Todd's Old Blog

Tag: open source

  • Tiny Tiny RSS as a Google Reader Replacement

    Since Google broke the news that it was discontinuing its RSS reader due to declining usage and “privacy concerns”, I’ve been searching for a replacement.  I looked at the web-hosted alternatives and while they each had particular appeal, none seemed worth the effort. Google Reader may not have been the fanciest or most feature-rich platform,…

  • KDE help: ‘The screen is being locked’ notification

    I love the state of KDE (currently 4.9.5) on my main laptop.  Mostly. One annoying behaviour is that when I close the lid and re-open it at a later time, there is a notification waiting in the panel that says “The screen is being locked”.  It’s about as useless as my car telling me “The…

  • Cool Kids Use Old Devices

    I’m not what you would call an environmentalist, but I’m trying.  I’m also frugal and pragmatic, so my life choices are sometimes guided by less noble ideals than protecting the earth. That said, I’ve recycled for all of my adult life… since university graduation at least.  I’ve been buying all my clothes (except socks and…

  • IMD 4005 Open Source Presentation

    This is a presentation on Open Source I created for Interactive Multimedia & Design (IMD) students enrolled in the Bachelor of Information Technology (BIT) Degree program (a joint collaboration between Carleton University and Algonquin College). Audio: Presentation audio (MP3 format) [37.4 MiB] Presentation audio (Ogg Vorbis format) [36.4 MiB] Slides: Download now or preview on…

  • New year, new OS?

    So far it’s shaping up to be a year of changes.  Some milestone birthdays, the family website on a content management system (at long last), and now, a change of operating system. After about 3 years of running Kubuntu on the family desktop, I’ve switched to openSUSE.  Not a huge change I guess, switching from…

  • On Free Culture

    I love free.  I blog about it; I tweet about it; I consume it; I produce it. Free Culture is a difficult concept for some to understand, primarily because we have been born and raised in a capitalist society where few things in life are truly free, both in terms of their monetary cost and…

  • Open Formats and Open Source for Better Government

    The Government of Canada is currently reliant on proprietary file formats and proprietary software applications, which lock it into a licensing bind with a single software manufacturer — Microsoft.  There is not only a question of cost — as we pay a monopoly corporation for per-seat licenses to run software that already dominates the market…

  • MythTV – The Do-It-Yourself DVR

    My television watching has decreased exponentially with every passing year. It wouldn’t take much statistical analysis to determine a correlation (and probable causal relationship) between this trend and the additional children that have also arrived at Chez Lyons over the years. I’m not complaining; it’s two blessings in one. More tangible enrichment; less etheral mind…

  • Kaffeine: Can’t check DMA mode. Permission denied or no such device: “/dev/dvd”

    I recently ran into trouble trying to play copy-protected DVDs on my new installation of Kubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron beta). Initially it seemed that there was a problem with the installation of libdvdcss2, because Kaffeine kept offering to re-install it. However, after a re-start of Kaffeine from Konsole with wizard mode (kaffeine -w), I got…