This is Just a Little Test Post to Get My Twitter-feed Working – Not Important

July 21st, 2010 Thomasso

I’m setting up my Twitter Feed to work with the blog. This is tough getting everything just right with so many settings, yikes.

Lets see if I can get this damn thing to tweet for me.

Added: Success! It worked! Yeah!

Now when I post, my Twitter feeds are send out to alert everyone that I have posted. Am I doing the world a favour by broadcasting my blog posts and jumping on the social media bandwagon, or is all this internet stuff just a complete waist of time and energy? Well, I kind of like it, and I am paying for it.

Heh heh, it appears that there are some who are anti-social media. I guess not everyone is a fan of networking. Hey-this is how you get the “better” employer to notice you, as compared to the social Luddite employers who are still stuck in the 80′s.

Posted in Blog Problems, General, Nifty Plug-ins | 5 Comments »

Installing Flash and Java for FireFox for Ubuntu 10.04

May 7th, 2010 Thomasso

This is for my friends who have either upgraded to Ubuntu 10.04, Lucid Lynx, or just did a fresh install, and are having problems with their Flash and Java for web sites like www.pogo.com. If you have installed from a fresh installation, or did a major upgrade from the last long term support release, more than likely your Flash and Java have been reconfigured.

The first part of this how-to is installing Flash, and the second part deals with installing Java and adding the plugins for FireFox, which are easy to follow, but they look daunting and seem labour intensive, but trust me, they are not.

PART ONE

Flash is not open source, it is propitiatory software, meaning that you cannot freely reconfigure it, or copy it and write to it, and is licensed. I personally have some issues with having it, especially on my open source machine, but because it is so wide spread on the net many web sites use it; it is practically unavoidable.

There are two ways of getting it. First is from the repositories used through synaptic (Ubuntu). Although I prefer to use that version of flash, I have found that in my travels it has some bugs that makes some of the web sites not function so well. The second, is to use Adobe Flash Player’s software, which is of the better of the two. I will direct you to use Adobe here.

You can find the download page here: http://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/

Once at that page, you should see, “Download Adobe Flash player”, “Adobe Flash Player version 10.0.45.2 Linux,” the current version at the time of this writing. Below that you will see a small drop-down box that you can click on that will have the following four options: choose: “.deb for Ubuntu 8.04+” Click on it, and the file should start downloading onto your hard-drive after you agree with the terms and conditions of the software.

This file should download quickly.

Once the “install_flash_player_10_linux.deb” has finished, double click on it and the installer will open and begin installing it on to your system.

Next, I recommend that you install the flash plugin for FireFox, called FlashGot. You can get it by clicking on tools –> Add-ons, in the FireFox menu, and choose the tab “Get Add-ons.” Then search “FlashGot,” in the search box, and once found, click “Add to FireFox.”

And that is it. Restart FireFox for the plugins to take effect and Adobe Flash to run.

To test to see if your Flash is properly working in FireFox, I would recommend that you try this web site : http://www.barbie.com Why? This is one of the most Flash ridden web sites I have ever seen!

PART TWO

Now for the Java and Java plugin for FireFox. I would only start this process if you plan on playing games over at pogo.com, otherwise, just ignore this section.

You need Java to navigate through Pogo and play the games that are on that web site. This link is the best site I have seen for installing and setting up Java to work with FireFox for Ubuntu. These Ten plus steps look like a lot hard work, but it is not. The whole process should take you about 15 minutes, and once done you will have the proper Java and Java plugins running with FireFox. Please click on the following link to get to the Java website where the instructions are.

Click here for installation instructions: JAVA. (You are reading the left-hand column!)

Note: if you are running the 64bit version of Ubuntu 10.04, you can find those instruction their also.

If you want, please leave me some feed back here and let me know if this was helpful or not. Good Luck and happy gaming!

***NOTE: After Aug 2010, I have turned off the comments. I am getting too much comment SPAM. This page does get about, on average,  5 hits per day!

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To Cast the Net Beyond the Fringe and Say the Hell With it!

December 19th, 2009 Thomasso

I got mad at my ISP last night. Every time I tried to upload a movie file to my website, it either timed out, or it took two hours to go through the upload process. I gave up. I heard that the University Library was open until 10:30pm week days, and 10:00pm during the weekends, so I hopped in the truck and drove to the Surrey campus. The Langley campus was closed.

