The Ever Changing (Internet) World

In light of the recent news about UbuntuOne's cloud and music service coming to an end, thought this post from 2011 was an interesting read:

When a cloud service vanishes: How to protect your data

xkcd: Mystery Solved

Moving away from UbuntuOne Cloud Storage

How strange a coincidence is this? Just a few days after I decided to try Dropbox (motivated by my need to share documents from a laptop to my Kindle), UbuntuOne announces they are dropping the music and file sharing service.

I really enjoyed the ease of sharing my documents, music and photos between a laptop running Ubuntu and my Windows 7 laptop for free (I had earned 25 GB of cloud storage from UbuntuOne by buying some music from their service).

Is it worth upgrading the free 2 GB plan on Dropbox to the 100 GB level?  That's the smallest plan they offer and really more than I need.

Throw in the mix that I've got free space on Apple iCloud, Microsoft's SkyDrive and have been using Amazon Cloud Drive for several years now.  Amazon's service works great between the Mac and Windows ... can I find a way to integrate it with Ubuntu and Linux Mint?

More to follow, I'm sure.

Upgrading to Minecraft server 1.7.8

First time for everything: since I set up my Minecraft server on version 1.7.4, I've had to upgrade.  Guess a lot of changes were made partly because of the Heartbleed bug and the fact that Mojang is making some changes for the username changes that will be implemented soon.  Thus it jumped from 1.7.6-7-8 pretty quickly!

There wasn't much as far as instructions to be found, so here's a short list of what I had to do to get things running again.

1. Stopped the running version 1.7.4 server
2. Renamed the ops.txt file to ops.txt.bak
3. Renamed the user files in <minecraft root folder>/world/players from playername.dat to playername.dat.bak
4. Downloaded the newest .jar file for the Minecraft server using wget into the root folder (normally I'd link to that file, but that changes often)
5. Ran the script to start up the server using a new screen
6. Wait for the conversions to take place, then first thing from the server console op my username (otherwise, nobody has op status

Probably to be expected, once I connected to the server, I lost any inventory that I had previously.  Also noted, from other users that posted info about the upgrade, you will need to re-do any white-list you had created previously.

The ops file and white-list now are .json files that contain both the usernames and their new UUID.  Otherwise, things looked pretty much back to normal.

---

4/14/2104

Addendum: Doing some more research, it looks like the user files should have upgraded automatically when server 1.7.8 was started for the first time.  I saw an error message stating that the conversion failed (and the server stopped).  That's why I renamed the user files and started over.

At the same time, there were reports that some of the Mojang services were having issues, including the service that would have done the conversion.

Conclusion, step 3 might not have been completely necessary.  User's inventory might have been preserved in the upgrade process, but I haven't seen anyone else post anything about that.

Using DropBox for your eBooks and other documents

I have no idea why I waited so long to try DropBox.  I already use Amazon's cloud storage and of course have an iCloud that's linked to my iTunes account.  But these services are geared to mainstream Windows and Mac users.

What I never realized was how easy it is to synch across different platforms like Linux and Kindle using DropBox.

Throw in the fact that several eBook sites are now starting to link up with DropBox for delivery and synching your purchases.  I've already tried it with O'Reilly and Smashwords.

You can try it for free ... and using this link, get an extra 500 MB of storage!

Book Review: Head First JavaScript Programming

Head First JavaScript Programming

By: Eric T. Freeman, Elisabeth Robson

Publisher: O'Reilly Media

Print: March, 2014

 

 The fun way to learn how to program

Pros : Helpful examples, Fun Style, Easy to understand

An excellent gateway for learning to program. The introduction clearly spells out who this book is designed for, why the concepts are presenting the way they are and how the reader can best use the book for learning JavaScript. On top of that, this book is just fun.

For the more experienced, you can select the chapters where you need to sharpen your skills and be adequately challenged.

You can browse through this blog and lots of others for tips and tricks related to JavaScript, all little bits and pieces thrown about on the web.  Sure, there are good pointers in of all of that, but do you get to really know how to effectively program in JavaScript? Now there is this book to get you the rest of the way there!

Productivity: OneNote vs Evernote

Sure, I've been using a DayTimer since the mid-90's to keep my appointments, tasks and projects straight.  Most things I just kept in my head (that's not working as well as it used to). Since I've got all these tech-toys (Blackberry, Kindle, laptop), it's time to start using them to get organized and more productive.

What got this started was a roll out of Microsoft OneNote at work.  So, everyone in the office now has it and some teams have already been using it for tracking projects.   First impressions so far:

Pros

• Integrates with Sharepoint and other Office apps we have at work
• Installs on most devices for free
• Free web version of OneNote with a Microsoft OneDrive account
• Has built-in OCD and screen capture

Cons

• Free web version isn't going to link up with the version we're using at work
• No app for the Blackberry
• Nothing for Linux (Ubuntu!)

