Posts on Jim Deibele's Blog

Apple show me the deleted messages

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 20:28:54 +0000

Are you diligent about deleting messages? I am, and it causes me grief when I try to find out what a message says.

Look at this:

Recent deleted messages. Which one do I want?

To see what a deleted message says, I have to recover it. It’s no fun doing that once, let alone a few times if you guess wrong.

C’mon, Apple. Fix this.

Ping Logger to monitor when internet is down

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 16:58:32 +0000

We have Ziply (formerly Frontier, formerly GTE) fiber at home and the other day I noticed that the internet wasn’t reachable. The eero app said the internet was down.

{#id}

Internet down in eero app

I checked the box (Optical Network Terminal) in the box and it showed green.

{#id}

After another minute or so, the connection resumed.

I don’t know how often this happens so I decided to monitor the internet connection from a server that’s running 24/7.

Clone Themes in Hugo, don't use submodules

Tue, 21 Apr 2026 16:09:35 +0000

Both Hugo and Netlify will tell you to use submodules when using themes.

Hugo saying to use submodules

Netlify saying to use submodules

That might work for some people but it didn’t work well for me and caused me to stop blogging for years because I didn’t want to/couldn’t figure out the conflicts with Hugo and various themes. Hugo releases come at a relentless pace and is backwards compatible for what seems like only a few versions.

Now Running on Hugo 1.60

Sun, 19 Apr 2026 16:46:52 -0700

In Siriusventures.com now on Pelican 4.11.0 I talked about upgrading my version of Pelican, which went smoothly, and my concerns about Pelican. I really like the interface of Publii because it’s more like Google Docs, with the ability to easily insert images, refer to links especially internal ones, and just the speed and ease of working with it. I have concerns about Publii. I worked with ChatGPT to try and import my other site, running on Hugo, into Publii. It was no problem getting markdown into the right directory and the articles into the right table. I tried a few times to get other tables right and in the end I just entered the articles by hand. That was OK for 28 or so posts but not fun for more than that.

siriusventures.com is now running on Pelican 4.11.0

Fri, 17 Apr 2026 04:04:04 -0700

I had tried upgrading Pelican once or twice over the years and had problems that I don’t remember anymore. Today it went surprisingly smoothly but instead of starting with my existing setup, I installed Pelican 4.11.0 using uv to a new directory, then copied over my markdown files. I edited the new pelicanconf.py file with a few things from the old one and we were up and running.

The toughest part was getting Netlify to stop looking for Python 3.7. More on that in the next article.

Forward Email for Your Domain to Your Email Using Improvmx

Thu, 09 Jun 2022 05:10:15 +0000

If you own a domain, perhaps your DNS host provides mail services. When I registered JimDeibele.com, I picked Netlify’s domain server and it doesn’t provide mail service.

I wanted to put blog@jimdeibele.com on here so I could be contacted without having to reveal my preferred email address. A year from now, maybe I want to switch to blog2@jimdeibele.com because there’s so much spam going to the first email address.

Improvmx provides a service where you can control mail for a domain. On the free plan, you can have up to 10 aliases, meaning “blog@yourdomain”, “help@yourdomain”, “bigboss@yourdomain” and so on. There’s also a catch-all option, written as “*”. That means that anything that doesn’t match an alias will be sent to the catch-all address.

First issue of the Teleport Times - February 1995

Sun, 27 Mar 2022 21:27:00 +0000

Teleport was one of the first Internet Service Providers (ISP) in the US. It got its start in a technical bookstore. Back then, almost everything was done with modems over ordinary phone lines, usually entirely copper wires. There wasn’t an internet then, just Usenet.

The bookstore struggled but there was growing interest in Usenet. I closed the bookstore and moved the Usenet access business to a downtown office building. Why? Well, having access to phone lines was easier with US West in a central business district than GTE in a suburb. Also, the business didn’t need customer parking.

Using Atom with Markdown Writer for Hugo

Fri, 25 Mar 2022 11:48:42 +0000

I want a markdown editor that works with images. I stopped blogging because I found the process of adding images to each post so time-consuming. So I’ve been trying different things. There are a lot of markdown editors but very few of them handles images at all.

I finally ran across a reference to Hugo support for Atom. There are a few Hugo-specific packages (what Atom calls its plug-ins) but they’re not very well documented, not being developed, etc.

Killer Soduku Math Error

Thu, 16 Dec 2021 19:46:01 +0000

So my daughter Charlotte introduced me to Killer Soduku, an IOS app that makes it a little easier to solve soduku problems by giving you hints on what certain boxes should add up to.

The other day I was sure I knew what most go in a box but Soduku gave me a red square indicating that 9 was not the right answer. I went on to solve the puzzle except for that square. As you can see, Killer Soduku says the last digit left to be used (on the lower right) should be 8. But 4+2+9+7 = 22. If the total is 31, the answer must be 9, not 8.

Apple Photos - Please Give Me a Clue When Asking Me to Confirm Person!

Tue, 17 Nov 2020 11:04:27 -0800

I get the feeling that people at Apple didn’t have siblings. Or they only have 1 child.

Below is a picture of my daughter. But it looks a lot like her younger brother when he was the same age. A dad told me that kids would turn out to be very different and I’ve found that to be true for my kids.

But there are ages where they looked very much alike!

Treehouse for Fairies or Squirrels

Mon, 16 Nov 2020 16:07:31 -0800

Saw this while walking the dog today. I don’t normally walk on this side of the street and had never noticed it before. I hope somebody had fun making it.

