…….Members!
That’s right, we have 1,000,000 members on Ubuntu Forums now, and I’m glad I could be a part of that awesome community 
A snippet of the screen:
Ubuntuforums.org Millionth Member
Archive for the ‘Internet’ Category
Ubuntu Forums Hits 1 Million
19
Jan
Chrome Beta
09
Dec
OMG Chrome Beta for Linux is available!!11!!…………………….is all I saw on Twitter/identi.ca the other day. So I figured I’d give it a go, knowing it should be much different from Chromium.
It seems that, somewhat surprisingly, I was wrong. I downloaded the 64 bit .deb file from the chrome site and installed it. Easy enough – there’s also RPM’s for any of you using Fedora etc. One thing I liked, though incredibly insignificant, was the Chrome logo – I just prefer the green, red & yellow to the Chromium blueness.
From what I can gather from various bits of info online, and my own personal use of the browser, it’s very similar to the latest builds of Chromium, except it carries the official Google backing. One thing I did notice though, which is a deal clincher for me right now – is that flash (specifically YouTube & BBC iPlayer, I haven’t tried anything else really)….works! Now I have received a Flash Player update today, but it worked before that
Another thing that seems to have been fixed is the double posting issue a lot of Linux/Chrome users were experiencing over on Ubuntu Forums – thankfully I haven’t had it happen yet, but I’m keeping an eye on it. I just have the privilege of being able to remove my double posts without having to report it first 
All in all – I’d say it’s definitely worth looking into, especially if you’ve been put off trying Chromium
Some Scheduled Downtime
26
Nov
My VPS is kindly provided by a friend of mine (if you really want to know who, drop me an email, I’ll forward them on to him). And this weekend – he’s scheduled some downtime on the server – so the site will be offline for a while around 2100UTC (incase anybody happens to be trying to access it).
I just thought I’d make anybody aware – hopefully we won’t be offline for too long!
WordPress Upgrade
14
Nov
I’m pretty sure I do these wrong, but I can’t complain, considering I’ve recently upgraded to 2.8.5 with no issues, and now I’ve just upgraded to 2.8.6, again with no issues, everything still seems to be intact (though please let me know if it isn’t!!).
Thanks again to the WordPress guys!
Long Time No Blog
02
Aug
Clearly I haven’t blogged for a while – this was evident by the fact I had a wordpress upgrade waiting to be done, and no less than 8 plugin upgrades!
Now normally, I don’t mind being all long winded about plugin upgrades, because it’s usually just one or 2. Now because I’m picky and awkward, the WP auto-upgrade for plugins doesn’t seem to work on my server. Instead of fixing that, I simply wrote a bash script. The contents of which are:
Not sure if anybody wants to use that – I’m sure it could be improved, but it satisfied 2 of my needs. I now have an easier way to update (and install, I guess) plugins, and a lesser desire to code things. I now have to think of my next blog topic so I can get back on track!
WordPress 2.8
12
Jun
Normally these upgrades go well, but when you accidentally unzip/untar the new version over the top of your current install, things don’t quite go according to plan
Though kudos to the WP Dev’s, I modified the wp-config file and set all the options (including a different database table prefix), and then I put all my plugins back in to place, and took the time to upgrade a couple I needed to do. Finally, after a deep breatth, I ran what would normally be the installer, which said “Your database needs updating”.
And that was all, so considering my potentially costly foul-up, things actually went very well I’m quite impressed!
Drupal?
02
Jun
So I’m trying out a test install of Drupal on my PC, and considering switching the site over to it. Though I have a few issues…
1) Do I keep this blog on WordPress, or do I attempt to migrate it over to Drupal? I love WP, it’s simple, easy to use, got a load of plugins I like and that I use. But then Drupal supports blogs, so I could just use the 1 software solution and be done with it, slightly less resources on the server – win all round? But WordPress is set up.
2) Drupal supports dynamic content. This is an issue for me, because I feel as though I would have to take advantage of it, but I never have anything to update my site with (as you may have noticed!!).
3) There’s too many settings to configure!!! The first screen presented by Drupal’s admin section is just an array of settings, such as the plugins, themes, etc. I don’t know where to start. I suppose if I take the time to read and research about Drupal, it would be better.
