Oli’s Blog

Father of three, seasoned web developer (Django, Vue, Astro, etc), Ubuntu Member, photographer and woodworker. This is my blog, covering a raft of topics, mostly technical.

← NewerDecember 2010 to November 2007Older →

Change DNS without downtime

A few times I’ve found that I need to move a site to another server without any downtime but every time, DNS rears its ugly head and ruins my day.

Nano: Open a file at a specific position

Nano isn’t the best editor but it does a fairly good job at staying out the way and letting you edit or view things without needing a cheat-sheet of cryptic keyboard shortcuts. However, what do you do when you have a 50,000 line document and you want to get a specific line somewhere near the middle?

It took three drafts, five rewrites and over six months but here it is: My N900 review

After almost a year of playing with Nokia’s former flagship phone, I’ve more than a couple of things to say about the device, if I’d recommend it and why I’ll not buy another Nokia phone in a while.

Doing cool things in Django’s Admin

As somebody who proudly considers themselves a Djangophile, I’m always looking to make one of the biggest aspects of Django (the Admin site) just that little bit better.

Why I love Disqus

Once upon a time if I wanted comments on a website, I would do them myself, tediously tackling problems solved a dozen times before to deliver an intuitive system. But today is a new day and I wouldn’t dream of writing comment code unless I really had to.

Why I can’t recommend VPS.net

I’d love to say VPS.net were a hip, awesome and competent company. I’d love to recommend them. I’d love to give you an affiliate link, sit on a beach and get rich… But I can’t. One quick look past their glitzy website and stunning feature array and you’ll see VPS.net are not the industry-leaders they aspire to be.

The Linux “1% myth” is pretty accurate

Linux market share is an oft-debated topic. Some people release statistics, others shoot them down. But are they incorrect? Is desktop Linux still at 1% share?

Scraping websites with Python

How to extract data from sites without an API with just a few lines of Python and no regular expressions.

The BBC needs to learn how to Google

Somebody at the BBC has no idea about their gaming history. Worse still, they seem completely unable to do any proper research on the game in question.

Ubuntu 10.04 is good, not perfect

Recently released, Ubuntu Lucid Lynx makes a lot of core improvements but in my eyes, falls further back in some aspects. This isn’t another review, it’s a list of what-and-why I hate parts of my favourite operating system along with some suggestions on how to make 10.10 better for everybody.

Dear ALSA, renew your domain!

Your domain expired yesterday and your registrar (Dotster) has been nice enough to put it on Sedo already as an auction.

Linux isn’t invulnerable. Don’t say it is.

Every month or so, I find some blog or forum post telling the world that because Linux is so hardcore, there’s very little chance of it getting any malware. As you can probably tell from the title, I disagree and want these people to recognise why their arrogance is dangerous.

Everything is new again

It’s been 19 months since my last regular post here. I have a few excuses but I’ve come to realise that I really enjoyed writing… so I’m back. This post is a quick catch-up on what’s been happening with the site and me, and what you can expect from both of us in the future.

Debranding and Unlocking a Samsung M8800 Pixon

Locked, branded phones are a complete pain in the behind. Period. They shouldn’t sell them but they do. Luckily for you, me and everybody else, you can usually step around these issues. Here’s how I unlocked and debranded a fairly new Orange-locked Samsung Pixon

Facebook worm

Facebook isn’t all bad but here’s a message that just got sent to my wall for me and all my friends to download. If they’re not careful, Facebook could be going the way of email.

My issues with Linux et al

Like a warm ocean current, the tides of contempt are slowly eroding my enjoyment of Ubuntu. I’ve been using it full time for eleven months now but I feel I have to write down my grievances before I find myself jumping ship.

Product placement gone wild

Films and TV need money to cover their extravagant budgets but is product placement the right way to cover those funds?

So you’re thinking of writing a comment…

Please read this before you do.

English is a complex language, something too many of us take for granted. Browsers can help with spelling, but they do little for grammar. Read this post to boost your grammatical karma.

Pimp’d my graphics card

There’s something about shiny PC hardware I can’t resist. In my opinion, the shinier and harder to install it is, the better. Today saw the arrival of a Thermalright HR-03 Plus for my 8800GTS.

