New Computers — Cheap and Silent!

I’ve put together two new computers recently, one for my mother-in-law and one as a replacement for a system that died here this week. I used some parts I already had from their predecessors (the monitors, keyboards, mice, hard drives, and CD/DVD drives), but even considering that, they were extremely inexpensive — the motherboard (with …

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Microsoft helping startups?!

It’s a curious move, coming from one of the largest software companies in the world, but a welcome one. Yes, it’s a transparent attempt to fight open-source software by getting companies hooked on their product before they’ve grown into the next Google. But it can also help such companies when they need it the most. …

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Roast Pidgin

A few days ago, I started getting this message from Pidgin, the instant-messaging client that Ubuntu Linux uses by default: The client version you are using is too old. Please upgrade at http://pidgin.im Well, I’ve seen that happen before, so I waited. Sure enough, that evening’s software update told me that there was an upgrade …

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Geek Drivel Updated

As you can probably see, I’ve made some updates to the blog. Some are visible, like the new “favicon” and a new theme; some aren’t, like removing some junk plugins and making some security improvements. All in all, I’m fairly happy with the results, but let me know if you see any weirdness.