The thoughts come as I have a broken wrist and can’t really go out too much at the minute (I can’t drive 
). But it’s been something I’ve considered for a while, it’d be much better than the iWeb pages I have up in place at the moment, and I could probably put content about life in general on the main page instead.
I would like to hear from others who use Drupal to get a rough idea of what they think to it, and whether it would be worth switching to.
Dropbox
17
Apr
From what I recall, quite a few people have heard of, or even use Dropbox.
Dropbox is similar to Apple’s iDisk, in the respect that it is an online backup/data storage facility. The only difference is, dropbox will give you 2GB of free storage, just for signing up. There’s also an option to pay either $9.99 per month, or $99 per year, which will upgrade your storage capacity to 50GB. For me personally, I don’t (yet) need any more than the 2GB, though I may consider looking into the 50GB option in future.
What I like most about Dropbox is that it’s cross platform. For me this is fantastic, because I run Ubuntu (9.04 64 bit if you’re interested) on my desktop, and my laptop is an aluminum Macbook. Now I had the problem of somehow remembering to put things in the Dropbox directory so that they would get synced to the server and thus between my 2 machines.
Solving that problem was a lot easier than I could’ve expected. No thanks to my friend Gabby, who told me what he had done on IRC. Using
ln -s
you can create soft links to the directories to/from the Dropbox directory, and any changes you make to that directory outside of the Dropbox directory, get automatically synced. Put simply, if I make any changes to something in ~/Documents, it automatically gets backed up/synced to Dropbox. Awesome!!
If you’re unsure of the syntax of
ln
, as it is a little confusing, it’s the following:
ln -s target link_name
And finally, if you want to join Dropbox because you haven’t already, following this link will (according to Dropbox) get you a little bit more space
Edit: I’ve just been informed (thanks Matteo!) that the referral links don’t seem to be giving extra space any more. This is likely because Dropbox limits the amount they give out. Please feel free to use the link at the end of the post if you want, but don’t feel obliged to if you do want to sign up. Join Dropbox
Laconi.ca
14
Apr
Now I’m sure most of you have heard of twitter? Ok good, that’s a start. Identi.ca? Even better.
Identi.ca runs on open-source software called Laconi.ca. It supports the Open Microblogging Standard, and in my opinion, is better than twitter. There’s 2 main reasons I say this:
- It doesn’t have the same downtime as twitter. A microblogging service that has downtime as often as twitter doesn’t present
a good service. If I’m out, and I want to update my friends, I expect to be able to fire up LaTwit (my application of choice for
my phone, as it supports Laconi.ca AND twitter). - It isn’t limited to one site like twitter. Identi.ca runs on laconi.ca as does The TWiT Army & Open Microblogger,the beauty of it however, lies in the
ability to subscribe to users on other laconi.ca based sites. So lets say that army.twit.tv/randomguy123 wanted to subscribe
to my feed at identi.ca/joeb454, that’s totally possible. Then I can subscribe to randomguy123 over at TWiT Army and receive
his updates on identi.ca.
Number 2 is what I like the most, if/when laconi.ca based microblogging systems catch on, or other microblogging software begins to implement the Open Microblogging Standard it should allow for a huge network between users, no matter what service they choose to sign up to. Although the networks can be closed as well from what I’ve read. You can stop people signing up to your laconi.ca installation if necessary, and of course if you want to restrict who follows your notices, simply block them, and then you have a semi-private network.
Personally I’d like to see more people move over to laconi.ca based systems, and status.net (a recently announced project) looks very promising. I’m also pretty interested in the development of laconi.ca, as it already has some awesome features (the XMPP service for one), but time will tell, so I’ll sit tight and see what the future holds for Open Microblogging
Ubuntu Forums News
07
Apr
I know that ubuntu-geek has already posted about this (and probably jacob too – way to steal my idea!).
We have some new staff over on the forums! bodhi.zazen & bapoumba have been made members of the Forum Council – thus, forum administrators, and we have 4 new moderators on the team too. They come in the form of tinivole, forestpixie, cariboo907 and Michael.Godawski.
Congrats to all, it’s great to have you on board, and I’m sure you’ll do a great job
