Okay.. it took awhile, but Meteor support in TextBuddy is back once again! If you have the latest version of the software it’ll just start working automatically.

Have fun!

I’m not sure how long it’s been this way but it’s damn annoying. MyMeteor’s been down all weekend due to “maintenance” and when I checked just now it’s still down!

What kind of maintenance lasts 96 hours anyway? Couldn’t they leave the old site in place until they’re ready to launch the updated version? It bamboozles me how companies of this size can get away with this kind of thing.

Over the last few weeks I’ve plunged head first in to using Linux as my primary desktop OS.  Since then, my desktop has evolved from the standard Debian Gnome configuration to my configuration. With this new desktop, things are approached a little differently when compared with my old Windows setup.  The avant-window-manager (dock) replaces the Windows taskbar. The Windows Start Menu and Quick Launch toolbar are replaced by the main Gnome panel, which sits at the top of the screen. I have added a bunch of applets to this panel, such as Terminal Services Client launcher, force quit a troublesome X process, user switcher, workspace switcher, some erm, eyes, local weather, show desktop and a volume control.  I have a whole bunch of screenlets running too, they provide the opaque desktop widgets that you see in the screenshot.

Having used this configuration for the last few weeks, things have now evolved a little further.  The folder layout on *nix machine “feels right” compared with Windows. All of “your stuff” is stored in your home directory – which means that there’s less emphasis on “the desktop”, giving me the opportunity to easily keep it organised.  Grouping all current desktop icons into logical groups (directories), I arranged them around my screenlets. I figured this is the best approach since all the useful bits (screenlets and icons) are all in one place. I disabled the nautilus (using gconf -> apps > nautilus > desktop preferences) desktop trash icon since I have a screenlet taking its place instead.

My only regret now is that when I built this machine I went with an ATI graphics card. ATI’s Linux support sucks, the official proprietary drivers (the dreaded “fglrx”) suck and the opensource radeon/radeonhd drivers aren’t much better.  Video performance is now the only major bottleneck on this machine and to “solve it” I decided I’d live with some high quality albeit closed-source drivers from nVidia – an nVidia GTS 250 is on its way to me as I type.

This is probably the most major release of TextBuddy in quite sometime.

Many things have changed under the hood, in addition, it handles larger multiline texts much more gracefully, and also remembers the last window size and position. I discovered that Vodafone support was broken for quite sometime (as a result of a recent vodafone.ie update) this is now working again.

Get it while it’s hot - you can download it here.

Firefox downloads have now reached 1 billion, or 31% of the web browser market share. Quite an amazing achievement for this community effort, opensource WebBrowser. It has even attracted attention from the US Secretary of State.

The big thorn in the heel for WebDevelopers, Internet Explorer still remains at large with a 60% holding while Opera, Chrome and Safari are all below 5%.

While attempting to upgrade to the latest version of Trac from the FreeBSD ports you may encounter the above error.  Finding a solution for this problem isn’t as easy as it may seem and so I decided I’d put it here to help out a few lost souls.

If you receive this error then it’s most likely that you’ve built subversion with the STATIC make option. Building a static version means that no shared libraries will be built and this is the reason you get the svn_client-1 does not exist error. The solution is to:

cd /usr/ports/devel/subversion && make config

Ensure you untick the STATIC option then rebuild and reinstall the subversion port. Once you’ve done this you can return to your trac build and live in happiness once again.

I’ve been waiting over two months and today, I finally received the phonecall saying the courier would deliver it – my Embody chair from Herman Miller.

For the last 5-6 months I have been sitting in something quite like this:

This is my upgrade:

It’s early days yet as I’m still getting used to all the adjustable bits.. but it’s very, very comfortable.

July 16, 2009 – Insecure.Org is pleased to announce the immediate,  free availability of the Nmap Security Scanner version 5.00 from http://nmap.org/. This is the first stable release since 4.76 (last September), and the first major release since the 4.50 release in 2007. Dozens of development releases led up to this.

Considering all the changes, we consider this the most important Nmap release since 1997, and we recommend that all current users upgrade.

Okay, this is my ultra brief list of essential Firefox addons. This is part 1 of more to come. Many of these addons are web development centric.

Here we go..

Adblock Plus

Adblock Plus is the ultimate solution to blocking unwanted, annoying banner ads. It supports configurable rulesets allowing you to block everything from absolute url’s to entire domains.  Once installed, be sure to subscribe to a ruleset (Doctor Von Evil’s is the one I always choose!). I like to modify the default options so that it doesn’t display a “block” tab on flash and java objects - if you too find the “block” tab annoying then seek out this option!

WebDeveloper Toolbar

Obviously, this one must get a mention; no web developer should be without it.

ColorZilla

An embedded, advanced eyedropper and colour selection tool for Firefox - no web developer should be without it! Be sure to enable to automatic clipboard copy features from within the Options context menu once you have it installed!  Get Colorzilla here..

MeasureIt

Yet another must have web development addon - this small addon adds a ruler button to your firefox statusbar. Once clicked, it allows you to measure distances/objects on a webpage, ideal for creating pixel perfect web pages!

Screenshot Capturing

Now, my first choice here would probably be Fireshot, since it’s extremely feature rich. Unfortunately thou, it doesn’t work with Firefox 3.5 or Linux.  Instead,  Iimmgg.com tools for Firefox does the job. Iimmgg allows you to quickly take screenshots of webpage; it supports capturing the full page,  visible area, or select (user defined) area.

ReloadEvery

This small little extension is a great timesaver when it comes to building webpages. Put simply, it allows you to reload a page every few seconds. This saves me lots of time - I can just kick this thing off and have it refreshing automatically, while I code up my pages or adjust stylesheets etc.