hawknotes.blogspot.com
Linux & Things: Updating Firefox and Thunderbird in LMDE
http://hawknotes.blogspot.com/2013/08/updating-firefox-and-thunderbird-in-lmde.html
Tuesday, August 13, 2013. Updating Firefox and Thunderbird in LMDE. A couple of weeks ago, as you may recall. I switched from ever-changing Ubuntu to nearly frozen Linux Mint Debian Edition (LMDE). So how is it? Nice Not only does it have the Gnome 2-like MATE desktop, but because it is based on Debian Testing (currently known as. LMDE is relatively slow to change. What's irritating about LMDE is that, because it is based on Debian Testing, it is relatively slow to change. Directory, since pure Debian do...
hawknotes.blogspot.com
Linux & Things: Galactus Rules
http://hawknotes.blogspot.com/2013/07/galactus-rules.html
Thursday, July 04, 2013. Now it can be told: I've been remiss in posting to this blog because I've fallen in love with my smartphone. Well, maybe not. Mdash; more like extreme like — but the fact is, we've been spending a lot of time together. More time than is good, and time I'd ordinarily have for posting to this blog. It's a Samsung Galaxy S3. So mainly I like it for the apps. Yes, most (all? Not to mention Navigator and Earth. I use Maps every day to check the traffic patterns on the way to work ...
hawknotes.blogspot.com
Linux & Things: DIY xkcd Password Generator
http://hawknotes.blogspot.com/2012/11/diy-xkcd-password-generator.html
Thursday, November 22, 2012. DIY xkcd Password Generator. One of the things I'm thankful for today is xkcd. Specifically, I want to talk about the world-famous password strip. Which points out that using a few selections from a big list of things (a dictionary) is more random, and yet easier to remember, than a lot of selections from a limited list of things (the keys on your keyboard). There are even sites which generate xkcd-style passwords for you. Many sites, in fact. Unique passwords (since strings ...
hawknotes.blogspot.com
Linux & Things: Making Transparent PNG Images
http://hawknotes.blogspot.com/2005/07/making-transparent-png-images.html
Saturday, July 16, 2005. Making Transparent PNG Images. August 14, 2011: Many years after moving from Comcast to Verizon, and thus losing a big chunk of. Webspace, I've finally moved the pictures in this article to Picasa, so that you can see them again. Also note that if you know the exact color of the background, you can do the conversion from the command line. One of the nice things about old-style GIF. Bring up the GIMP, and load in your picture. For our purposes we'll use this bit of modern art:.
hawknotes.blogspot.com
Linux & Things: LMDE
http://hawknotes.blogspot.com/2013/07/lmde.html
Sunday, July 21, 2013. As long-threatened, I've finally followed the crowd. And move from Ubuntu to Linux Mint. The main attraction was Mint's use of the MATE desktop. Which is enough like Gnome 2 to keep me happy indefinitely, but I also liked the fact that the Debian edition. Hereafter LMDE, is a. Release, meaning I'm not going to have to do a complete upgrade in 6 months. The price is that some software is going to be a little behind the times, but, hey, at work we use CentOS. So a brief review:.
hawknotes.blogspot.com
Linux & Things: Health Care Cost Comparison
http://hawknotes.blogspot.com/2012/09/health-care-cost-comparison.html
Monday, September 03, 2012. Health Care Cost Comparison. Since health care is going to be a big topic in the 2012 U.S. Presidential election, and since I've had several discussions about health care with friends over the years, it's probably a good idea to round up some data. Fortunately, we have the. Which lists all sorts of demographic information, including health care cost as a percentage of GDP, life expectancy, infant mortality rates,. For every country in the world. So, for example, if you click on.
hawknotes.blogspot.com
Linux & Things: “Units”
http://hawknotes.blogspot.com/2007/12/other-day-i-had-to-convert-quantity-150.html
Sunday, December 02, 2007. The other day I had to convert the quantity. The inverse of the wavelength of a certain frequency of light) to meV (the energy of a photon of that wavelength, in milli-electron Volts). I have a spreadsheet somewhere that does this, as it has the values of Planck's constant and the speed of light encoded. I could also have gotten the current best value of these constants. A yes, I'd finally remembered the old unix command units. Available in Ubuntu with the command. Making Trans...
hawknotes.blogspot.com
Linux & Things: Revised GNOME3 Wallpaper Switcher
http://hawknotes.blogspot.com/2012/10/revised-gnome3-wallpaper-switcher.html
Saturday, October 20, 2012. Revised GNOME3 Wallpaper Switcher. Almost a year ago, I wrote a Random Wallpaper Switcher for Gnome3. It works pretty well, IMHO, but it does have one small aesthetic flaw: If the picture doesn't fill the desktop, and most of mine don't, the color of the underlying background might be far off from the color of the picture, possibly creating a color clash. Annoying. Then along came Penguin Pete. Who showed me how to use ImageMagick. And the rest is easy. If you don't like the b...
hawknotes.blogspot.com
Linux & Things: Taking POODLE to the Pound
http://hawknotes.blogspot.com/2014/10/taking-poodle-to-pound.html
Saturday, October 18, 2014. Taking POODLE to the Pound. You may have heard of POODLE (Padding Oracle On Downgraded Legacy Encryption). Which exploits a bug in the ancient SSL 3.0 Encryption Protocol. This has the capability of letting malicious sites take over your browser. The fix is to turn off SSL 3.0, forcing your browser to use better encryption. This will break some sites, but that's their problem, not yours, and they are probably working on it right now. To change the settings for you. Now every t...
hawknotes.blogspot.com
Linux & Things: Random Wallpaper Switcher for GNOME 3
http://hawknotes.blogspot.com/2011/12/random-wallpaper-switcher-for-gnome-3.html
Saturday, December 03, 2011. Random Wallpaper Switcher for GNOME 3. 20 October 2012: There's a revised version of this script. See what the changes are. Then download the new version. 21 July 2013: And yet another revision, following my switch from Ubuntu to LMDE. A MATE version of this software. Some things bore me — KU losing in March every year, the Yankees winning more than one pennant a decade, Republican Presidential Debates,. Way back in the day I wrote. Gsettings set org.gnome.desktop....Where...
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