Some information about finding disk health and partition information on Linux systems, particularly Kubuntu/Ubuntu.
How’s my disk doing?
SMART disk info
The tool known in Ubuntu as “disk utility”, from the package gnome-disk-utility with command palimpsest, is the best GUI based summary of disk health and partition info I’ve found. Currently I’m using KDE 4.6 on Kubuntu 11.04 FWIW.
Here’s a couple of example images:
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Some JavaScript resources, in particular JavaScript videos and interactive coding tutorials. Also listing the most popular books and online references as reported by developers.
Learning JavaScript
Interactive code writing lessons
- Eloquent JavaScript, an online resource for which there is also a printed book (UK book link).
- Learning Advanced Javascript from John Resig, part of the book “Secrets of the JavaScript Ninja” [pre-order].
Goal: To be able to understand this function: The .bind method from Prototype.js
- Nathan’s JS Lessons from Nathan Whitehead an NVIDIA developer. A really well set out interactive approach of learning by doing.
Ever wonder what closures are and how they work? You can learn about this advanced programming concept right now through interactive lessons in JavaScript.
Other books
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Finding bookmarked and visited pages quickly in Firefox.
Location Bar search
Search modifiers
I’ve been using the web since 1994 (Mosaic, Lynx, etc., yay!) so it takes quite a bit to change my usage. The Awesome Bar was, well, awesome when it came out but I’ve always found the bookmark finding mechanism a bit unwieldy.
So, when I found that there were search modifiers a week or so ago I was happy and have found that over the last week or so it has helped me a lot, streamlining the process to finding bookmarked or previously visited pages (ones in my history).
Most used bookmark search modifiers
This MozillaZine page gives the full run down but my usage has so far been limited to these modifiers:
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Short note on adding the Kdenlive official release repository in order to get a more up to date Kdenlive in Ubuntu/Xubuntu/Kubuntu/Edubuntu.
Install latest Kdenlive
Add the release repository
If you’re looking for a repos for the latest Kdenlive, non-linear video editor, for Ubuntu (or variants like Kubunut, Xubuntu, etc.) then you can use their official ppa. Open a console (command line; eg Konsole, xterm, gnome-console) and type this:
sudo apt-add-repository ppa:sunab/kdenlive-release
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VirtualBox USB permission problem
On attempting to change USB settings for a virtual machine I got the following error in a popup dialog:
Result Code: NS_ERROR_FAILURE (0×00004005)
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VirtualBox issues [solved], along with minor halevt error [solved], whilst updating from Kubuntu 10.10 Maverick to 11.04 Natty. Note that I write these things as I work through the problem and so you may be best jumping to the end if you’re just after the solution.
Updating Ubuntu from Maverick to Natty
Something always breaks …
I’ve just moved from Ubuntu Maverick (well Kubuntu actually, version 10.10) to Ubuntu Natty (11.04). Waited a while to be sure that there weren’t going to be any major problems (as has been the case in the past) and things seemed to go smoothly.
So far there have only been two things causing problems.
Changes to hal easily fixed
One was that halevt wouldn’t work. But that was easy, just removed it, it seems that the functionality (hotplug hal actions) has been moved into the main hal package.
Changes to VirtualBox not easy to fix
Two is that VirtualBox isn’t working, the module can’t be loaded. Hmm …
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