An Ubuntu & Firefox Kiosk for my Toddler
My daughter Anneliese is starting to learn to use a computer, and that means she needs things made simple and easy. Here are some steps I took to making a separate login for her under Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick. This guide assumes familiarity with general Ubuntu system administration tasks, as well as gconf-editor.
Speed up laptop boot & resume times with large MySQL databases
I’m in the interesting position of using my laptop for both programming work and day-to-day web surfing. I’m the lead developer for SAGrader, a web-based computationally intelligent essay grading system. We use MySQL for the database, and naturally I run a copy on my laptop to develop with. Unfortunately, MySQL and laptop power-saving goes together [...]
Inspiron 5150 Owners – rejoice!
I got a letter on Friday telling me that my just-past-extended-warranty Dell Inspiron 5150 that died of overheating would be repaired for free by Dell. Apparently, they decided to settle the class action lawsuit, rather than fight the legal battle (which they would have lost, as my overheated lap and broken computer can attest). So [...]
So, about that “working perfectly”
Well, I have to admit that I was blinded by love for my laptop. But when I said that 1920×1200 was working perfectly on my Inspiron 9400, I was wrong. I didn’t even really check – it just looked sooo good. But then I went to take a screenshot of the next generation of SAGrader, [...]
Dell Inspiron 9400 with Ubuntu Dapper Drake
A few weeks ago I bought a new Dell Inspiron 9400 laptop after my three year old Dell died, 37 days out of warranty. I was running Dapper on that laptop, and I wanted to continue that with this new machine. The good news: everything works. (Intel) Wireless, Bluetooth, CD/DVD burning, suspend, hibernate, touchpad, brightness [...]