Nathan Hoad .net

Do you have an Ubuntu installation and want to know what all this fuss about Ruby on Rails is? With Passenger from Phusion it's easy!

I find the little chat application that sits in the Facebook status bar pretty handy for sending quick messages to buddies who are online when I am. If you're a user of Pidgin like me you might like the idea of being able to use the Facebook chat service from within Pidgin (keeping all your IM accounts in one place ). Awesomely enough, you can do just that. All you have to do is grab the Facebook Chat for Pidgin plugin:

Are you using Git in Ubuntu and want to use an external visual diff viewer? It's easy! I will be using Meld for this example but most visual diff tools should be similar. If you don't already have Meld, then install it:

I was listening to some music with Amarok this morning when I wanted to watch the new The Happening trailer. To my annoyance there was no audio! After conducting a bit of googling, I learnt that it was because of Ubuntu using PulseAudio as its audio backend for Hardy. The fix is simple; install libflashsupport:

After an agonising wait on Thursday for the latest Ubuntu to be released I finally managed to download a copy of the Hardiest of Herons, Ubuntu 8.04. Every six months, with each new Ubuntu release, I format my Ubuntu partition and start again, cleansing my computer of all the 'testware' that I installed since the last format. I wanted to allow plenty of time for tinkering so I decided to put off the format until Friday (with it being a public holiday). I burned the Hardy ISO to a CD and got some sleep.

Want to change the way that Gnome clock applet looks? Its easy. Start by opening up the Gnome Configuration Editor. If it isn't in the menu, you can open it by typing this into a terminal:

If you have ever used Quicksilver on a Mac or Launchy on Windows then you have already experienced the concept that makes Gnome Do awesome. If you haven't (and are running Gnome) then give it a try.

Ubuntu launched its new feedback site the other day. Brainstorm sites seem to be growing in popularity recently with Dell's Ideastorm site and GIMP's UI Brainstorm blog proving to be useful in getting quality ideas from the people who use their products.

I noticed I was getting a bit of traffic from people searching for 'Eyetoy Ubuntu' but the only article I had regarding the Eyetoy in Ubuntu was about Cheese. So, in an effort to make the Google results pointing here more useful, here is a How To about getting the Eyetoy working in Ubuntu Gutsy (I mostly followed this tutorial on Ubuntu Forums, with a few changes).

I got a new 6x8" Wacom Graphire4 yesterday. After finishing off an assignment for uni this afternoon I got a chance to hook it up and have a play.

Getting a LAMP installation happening in Ubuntu is easy. Just open up Applications->Accessories->Terminal and type each of these commands in.

Today marked the occasion of me giving in to the call of the Gutsy Gibbon. I know I said I was going to wait until after all of my exams/assignments were over but the lure of the latest Ubuntu was too strong. I took some time out from writing my MMDS3300 essay to load up the Gutsy live CD. In a few minutes I'd filled out the installer forms and the install was under way. A quick game of Lagno (I lost ) later and my computer was ready to restart.

Well the new Ubuntu is out. It's 7.10 or 'Gutsy Gibbon' for those of you playing at home. There are quite a number of tweaks and changes in this release. After a quick download I had my copy ready for me to burn and install it. However, I did neither. As a rather unfortunate coincidence, each October release of Ubuntu seems to coincide with my uni exams and I know that if I install Gutsy now, it will be way too easy for me to procrastinate and not get my study done.

I decided to give Cheese another go the other day. Last time I tried it was just after I got my Eye-toy working in Ubuntu but, back then, Cheese didn't seem to play nice. This time, however, things were different.

After realising that I hadn't updated my Inkscape in a while I decided to checkout Inkscape.org to get the latest development version. I got the most recent autopackage release (inkscape200709061136.package) that I could find and installed it. The first thing I noticed was the new node sculpting tool. I can see that it might be handy but I don't see me using it all that often.