PS: I need to figure out how to get Hugo to make thumbnails. But this was taken with the iPhone 11 I have in my pocket. Man, it takes amazing pictures.

Tree House for Fairies. Or Squirrels. North side.

Covid for the Holidays

Mon, 16 Nov 2020 15:30:46 -0800

Our family is carefully planning the holidays. For my wife’s birthday we went and saw her parents. They stayed in the dining room near the gas fireplace while we stayed near the open patio door. Masks were worn except for eating and drinking.

For Thanksgiving, we’re planning on hosting one brother and his two kids. Outside, with a heater attached to a propane tank. Maybe two.

And, for Christmas, maybe it’s all via Zoom. That’s not traditional or even fun but if it keeps people alive, well, it’s worth it.

Watching the Covid 19 Rt Rate in Oregon Climb Again 3rd Wave

Sun, 15 Nov 2020 14:11:35 -0800

Rt.live shows the Effective Reproduction Rate, or Rt, for the whole US and specific states.

The rate for Oregon started high, came down, went up a little, came down, and is now going up.

What’s really scary is

My oldest is doing her freshman year of college online at home. My other two are doing their high school classes 100% online, including Intro to Industrial Arts for one and Band for the other. With the onset of bad weather, it’s been weeks since we had somebody over since we can’t socially distance in the house.

Improving Your Website Security with Mozilla Observatory and Netlify

Sat, 14 Nov 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Mozilla Observatory will test your website and assign it a letter grade based on how well your website implements things like implementing a good Content-Security-Policy, blocking clickjacking, enforcing HTTP Strict Transport Security, and so on.

When I started, this blog was rated F. After a few changes, it’s now rated at B+ and I’m heading for A+. One of my other blogs started at A and became A+. That’s because the other blog uses Hugo and a very recent theme.

How to Automatically Keep Your Python Packages Up to Date With pip-review

Wed, 11 Nov 2020 08:12:27 -0800

One way to install packages is via Pip.

pip install django

Pip will install not only the program you want but anything else it depends on. Further, you can use pip to upgrade a program and its dependencies.

pip install --upgrade django

I’d set up a cron job that would do this:

pip install --upgrade django requests pytz certifi httplib2

Eventually I added a second and third line. But there’s a better way: use pip-review

How to Block Ads on Your iPhone, iPad, and Laptop Easily, Effectively, and for Free

Mon, 09 Nov 2020 00:00:00 +0000

I have been using uBlock Origin for many years on my Mac. Recently, I tried replacing my 2015 MacBook Pro with a 2018 MacBook Pro. There were a lot of things that I liked about the new MacBook Pro but what bothered me was that it had only 8GB of RAM whereas the older one had 16GB.

I would listen to the fans howl and eventually I replaced it with a machine I described in The Perfect Mac. But as happy as I am with my Mac Mini, it’s not portable. So I added an iPad Pro to the mix. That’s been pretty good but the ad blocking on the iPad doesn’t seem anywhere as effective.

Gilbert Heights Elementary School Grade 6 1973-1974

Sun, 08 Nov 2020 09:24:49 -0800

Gilbert Heights Elementary School Grade 6 1973-1974

Top row: unknown, John McIntosh, unknown, unknown, unknown, Liz Silva, unnknown
3rd row: unknown, Lisa Mullen, unknown, unknown, unknown, Ray Teuber?, unknown
2nd row: John Speck, unknown, me, Pat Dye, unknown, unknown, unknown, Mrs. Margeson
first row: Denise Buckley, unknown, Charlotte Trapp, unknown, Debra Halvorsen?, Jim Greenslade

We moved and changed school districts the year before. So I only had year at Gilbert Heights Elementary School before this photo and a year after. Still, I’m surprised I can’t remember more names.

What Waiting for the 2020 Election Results Felt Like

Sat, 07 Nov 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Ran across a neat graphic that sums up what it’s felt like waiting for the results of the 2020 Presidential Election results felt like.

Updating my old blog, I was surprised at how many links broke over the years. So I decided the image for posterity. When I went to download the GIF, it turned out that Twitter had converted it into an .mp4 video. When I used a website to convert it back, it grew from under 10k to just over 50k.

Vote by Mail After 20 Years of Experience in Oregon

Fri, 06 Nov 2020 00:00:00 +0000

There’s an excellent article in Vox about vote by mail in Oregon, focusing on how it started and how it evolved.

It’s difficult to forge someone’s signature on a ballot. Not impossible, not if you have access to something with their signature, but difficult. And it’s hard to see that scaling to any numbers.

It’s pretty much impossible to insert fake ballots into the system. There are bar codes on the envelopes mailed out to voters and it’s pretty simple to reject any bar codes that don’t match what was sent out.

How to Read Blogs with RSS in 2020

Thu, 05 Nov 2020 00:00:00 +0000

How to Read RSS in 2020 is a nice article on how to use RSS.

RSS is a great way to follow people who post longer content on their blogs. You fire up your reader of choice and it pulls in the articles without you having to visit all those websites. If there’s no change, nothing shows up in your newsreader.

Some of the neat uses of RSS to follow someone’s Twitter or Instagram without having to follow them on Instagram have faded away as companies put up walls to keep you on their property.

Refill Propane Tank vs Blue Rhino Exchange in 2020

Thu, 05 Nov 2020 00:00:00 +0000

There’s an excellent article that goes deep into the specifics of refilling your tank versus just exchanging it for a different Blue Rhino[1] tank.