In the mean time I was having troubles with some other web sites also – so naturally I assumed that it was the fault of my ISP. When I tried to download a web page, it would time-out. It was not a good night to go surfing on the net.

When I got to the University Library, the first thing I did was fired up my lap top and connected through Wi-Fi. Once connected, things seemed a little faster, but when I tried to connect to my web site, the same things happened–hardly any connectivity. This told me that it was not my IPS, but my web provider!

Some other students in the computer lab old me that most of the kids are off from school as of Friday, and that it might be possible that most of them are on-line textting each other, clogging up the net. I thought about that, and figured that this might be the cause. The only thing that didn’t add up was I only had a few web sites that I went to which were slow or not working, so I doubted that it could be the on-line kids? I managed to up load everything I needed to, and then I went home.

This morning I checked to see if the connection rate was still slow, or shut down, and when I logged on, there was a notice posted on the server page. It said that they had service interruptions over the last 24 hours, and that now every was back to normal. I then went to the server’s blog and read that they had some vandalism on their server-farm, and that someone tried to take some equipment. They said that their local law enforcement officials caught the person and they noted that none of the equipment was taken. Cost in damages, however, was about $5,000.00 US.

I started thinking about this today, about how fragile our network really is. I remembered in my class on terrorism from last summer, studying about how important our information network is in today’s world, and asking the question would we be crippled from having no network? Although it would not indirectly harm us if the entire Intranet collapsed becuase of terrorists, but it would certainly hurt us over a longer period. By collapse, I mean no web browsing, email and VIOP, possibly cell-phone and land-line phone service too. I know most Banking and some forms of commerce would stop, but most businesses would manage to keep on operating.

On a humorous note, I wondered how many people would go through Intranet withdraw, if the idea of Internet Addiction really exists? Would I be one of those people? After all, I do spend a hideous amount of time sitting in front my keyboard and monitor, and hlaf that time connected to the internet. I treat emails like they were phone calls for goodness sakes. Does this mean I’m sick–I have an addiction that affects my social life, if their is such a thing as a social life?

Nope-things are all good. I have network connection and life goes on. My ISP are doing their job and I can sympathise with my web provider about their misfortune. Once again I am happy.

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I Like Google’s Street View Maps

October 22nd, 2009 Thomasso

This is so cool! I remember the Google truck driving around town, going from street to street, with this weird looking camera sitting on a tripod on its deck. In a way it is freaky knowing that the world can now see your street, house, even the garbage can and mess on the lawn. Only if there was some warning? This adds a whole new dimension of public view.The Google Street View service started up on October 7, 2009 for some areas of Canada, mostly the large cities and their urban areas. They got  much of the Lower mainland, the Fraser Valley and Metro Vancouver area covered.

View Larger Map

Above, you can use your mouse to move the 360 degree picture around to see the main street in Fort Langley, and the street I live on. Of course I am not going to show the exact location, for privacy reasons. Have fun, take a tour of Fort Langley and the rest of the Metro Vancouver area – street by street!

I’ve already used the Google Street View for finding what a house or building looks like before I leave to visit it. I can see many more uses such as road conditions for large trucks, or parking spaces–whether it is pay parking or free public parking. The list seems endless.

I even checked to see if my image was captured becuase I did see that truck drive by me while I was walking to the market that day. No, I’m on it, or at least that I am aware of?

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To Dabble into Cablevision Land

June 28th, 2009 Thomasso

I had a major upgrade done to my residential cable, and for the first time not one channel was diminished with static, snow, ghosting and interruptions.

The “problem” came from having inherited 15 year old cable lines that ran in the ground with no conduits or the proper burial protective cable needed for underground use. It was so bad that the signal required for Intranet service would cut out at random, and when it was tested the technician told me that having such a large drop in signle was very bad for the cable modem to work properly.

So it was up to the park owner to do the digging. Actually the labour was not so bad, only requiring a shallow trench that was less than 40 cm deep. He laid the proper conduit and inserted pull strings for future use if he needed to run more lines.

Once the initial cable was connected I tried out the television. The commercials never looked so good before. But the primary goal, my Internet connection, was met with flying colours. For the first time I actually maxed out my “up to” bandwidth speed. Connectivity now takes only a few seconds from a cold start as compared to the several minutes it took before.

Hindsight being 20/20, I should have gotten on everyone’s butts a long time ago, but of course that did not happen, so I can only say, “chock one up for experience.”

