Monthly Archives: September 2010

A Google Reader mess

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Discovered this when adding some info to my wife’s reader.
Get the Subscribe bookmarklet from the Google Reader pages
Find a new site to add – for this go to http://psychcentral.com/
Click your Subscribe bookmarklet. Reader opens and shows the link to subscribe to that feed and 8 others.

If you click to subscribe to the Psych Central feed all the others disappear.
If you click one of the others that says no items are unread you have to click to ‘unread’ before looking and then saying ‘No Thanks’, Reader says it has removed the feed and then throws an error.
If you click and there are unread and then click ‘No Thanks’ still get this error – “Oops…an error occurred. Please try again in a few seconds” has been going on for 24+ hours.

So what would I like? For a checkbox next to each and those feeds by default dropped into a “Trial” folder. I get the feed I want and get to not lose those feeds your software has said I might like. Even if the back/forth worked the fact is that I’m not at that point in time wanting to vet sources. All I actually wanted was to subscribe to a single site so saying “More like this” is actually “More like this if you act now because we won’t tell you again”. Isn’t the point of the Subscribe bookmarklet to make everything smooth and easy? So why throw this heap of work up at me?

Another OS

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Have I mentioned I am trying Ubuntu? When I bought the netbook one of the factors was that it was running Windows XP. I didn’t care for later and I knew XP wouldn’t tax the machines like Vista and 7 would. After getting it I considered what precisely I wanted the OS to do and XP came out as doing too much. There was too much OS for what I wanted. So I stuck Ubuntu on it. Latest version, Lucid something? Netbook Remix version it was.
I’ve been quietly impressed. All it has to do is browse, IM, email and music. Maybe IRC if needed. That’s all. I’m not saying Ubuntu can only do that, just that because my needs are deliberately basic I have not had to go round chasing drivers and hunting for different sources. So it’s all set up, I’m pretty happy with the command line stuff I do, I have it secured wirelessly and I have my background of choice which is always important (it’s the Red Bull logo). There are some minor niggles but I have major issues with OS X so the netbook is fine. (When I say major issues that can be broken down into 2 parts. (1) the fanboy “OMG Windoze is so insecure and OS X is great” side of things when they fail to see Apple security updates outnumber Windows ones and (2) Apple’s paternal “We know best, we do, really.”). Anyway, Ubuntu on the netbook is really great and because I didn’t need it to do work on from the start it meant I could take my time to learn and poke around.

Went looking for a blogging client under Ubuntu earlier. On Windows it’s Live Writer, on the Mac I use Marsedit if anything so I was after something similar. Blogtk I couldn’t get working, a Blog Entry program I could not create cats with, another would let me connect as if it were a MT blog but then would not retrieve posts. There were a couple of others from the Ubuntu Software thing in Systems but none worked for me. I was quite surprised that there was nothing. Millions of blogs and no way to create and post remotely. Not that there should be, I’m not saying this out of any sort of entitlement I am just surprised there is nothing there and even that there is no competition. It’s not like there isn’t a market is it?
I chose to use the epiphany browser instead. It is for one blog only and although a client lets me save offline I am never offline. If I am away from the computer I have the Blackberry (until December when I go Android. RIM deserve to go down the pan) so the browser will do the job. I can’t confuse it with Firefox either.

Green on grey

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Not a great photo but the best I have after lying down in 2 fields taking shots of what I want – bugs, spider webs and other small stuff. The lenses I have are great but they don’t do the close-up stuff at all. So off to Amazon I go. I’ve already got a wide-angle listed there so I don’t forget it (some photo forum said it was good so I made a note for once). If I had a macro and a tripod I’d have a card full of ladybirds today. And I bet macros are hideously expensive.

Edit: Yes they are. The Sigma 105mm which gets good reviews is £400. That takes my wishlist for camera stuff only to £1000. Something to save for.

One click proxy

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Overall problem: Have netbook and want to be sure browser traffic is hidden from prying eyes. I don’t care about other programs, just the browser.
Sub-problem: I really cannot be bothered to do the ssh -D 8000 thing every time. Tedious.

So:
1. Get your ssh keys set up as listed here (Ubuntu) (Mac). They both talk about using scp to shift the file from machine to server. For some reason that did not work so I used ftp.
2. Open Terminal and check you can ssh straight in, no password prompt then exit. If you can’t go back up a step.
3. Install QuickProxy in Firefox. Go to http://whatismyip.com and note the numbers. Restart.
4. In Firefox > Edit > Preferences > Network

and apart from the 8000 which you can change you put exactly that.
5. Open Terminal and ssh -D 8000 name@domain.com You should not get a password prompt still.
6. In Firefox click the QuickProxy icon and then go to http://whatismyip.com. They should be completely different. The alternative is that you will get no connection in which case go back to 4 and check that the 8000 (or whatever) you used matches the number you used in terminal.
So, that should all work just great but that whole long winded hassle of opening Terminal, typing that long string and having to then press Return is just too tiring.

Open Gedit (textedit) and type the ssh line then save.
You need to make that file executable. In Ubuntu right-click, select Properties and check the box near the bottom. Save it somewhere easy to find like your main directory.
Now go to the main desktop, press alt-f2 and when the box appears you want to run ‘alacarte’
Go to Accessories (not that it matters, just seemed a good place) and on the right choose New Item.
Find your file (I saved mine as ‘ssh’) and when you add it make the Type “Application in Terminal”
Close the dialogue to save
Back to Desktop, go to Accessories and you should see ‘ssh’ ready for you.
Right-click and Add to favourites.
And there you go. Log in to your machine, give that a couple of clicks and you are good to safely go.

GMail. Stupid.

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Making sure you are logged out of all your Google accounts go to http://gmail.com. You want another email account and being the savvy net user you see that you can check availability of a name. Having signed up at places like AIM, Yahoo, MSN etc it saves hassle to get that name checked first. So you put in all the names and each time it says it has been taken but offers you the “random number on the end” crap each time too. Ever hopeful you plough on until all of a sudden it gives you a captcha you need to solve before you can check another. Annoying but you have to. Study the letters, enter them carefully and click ‘Check availability’. In nice red letters it said you got it wrong. You know you did not so you check again, enter carefully again and again you are wrong. Like wtf? One last time. The swirly letters appear and you are sure they say I D I O T S so being super careful you type in I D I O T S and again it tells you you are wrong.

It’s because there are 2 captchas on the page. One right at the bottom. I can’t see it and my monitor is pretty large. Do they give any hint that you should scroll down? No. Do they highlight other boxes in red to hint that completing them may help? No. Does the page move down to the other captcha? No. Do they make the big assumption that everyone will always complete the whole form before checking for a free name? Yes. Can you simply open another browser and continue battering away for new names? Yes. Has this measure stopped the millions of gmail spammers? Not.one.little.bit.

Wishlist

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Been meaning to do this for ages but I cleared and updated my Amazon Wishlist. Gone are the novels as I have many of those on my Sony Reader (still reading Anna Karenina and really annoyed that an absolutely vital part of the plot was accidentally seen in a newspaper) but what I have none of – apart from The Communist Manifesto – are enough politics / society books. So a few of those I want are listed. And that Kindle thing is there. Why put that there when I have the Sony? Because I have bought several books recently and all of them were on the kindle, I could have all instantly and yet even Prime meant I had to wait at least a day. Annoyingly I also tend to buy things on Fridays (I do the same on ebay) so the delay is compounded. Had I a kindle I could have been happier faster and more importantly started reading while still in the moment of wanting. It is far from essential but hey, it’s a wishlist.