File Thingie is not the sleekest or feature-richest web-based file manager out there, but it's a perfect fit for those who need a no-frills solution that is easy to deploy and use. This is not to say ...
In my previous installments, I described the success I've been having with compressing "Sita Sings the Blues" with the VP8 video codec, and at the end I had a video file. Then I converted the audio to ...
In my previous column, I described the success I've had with using VP8 for compressing the video for the Lib-Ray main feature multimedia file. At the end of that process, though, I still have a silent ...
There are some nice sticky-note applications for Linux, and they're good places to write down reminders, like _Ring Fred_ or _Pick up a litre of milk_. Unfortunately, sticky-notes are no help to me at ...
When I started working on a no-DRM, open-standards-based solution for distributing high-definition video on fixed media ("Lib-Ray"), I naturally thought of Theora, because it was developed as a free s ...
Sometimes, you need to find and group together the replicated records in a spreadsheet. There are several different ways to identify duplicated records (see this tutorial for a good one), but what I w ...
This is one of those things that doesn't get explained much, because it's almost too simple to document: it's often useful to keep a few Debian package files (`.deb` files, used in Debian, Ubuntu, and ...
In Spring 2011, I started a project to attempt to create a free-culture compatible / non-DRM alternative to Blu-Ray for high-definition video releases on fixed-media, and after about a year hiatus, I' ...
A web site is a set of pages on a specific subject. It normally has sub-pages, and normally valuable information about the topic it covers. What if a web site is dedicated to a property? Could you cre ...
I often need to insert a special character in my writing, like the degree symbol or the Greek letter _mu_. Although LibreOffice Writer, my favourite writing application, helps me do this with an _Inse ...
The Xfce desktop environment comes with Xubuntu and is also available in the Xfce versions of Linux Mint, Fedora and other Linux distributions. Using Xfce, you can easily set up a highly functional bu ...
Do you know if your server or your home computer has unnecessary ports open to the internet? These days most of the people have multiple devices which are constantly connected to the internet; each an ...
The terminal and its command-line programs are things that scare many end-users. What they may not realise is that to use command-line programs, all you need to do is open a terminal, type the magic w ...
The t task manager boasts two distinctive traits: an impossibly short name and supreme ease of use. This no-frills Python script lets you keep tabs on your tasks and to-dos using a handful of commands ...
Since script extensions are going to be a part of our toolchain on creating Lunatics, I thought it would be a good idea to familiarize myself with how scripts are created and run in Blender. As a lear ...
Call me old-fashioned, but I like to store emails in text files, one per correspondent. For example, 'Bloggs_Fred.txt' contains all my emails to and from Fred Bloggs, in chronological order with the n ...
This article is not strictly about free software. In fact, it's not about free software at all: it's about what to do to find out if your server's IP is blacklisted for sending mail. I just discovered ...
In my recent series on Encouraging the next generation of Hackers I looked at the concept and ideas behind the (in my opinion) exciting Raspberry Pi project. For those who don't know the Raspberry Pi ...
If you use Google Documents, you might want to be able to access your files without using a browser. So, I was all set, happy to write a good blog entry about how to mount your Google Documents folder ...
In the first part of this series I looked at the Raspberry Pi -- a $25 computer which is being developed to remove one barrier to encouraging the next generation of programmers. It's ambitious and com ...