The article was written in 2013 but pretty much everything holds up. The price of propane has actually gone down in 2020 to less than $2/gallon

Basically it comes down to this:

Do you want to refill your tank and save $8$11?

Would you rather go to a nearby store and just exchange tanks?

Something to Think About as We Wait for the Votes to Be Counted

Thu, 05 Nov 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Something to think about… I have seen a lot of hate spewed in recent days about a man who is a constant winner and overachiever, and that’s what the people who support him like about him. Yes, he’s been caught in some lies and maybe twisted the truth a little but he’s still out there proving his haters wrong time after time. Some people are just jealous of someone who is successful and has money. Throw in a hot foreign underwear model at his side and they hate him even more. You may not have wanted him in his role, but he’s there now and there’s nothing you can do about it. I know it’s possibly just going to get worse over the next several days, but like him or not, Tom Brady is turning things around in Tampa.

Use Dropbox or Google Drive to Sync Your Downloads Folder Not iCloud

Wed, 04 Nov 2020 00:00:00 +0000

I wrote an article talking about using iCloud to sync your Downloads folder.

So I did that and I found out I didn’t like it. I’m running tight on disk space (I have to cull more photos from Photos, which is taking up the most disk space for me) so Apple is uploading the files in ~/Downloads, then replacing them with an .icloud version. That means that I need to download the file to use it.

Sad and Happy Halloween 2020

Tue, 03 Nov 2020 00:00:00 +0000

It was both a sad and happy Halloween here in Portland. Our youngest teenager is almost 15 so we definitely didn’t have a lot of cute costumes. There were no worries about meeting up with friends to go trick-or-treating. In the end, we had two people come ring our bell so we could send candy down the chute.

What made it happy was walking the dog leading up to Halloween and Halloween Eve and seeing the precautions people were taking: there were candy chutes, there were paper bags (didn’t rain here!) or plastic bags with candy inside set out, and more complicated measures for distributing candy in a socially distanced way.

How to Get Your Old Propane Tank Re-Certified

Mon, 02 Nov 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Before we got married, my wife’s brothers and sister gave us a BBQ grill as a present. I also inherited two propane tanks from my dad. In doing some reading on re-filling propane tanks, it turns out that every tank has a date code on it.

For example, this is the tank that came with the grill:

Date Code of January 2001

We were married in July 2001 and the tank was made on January, 2001.

Delete Time Machine Snapshots When Your Disk is Almost Full

Sun, 01 Nov 2020 00:00:00 +0000

If you’re running a Mac with limited internal disk you’ll encounter this message:

There’s a great article on how to manually delete Time Machine Snapshots

Key steps:

List available local snapshots “sudo tmutil listlocalsnapshots /Volumes/Macintosh HD”
Delete each snapshot “sudo tmutil deletelocalsnapshots 2020-11-01-002004”

I’ve had to do this a lot when upgrading to a new beta release.

Welcome to Apple News+

Sun, 01 Nov 2020 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve been using Gmail with the setting for “Display Images” set to off. It helps cut down on tracking and it cuts down on the visual clutter so I scan quickly.

I got free 4 months of Apple News+ for buying a new Apple Pencil and I activated it. This is the message that Apple sent me:

Apple makes a lot of how they’ve improved accessiblity and rightfully so. But this is not very good for the visually impaired, Apple.

Moving from Blogofile to Pelican

Thu, 29 Oct 2020 01:01:01 -0700

A couple of years after I wrote about how happy I was with Blogofile, it stopped being developed. The last update on GitHub was in 2015, the owner has archived the repository, and Blogofile.com doesn’t answer anymore.

I looked for forks and didn’t find any active ones. So as much as I liked the look and feel of my blog, it was going to have to switch software to something that was supported. I looked at several different options but the only one written in Python that seemed active was Pelican.

Moving from AWS S3 and Cloudfront to Netlify

Wed, 28 Oct 2020 01:01:01 -0700

After almost 10 years of letting the blog sit, I wanted to bring it into the modern world. One of the issues was that I had last touched the blog back in 2011 when SSL connections were only for transactions. The blog was just fine serving pages at https:// but the rest of the world has moved onto https:// Notice the “s” for HyperText TransPort Secure.

I was able to do that with some work but the biggest problem was that most of my URLs end in / but some didn’t. I was able to find a blog post on how to use Lamdas from AWS called from Cloudfront to handle adding a “/” to requests. But some-url/ and some-url and some-url/index.html were treated differently.

Give Blood, Get Covid-19 Tested for Free

Tue, 27 Oct 2020 14:33:33 -0700

Right now, if you give blood, the Red Cross will test it for Covid-19 before distributing it. They say it takes about 1-2 weeks for the results to come back. It took a little longer than that for the email to come but I was also not expecting anything but negative.

Still, good to know.

The Perfect Mac

Tue, 27 Oct 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Are you traveling a lot?

Do you like to carry your computer around the house with you?

If so, maybe you need a MacBook. But for most people, the perfect Mac is the Mac Mini with an i3 processor and 256GB of SSD. Why? Because you can expand the system memory on your Mac relatively cheaply to 32GB and you can attach terabytes of SSD for about $130/TB.

MacOS will load as much as it can into RAM and you’ve got 32GB of RAM, your processor will be flying along and outperform much more expensive processors if they only have the standard 8GB of RAM.

