flapjacktastic

Have you seen Piclens from Cooliris? It’s awesome. Actually came across this from watching >Click from the BBC - they arrogantly said “just install it” - so I thought, *huff* how good can it be. Well I’ve got news: it’s flapjacktastic!

Only downside is that it’s not yet out for Linux - I tried it on Windows Vista (FF version) on my new comp and it rocked my techy world! Also ran it in a VMWare Windows XP environment (FF again) on which it was a tad slow for me but still cool enough to use.

My next effort now is to use the information in the Gallery2 forums to enable Piclens on Barefoot Ceramics’s gallery. Code available from Suprsidr on FlashYourWeb.com.

Update:

It works. Go to a gallery and you can get the piclens view if you have the plugin installed. I simply followed the instructions to alter the template.tpl, album.tpl (in the $templateName/local/ folder) and piclensRss.php (in the gallery root) files.

Can I edit a pdf file

It’s not easy but …

My Dad asked me how to edit a pdf. Here’s my response:

It’s not quite a “forget it” situation but nearly … I suspect that your scanner / copier is embedding images files (JPEG or TIFF) in a pdf “wrapper”. It’s unlikely that it performs OCR (Optical Character Recognition) on them, so the text you see isn’t in the PDF, it’s just a picture - you can test this by using the text selection tool (looks like a capitla I) in Adobe Reader and clicking and dragging over some text … if it’s text you’ll be able to select it. Or, you could send me one of the files and I’ll have a look (if you’re not my dad, don’t do this!).

Abbyy

PDF Transformer and Finereader

The leader in this area is a company called ABBYY (sometimes their software is bundled with scanners, so have a check and see).

They have a couple of products that would suit:

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Firewall administration in Slackware Linux

Which front end?

These programs configure a script, usually rc.firewall, which in turn sets up iptables. Iptables then handles all the filtering mangling and NAT requirements for you.

As ever there are lots of options, I used to use Guarddog which was great. However I now need to do NAT and guarddog required me to use a companion program called guidedog. Instead I thought I’d try the native KDE options, the closest thing to that seems to be KMyFirewall.

KMyFirewall (KMF)

This is pretty good.

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Favourite Open Source Applications

This is a quick list of some of my favourite applications, originally written in 2007. They are either free gratis or free libre or both; many are open source.

If you don’t know what that means then all you do need to know is that you can safely use these without worrying about the police knocking on your door. Big companies like Microsoft do prosecute the little guys that illegally copy their software … so use these apps and don’t worry anymore.

The winners are …

Knoppix on HP Pavilion 7880 (UK)

This page (started March 2003) gives details about using Knoppix on my HP Pavilion 7880(uk) desktop computer. I say using and not installing because Knoppix (pronounced K’Noppix, created by a German bloke called Herr Knopper) can be booted from CD - just stick it in your drive and reboot.

The computer

A HP Pavilion 7880 (UK) about 2 years old. It’s a AMD Athlon 1.1 GHz with 20 GByte harddrive, Nvidia Gforce 2 graphics. It appears that it has a HCL modem using a PCTel Chipset, ie a Winmodem. sourceforge.net has a useful project on PCTel modems under Linux and there’s a mini how-to.

The distro

Whilst I was trying to get Linux working fully I decided to try Knoppix as it’s bootable off the CD.

I’m stuck with windows at the moment as there are a few programs that we use (particularly MS Money) that I haven’t found a linux alternative for yet [GnuCash might be it though??] - I’m sure there is one but will it read the proprietary format of Money’s files? Due to the winmodem (see above) I haven’t got online with Knoppix but everything else seems to work fine,eg OpenOffice.org and all the games ;0)> .

Where can I get Knoppix (and other Linux distros) in the UK?

Well, funny you asked that! I got my copy from uselinux.co.uk, the proprietor was most helpful and appears to be providing the discs out of love for Linux - ie I can’t see how he’d make a profit unless he has a huge CD generating capacity already.

Your best source for up to date distributions is the internet site, usually www.your-desired-distro.com. They usually have a list of FTP mirrors that you can spend a few weeks trying to get an ISO off - if like me you have 56K dialup. You could get a friend to download a copy. Or you could borrow a copy - remember this is open source and most of it is free-as-in-beer (eg GNU GPL) so you can print as many copies you like - check the license first and if in doubt e-mail the support guys for your distro.

Alternatively, try one of the following sites (none of whom sponsor me), I can only vouch for uselinux.co.uk though.

• uselinux.co.uk Good basic site, limited set of distros, payment by paypal,nochex, postal orders, etc.. Mr Wellstead seems like a nice bloke - any chance of a commission? Knoppix 3.1 comes to £3 with p&p.
• cheeplinux.com - appears to be the most expensive of this pick. Knoppix 3.1 comes to £7.98 with p&p.
• linuxemporium.co.uk - no comments really. Knoppix 3.1 comes to £4.50 with p&p.

General Knoppix places

The first page listed is the creators site. Note that Knoppix is from a German source and so English documentation appears to be sparse at the moment.

• knopper.net
• www.volny.cz/basiclinux/lowmem.html Installing slackware with only 4 MB of RAM
• jetblackz.freeservers.com/ConfiguringSlackware81.html - well duh?
• linuxtips.sourceforge.net/index.php - the SlackFAQ, gives general info about Linux too, in multiple languages!

Knoppix on Pavilion places

I didn’t find any one else logging there use of Knoppix on a HP Pavilion.

• [NONE]

General Pavilion 7880 places

General information about my Pavilion:

• hp.com - drivers and downloads page.
• hp.com - specifications/information about the 7880. There’s also a local copy of this page.