Does Linux really want Windows users?

Linux is often criticised for its over-enthusiastic community trying to convert everybody and their grandma. Today I saw another post asking why we should care if more people use it. In short: yes but I’ve got plenty of reasons to back this up…

10 Reasons Why Linux Ubuntu is Better than Windows

Rather than listing 10 genuine reasons, I’m taking these points from a fanboy. I use Linux as my desktop operating system but these reasons are amazingly flawed.

Diagnosis? Dying HD?

Possibly the worst noise that you can expect to hear as a user of a computer: a HD in the process of kicking the bucket. Listen to this…

Phorm is blatant copyright infringement

Phorm is the much criticized service that’s coming to the UK to provide some ISPs users. I’ve been slightly concerned about it since I found out my ISP was going to deploy it but I’ve now uncovered something that should make all web publishers worry: they’re stealing our ad revenue!

As much as I dislike Apple, the SDK looks cool

Watching the aftermath of the Apple event today, I couldn’t help but feel like my psyche is pulling me in several different directions.

digg’s friend feature is a complete debacle

Many aeons ago, digg added a social aspect to their news site: friends. Hailing it as a new way to find news at a more personal level, it was seen as a good way to follow your favourite diggers. Now there’s a new game for would-be spammers: add whoever you can and shout your crappy submissions at them.

Adobe: Do as we say, not as we do

Adobe launched its Open Source initiative website the other day and I took at a look at the page. After highlighting some of the text as I read through it, I quickly realised I had stumbled through a warp-hole and landed in 1995. Warning: bad coding practices in this post!

Does Windows have a viable future?

Microsoft have enjoyed a long stretch as dominant market-share holder in the desktop market; but now they face stiff competition from two sides: OSX and Linux. Can they maintain their strong position?

7 things Windows 7 has to do to win me back

As I keep harking on, I moved to Linux. I’m happy and things are getting a lot more routine for me. I’ve been seeing a lot of fake screenshots this week for Windows 7 and it made me think what I would need from the next version of Windows to migrate back.

The cruel joke: Seagate RMAs

Last year while moving to Linux, one of my 300gig disks from the just-broken-up RAID5 array decided it was time to call it a day and died. It’s within warranty but that doesn’t mean that much when the support is run by Seagate.

Oh my! Nokia are buying KDE!

Well that’s a bit of an overstatement. Nokia are buying the makers of the Qt library, by far the biggest component of KDE and KDE applications. Make no mistake, this is big news for both Nokia and Linux.

Zookoda’s mother was a hamster!

Zookoda, the RSS to email re-publishers have been spamming me since a newsletter I was subscribed to closed down. I’ve complained several times yet the junk keeps coming. Not on my watch.

Why Firefox 3 rocks

A media heavy post to start the year! I’ve been using Firefox 3 beta 2 for some time now and here are my favourite features. FF3 already rocks my socks and I’ve a feeling that the final release is going to blow them off.

The 2007 Linux review

Another year, another time to ask the question: “Will next year be Linux’s year?” So lets look at 2007 and what desktop Linux has managed to achieve and at what point this leaves us for 2008.

Browser-wars 2.0? Conflict breeds innovation

Several pronounced webdev figures are stepping forward to say they’re bored of the stale state of standards. We need more fun and faster innovation and the best thing for that is all-out war, no?

This Operatic madness must not succeed

It’s an Opera of gigantic proportions with the company behind the, err, Opera browser whinging to the European Commission that Microsoft shouldn’t be allowed to include their browser IE with Windows.

Nice idea France, but it wont work

France plans to trivialise the crime of file-sharing, a good move, making the punishment a few warnings then severing your internet connection. Look slightly deeper in to what this could mean, however, and it doesn’t take too long to see that this could fund terrorism.

I’m dreaming of a brown internet

According to an anti-net-neutrality-sponsored study, people aren’t going to have enough bandwidth to do the things they want online by 2010. Fact is, I’m at least 4 years ahead of the curve and the report. Why should ISPs improve network access when they could just sit on their pile of gold?