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frugal technology, simple living and guerrilla large-appliance repair

Regular blog here, 'microblog' there

Many of my traditional blog post live on this site, but a great majority of my social-style posts can be found on my much-busier microbloging site at updates.passthejoe.net. It's busier because my BlogPoster "microblogging" script generates short, Twitter-style posts from the Linux or Windows (or anywhere you can run Ruby with too many Gems) command line, uploads them to the web server and send them out on my Twitter and Mastodon feeds.

I used to post to this blog via scripts and Unix/Linux utilities (curl and Unison) that helped me mirror the files locally and on the server. Since this site recently moved hosts, none of that is set up. I'm just using SFTP and SSH to write posts and manage the site.

Disqus comments are not live just yet because I'm not sure about what I'm going to do for the domain on this site. I'll probably restore the old domain at first just to have some continuity, but for now I like using the "free" domain from this site's new host, NearlyFreeSpeech.net.

Mon, 01 Aug 2011

Windows 7 Service Pack 1 installs begrudgingly on my Debian Squeeze-running laptop

Thanks to readers who responded, Service Pack 1 successfully installed on my Debian-squeeze-running laptop.

Here's a chronicle of what I've done to the machine:

Those who read my previous entry on this topic know that SP1 refused to install on the Windows 7 Home Premium portion of my Lenovo G555's hard drive.

And it probably had something to do with my running Linux (specifically Debian Squeeze) on the same drive.

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Thu, 21 Jul 2011

Windows Update doesn't like my Linux-Windows dual-boot system

Just when I'm thinking, "Windows sucks less than it used to," here I am with my dual-boot system - Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit on one partition, Debian Squeeze 64-bit in LVM (with encrypted swap and home partitions) on another.

Everything has worked well until the arrival of Service Pack 1.

It just won't install. It won't install via the Windows Update mechanism. It won't install after downloading a 900 MB file.

A 900 MB file. For a service pack. Let's ponder that for a minute.

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Sat, 11 Jun 2011

What I need to work with Windows

Yes, I do use Windows. XP and 7, depending on the hardware.

So what software and services do I bring along for the ride?

  • Notepad++
  • IrfanView
  • Firefox
  • Thunderbird
  • FileZilla
  • Dropbox
  • Avast! Free Antivirus
  • Google Chrome
  • Pidgin
  • GIMP
  • Inkscape
  • Audacity

I'll write more about each of these applications in the future. They're sort of in order of most valuable to least. The Notepad++ text editor and IrfanView image viewer/editor are definitely my top 2 applications in Windows.