Sync Additional Folders with iCloud Drive

Sun, 25 Oct 2020 00:00:00 +0000

As the kids are getting older, 2 out of the 3 have switched to MacBooks from Chromebooks. That makes 4 out of the 5 of us pretty firmly in the Apple eco system. And after switching from Picassa to iPhoto to Aperture to Google Photos to (Apple) Photos, I’ve decided that’s going to be my last switch. I’m going to keep my personal photo archive backed up to iCloud.

A few years ago, iCloud was not as stable as it is now. But it now seems as stable as its major competitors Dropbox and Google Drive and we’re already using it to back up our various Macs, iPhones, and iPads.

Gmail filters - avoid using list

Sat, 24 Oct 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Filters in Gmail are incredibly useful but about 50% of the time the default is to see something like this:

This is an example of what programmers call a “write only” command. Why? Because a few months or weeks from now - or even tomorrow - you’ll have no idea what this corresponds to.

You’re much better off putting in “From: somecompany.com” or “Subject: [list prefix]” in your filters so that you can remember what they mean.

Don't Run as Administrator on Your Mac

Fri, 23 Oct 2020 00:00:00 +0000

One of the first things that I do on a Macintosh is to create a new user (say “admin”), give it administrative privileges, and then reboot. I log in as admin and lower my own privileges to an ordinary user.

Why? Because there were a series of exploits relying on quietly doing things requiring administrator access. You’d download a game and never notice during the install process that it was accessing things it wasn’t supposed to. Things like your passwords stored in your browser, access to your camera, etc.

Oregon Forest Fires in September 2020

Wed, 09 Sep 2020 00:00:00 +0000

This year we had the worst forest fires that I can remember. Things were bad 3 years ago, when teenagers playing with fireworks set off a forest fire 40 miles from Portland. Soccer games and other sports were cancelled because of the extremely poor air quality.

But this was worse. The farm where my grandfather and father lived was classified as category 3, meaning that everyone was to evacuate immediately, for several days. The house where my parents-in-law was classified as category 2, meaning that they were to be ready to leave at a moment’s notice. The smoke and the worry was causing so much stress that they moved to stay with a grandchild.

Using custom fonts on a web page, including internet explorer

Wed, 18 May 2011 11:00:10 -0700

Making CSS Custom Font works with IE, Firefox, Opera and Safari has a clear explanation of how to use custom fonts on your site.

Namebench for the win! Bad DNS makes my mac slow

Fri, 29 Apr 2011 16:00:10 -0700

Really bad performance on my MacBook has been driving me up the wall the past few days. Closing all un-needed programs didn’t help. I ran several Mac utilities on my system, rebooted and so on and so forth.

Still no good.

There’s 8GB of RAM in my (latest model - fall 2010) white MacBook and that really sped things up when it replaced the stock 2GB. It was very frustrating.

Script to Update Blogofile Blog on Amazon S3

Fri, 29 Apr 2011 16:00:10 -0700

Because Blogofile(at least the 0.7.1 version I’m using) regenerates every file and directory every time it makes it hard to update just the changed files on Amazon’s S3 (Simple Storage System) can scale incredibly high

So I wrote a shell script that updates only the changed files and also pings GooglePing so that Google and other services come along and read your update.

Over time, the difference between what the old page 2 on S3 has and what it should be will build. There’s a simple answer, which is to just upload all of the page files.

What's not perfect with Blogofile

Thu, 28 Apr 2011 15:00:10 -0700

In Switched from WordPress to Blogofile there are two good things about using Blogofile:

flat files are almost impossible to hack
Amazon’s S3 (Simple Storage System) can scale incredibly high

There’s some downsides:

blogofile build seems to copy or regenerate every single file
it’s not totally happy being on S3 - it doesn’t make index.html files for the archive and category directories.
there’s no easy way to post-via-email or send a link to start a post

Right now I’m writing this with vi and that’s far less comfortable than WordPress’s editor which I really liked. But I’m sure I’ll find TextWrangler or something as suitable for writing blog posts.

Switched from WordPress to Blogofile

Thu, 28 Apr 2011 13:24:10 -0700

I really like WordPress for the huge number of themes and utilities that it has. What I don’t like, though, is the need for constant vigilance to make sure that your blog hasn’t been hacked. When I started the conversion, I found two blog posts that had been secretly altered so that they had links to spam sites. I wasn’t sure whether to be grateful that only two had been altered or disappointed that my blog mattered so little that that’s all they did.

Twitter phishers are after your password

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 10:10:10 -0700

I was burned by this one! Graham Cluley writes a nice article on his blog called Twitter phishers are after your password

What was really appalling to me was getting burned by this screen:

Fake twitter login screen

Twitter, like Facebook, lets you use other sites by handling authorization. I’d been having serious problems with Twitter not accepting my password (as were thousands of others, apparently) and it just got fixed last week.

Cargo bikes for greener business deliveries in congested cities

Wed, 24 Dec 2008 12:12:12 -0700

These cargo bikes seem really neat for emissions free deliveries in the city. Do wonder about security - not only the cargo being stolen but the whole bike.

Greasefire - automatically find greasemonkey scripts

Wed, 17 Dec 2008 12:12:12 -0700

This Greasemonkey script Greasefire looks interesting but it doesn’t run on Firefox 3.1 beta, which I’m running now. I find the Greasemonkey scripts for Google Reader very helpful. It’d be nice to look into later.