So, looking at trying to find something that would be more accessible on all my devices, at work and home, took a look at Evernote.  There are apps for Linux available (Everpad, NixNote aka Nevernote) and they have an app for the Blackberry.  Multiple subscription levels that include free personal use and scales up for business use.

Both have third-party apps that used with them to scan, capture web pages and utilize project management tools.

For now, I'm going to use OneNote just for specific work projects and Evernote for everything else.  Also going to use Zendone.com to integrate Evernote with my Google Calendar (OneNote can hook in with Outlook, but we don't use Outlook at work).

More to follow as I try things out.

Thirty years of Personal Computers

My first introduction to computers was in 1978 at Eastern Illinois University. Although it was not my major (Medical Technology), I took a summer class in Basic programming, which was offered through the Mathematics department. The Computer Science department didn't exist yet. Programs where typed in on a keypunch machine, the stack of punch cards handed over to someone at the computer room and then wait until the next day to retrieve your output printed on paper.

Fast forward to 1984 when, after working in the forensic pathology lab for a couple of years, I was able to purchase my very own personal computer.  It was an used Tandy TRS 80. I was quickly frustrated by the limited 4K of RAM (yep, that's 4,000 bytes of memory) and excruciatingly slow cassette tape method of loading and saving programs.  So, just a couple of months later I purchased a bright and shiny Apple IIc with monochrome monitor (green screen), a whopping 128K of RAM and two (count them, two!) 5.25 inch floppy drives.  It was, at the time, amazing!

The rest, as they say, is history.  I could write a long list of computers I've owned since then, but maybe that will be another post someday.

It wouldn't be a decent blog post if I didn't link to something, so for old times sake, go take a look at the Jargon File - where you'll find all sorts of interesting history and terminology.  And happy 38th birthday to Apple, which was founded in April, 1976.

Using an Edimax USB WiFi with Linux Mint 13 Maya

Just for fun, I setup an old PC (HP box with Pentium 4 3.2 Ghz, 2 GB RAM and 160 GB HD) and installed Linux Mint.  The motherboard has the built in Ethernet port, but I wanted to use WiFi. So I plugged in the Edimax USB that I had laying around.  Mint recognized it, but it didn't work quite right (would not maintain a connection but for a few minutes).

Did a bit of searching and found several comments about this issue.  Some where helpful, some not. Finally found this post that briefly outlined the steps to update the driver - and now it's working much better!

Ubuntu: Linux for human beings

Catchy phrase, eh?  Up to three installations of Ubuntu now (2 laptops, 1 server) and enjoying every minute.

 

Found this over at LinuxCounter.net - guess it's a bragging rights kind of thing.

Of course, could always learn new a thing or two about Ubuntu and Linux in general.

Check out this blog:

Cool UBUNTU Tips & Tricks brought to you by OzzyFrank

Malware, Local File Insertion and PHP

Getting back into some web development once again.  I've been playing around with some simple CMS applications for blogging, etc.  On one new site, I installed Pixie, which seems to be a nice solution (plus I just like trying out things that are of British origin).

On the new micro server, I installed tinyCMS to try it out.  Getting it setup and working properly can be a topic of another post, but I was doing a little research on the security of the application.  Seems it does have some documented vulnerabilities, along with WordPress and the TinyMCE editor.

In the course of looking at this, I came across this post that suggested some things to help make the PHP more secure. Specifically by disabling these functions in the php.ini:   

disable_functions = create_function,gzinflate,eval,base64_decode

Good reading and never hurts to a least try to keep the sites a little more secure. 

Dell Inspiron 1420, Ubuntu and Wireless 1395 WLAN mini-card

I had previously posted about my adventures with installing Ubuntu on this old Dell laptop.  Even though I could get the wireless to connect with the open source drivers included with Ubuntu 12.04, I have always had difficulty getting the connection to persist, especially after a reboot.

First I thought it was the network manager, made changes and eventually went back to the original.  I put up with it for awhile but again went searching for a better answer.

There is a proprietary driver for the Dell Wireless 1395 WLAN mini-card (which is actually a Broadcom BCM 4312 under the hood) provided by the manufacturer here.

Also, more information about detecting and installing alternate drivers provided in the Ubuntu documentation is worth reading:  Identifying Your Broadcom BCM43xx Chipset (PCI)

The easy answer that I discovered was:

• Go to System Settings and select Additional Drivers
• Give it a few minutes to detect your hardware
• Activate the STA wireless driver

Important to note: you need to be plugged in with your Ethernet port to access the Internet. Changing the wireless drivers will disconnect your WiFi and of course will be unable to download anything.  That might be overstating the obvious, but hey, just wanted to mention it.

