Posts
Linux Mint on a 2008 Macbook
#Linux#Software#Linux Mint#Mac
I have access to an old (2008) white Macbook that is not being used due to the age of its operating system. New versions of Firefox can’t be installed on this machine without an operating system upgrade, and the upgrade path for old MacBooks doesn’t appear to be free or easy. So I decided to see if I could install Linux Mint 17 (LTS) on the MacBook. Supposedly it was possible, but I wanted to see for myself.
January 17, 2017
Linux as an Internet Kiosk
#Linux#Software#Linux Mint#Ubuntu
UPDATE May 2020: this procedure has been greatly simplified for Linux Mint 19. For some time I have been looking for a way to use Linux as an internet kiosk in our small local library. The library currently has a number of computers available for use by patrons, ranging from netbooks to desktops, all running some variant of Windows 7. Some of these machines are crippled by not having Office licenses.
November 16, 2016
Housing Bubble 2.0
There’s a new, improved housing bubble going on all across the USA. It is going to end badly, as it did before. But meanwhile prices keep climbing, and that is squeezing both buyers and renters. Take a look at the Culver City crap shack in the article linked to in the previous paragraph. At $782 per square foot, that may seem like a lot to my fellow Vermonters. But to a former Californian like me, it’s peanuts. In 2008 I was living in a mobile home in Palo Alto (in the only mobile home park in the town). Just down the block a 780 square foot house went up for sale with an asking price of $700,000. That’s $923 per square foot. According to Zillow, it sold for $675,000 a few months later, which must have been a huge disappointment to the seller.
July 6, 2016
Fixing disabled TrackPoint after Mint 13 update
#Linux#Software#Linux Mint#Thinkpad#Ubuntu
Yesterday I did a normal software update on a ThinkPad X200s running Linux Mint 13 (which is based on Ubuntu 12.04 LTS). After the update and reboot, the TrackPoint (belly button mouse) no longer worked. This made working with the GUI desktop nearly impossible. Fortunately, Linux has several virtual text consoles that can be used to make repairs.
May 4, 2016
Creating a resume using Pandoc
One of the tasks that Pandoc can take over from word processors is the creation of printable resumes in PDF format. Because Pandoc uses LaTex to create PDFs, the markup in the source document can contain LaTex commands to tweak the appearance.
February 20, 2016
Fixing "send to" in Shotwell on Linux Mint Mate
I recently set up a ThinkPad T61 with Linx Mint 17 Mate for a long-time Mac OS user. I installed Shotwell as the photo manager. It is the default photo app in Ubuntu, and it seemed the closest to iPhoto due to its ability to organize photos by “events” (grouping by timestamp). I also installed Thunderbird as the email handler. But the Shotwell “send to” feature, which is supposed to allow the user to send a photo via Thunderbird, did not work.
February 15, 2016
Disabling multiple downloads in apt
The apt-based package managers and update managers in Ubuntu and Linux Mint will open multiple connections to repository servers in order to download several packages simultaneously. Unfortunately, the multiple connections cause our old DSL modem (a Westell 6100) to hang. At a former workplace, similar problems occurred with the corporate firewall.
February 6, 2016
Word processors considered harmful (part 2)
Several months ago, I wrote about the considerable drawbacks of using word processors. A few years ago I started searching for a replacement for Sprint that would run on Linux: a non-WYSIWYG text formatting system that would allow me to use my favorite editor and focus on writing instead of typesetting and formatting.
January 7, 2016
Fixing a dehydrator
Our Nesco deyhydrator gets heavy use in the summer, drying fruits, vegetables and even complete meals for future use in winter or on camping trips. This simple device consists of a number of plastic mesh-bottomed trays that stack on top of a ventilated base. On top of the stack is a lid that contains a heating element and a fan. This last summer, the deyhydrator suddenly stopped working in the middle of the night.
December 31, 2015
Converting Gallery2 albums
As mentioned earlier, converting Gallery2 albums to nanoc-based albums involves a great deal of error-prone typing. To save some of this effort, I wrote a Ruby script that reads a Gallery2 database and outputs album descriptions in the format that I defined for use with nanoc.
December 30, 2015