Posted in Blog and Web Tech, Diatribe, General | 2 Comments »

Still Dealing With no Service from My ISP!

May 7th, 2009 Thomasso

Well, day number three with no evening service. I had a connection early this morning but I had to head into work, but when I got back it was down again. When got up the next morning it was working again—go figure.

I’m sort of cheating with my posting by back-dating the last couple of posts—I really wrote them on these days but didn’t get a chance to posted them until now (May 8, 2009). It is frustrating when you pay for service but are not getting it. I understand that things break-down and all, but my service provider should at least give us some warning or a reason as to why. This has being going on since Tuesday.

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The Wonderful Semester of Summer, and My ISP Sucks!

May 6th, 2009 Thomasso

The first day of classes were fun, and I still have one more to go before I can turn the page on “week one.” So far the best class looks like my CRIM4900 class on International Crime, a preceptorial style class, or for you old school types it is also known as a seminar taught course. The prof seems to be well qualified to teach it, as she works for the RCMP, and has done most of her academic training throughout Europe. I think we are lucky to have someone of her calibre, and I am looking forward to all the materials that we are going to be covering in the weeks ahead. Some of the preliminary readings look very interesting, especially the arguments over terminology and usage of the label transnational crime vrs international crime by academics, governments and bushinesses. And the other neat quality about the class is that there is no textbooks for it as all readings are either in video format, or on-line text and in library resource materials.

My ISP (Internet Service Provider) is really ****ing me off right now. Today marks another day out of two with down service so far this week. I had no service on Tuesday all day, and right around 3:00pm today it was down—and is still out—as of this writing. I am paying Shaw Cable damn good money to have my machines connected to the Internet, and so far they are really trying my patiences. If these long outages continue then I will have to move my business over to Telus or go with Satellite (which is a smaller band width, but more reliable). In the long run I may need to change who I do business with, and during these hard economic times I do not think that companies would want to loose too many of their customers because of poor service. * hint *

Spreadsheets are either your best friend or they are your worst nightmare. So far this week I have being asked to create spreadsheet for two different people. One person just needs the basics, or the rudimentary in-out and balance type while the other needs to consolidate a huge amount of data and thus a massive undertaking for both of us. For both people I don’t mind it doing this, but I fear that teaching people from scratch on how to use spreadsheets may require more time than they realize. I have learned over the years to treat spreadsheets like as if I were teaching people how to use a new desktop, (only the Linux community will understand this) so they are fully aware of all the procedures that are involved with using them. And I use Open Office for this because of the stability and ease of use as opposed to other commercial products that have way too much eye candy and are cumbersome to use for everyday simple items—and it’s free for personal use. So it will be interesting to see how this teaching experience goes. Remember, spreadsheets are our friends in the business world and we need to use them right to keep all our wonderful money in balance.

Posted in Blog Problems, Diatribe, General | 2 Comments »

Ubuntu Equals Freedom

April 2nd, 2009 Thomasso

I was working with some friends, former colleagues from University who have long since graduated, when I found out that they too were using Open Source Operating Systems on their laptops. In fact, one of them uses it for her work right within Corrections Canada, primarily for the security! I guess a few years ago one of the PCs was stolen from an employees’ car and it was believed that the machine contained some personal data on it, so ever since then all computers must pass inspection when entering and leaving some of the departments and area facilities. Some Hard Drives were accidentally wiped clean due to these inspections, and it was soon a problem reinstalling some of the Closed Sourced OS products when the licences and agreements would expire.

I was impressed when I found other users who were very adaptive with the software. I’ve always boasted that Open Sourced software would do very well in commercial application—here’s proof. I think people need to get over the ignorance part about security. Open Source does not mean that you can freely hack onto a Open Source machine without permission. I say good luck with that. Trying to open a Hard Drive with the latest Open Source Security functions installed would be a very painful experience. Perhaps in a later post I will list what I do for my security, and all of the wonderful tools that are available to do this with.

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What’s New in Tom’s World–here’s some stuff.

March 26th, 2009 Thomasso

A couple of things that have being going on in the last couple of days….

No Web Page Issues: If you clicked on the website yesterday and notice that there was just a “notification” page instead of my web page, don’t worry, it was just because I had a payment issues with my service provider. It took longer than usual for the money order to arrive down to California. I suspect it had to spend a few days at the border due to security reasons. They received the money, and I’m good for another year.