Logwatch and fail2ban

Things are running along pretty smoothly on the Ubuntu server over on Amazon AWS. Doing some research on server admin and security, saw a post on installing Logwatch to more easily scan the logs daily.   Of course, no surprise to see lots of attempts at compromising the server.

Decided to do something about it and found this article (geared more to Debian Wheezy, but still applies to Ubuntu): Install and Config Fail2Ban

I particularly liked the information about apache-badbots and apache-myadmin, both of which would help block a lot of the traffic seen in the logs.

Also saw lots of entries in the logs with w00tw00t.at.blackhats.romanian.anti-sec:)
So looked up a post on this blog that discusses using fail2ban specifically to block it.

Fun stuff!

LibreOffice on Ubuntu 12.04 - More about hsqldb.jdbcDriver

I have another old laptop that has Ubuntu 12.04 LTS (dual boot with Windows 7) and wanted to see if I could recreate the issue with LibreOffice Base.

This time I did not uninstall the default LibreOffice 3 that came with the distribution.   Rather I followed the instructions mentioned in the previous post and added the PPA followed by an update.  I didn't realize that Base was not included in the default install I had, so did have to install it.

Was not surprised to find that Base could not open up the sample database just as before.  So, that ruled out that doing the uninstall first on the other laptop caused the problem. 

As before, running this command fixed the issue:

sudo apt-get install libhsqldb-java

Upgrading to LibreOffice 4.1 on Ubuntu - Missing hsqldb.jdbcDriver

I've been really enjoying Ubuntu on this old Dell laptop for awhile now.  One thing I ran across was not being able to open MS Publisher documents with the default LibreOffice 3 that was installed.  Doing a little research, that functionality was added to LibreOffice 4, so I decided to upgrade.

Best I could tell, the proper way to proceed was to use the Software Center to uninstall version 3.  Then I found this article on installing LibreOffice 4.1 from the PPA.  After installing with sudo apt-get install libreoffice, I tried out LibreOffice Base.

I created a new database and tried to open it.  Uh-oh, I got this error:
The connection to the data source "SampleDatabase" could not be established.
and
The driver class 'org.hsqldb.jdbcDriver' could not be loaded.

Now what to do?  I went back into the Software Center and looked at LibreOffice Base and there were several optional add-ons for a variety of database drivers.  Select every one available and updated.   Nope, still not working.

Somehow installing from the PPA is not linking correctly so the hsqldb.jdbcDriver can be found.  Doing some more research I found another reference to exactly just that topic on the LibreOffice forum:  Upgraded to LO 4.1.0.4 now get 'connection to data source' error

Reading through that showed me how to install that specific driver with this:
sudo apt-get install libhsqldb-java

(Side note: I did not need to remove the old symbolic link and create a new one as mentioned in the post by dtmonterrey).

Bingo!  LibreOffice Base now opens my new database and I can connect to create and edit tables.

Happy New Year - 2014!

That's about it for today.

Top 5 Things to Do After Installing Ubuntu

Ubuntu on Dell Inspiron 1420

Earlier I posted that I had installed Ubuntu on an old computer, but didn't really go into any detail about the hardware.  It's a 5 year old Dell Inspiron 1420 that was running with the original Windows Vista (service pack 2 installed).

This poor old laptop had a couple rounds of spyware/malware and was pretty buggy to the point no one wanted to even try to use any more.  Almost to the point of recycling it (or donating to a worthy cause), but thought why not install one of the new Linux distributions on it for fun.  Turns out it gave the old Dell a brand new lease on life!

With that said, I'd had some problems with the wireless drivers related to the hardware on this model, the Dell Wireless 1395 WLAN Mini-Card.  I had read previously about issues with proprietary drivers, etc.  Ubuntu connected via wireless without a hitch but I always had to manually reconnect the wireless after a reboot.  Researching showed several others having the same problem with 12.04 and recommended a different connection manager - wicd - but that caused more problems on the Dell because wireless broke all together.

Long story short, I put the default network-manager back and decided that the issue wasn't with Ubuntu but rather the drivers.   Still want to link to an article about an alternative for later:

Broadcom Wireless on Ubuntu

more Ubuntu changes

After setting up a nice screensaver in Raspbian on the Raspberry Pi, I realized that my laptop with Ubuntu 12.04 only had the default blank screen available.  Not to be outdone by the RasPi, I found some information about why Ubuntu's screensaver is the way it is and what to do about it:

How to Add Screensavers to Ubuntu 12.04

more Raspberry Pi

Here's something very interesting - combining my two newest hobbies Ubuntu Linux and RaspPi - A Raspberry Pi Build Cluster for Ubuntu

Never mind that I can't actually watch the YouTube video with Raspbian :-P

Still, if it could be done, I think having a modified Ubuntu that could run on the Raspberry Pi would be cool!