David Latham

I subscribe to the NZLUG ( New Zealand Linux Users Group found at http://www.linux.net.nz ) mailing list and received a very interesting item in my inbox this evening. Internet Assist North Shore are looking for ways we can help out families who do not have the wherewithal or sufficient finances to get on-line. The idea is that we donate old hardware with opensouce only software and operating systems along with our time for installation, setup and training if required. Another idea was also put forward to provide the actual internet access. However that is possible. I think they are looking for ideas. One option might be through sponsorship. Corporates looking to provide their services might, for the extra publicity we could maybe provide, cover the $25.00 a month for a year or even 6 months to get folks on-line and up and running. It might be tricky to work out who qualifies... Anyway - those are my ideas... For now anyway. Check them out at: http://internetassistnorthshore.blog...

Those of you who are into social networking and like to keep up to date with your feeds, facebook, twitter, youtube and anything else, then you might like Flock. Flock is a mozilla based portal into all of these services.  It saves your account login data and allows you to both browse and social network at the same time from the same application.  Rather than all your services in multiple windows, you have them in one application. I recommend a large screen though.  Wide screens are especially suitable for thos wide sidebars. Check out Flock at http://flock.com/ There is a windows and a linux version.  I didn't bother to check if there was a mac version. Blogged with the Flock Browser

I would like to share this post on Linux Security. I would place it in my shared items but I thought that if I left it there it would go largely unnoticed. The author has written a fantastic entry about the User effect on security within a Linux environment. He makes points about users running arbitrary code as root, installing unsigned packages and a lot more. It is well worth a read! http://www.happyassassin.net/2009/01/20/on-linux-security/ I would like to note that I am merely trying to introduce a great piece of writing by another blogger.

Ever wanted to show a progress bar on your bash scripts? I am talking specifically about the progress of file transfer or raw read scripts. It might be easier to explain with an example: I have a script that reads raw data from a CD or DVD ROM disk and pipes that data to md5sum or sha1sum to find if the data on the disk matches the published md5sum or sha1sum checksums published by the vendor. I download ISOs and verify them before I send them to my customers. I wanted to have the script show a progress bar so I started searching... Here is how I have implemented clpbar Installation instructions ( Fedora 10 x86_64 ) Download and install clpbar ( bar-1.10.9.tar.gz ) -- See references at the end of this script. tar xvfz bar-1.10.9.tar.gz cd bar-1.10.9 ./configure make su -c "make install" Usage example #!/bin/sh # # Start with verifying CDs # device="/dev/cdrom" # pass the type of checksum into the script. (md5sum|sha1sum) checksumtype=$1 #Find details of the devi...

I had a crack at installing Paymex on my osCommerce website this evening. I will try to summarise the experience: INSTALLATION Paymex provide an osCommerce module for download from their website. It is mind numbingly simple to install. A simple upload of files is all that is required. There is absolutely no php editing required. This is always a plus for me. osCommerce code is painful enough and in a production environment any update that does not require php code editing is very useful. 5 out of 5 for installation. CONFIGURATION There is only one item of identification required by the Paymex module config. A business id. This looks remarkably like a windows uid. I just copy pasted it from the Paymex website while logged in there. There is the option to have the paymex module enabled or disabled, Test mode or Production mode, set the acknowledged order status and the sort order. So not much to configure really and very simple to understand. 4 out of 5 for configuration. Not ...

I was leaving my office the other day and had my phone in my hand. Its a nokia 3120 ( i think ) and has a little camera in the front for video conferencing or something. Anyway - I accidently took a photo of myself. Initially I was just going to delete it but thought I would just post it here. Has anyone else taken an accidental photo of themselves? Maybe we should set up some kind of flikr page for it. Who is keen? Merry Christmas and a very happy new year to all who follow this blog!

I was very reluctant to install Fedora 10. Mainly because of the poor success I have had in the past with it all going smoothly. IE: Typically it all went very bad. I never do an upgrade. Always a backup of important data - never apps or configurations - then a fresh install. I like my system clean. So after about 5 days of having the new distro, I couldn't wait any more. I was just too curious so I carefully backed everything up not forgetting this time to dump my databases too. The install went absolutely swimmingly. It was like installing a vanilla ubuntu. Nothing went wrong - everything worked like it was supposed to. Just fantastic!!! I suggest you backup and install Fedora 10 today! Only thing... ( there is always a but ) Amarok in the new version is unusable. I had to trawl google for like minded individuals. Found a forum where I was able to download a compiled version of Amarok 1.4. ( v10 ) I think. I needed this desparately because I use the REPLAYGAIN exte...