Smart Google Reader Subscribe Button

Wed, 17 Dec 2008 12:12:12 -0700

If you’re like most people, you’ve got more feeds in your news reader than you can keep up with. What’s neat about this script is that it not only makes it easy to subscribe but also shows you if it’s already in your subscription list. If it is, it’s shown with a checkmark over the RSS icon.

My only objection is that it’s not posted to UserScripts, a central repository for Greasemonkey scripts.

Enter credit card number to see if it has been stolen scam.

Mon, 15 Dec 2008 12:12:12 -0700

It’s almost tempting to implement this just to see if anybody enters their info, isn’t it? Scam fail

Google Reader - Colorful List View

Tue, 02 Dec 2008 12:12:12 -0700

If you’re like me and like to read your feeds sorted by tags, you’ll find yourself jumping from blog to blog. Some Greasemonkey styles for Google Reader drop the feed name to save space, making it hard to tell articles apart.

Color is an efficient way to cue people that things are changing. Unless you’re color-blind, I guess. But since I’m not, I appreciate the Google Reader - Colorful List View script because it makes it simple to tell that there’s different feeds.
Note: updated to show correct script

Florida boy, 12, arrested for farting in class

Thu, 27 Nov 2008 11:11:11 -0700

Gotta love our zero-tolerance society showing up in situations like this: Florida boy, 12, arrested for farting in class

Does anyone doubt that if this was the principal’s kid it would be handled differently?

Global Warming & Epistemology

Thu, 27 Nov 2008 11:11:11 -0700

Matt Maroon in Global Warming & Epistemology articulates far better than I can the reasons for believing that global warming is happening, is caused by mankind, and needs to stop as soon as possible.

Nobody can be right about everything, and the nature of climate change is that the ultimate decisions have to rest with citizens, the politicians they elect, and entrepreneurs, most of whom can’t be expected to know everything about everything, or even everything about global warming. The best they can do is take the most informed opinions around and act on them.

MyAd Display Case for businesses

Wed, 25 Jun 2008 06:06:06 -0700

We’re starting to talk about some of the things that we’ve been working on with MyAd.com. One of my favorite features is the

Example of a display case

Display Case, which lets you put items you’ve posted on MyAd in a widget on your own site.

Many businesses have a site that doesn’t get updated very often. This is an easy way for a business to show what they have to offer on their own site.

TipToeTurtle.com - neat concept, easy to do business with

Sat, 26 Jan 2008 01:01:01 -0700

I ordered from BicycleTrailers.com a Baby Jogger Tailwind trailer that I ended up returning. I ended up returning it mostly because it had no storage room at all. I’m toting my son in the trailer and he needs his lunch, sometimes a change of clothes, etc. And it’s nice to have that behind him where he can’t get at it.

The trailer itself, while a bit on the heavy side, was extremely well built and had some very nice touches compared to our Burley LadyBug trailer. It seems likely that the Baby Jogger folks were aiming this at people who want to jog with young kids and that having no storage room was a feature, since the missing space gives a runner room for their legs to step forward.

Kudos to Dell on making it easy to add parts - Dimension 9200

Thu, 01 Nov 2007 11:11:11 -0700

I bought a Dell Dimension 9200 with a Quad Core processor. It hasn’t helped a lot but I’m reserving judgment on that until I get a second hard drive into the box. I’m suspecting that things are more I/O bound. Anyway, I didn’t want to pay what Dell wanted for a DVD R/W drive instead of a DVD drive so I got the box with just a DVD drive. I tried buying a DVD R/W drive at Target but the connections are wrong for my box.

Why I ride fixed - article from Bike Hugger

Thu, 01 Nov 2007 11:11:11 -0700

I really liked this article from Bike Hugger called Why I ride fixed. It fits very well with why I ride a Redline 9-2-5. I’ve got fenders, which I need for the wet here in Portland. It’s got brakes, which I need to slow Ben and I down in the trailer. And to slow me down - my legs aren’t up to stopping the bike by themselves yet.

Breezer Uptown

Tue, 25 Sep 2007 09:09:09 -0700

I read Sheldon Brown’s article on Breezer Town where he says

The Breezer Uptown 8 is the best commuter bike available in the U.S.

There’s a lot of things to like about the Uptown 8. I was able to test-drive one at Veloce Bicycles on Hawthorne.

Pros

Shimano 8-speed hub
Hub-powered headlight and taillight - no batteries, hard to steal
Full chainguard - reduces wear

Cons

No disc brakes - want to pull trailer down a steep hill in the rain
Noise from rack and fenders
26" x 1.5" tires - seem slower than 700c tires

The deal breaker for me was the disc brakes. How much of an issue this is really going to be, I don’t know yet. The downhill is at the start of my ride, so the bike will be relatively dry and any brakes might work well. On the other hand, the end is the top of a “T”. If I can’t stop and manage to avoid being hit by the SUVs and mini-vans taking kids to school, I’ll run right into a house. The twist shifter worked OK and would work well with gloves. I preferred the feel of Shimano’s RapidFire shifters but not sure that they’re as glove-friendly. I’ve also found the twist shifter seems to have more issues shifting smoothly than I would have thought. Some of this definitely may be due to my inexperience as a cyclist but I haven’t liked the sloppiness of my SRAM shifters (old Specialized Crossroads) or the Shimano 7 on an Electra Townie 7 I test-rode the Townie from the Bike Gallery on Sandy.