EXAMS: Yesterday was the last of the mid-terms until finals. I also have one more…, nope, scratch that, two more presentations to do before last class. In both Wednesday classes the lectures were extra intents with non-stop notes. I almost set a personal record in my CRIM3100 class with 12 pages of typed notes ploughed through in a three hour period. My poor lap-top was making lots of noise towards the end as the keys seemed well worn after that.

Actually this is funny, when the prof changes slides on the power-point, all you can hear for the next ten seconds are hundreds of fingers pounding away on keyboards, like the sputtering sound that a hard-drive makes.

CLASSES: I have two more regular weeks left in the semester, then the exam week where I’m writing one exam then. Soon the summer season will be here. I have only two class scheduled for the summer semester, that’s all I could afford unless Revenue Canada steps on it with my Tax Refund. *smile*

WORK: I maybe getting my schedule switched around at work. It appears that I maybe getting the weekends off as the company is scaling back its hours of operations. In some ways I’ll miss working the weekends, but in general I’m happy to be on normal shift with everyone else again. I won’t miss the traffic though—one of the benefits of leaving for work on a Sunday morning is hardly anyone else up yet. I could always get to work in record time while driving the speed limit. The new hours will make juggling classes and class times a little more difficult, but I did for the last two years; I think I’ll manage OK.

So that’s it for now. Oh, and thank you for all the email about my last post regarding Linux showing up Microsoft’s radar. As you noticed I didn’t post any of them, but I did reply to you all. Please remember that I will not allow profanities on my web site no matter how much you agree the operating system sucks.

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What Can I Say…, MS, You Suck.

March 23rd, 2009 Thomasso

OK, Please forgive me for acting a little bold right now, actually I heard about this several weeks ago just when this story was realest on Full Circle Magazine last month, so I’m kind of sticking it to all of you who are either fed up with your current operating system (OS); or frustrated because the OS that you never paid for and are happily violating the vendors’ service agreement keeps freezing up; or you paid for it, but discovered that in order for you to have a happy updated system, more money needs to be dished out to keep it healthy and operating smoothly; and, you found out that once your OS aged a little bit, and you do not want to spend any more money on it for the next version, there are no longer upgrades for it and it crashed all of the time because of that.

Looking at the what Microsoft is saying in this story from OS news sort of sums up what my philosophy is on the whole concept of what should be the ideal software environment. They, MS, has dominated the computing world for the last two decades, and with this power they suffer from some of the effects of becoming “the only platform” to all of the worlds personal computers. We all know why spreading malicious software is so easy, right? When 90 percent of the worlds computers run from a single copy of the same platform, it is easy to maximize your target. However, this can be said for the same reason why it has being so successful, as everyone can share, and compatibility between networks requires less problems of sharing data. But, this is slowly turning around in the world of competition; however, I didn’t think MS, or MAC saw this coming, a free open source system that is spreading like a the black plague.

Above is an image, courtesy of OSnews, that was used by Steve Ballmer who is the CEO of Microsoft, to describe to his investors of what the current market share of Window$, and the economic effects are on the company so far in 2009. If you notice that the bigest issue MS has is the piracy of their products, then next and surprisingly is LINUX, then MACs.

Looking at the chart more closely I noticed that there is a paradox here, and it took me some time to clear this up in my head. First, MS is a corporation who can really only gage its market share from its own profit or units of sales, anything other than that it has to guess at what those numbers are. Second, LINUX, or open source versions of it are free, in other words, there is no true way of determining who has it, and how many unit exist around the world because they are given away. I mean I am pleased that Open Source is on the radar, but we will never know the true extent of how prolific it truly is.

Why is LINUX taking off life wildfire? When you have people like Mark Shuttleworth who have taken a flavour of UNIX and transformed it to something that anyone can use right out of the box, the boon that this has created has made a title-wave of advances in all areas of software. For Mark Shuttleworth, he created the Ubuntu version of LINUX, and gave it a desktop, a means of updating the system with software, and who organized an entire community that spans the glob—all for free! The cascading effect it that it may become self-sufficient someday soon as more and more people support it. So, should MS be concerned? Damn right they should be. Every piece of software, technology and licensing, of what I used to create this, is created on Open Source platforms.

Sources:
OSNEWS: Ballmer: Linux Bigger Competitor than Apple
on Wed 25th Feb 2009 10:17 UTC

FULLCIRCLEMAGAZINE: Issue 22, March 2009.
Ballmer: Linux Bigger Competitor Than Apple (p. 5).

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