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A while back I posted an article on how to setup a PPTP VPN connection in Ubuntu 9.10, in Ubuntu 10.04 these packages are available by default (and these are now supported packages).

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If you use Vim on multiple platforms like I do, you may find it convenient to know that you can detect the platform your installation Vim was compiled for in Vimscript. With this functionality you can put all your settings for all your systems in a single vimrc file. Read the rest of this entry »

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One of the features I find very convenient in Vim editing in visual blocks.

With CTRL+V (while in normal mode) you can activate the visual block mode, by using the standard movement keys (h, j, k, l or the arrow keys). You can perform various operations on visual blocks (check the help with :help v), in this article I will describe how you can prepend or append text to a block. Read the rest of this entry »

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It’s fairly simple to create a USB flash drive that can be used to boot a computer and install Windows Vista (assuming that the computer that you want to install on can boot from a USB flash drive). To get your USB flash drive ready you need the following:

  • USB flash drive of the appropriate size (I used a 6GB drive)
  • Windows Vista install DVD
  • Computer that has Windows Vista installed, a DVD drive and has a free USB slot (for use with the USB flash drive)

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Installing software in your home directory is not an uncommon practice for Linux users. In Ubuntu 10.04 you can easily software that you installed in your home directory (or anywhere else for that matter) to your menus in Gnome, by using the option “Main Menu” under System -> Preferences. Read the rest of this entry »

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The standard Ubuntu distro comes with the Metacity window manager (Ubuntu community documentation on Metacity can be found here). Metacity’s shortcut keys are customizable, and you can change these shortcut keys and add custom shortcut keys for commands of your own choosing (if you’re a Windows user and want similar functionality there is a very useful open source program named AutoHotkey that may be of use to you). Choose System -> Preferences -> Keyboard Shortcuts via the menu bar to run the program to maintain the shortcut keys. Read the rest of this entry »

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By default Ubuntu comes with gedit as it’s text editor (if you are using the standard Ubuntu version, which comes with Gnome), I however personally prefer to use vim instead. If you don’t have gvim installed yet, you can do so by installing the gvim-gnome package. To make gvim your default text editor do the following: Read the rest of this entry »

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Yehuda Katz wrote up an excellent description of the procedures to build and release gems on his blog. You can find it here: http://yehudakatz.com/2010/04/02/using-gemspecs-as-intended/

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VirtualBox is an open source virtualization program (for those of you that don’t know what that means: simply put it is a computer program that can emulate other computers within your own computer). One of the things that I use it for is to run my personal development and testing servers within my own workstation that don’t exist to the outside world. You don’t have the mess of dual boot, nor do you have the need for lots of additional hardware for your development and testing setups! Read the rest of this entry »

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I have upgraded without-brains.net to WordPress 2.9.2 :)

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