Why I hate Ubuntu sometimes - crontab not enabled

Thu, 09 Aug 2007 08:08:08 -0700

I’m trying to set up cron to run jobs for me. I have to go look up the weird syntax but OK. Found it. Everything looks fine but the jobs don’t work. Go on vacation. Come back and try again. Syntax is OK. Everything looks fine but the jobs don’t work. Dig, dig, dig. Find this Unix Crontab - setting up cron jobs using crontab

You can execute crontab if your name appears in the file /usr/lib/cron/cron.allow. If that file does not exist, you can use crontab if your name does not appear in the file /usr/lib/cron/cron.deny.
If only cron.deny exists and is empty, all users can use crontab. If neither file exists, only the root user can use crontab.

Tact Filters - how to deal with nerds

Tue, 24 Jul 2007 07:07:07 -0700

I thought this was a great explanation of why I’ve had trouble dealing with some excellent technical people. They had wonderful skills and cared about doing a good job but were very abrasive. Tact Filters has been around a long, long time but it’s as true today as it was 10 years ago, when it was written. Or 20 years ago, when I first started working with techies.

Feisty Performance - “Fly Like A Butterfly” Ubuntu

Sun, 01 Jul 2007 07:07:07 -0700

Haven’t implemented all of the things here but this looked promising on speeding up Ubuntu: Feisty Performance - “Fly Like A Butterfly

SSH your Debian servers without password - sftp

Sun, 01 Jul 2007 07:07:07 -0700

I was looking to do an unattended backup of some important files and found this very helpful: SSH your Debian servers without password

Web 2.0 how-to design style guide

Sun, 01 Jul 2007 07:07:07 -0700

This seemed like a great article on how to develop modern-looking pages. I barely know some of the HTML tags but Web 2.0 how-to design style guide was clear with great screenshots.

HowTo Mount NTFS Filesystem Partition Read Write Access

Wed, 27 Jun 2007 06:06:06 -0700

Found this article on HowTo Mount NTFS Filesystem Partition Read Write Access very helpful as I continue to dig out from under the Feisty Fawn -> Gutsy Gibbon explosion … er, upgrade.

The key thing here is the ability to mount the files so that they’re readable and writeable by an ordinary user. I am in the process of moving photos and music off my second NTFS-formatted drive. I may reformat it as ext3 or I may not but I want to know that I’ve got copies on my first NTFS-formatted drive (which is split with an ext3 partition) and my SimpleShare NFS NAS.

Test for blogrefs.com

Wed, 27 Jun 2007 06:06:06 -0700

This is a test for BlogRefs

Ubuntu Linux, SimpleShare NAS, and NFS

Wed, 27 Jun 2007 06:06:06 -0700

Had an upgrade to Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon go badly. Now I’m digging out from under. Part of what was lost was my /etc directory getting scrambled so I couldn’t read my old /etc/fstab entry. Been fighting to remember how things worked to mount my SimpleShare for backup and access to my ripped CDs. I finally found this article on Ubuntu Linux, SimpleShare NAS, and NFS which includes this key part:

mediaserver:/shares/SimplePool/Photos/ /mnt/photos nfs rsize=8192,wsize=8192,timeo=14,intr

Local DNS Cache for Faster Browsing using dnsmasq

Tue, 26 Jun 2007 06:06:06 -0700

Looking for a way to speed up recurring DNS lookups on my Ubuntu box. I found a reference to Local DNS Cache for Faster Browsing on Ubuntu Blog. Works like a champ.

I like that dnsmasq allows me to configure the size of the cache easily. I don’t like that I had to chattr +i /etc/resolv.conf to make it immutable so that the system wouldn’t drop looking at 127.0.0.1 (localhost) first. I tried using the package resolvconf but it caused all lookups to fail. So I used apt-get again to remove it and stayed with just the dnsmasq package.

Inside the Monkeysphere

Mon, 25 Jun 2007 06:06:06 -0700

Seriously good article on why we don’t think of other people as “people”. Inside the Monkeysphere is terrific.

Kodak and their great video...

Tue, 19 Jun 2007 06:06:06 -0700

Found a link to this Kodak video from Jason Calacanis’ blog. His article about winds of change has one word: genius.

It is a phenomenal video. Too bad that Kodak’s web site is messy and confusing and has nothing of interest to me. For me, the video just brought home how much they don’t matter to me.

I can’t remember the last time I bought a Kodak product. I suppose that they do sell paper and stuff like that to Walgreens or Costco or wherever I get the few photos I want on paper printed out.

How to create a PDF printer (print to PDF) in Ubuntu

Sun, 17 Jun 2007 06:06:06 -0700

I found printing to a PDF file useful occasionally useful under Windows. Neat to have a way to do it in Ubuntu: 5 steps to create a PDF printer (print to PDF) in Ubuntu

Celebrity Worship and the American Dream

Fri, 15 Jun 2007 06:06:06 -0700

Love this quote from Violent Acres about Celebrity Worship and the American Dream

Speaking of the American dream, has anyone noticed how much it’s changed? The American dream used to be about owning a modest home, having a happy family, and supporting yourself with honest, hard work. No one vies for things like that anymore.

She certainly expresses herself in ways that I wouldn’t. But like the way so many of her posts cut to the heart of things. Recommended reading.

OS X Style Google Reader

Fri, 15 Jun 2007 06:06:06 -0700

I’d referred to using CSS to make Google Reader look better.

If you’re using Google Reader, OS X Style Google Reader makes it much more usable. The font’s better, it’s much prettier in layout, etc., etc. Great stuff.

