User: meonkeys

Re:we have it in pdf, but not in epub

On: New Book Helps You Start Contributing To Open Source

Right on, thanks! Looks like they also just officially released epub and mobi versions.

Re:we have it in pdf, but not in epub

On: New Book Helps You Start Contributing To Open Source

Anyone have tips on how to actually produce a decent-looking epub ebook with pandoc or latex2html/Calibre?

I tried several incantations of pandoc, none of which produced more than gibberish. For example: pandoc -w epub -o Open-Advice.epub -S -s Open-Advice.tex

latex2html got much further (generated a real HTML book), but it had tons of munged words. I didn't bother trying to munge the mess to epub.

From what I can tell, the conversion tools can help, but the source text really has to have epub in mind if that is to be a useful build target.

Gobby Slashdotted?

On: FOSS Multicast Document Sharing?

Dang, looks like perhaps the Gobby Web site went down under the load. Anyone have a mirror? I just set up a Gobby server and want my coworkers using Windows and Mac to be able to try it out, if clients exist for those platforms.

Smiley Your Bash Prompt

On: The Smiley Face Turns 25 :-)

It's useful. Really!

Add the following to your ~/.bashrc or to /etc/bashrc or something like /etc/profile.d/bash_smiley.sh ...

# ~ the Emotiprompt(TM) ~
# idea came from: http://linuxgazette.net/122/lg_tips.html#tips.1
smiley() {
  err=$?
  if [ $err == 0 ]
  then echo ':)'
  else echo ":( $err"
  fi
}
PS1="\$(smiley) [\u@\h \W]\\$ "

If you like it, let me know!

Re:Why is it so good?

On: Ubuntu 5.10 "Breezy Badger" Released

I was quite impressed that after installing a few packages via synaptic I was able to compile and run C# program, something I found not-too-straightforward with Fedora Core.

Packages to install first, including dependencies: monodevelop, libgdiplus

Then, compile the code pasted here with mcs or monodevelop

.

Re:Well, it does work.

On: Google's Blog Search

If what you say is true, the definition on wikipedia is incorrect. -- Adam Monsen http://adammonsen.com/blog/

Re:Biodiesel!

On: Practical Method for Getting Oil from Oil Shale?

I concur, biodiesel is great. It is now cheaper than petroleum diesel in some parts of Seattle, Washington, USA.

Algae cultivation looks especially promising as a source of fuel oil (biodiesel is made from oil). According to From the Fryer to the Fuel Tank, algal harvesting could potentially yield 4 to 40 times more oil than canola/rapeseed farming per acre.

If algae was cultivated using 1/60th of the currently fallow cropland, tens of billions of litres of oil could be produced, at a price of about $1.65 per gallon!

Re:GUI frontend for SVN

On: KDE Switches to Subversion

There exists plugins for using subversion within Vim and subversion within emacs.

EmperorLinux Rocks

On: 3D Linux Laptop Available

I just bought the Meteor (Sharp Actius MM20) from EmperorLinux. I highly recommend the laptop and the company. I was able to unpack the box and turn it on the moment it arrived, ready to go! The support is quite helpful as well.

Aforementioned In-Development Plugin

On: A New Type Of Realtime Blocklist: The SURBL

Is spamcopurl the one you're referring to?

other cool articles in this issue

On: Linux Used To Make "Star Trek, Nemesis"

'zero copy', using the sendfile() system call -- this is pretty interesting stuff

screen -- intro to a kick-ass console-based "window" manager

quicksort -- understand the classic algorithm using DDD (shameless self-promo)

Re:RPM?!?!?

On: OpenPKG 1.0 Released

THANK YOU. tarballs/bz2balls are much more cross-platform than rpm or deb packages. If you need an rpm or deb package, make it yourself if someone hasn't made it for you.

Re:My take on it.

On: APT - With Your Favorite Distribution

I agree with your main point, if that is that there is no silver bullet for package management. I also agree that the best package management system in the world can't make up for bad packages.

However, many of your supporting statements are baseless and subjective...
"Most Debian Developers take care of a *single* package."
What? How do you know?
"the Debian packagers *care*"
Really? More than people who make rpms? How much more do they care? "Debian Developers arn't lazy"
Thank heavens. Are you inferring that people who make rpms are lazy? "A few dozen? Full-time?"
Well, I made source and binary rpms for a package called x2vnc, but I don't know how many people use it. Still, anyone is welcome to contribute RPMs to rpmfind.net.

I'm just being a jerk. I am interested in Debian, but I'm lazy. I'm trying to poke holes in the distribution so I don't have to go through the trouble of switching from RedHat.

Practice what you're preaching, Joel

On: How To Make Software Projects Fail

Joel seems to be a strong advocate of code reuse and understands the stalwart value of "old code". Why then, does his comany, Fog Creek Software implement their own proprietary bug tracking system, "FogBugz" when there are perfectly awesome bug tracking systems out there, like Bugzilla?

Re:Which came first

On: CEO of RIAA Speaks at P2P Conference

Here's one story

A solid replacement for SQL Navigator

On: Open Source Software in a Windows Environment?

TOra is an awesome database utility that runs on Linux and Windows that could be used to replace SQL Navigator. It can connect to Oracle and MySQL.