Dropbox
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
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
, as it is a little confusing, it's the following:
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
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
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
All Settled In
I'm running from my new VPS now. It has a healthy 1GB RAM (much better than the 384 I used to have!). And everything seems to be running smoothly.
I did have possibly the most unusual method of moving my blog over - in that I zipped up the directory, moved it over to the new VPS, and imported the database, same for the apache2 settings. Luckily, 98% of it went without a hitch! A few issues with virtual hosts and mod_rewrite, but that's all.
I now have a constant IRC presence, because I'm no longer limited by the VPS provider on what I can and can't use (gotta love having a friend with a server!). And yes - it's running Ubuntu 8.04 Server 
New VPS
I know I know, I'm terrible for switching.
But anyway - I've got a new VPS, and I'll have to take the site down for a while to switch the domain over to the new VPS and set everything up.
I'm doing what I can to minimise the downtime, and I don't know whether it'll be later today or sometime in the week. But if you see my site down in that time - don't panic, it just means I'm mid move
New post when I've finished the move.
Location, Location, Location
Nothing to do with the TV show
I mentioned a few days ago that I would be moving http://www.joeb454.co.uk to point to this domain, which I have now done. I'll be removing the old wordpress hosted blog sometime in the near future as well.
I should note that all the links clicked here do correspond to http://blog.joeb454.com. However after a quick check, lets say you wanted to login, you could still visit joeb454.co.uk/wp-login and that would work just as you would expect it to
Amazon Hit By Economic Downturn?
Ok this post isn't half as serious as it first sounds
I was reading a post on the Ubuntu Forums about Amazon's rather steep prices. I can only assume that it's because of the economy, that they're needing to increase prices
(Note: I'm well aware that the layout of the images has messed up the theme somewhat, though I can't figure out why! Sorry!)
I'll take 2 pairs...
A Bargain!
Moving Home?
I'm thinking of moving this blog over to joeb454.com
As some of you know, I recently bought a MacBook, and I realised I didn't have a page up on my .com domain, so I decided to kill 2 birds with 1 stone, and had a play with iWeb '09. The end result isn't bad, and moving the blog over to my VPS provider would mean 2 things:
1) I'd actually be using my VPS for something
2) I'd have a more fine grained control over my blog, because I would be hosting it myself. Currently this blog is hosted by wordpress.com
It could mean I'd need to upgrade my VPS package, because currently I only have 384 MB RAM on there. I guess it all depends on how much MySQL decides that it wants to take, though before upgrading I'd look into tweaking some MySQL settings to see if I can reduce the amount it needs.
Ultimately I'd like to do this just because of number 1 above. But also it would teach me some more about Apache, MySQL, possibly PHP. I may also look into changing the site at some point, possibly to a Drupal installation, but we'll have to wait and see
Any thought's on whether you think this would be a worthwhile move, or any recommendations you have on tweaking various settings on the server (it runs Ubuntu 8.04) would be fantastic!
Facebook Easter Eggs?
Now...I don't know if this would technically be classed as an easter egg, nor how long it has been an option...but it's publically available, easy to find (if you take the time to check), and absolutely awesome.
I have the language on my facebook account set to English (Pirate). Yes, you did read that right! My friend Rich told me about it on IM, so I had a look....It's absolutely brilliant, it adds a new dimension to Facebook (if only in finding out what things mean again!). I don't think I'm likely to change it back either, it makes me laugh.
It's hard to put it into words, so take a look at the screenshot below 
PirateBook
Login
OpenDNS
Joeb454 on Twitter
- Got quite confused then. Just seen a tweet from a "Christina Rankin", mind automatically told me it was @chrisrankin 4 days ago
- Wish the #BBCNews site had support for mobiles with the videos. 4 days ago
- Just seen a picture of @TheTimeZebra dressed as a reindeer... 4 days ago
- RT @AnnieWanKenobi: 'It's a chap!' Midwife Admiral Ackbar. 5 days ago
- Working in the future, as you do… http://t.co/Dg7Rq8zi 1 week ago
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New Home!
As I posted earlier today (sorry for any Planet spam!), I planned on moving my Planet Ubuntu feed over to blog.joeb454.com later in the week.
I changed my mind and did it about an hour after posting that last post. Hopefully I remembered to use the correct feed type for WordPress, else I'll have to edit it again!
From what I've seen though, the site seems to be holding up pretty well, It's not using gross amounts of RAM just yet, but I'll be keeping an eye on it
The only real issue I've run into is that it doesn't seem to want to email me when a comment is held for moderation, or when a comment is left at all.
I'm not sure why it doesn't, because it sends out emails for registration.  I'll have to wait and see how that one goes