let me know if you have any questions. I’ll be a Senior Software Engineer for a small-but-growing tech company that survived the dot-com bust. From what I know so far, my primary responsibility will be to … Continue reading →

Netcraft: SCO “own all your code”

Nov292004

Netcraft: SCO “own all your code” SCO’s web site now proudly proclaims “We own all your code” and “pay us all your money”. On the one hand, I definitely don’t endorse attacks like this. They only serve to hurt the image of ethical programmers who support open source projects. But on the other hand, that is funny as hell. If you don’t know what all the hubub is about, you can find lots of links … Continue reading →