Edward Andrew Robinson

<rant>Yesterday Bell, my super fast ISP, started to redirect unfound urls to their own website (www.domainnotfound.ca). I have been very happy with Bell for the last few years and have been thinking of moving my cellphone subscription to them as soon as they support the android.

To Bell’s credit they do offer a way for you to opt out of the service however when you opt out instead of returning a DNS error they you get a blank page, not very useful for me. I have a habit of typing anything I am looking for into the address bar and then letting google take over. This works very well for me if I want to visit reddit I type reddit and google seems to figure out that I want to visit reddit. If instead I type “reddit bell dns hijacking” google still seems to figure out that they do not know what I am looking for and so they take me to a search results page. This is how I brows the Internet, I do everything from the Awesome Bar (the bar in Firefox that you type your url into). And yesterday Bell broke that.

NoRedirect (Firefox Extension Link) to the rescue!

NoRedirect lets the user take control of HTTP redirects. It can be used to interdict an ISP’s DNS search redirection hijacks, preview/screen “shortened” URLs (e.g., TinyURL), stop the annoying redirection of “smart” error pages, etc. — Source

This lets me set any url mattching the following regular expression http://www\.domainnotfound\.ca/* to be interpreted by Firefox as a DNS error giving me back my Awesome Bar and my ability to type anything I want into it and have google do all of the work!

I think this is an exteremly evil move by Bell and I am quite disappointed. at least Firefox + NoRedirect has saved the way I brows my internets. But this is another step by our ISP’s to erode our digital freedoms and net neutrality and another reason to move to TekSavvy. I should not have to resort to a software solution to preserve how I browse the Internet!</rant>

With all the posts on planet ubuntu lately about twitter it got me thinking about my micro-blogging habits and how I update my online status in general. I started using twitter about a year ago, and since then I have become quite the huge micro-blogger. However a while ago I stopped thinking about it as twittering or identi.caing (?) and started thinking about it as updating my online status.

To understand why let me tell you what happens when I make a tweet (I think twitter has won the terminology war). When I want to tweet something I open up gwibber (thank Jono)and fire off my update, gwibber then updates my pidgin (MSN and Google Talk) status as well as my identi.ca account (If I am not at home I go directly to identi.ca). Identi.ca then  updates my twitter account that then posts the updated to my website, and my facebook.

From Public

What I really like about this setup is that all of these services have the built in ability to update each other. I know I could also use something like ping.fm to do the job but currently I have no need, just by updating one account I can update all my online profiles status.

So what’s your tweet flow like?

Also add me on Identi.ca, Twitter, or anything else!

A lot of this post could also be applied to the Ubuntu Brainstorm but since I use reddit (an open source social news site)  a lot more I will make this post about reddit, yet it could apply to any voting site.

I use mainly reddit, and google reader to get my news online. Google reader is great letting me subscribe to sites I am interested in. Reddit is great letting me see what other people think is cool and find new sites that way. In order to decide what topics to show reddit lets users vote up or down a link and the displays the top links on the front page.

reddit is a source for what’s new and popular on the web — personalized for you. Your votes train a filter, so let reddit know what you liked and disliked, because you’ll begin to be recommended links filtered to your tastes. All of the content on reddit is submitted and voted on by users like you.
– http://www.reddit.com/help/

I love the up or down vote system. It is much better than the star system for me (looking through my rhythmbox library most songs have either 4, 5, or zero (unrated) stars) and the up down system seems to work a lot better for me. However looking at just my liked, or disliked votes does not tell the whole story. I have 1000’s of liked votes but less than 50 disliked votes in the 2 years I have used reddit. Looking at a screenshot of my reddit homepage tells an even better story.

Looking at the above screenshot you can clear see that today I have clicked on 15 links but only liked 2 one of which I did not even click on. I feel that this is an important metric that reddit is missing from its stats, looking at the comments of a posted article tells you how many up and down votes an article has got. Maybe at least to start tracking and telling us how many clicks an article got is a good start. Why, well because if you have two sites one has 100 up votes and 100 clicks VS one with 100 up votes and 1000 clicks that info tells you something about the article. What this tells us yet I am not sure but maybe one is a niche article that a small community of people really care about as to read the article and up vote it (for example a colour blind patch for fluxbox, and yes I don’t even know what that would be), but maybe the latter is the release of the next version of ubuntu. I feel that this information could make reddit even better and as an added bonus for those of us who use reddit on more than one computer reddit could keep track of our clicked links for us.

