Category: Web Technology

Exploring Suse Studio

I’ve had an account on http://susestudio.com/ for a few weeks now, but have only really had a couple of chances to play with it. The basic idea behind the site is that anyone should be able to create a customised Linux distribution that perfectly suits their needs (providing those needs involve openSUSE 11.1 or SUSE Linux Enterprise 10 or 11). Normally I do this sort of work on Ubuntu, using Ubuntu Customisation Kit, as detailed in a previous post. This suits me, because I use Ubuntu in a production environment and it makes things easy. But I was interested in how this new software would work for someone who had never used openSUSE for more than a few minutes.

Ubuntu Customisation Kit does everything on the host machine, and only uses the Internet to pull new/updated packages in. This is light on bandwidth for tweaks, but heavier if you’re making major changes. Suse Studio does things the opposite way round, in that all the building and updating is done on the web, and you then download the finished .iso image. It’s slightly heavier on bandwidth overall, but did allow me to do a lot of the build work from my netbook in the foyer of a hotel in London, as all you need is a web browser and a net connection.

I ended up building three different versions of openSUSE, to suit three specific needs I occasionally have:

  1. Gnome, with a web browser (firefox), a terminal (gnome-terminal), dropbox preinstalled, and a couple of work-specific scripts for mounting drives and backing up data. This is a configuration we use at work for data recovery (currently based on Ubuntu 8.04). This was painless to set up, came in at 348Mb, and worked well.
  2. A showcase for KDE4. I’m not a big fan of KDE, but it’s always useful to have a VM kicking around to show people what it is like. This was on the same level of detail as the Gnome one, and came in at 350mb. I think I might actually be able to use this to get things done, as it takes away a lot of the un-instinctive KDE apps whilst leaving the very pretty and functional base.
  3. An image containing the applications I use every day, which would act as a basis for reinstalling my home or work laptop (both currently running Ubuntu 9.04). This contains Firefox, Thunderbird, OpenOffice.org, Empathy, Rhythmbox, Gedit and gnome-terminal, and was still only 484mb (300Mb less than the version of Ubuntu I install from usually).

So yes, all three experiments worked, and while I’ve not tried to use them to get things done yet, I have successfully installed all three as virtual machines and they seem to work as expected.

I think most people could use Suse Studio, and it acts as a good way to learn the basics of how a distribution is put together. I very much expect to see the code base from this project move in interesting directions in the next few months, and I’d be surprised if we don’t see similar projects getting off the ground soon.

Twidge

I’ve been after a command line based microblogging tool for ages. I think Twidge might be just what I need.

The syntax to make a post is as follows:

twidge update "whatever you want to post goes here"

And before you do your first update, just type twidge setup, which will then ask for your usename and password.

If you want to update identi.ca rather than twitter, then add the following line at the end of .twidgerc:

urlbase: http://identi.ca/api

And that’s all there is to it.

Turning OpenOffice.org files into Wiki pages

This week I’ve been looking at a few OpenOffice.org extensions that might make my life easier. One that certainly will is the Sun Wiki Publisher. Basically it takes a document, logs in to a particular instance of Mediawiki, and converts that document into a wiki page (including table of contents, headings etc.). I’ve tried it with a couple of complicated documents and it did a fair job of converting them, and it is certainly something I will be looking at further at work this week, as I think it might solve a couple of long standing problems.

Social networking workflow

This is how it works…..

I post anything under 140 characters to identi.ca using the Ubiquity extension for Firefox. This then posts them to Twitter and Facebook, and adds them to the right hand menu of this blog using the Twitter Tools plugin. Then, once a day, they all get spliced together by Loudtwitter and posted to my Live Journal.

I also add posts to my LJ using the Deepest Sender plugin for Firefox. I only post there if I need to lock things down to custom groups of people (or if what I write cannot be in the public domain for whatever reason).

Everything else gets posted here. Also via Deepest Sender.

Additionally, everything I listen to all all my computers and my iPod is sent to Last.fm, which then adds the last 10 songs to the right hand menu of this blog.

I think that is pretty much everything.

A roundup of IRC clients

This is largely a response to a thread on an email list regarding IRC clients. I thought I’d make a list of what I use now, what I’ve used in the past, and what is actually out there.

  • mIRC – the first thing I ever used, and what I know a lot of people still use. It’s user friendly, but quite fast and light. Windows only.
  • Trillian – an IM client that also does IRC. I’ve not used this for many years though. Windows only.
  • Quassel – developed for Linux (KDE4 in particular), but now available for Windows, Mac OS X and several flavours of Linux. I alpha-tested this last year and it’s actually really good for monitoring several channels (on different servers if required) at once.
  • Colloquy – Mac OS X only client that looks pretty, but that didn’t seem that instinctive for my needs.
  • Empathy – Linux only chat client that also does IRC. It’s what I use most of the time, and it seems quite fast without getting in my way.
  • Pidgin – does pretty much what Empathy does, but is also available for Windows and Mac OS X. It’s all a matter of choice really.
  • irssi – text based Linux/Windows client that is lightning fast and great on old computers. It also forces you to learn all the commands. It’s what I use when I’m not using Empathy.
  • Xchat – Another Linux client that has been around ages and that works exactly like mIRC so is great for switchers. I believe it is now available for Windows although I’ve not tried it.
  • Konversation – KDE3 (and now 4 it seems) client for Linux. I used it once around 5 years ago so I’ll say no more than that.
  • Chatzilla – Firefox/Sea Monkey extension. It’s basic, but useable.

There are lots more, but the above list is all the ones I’ve actually used.

Why static websites fail

I think the answer is in the question really. Static websites fail because they are static, and never change unless it is someone’s job or responsibility to change them. So many times I visit a web site related to some project or other that I’m interested in, and feel like I’m probably the first person who has looked at the site for months, despite the fact that I’m fairly sure the project is still active.

That’s why I like WordPress a lot, and why I use it for my website. I’m now at a stage where all my online identities feed into WordPress and present a fairly unified view of what I’ve been doing, what I’m thinking and what I’m listening to. And most of it happens without me having to do a lot.

Yes, this took a while to set up, but most of that was experimentation. I could rebuild everything in about an hour now, and all it would take to make the site look current is the occasional bit of text typed in to one of the two firefox extensions I use for updating everything (ubiquity and deepest sender). I can update things on the fly, publish within seconds, and can also solicit responses from other people. All these make the site look like someone gives a damn, which is half the battle sometimes.

So yes, for all those people who maintain websites that were last updated years ago, it might be time to consider something more dynamic or even removing the site altogether. Especially if you want to attract new people to your project.

Synching with folders outside of /dropbox

This could probably be summed up in a few words (the words being “use symlinks”).

Basically, what I wanted to do was to sync several folders outside my dropbox folder (for various reasons). The solution was to create a shortcut in the folder I wanted to sync, and then moving the link to my dropbox folder.  This can be done of the command line by typing something like:

ln -s /home/folder/to/sync /home/andy/dropbox/synched_folder

This could be used in all sorts of ways, some of which I may blog about over the next couple of weeks.

Planet Localhost

Today I’ve played around with Planet (the software behind Planet Gnome, Planet Debian and lots of other planets), and installed a demo version on our home server. It’s actually quite straightforward, and I think I could theoretically get something up and running quickly if required. Of course, it does require people to have publically available blogs which could be an issue in some circles I move in.