Google Reader Optimized

Wed, 13 Jun 2007 06:06:06 -0700

I’ve been using Google Reader more and more. I’m not thrilled with the layout, so I was really pleased to see that I could modify it either using the Stylish FireFox Extension or via Greasemonkey Google Reader Optimized

I started out with Stylish but am trying to cut down on the number of extensions I have. Of course, whether it’s better to have it as a Greasemonkey script seems more open to problems than an extension. You’re one level away from the scripts and they don’t go through the official Mozilla check-in process.

How to change the root password on Ubuntu

Wed, 13 Jun 2007 06:06:06 -0700

This is one of the things I meant to investigate. I know I have a password and can use sudo to do almost anything … but what’s root’s password? How to change the root password on Ubuntu was one of those “duh” moments but I’m glad to have this as a prompt to change the password. You should, too.

Set Gmail as Default Mail Client in Ubuntu

Sat, 09 Jun 2007 06:06:06 -0700

As much as I love Thunderbird with IMAP, I’m finding that I’m making mistakes because of using Linux and Google Reader more and more. I use vim and both it and Google Reader use the vi-style commands of the j key for down, k key for up, etc. I can’t find a way to re-map the keys in Thunderbird to do the same under Linux. Also, using Thunderbird means keeping two addressbooks instead of one.

Pointer to Reviews of Dell computers with Ubuntu Feisty Fawn preinstalled - XPS 410n, E1505n

Fri, 08 Jun 2007 06:06:06 -0700

I’ve been waiting for people to start getting and reviewing their Dell machines with Ubuntu before ordering mine. There’s a nice article on the Ubuntu Forums:Review of Dell XPS 410n with Ubuntu Feisty preinstalled. Also good coverage of the Dell E1505n laptop.

I’m not ready to convert my 4-year-old Inspiron laptop over to Ubuntu because of suspend/hibernate and wireless issues but it sounds better with more modern machines. Maybe if Dell or HP or Lenovo comes out with a backlit LED screen like Apple’s I’ll be ready to switch. Also liked the tips on wireless with Ubuntu here.

This Blog Entry is Urgent

Tue, 05 Jun 2007 06:06:06 -0700

Eric Sink writes a great article called This Blog Entry is Urgent and it includes:

When I see an envelope that says, (Do not discard this envelope(, I know immediately that it will be safe for me to throw it away unopened.

When I see an envelope that says (Special Offer(, I know with certainty that the offer contained therein is not special, and was in fact distributed to everybody with a pulse.

I'm Sorry You Feel That Way

Tue, 29 May 2007 05:05:05 -0700

Wow, this is a great post. Pet Peeve #7: I’m Sorry You Feel That Way totally sums up how snotty some people are when saying “I’m sorry you feel that way”.

Wow.

Bookmarks Power up Firefox with keywords - Lifehacker

Wed, 23 May 2007 05:05:05 -0700

I have this working on my laptop. But I have to remember to get it going on my desktop machine. That’s the only problem with having two machines - even with Google’s browser sync it’s hard to keep the FireFox configurations absolutely identical. Bookmarks: Power up Firefox with keywords - Lifehacker

Hack Attack - Firefox and the art of keyword bookmarking

Wed, 23 May 2007 05:05:05 -0700

Another article on FireFox and bookmarks. Firefox and the art of keyword bookmarking

Convert Physical Windows Systems Into Virtual Machines To Be Run On A Linux Desktop

Fri, 18 May 2007 05:05:05 -0700

Another article on how to Convert Physical Windows Systems Into Virtual Machines To Be Run On A Linux Desktop

Running a Windows Partition in VMware

Fri, 18 May 2007 05:05:05 -0700

I’m still trying to figure out whether I’m going to try and keep running XP on my laptop or try to run XP under Ubuntu. Big problem with running Ubuntu is that hibernate does not work and I’ve spent several hours on it. Enough time that I’m not willing to spend more without confidence that the time will be well-spent.

I may just wait for Dell or someone else to come out with Ubuntu on their machines officially and then buy one of those. Hopefully WiFi and hibernate will work without the kind of work I’m having to do.

Things I can do in Linux that I can't do on Windows. | dmartin.org

Fri, 18 May 2007 05:05:05 -0700

This article lists some of the things I can do in Linux that I can’t do on Windows.

Nice article.

You Can Switch to Linux! - willsmith - Maximum PC

Fri, 18 May 2007 05:05:05 -0700

Apparently it’s Ubuntu day for me. Wondering if you can switch to Linux? Here’s a nice article on how to do so. Published in Maximum PC magazine, it’s clear and current with Feisty Fawn, released just less than a month ago. Good stuff.

How to choose the right screenshot program

Mon, 07 May 2007 05:05:05 -0700

I need to get pictures of screens for reporting problems. I don’t usually want to take the full screen or even a window - I want the smallest section that will show the problem. Using Ubuntu, I wasn’t able to find anything that would do it as easily as I would like. I’m guessing with some certainty that I could have rigged The Gimp or something to capture the screen but then I would have to work at reducing the size, etc.

Linux Audio Players Compared

Sat, 05 May 2007 05:05:05 -0700

Really liked this article. Linux Audio Players, Tested and Graded. I’m working my way through the Linux equivalents of Windows apps. I’ve used iTunes under Windows because it would talk easily to my iPod.

I tried Rhythmbox but it was out immediately. I want to keep my songs on a network-attached storage drive. Basically, the SimpleShare is a hard drive with an ethernet port. I don’t expect it to be as vulnerable to attacks as Windows XP. I don’t have to punch holes in its firewall that might allow people to get control of my Linux box or my wife’s Mac. Rhythmbox wants import all my music to one local location. No.

