The Catling Mindswipe

I had to refresh a client's website recently; in a rather quaint way, the front-end consists of a set of static pages containing the general company info while the back-end holding the day-to-day business data is in a third party content management database.

Full Circle #50 – the half-centenary issue! is available from Full Circle Magazine.   This month: Command and Conquer. How-To : Program in Python, LibreOffice, Ubuntu Development and Use KDE (4.6). Linux Lab – Gnome Shell -vs- Unity. Review – PAM Facial Recognition. Top 5 – USB Installers. I Think – Should Ubuntu keep it’s current schedule, or switch to a rolling release? plus: Ubuntu Games, My Story, and much much more!

One of the things I like about Blogspot (as Blogger used to be known way back when), is the flexibility to change ANYTHING in your template. You should bear in mind the terms of service before you start ripping out branding and credits elements, but it is a free service, where the technically minded can do what they want - unlike the free equivalent in certain blog platforms I could mention!

Full Circle Podcast Episode #21, Wibberty Wibberty Woo is available from the main site. In this episode; Why do we need Ubuntu? The desktop versus the Cloud Feeds for both MP3 and OGG: RSS feed, MP3: http://fullcirclemagazine.org/category/podcast/feed RSS feed, OGG: http://fullcirclemagazine.org/category/podcast/feed/atom Full Circle Podcast is also a proud member of the Tech Podcasts Network . File Sizes: OGG 35.0Mb MP3 23.6Mb Runtime: 68 mins 23 seconds Your Hosts: Robin Catling (blog at http://catlingmindswipe.blogspot.com/ , @robincatling on Twitter) Ed Hewitt (blog at http://www.edhewitt.co.uk/ , @edhewitt on Twitter) Dave Wilkins (...has a Fischer-Price toy. @DavidAWilkins on Twitter) Additional audio by Victoria Pritchard   Show Notes 01:25 | WELCOME and INTRO   02:16 | SINCE LAST TIME Dave: academic and military Ed: finishing the academic year, work, travel, weighing up Chromebooks . Watching proceedings of the WWDC co

Regular visitors may notice that we have refreshed the template here on the Blogger site. Partly for a visual refresh and partly for functional reasons, we've finally left our original template behind to go with a feature-rich template Novato (itself based on Bloggerized). The benefit of an established platform like Blogger is the wealth of free templates, code, gadgets and all-round expertise. I found this template at http://blogtemplate4u.com , alternatively http://www.premiumbloggertemplates.com , which feature templates for Blogger, Wordpress and other CMS...

Google, Yahoo and Bing Indexing Simply being listed in search engines doesn't guarantee you traffic. However, not being in them guarantees near invisibility. Similarly submitting once doesn't guarantee a presence for life. The proper 'grown-up' Search engines send out web spiders to crawl for information regularly. They look for new and updated content, so you need to submit your site periodically to be crawled and updated in the search engines' indexes. It's worth running through the process for sites in the big 'three' Google, Bing and Yahoo (despite Bing and Yahoo being effectively the same search provider since they linked up)...

It's possible that some visitors to this site don't actually know what is this thing Linux to which I keep referring. The word Linux is generally used to describe an Open Source computer Operating System based on the Linux Kernel which forms the basis for free alternatives to Microsoft Windows or Apple Mac-OS. Linux runs on a variety of hardware platforms from mobile phones, PC's, embedded devices, right up to mainframes...

The Dell Inspiron 6400 (also sold as the Inspiron e1505) is currently my main machine. We remain locked in the love-hate relationship we have shared since I bought it in 2007. Its wasn't the cheapest Dual-Core Centrino laptop at the time, but a good, solid, mid-range workhorse...

Graphic designer, web designer and photographer Josh Peterson is still producing stunning images. His blog is at Noaesthetic.com which displays a selection of recent works and his photostream on Flickr showcases much more.  The featured image is 'Assembling for the View'.

No credit claimed here,this is a straight pointer to the article on the Ubuntu wiki, Demystifying Unity's Graphics Hardware Requirements from the Ubuntu wiki. Part requirements, part How-to, part FAQ page, part bench-mark, if you don't get what it takes to run Unity by the end of this, just give up. RC

Ubuntu always had an option for adding icons for places such as Home, Network and Trash Can to the desktop. They're just not enabled by default. If a bare Gnome or Unity desktop is a bit too stark and you want the convenience of these icons, you can enable them. Run the Gnome Configuration Editor by typing gconf-editor into a terminal or the Alt+F2 run dialog...

Working on the Full Circle Podcast and various other audio projects, I thought it expedient to pick up a handy-size portable audio recorder to take the place of a laptop or net-book with microphones and cables. There are dozens of solid-state personal data recorders around, in all price ranges and all qualities. As usual I set myself a budget and settled on the Zoom H1, baby brother of the more capable H2...

Almost a month on from the upgrade and so far nothing but good to report on the latest stable release of Android CyanogenMod 7.0.0.buzz. It's finally got my HTC Wildfire smart-phone where I wanted it all along. The original article on rooting the phone can be found in the archive. Remember that rooting your phone will void the warranty and could do physical damage if used badly. But if you get it right...