Dedwarmo

Easily encrypt text files with vim

dedwarmo — Mon, 07 May 2012 04:12:50 +0000

I’m learning to use a really cool text editor called vim. It is a fast and powerful text editor, but it is not as easy to use as programs like Notepad or TextEdit.

One thing I discovered is that is is really easy to encrypt your text files with vim. You can even use the Blowfish encryption method, which if I understand correctly, is a really good encryption method. TechRepublic has a helpful article about using vim to encrypt text files.

Apple retail store at Friendly Center

dedwarmo — Sun, 06 May 2012 16:50:53 +0000

Should the government say who you can marry?

dedwarmo — Thu, 03 May 2012 13:37:55 +0000

Vote against Amendment One now until May 8, 2012 in North Carolina.

Freedom Force International

dedwarmo — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 05:35:23 +0000

http://www.freedomforceinternational.org/

Vote Against Amendment One in NC

dedwarmo — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 12:00:57 +0000

My friends and I are going to vote against NC Amendment One.

How to create a script in Ubuntu

dedwarmo — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 04:01:02 +0000

I’m not very skilled when it comes to using the command line in Ubuntu so these instructions may be incomplete. Follow them at your own risk. It would probably be a better idea to learn how to do this from other resources such as https://help.ubuntu.com/. If you still want to try to follow my instructions then your are brave indeed.

To quickly perform repetitive tasks from the command line in Linux you can create a script. Here are the basic steps:

1. Create a text file containing the command or commands you want to perform.
2. Use the chmod command to make the text file executable:

sudo chmod +x /usr/local/bin/sampleprogram

If the text file you created was called “sampleprogram” and it is in the /usr/local/bin directory then to run the command you will need to issue the command like this:

cd /usr/local/bin
./sampleprogram

Putting the dot and then the slash in front of your command tells the command interpreter that you want to run the command called “sampleprogram” that is in the current directory.

BlenderDiplom.com

dedwarmo — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 05:15:09 +0000

http://blenderdiplom.com/

I ditched Mac and Windows

dedwarmo — Mon, 09 Apr 2012 04:52:08 +0000

In January or February I installed Ubuntu 10.04 on my 2009 Mac mini. After I installed Ubuntu, I learned that there is a faster, lighter version called Xubuntu. Rather than starting over from scratch I installed Xubuntu along side standard Ubuntu. That resulted in a lot of redundent programs and left me with only 17 GB of free space. Then I upgraded to Ubuntu 11.10 and a few things broke. Today I decided to start from scratch and install just Xubuntu. It took less than 30 minutes to download the disk image via Bit Torrent, maybe 15 minutes to burn it to a CD and, get this, 20 minutes to install. You heard that right. I booted from the Xubuntu CD, clicked “Install” and 20 minutes later had Xubuntu running on my computer. I also now have 46 GB of free space (after restoring all my backed up documents). When I was using Mac OS X I was down to 8 GB of free space.

My computer feels like a new machine and it cost me the price of one blank CD.

Here are the first few programs I installed after installing Xubuntu:

VLC – media player
Grsync – file backup utility
Blender – 3D computer graphics program
feh – a wicked fast command line image viewer
Flash plugin – yuck

Does your web browser pass the test?

dedwarmo — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 04:35:53 +0000

Go to acid3.acidtests.org to see if your web browser passes the test.

Acid Tests says, “To pass the test, a browser must use its default settings, the animation has to be smooth, the score has to end on 100/100″

Wikipedia says, “Acid3 test is a web test page from the Web Standards Project that checks a web browser’s compliance with elements of various web standards… If the test is successful, the results of the Acid3 test will display a gradually increasing fraction counter with colored rectangles in the background. The number of subtests passed will indicate the percentage that will be displayed on the screen. This percentage does not represent an actual percentage of conformance as the test does not really keep track of the subtests that were actually started (100 is assumed). Moreover, the browser also has to render the page exactly as the reference page is rendered in the same browser. Like the text of the Acid2 test, the text of the Acid3 reference rendering is not a bitmap, in order to allow for certain differences in font rendering.”

Bicycling Robot

dedwarmo — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 04:01:37 +0000

This robot balances on a bicycle by turning the handlebars in the direction the bicycle is leaning. Cool, eh?