Edit: This has been submitted to reddit. Please up vote it.

Well there is another meme on planet ubuntu and this one is about the name of your computers. I typically name my computers after different ways of saying NULL in different programing languages. I currently have:

• MinusOne – This is my main computer. -1 is a way sometimes used to mark an int as NULL.
• NaN – This is my laptop, a dell inspiron 1300 … also my battery is dead if anyone knows where I can get a cheap one in Canada that would be great. NaN stands for not a number in matlab.
• Void – This is my current test box. I’m not really sure if void is used in any programing languages but it seemed to me like a synonym to NULL.

In the past I have also had:

• NULL – This was my first linux computer and the mother board died.
• Zero – A laptop that no longer works. Zero is also used as a NULL value.

I also have three devices that currently do not follow this naming convention:

• xo – This is my OLPC XO this computer came whith that name and I have not changed any of the default settings on it.
• Neo – This is my work computer, named after Neo from the matrix. When I have more than one work computer I use other matrix character this helps me keep my work machines seperated from my personal computers since some of them travel with me and spend a lot of time on my home network.
• DD-WRT – This is my router and yes it is using the DD-WRT firmware. The DD-WRT firmware is a great way to get all the power out of your router. I only just started using this and would love to get some neat tips and tricks or other recomendations that people find better and why.

Lastly I have one virtual computer:

• earobinson-PC – This is my vista box, this is the name vista gave it, and I hardly use it so it can stay like that. (Well the last time I used it was to check out google chrome)

So what do you name your computers? Also I do intend to recycle the no longer used names but if anyone has any ideas for more ways of saying NULL I would love to hear them so far the only unused one I have is None from python.

<rant>Although I get to use Linux mostly for work and personally, there always comes a time when I need to use Windows. It could be that I need to write a program for Windows, or that I have a friend, or family member that needs windows for something. This is one of those times.

What frustrates me most is that I’m trying to install Windows on a laptop that came with Windows Media Centre. That laptop has a Windows Media Centre key but I don’t have the Dell disks that came with that laptop, and I know I can order them from Dell and at the end of the day I just might have to do that (and end up paying for it). But what annoys me most is that including the Windows key on the bottom of the laptop, that I’m trying to install windows on, I have three legit Windows XP keys but cant get an install working. I have an MSDNAA Windows XP key, as well as the Dell XP key from the bottom of my laptop and what annoys me is that I have three valid XP keys and I cant seem to install XP.

I have no media center disks, annoying and I really don’t want to used bittorrent to download them. I don’t feel like I should have to steal software that I own

The MSDNAA ISO and key came from two different people, eg its my key buy my buddy burned the ISO when he got a key, maybe that’s causing the problem I will burn my own copy and find out.

Obviously my laptop is OEM for XP pro and cant be installed on another computer even though I have never used it.

Guess this is just another reason I use Linux, I find this so annoying. Microsoft/Dell should really have a website that I can find out why the one key wont work as well as download ISOs. I know this is the way things are and that me wining about it is not going to change anything but I really just wish if I had a CD key I could download the ISO and use that key on any computer (only one of course). This just makes my windows experience more painful and makes me want to avoid Windows more.</rant>

Also my blog still seems to be broken I don’t want to update and spam the planet again by removing the fact that I think I fixed one of the issues.

I am a huge fan of the google docs, In fact I am pretty much a fan of all of googles services. I love having all my information with me wherever I go and I am willing to “sacrifice” my privacy in exchange for that service. Anything really important and I will keep it on my own server but I am yet to have anything that I really worry about. That said some people might not want to use google to host there expenses, I do.

The great thing about using google docs to host my expenses is that I can add an expense from anywhere using the google docs form feature In the example I provided (Fake Expenses), I use the forum feature to add expenses on the road as well as getting real time updates about the amount of money I spend per day, week, etc.

If you would like to use my expense tracker you can view it here (Be sure to check all the sheets (Form, Overview, Worker, and Totals)), or download it here. Then simply upload it to your google docs and set up a form. Also feel free to play around and add fake expenses to the doc.

How do you track your expenses?

Update 01: Click here to get your own copy of the doc in your google docs. Thanks JR.
Update 02: Any idea why when I edit my posts they are being republished?

