Posts
Replacing Gallery2 with nanoc
For many years, this site has used Gallery2 to provide photo albums. This large piece of PHP works well, but it has many of the same disadvantages as Wordpress
December 28, 2015
Installing and using a new Ruby on Linux Mint 17
Linux Mint 17 (and its parent, Ubuntu 14.04) ships with Ruby 2.0.0. This is a pretty old version of the language, and recent versions, especially 2.2, have numerous performance improvements. Fortunately, it’s easy to install and use the latest Ruby,
December 15, 2015
Converting from Wordpress to nanoc
For seven years this site has been using Wordpress as its main engine. There are a number of advantages to using this feature-rich piece of PHP, but I finally decided that the disadvantages were enough for me to switch to a static web site generator called nanoc.
November 15, 2015
Creating business cards with Gimp and ImageMagick
In the search for ways to create business cards on Linux, I came across a couple of useful items from the GimpWimp. First, a video showing how to use the Gimp to copy and paste a business card into a template for printing a sheet of ten cards
August 29, 2015
Extracting text from image-only PDF files
#Linux#Linux Mint#Software#Ubuntu
Sometimes I obtain scanned books in PDF format, in which each page is simply an image, not text. But it would handy to use OCR to extract the text from these images.
May 7, 2015
Word processors considered harmful (part 1)
It almost goes without saying that when you buy a PC, part of the price is the Microsoft Tax, to pay for a copy of Windows whether you want it or not.
May 1, 2015
Fixing Intel GPU crash on Linux Mint 17
#Linux#Linux Mint#Thinkpad#Ubuntu
(mention firefox) The older ThinkPad I’m using now has an Intel 965 graphics processor, and is running Linux Mint 17.1. Today I decided to try installing Google Chrome because of a Firefox problem I was having with a particular web site’s buggy Javascript. When I visited the Chrome site, the screen went black.
March 11, 2015
Using Linux with a weather station
#Linux#Linux Mint#Software#Ubuntu
We have a Davis VantageVue weather station, which is a pricey but excellent outdoor weather sensor that communicates with an indoor console via radio. The station has survived two Vermont winters so far, which is a testament to its reliability. Davis also sells an optional WeatherLink, which is a data logging card that plugs into the console. The card stores weather data and has a USB connector so that a computer can read the logged data. The CD that comes with the WeatherLink is designed for Windows, so it is just another useless Microsoft tax. But fortunately there is a fine software package called weewx that works with the VantageVue and many other weather stations.
October 27, 2014
Nexus One and Consumer Cellular
We have two Nexus One phones, one of which is used as our internet connection (no broadband here) and long-distance phone. The other is almost never used as a phone or an internet terminal. Both of these phones are on an AT&T family plan, which is ridiculously expensive given the poor quality of the service (internet almost unusable during the day). So I started looking for alternate services, and decided to try Consumer Cellular.
October 18, 2014
Using a Linux laptop as a router
#Android#Linux#Linux Mint#Ubuntu
Despite the governor’s promise that every house in Vermont would have broadband by the end of 2013, our little rural village still has nothing besides satellite and very flaky cell service. Consequently, we have been using an Android cell phone (a Nexus One) as our internet connection for the last couple of years.
October 14, 2014