Official Google Reader Blog - There are people who don't use feed readers?

Thu, 03 May 2007 05:05:05 -0700

Do you use Google Reader? I’ve thought that other readers were better beause they’re faster. I really like RSS Owl, which uses IE to display pages. It’s based on Java and is cross-platform, usable on Macs, Windows and Linux. It uses one file to track what feeds you read.

Problem is, there’s no standard way to show how far you’ve read in a newsfeed. Articles are updated, the online services fetch them at different times - Google and Bloglines are online all the time but your RSS reader probably is not. So I can’t easily keep offline readers in sync unless they’re hooked up to something to like FeedDemon.

Firefox - Open diverted links in new background tab instead of new window

Tue, 01 May 2007 05:05:05 -0700

I really like to be able to click on links while reading an article but not have to deal with the links until I’m done. I’ve got enough ADD issues without tabs popping up. So I was very happy to find this reference to making tabs work better (for me, anyway): Firefox: Open diverted links in new background tab instead of new window

It’s kind of an adjustment process because FF is relatively “quiet’ - the tabs are opening all the way to the right and not grabbing attention. Just the way I’ve wanted but it’s a little unnerving - I’m checking to make sure the tabs did open.

What’s With the Ubuntu Version Number Scheme?

Tue, 01 May 2007 05:05:05 -0700

One thing that was kind of exasperating about Ubuntu was the (weird( version numbers. The successor to 6.06 was 6.10? The next version was 7.04? Huh?

Fortunately, somebody finally blogged about this: What’s With the Ubuntu Version Number Scheme? – Johnny’s Thoughts

No big secret: the first number is the year and the second is the month. So 7.04 translates as 2007 and April or month 04.

Now I can sleep at night.

Why we just have basic cable ...

Sun, 29 Apr 2007 04:04:04 -0700

We got an HDTV last year. After a few months of watching DVDs on it, I started wondering what HDTV was like. I tried getting an indoor which didn’t work so well. I started looking at DirecTV and Dish Network and upgrading to higher levels of cable with Comcast. There’s occasional things on ESPN that I want to watch and there’s probably a few things that my wife would like to watch.

Dell offering pre-installed Linux?

Tue, 24 Apr 2007 04:04:04 -0700

Was reading Deep Jive Interests about Dell’s Crowdsourcing More Than Hype: Tells Microsoft to “Suck It!”

I’ve spent some time the past 10 days or so putting Ubuntu 7.04 on 3 PCs, all of them dual-booting some flavor of Windows. Obviously there’s a lot of interest in doing this on Dell’s site but it’s not clear at all that Dell is going to reduce the price just because they don’t install Microsoft. I still don’t have hibernation working properly on my desktop - haven’t tried on the kids’ or my laptop yet - so I’m a lot more interested in paying the same price as a Windows box just to have hibernate and wireless work without a glitch.

20 must-see Greasemonkey Addons(No Technical Knowledge Req.)

Tue, 03 Apr 2007 04:04:04 -0700

I love the way that Firefox and Thunderbird can be extended by extensions. But I’ve been somewhat concerned about the reliability and stability of Greasemonkey scripts. There were a couple of features that I wanted to try (more on that later) so I broke down and installed it on my laptop.

Wow. I’ve been very pleased with how well the scripts worked. I’m still cautious about installing them, since they’re not looked over anywhere near as much as extensions on the official Mozilla site are. But the Userscripts site lets you look over info from the author and comments from people before installing anything.

This is the way I'm feeling about technology, too

Tue, 27 Mar 2007 03:03:03 -0700

I found Eric Sink’s blog via some references from Joel Spolsky’s blog. This is a nice post about the problems with whiz-bang technology.

Good summary of why Blu-Ray and HD-DVD won't take off

Mon, 12 Mar 2007 03:03:03 -0700

This is an excellent write-up of why I don’t think Blu-Ray or HD-DVD are going to matter. And some good insights in the comments, too. The Unwinnable War in high definition DVD

Ouch! Apple gets it right on Vista

Tue, 06 Feb 2007 02:02:02 -0700

Yesterday, I referenced what it was like living with Vista

Today I ran across an [Apple ad](https://images.apple.com/movies/us/apple/getamac/apple-getamac-security_480x376.mov mocking Vista). Unfortunately, they pretty much got it right.

I’m hoping for an update that fixes this. Please, Microsoft?

Living with Vista

Mon, 05 Feb 2007 02:02:02 -0700

OK, I’ve had Windows Vista installed for 9 days now and my verdict is … it’s not worth upgrading. Vista is supposed to be more secure than XP but this manifests itself in really annoying ways. The screen flashes black and a box pops up that must be dealt with. That’d be great if it were only for important things but it happens all the time!

I’ve had it happen when I want to change the smallest system setting. I’ve had it happen while downloading files. C’mon, get out of my way.

Too many choices = problems

Wed, 31 Jan 2007 01:01:01 -0700

I installed Vista on my home desktop machine on Friday. I’ve already been bitten twice by the new (off( button with Vista. I’m going to have to figure out how to change its default behavior.

I enjoy reading Joel Spolsky’s articles. In Choices = Headaches he talks about the problems with Vista:

Every time you want to leave your computer, you have to choose between nine, count them, nine options: two icons and seven menu items.

Buzz Monitoring and Tracking