APT-URL is one of my favorite programs. The great thing about it is I can keep a list of programs I like on a website and easily install all the program I like on a new box, or point someone new to Ubuntu to the website with all my favorite programs. The problem is that with the personal package archives, letting users run there own repositories on launchpad, and many great programs using there own repository’s you need to add them to your source.list file before you can use any of those great programs.

My solution, let APT-URL add a repository after giving a warning of course. Is this dangerous, sure it is but we can take a similar approach to this that Firefox does, only let trusted websites add to the source.list file. So on a trusted website like launchpad you would get a message like “launchpad.net is trying to add the following repository” compared to a random website that might say “wiki.earobinson.org is trying to add a repository if this is a trusted website please click yes otherwise click no”. This would add some risk but the benefit to the user is huge. Please support this idea by voting for it at the Ubuntu brainstorm.

I love planets, both the ones in the sky’s, and the ones on the web. But this post is about the latter. One of the things about the web is that you have profiles everywhere, and while openID partly solves this problem allowing me to use one user name to authenticate everywhere it does not solve the problem that people have to visit a bunch of different sites to find out about me. They need to visit my facebook profile to find out what I’m up to, last.FM to see what music I’m into, Digg to see what I’m digging (but I can never decide if I like Digg or not), and the list goes on. I guess if something really important happens, like the launch of Ubuntu brainstorm, I can always blog about it or Digg it but I’m not about to go blogging or digging everything I see. There are a few facebook apps that allow me to display my google reader info on my facebook page and thats kinda cool but I want it all in one place.

My solution planet earobinson, this lets me put any content I have with a rss feed onto my own personal planet its kinda what I’m up to everywhere and until I find a better way to link all my content into one place I’m sticking with it. Google’s open social has some promise but as of right now i’m only linked to my last.FM profile.

So how do you keep all your content in one place?

Using gmails spam filters I normally don’t have a problem with spam. However my one email that does receive a lot of spam is my Ubuntu email address. Interestingly enough a few open source members have droped there open source email addresses due to this exact problem. Jeff Bailey has disabled his @gnu.org email address, and talked about doing the same to his Ubuntu address. Daniel Robitaille has also posted on the problem. Now I like my Ubuntu email address so I’m not about going to delete it but I did receive three rather “great” bits of “email” to it today (Ill only include screen shots of two).

What I thought was “great” about these messages was that they where “sent” to Colin Watson and Corey Burger. Yes they got the emails wrong but I recognized the name instantly. I did find it funny that I had “antecedently” received personal emails to the both. It would be great if we where to use google apps, to run the Ubuntu emails that way we could take advantage of google great spam filters but I know that wont happen. I guess for now I’m stuck reading emails about the sexual prowess of Colin Watson and Corey Burger.

I often recommend Ubuntu to people and recommend that they install programs like miro, and geany. Geany comes stock in the Ubuntu repositories and miro has great step-by-step install instruction for beginners, however as I make this post they currently have no official Gutsy support. When I recommend a program to a user I usually send them the command line install command sudo aptitude install geany as well as sending them instructions

Go to System, then Administration, then click Synaptic. From there you can search for geany and you should be able to double click the name then click install and Ubuntu will install geany for you.

In my mind both solutions extremely simple, but then I have been using Linux for a while now and am a computer geek. I was trying to set up ssh the other day for a friend and they where complaining to me about how on Windows they can just click the program the select run, I claimed that you could do the same thing in Ubuntu (with a deb file) but the claim was that the website (repository browser) was ugly, and well I cant really argue with that. Now that Geany is out I can go back to my friend with another solution and if they want to install Inkscape I can just say “here you go“.

The only downside is that currently adding a new repository is disabled, my two cents is that we should give the user a nice large warning then go ahead and add the new repository. Another anoying and easily fixed thing is that I was looking at the Ubuntu wiki for games yesterday and I thought “ohh I’ll add in some apt:// URLs so that users can just click to install games”, but currently the Ubuntu wiki doesn’t support apt:// URLs so I got them working on my own wiki, just to make sure that it was easy and started a list of my favorite applications.

I guess I really have 2 requests:

1. Enable AptUrl to add third party repositories, I’m going to download the code eventually and take a look at this and post a deb file if I make one. But It would be great if someone beet me to it.
2. Add support for apt:// URLs on the Ubuntu wiki.

Oh and thanks for such a great feature.