I spend a lot of time online everyday, and when I am not working, most of my time is 'wasted' particularly in about 6 or 7 sites. It has gotten to a point where I bounce back among those sites without even thinking about it, specially using Firefox's Fast Dial add-on, which lets me add keyboard shortcuts to each one of those sites.
This morning I decided to look around for something to combat this 'addiction' of mine. I still want to go to these sites, but I want the browser to tell me when it's time to move on. I found LeechBlock for Firefox. It lets me open an window of time when I can use whatever sites I tell it to, I can lock my access after X number of minutes or just plain block them...
I'm interested to see if it will work for me...
Monday, December 28, 2009
Thursday, December 24, 2009
Speed Dial plugin for Chrome/Chromium is here, but...
There is no Ctrl+1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9 for shortcuts yet :-(
Thursday, December 17, 2009
Saturday, December 5, 2009
My computers over the years
I started talking to a couple of friends tonight about the "old days" of computing, and I got this crazy idea to try to map out every computer I've ever owned. Now, the list isn't 100% accurate because there were probably 2 or 3 computers that I bought from 'mom & pops' shops to be used as servers, but were not my main work computers.
1980s
DGT-100 (aka TRS-80): I started taking an after school course in BASIC programming language when I was around 10 years old. My grandfather gave me this computer when he realized I could write some code. He bought this computer in the late 70s with US$5,000 that he was given as a bonus from work to buy a car instead he bought a computer. This particular setup was hooked up to a black and white tv, and a cassette tape recorder as the storage device.
MSX Expert 1.1: This computer was again a loving 'hand-me-down' from my grandfather, and it was great, it had cartridges with games, a color display, sound and a drawing program as well. Even my brother used this computer. The MSX Expert was built on the 8-bit Z80 processor.
1990s
IBM PC XT: My dad's company were getting rid of their outdated PCs and he was able to bring one home for me. Now, this computer had an amazing 10 MB hard drive, and I used to run DR-DOS 6 on it.
486DX2 66 MHz PC: This computer was bought by my father to me as a Christmas present, and built by my uncle's side business (back on those days). If I remember correctly the computer had 8 MB of RAM, and it started with DR DOS and Windows 3.11.
1994 - I went to US, and left my 486 back in Brazil. When I got back in 1995, I remember getting an AMD 586, but it was mostly my family's computer by now, so I am not including it on this list.
1996 - Back in the US
Packard Bell 133 Mhz, 32 MB of RAM: I remember the price, it was around $1,300. This was my first computer in College and it was the first and last computer I bought at Sears... and now that I think about it, it was the first and last Packard Bell I bought as well. I remember having an issue and being on hold with them for over 2 hours! This was also the first computer I've ever installed Linux on as well. Red Hat Linux 3.0.3
HP Pavillion 800Mhz w/ 64-128MB: I bought this computer in 1998 right after I got married. It was the first computer I bought with my very own money. Pretty sure, I bought this one on Circuit City. Eventually, I ended up 'blowing up' the BIOS of the desktop by accident, and having to sell parts and trash the board.
My first laptop, I don't remember the specs, but it was an HP Pavillion, and I did run Linux on it, although there were plenty of hardware compatibility issues :-)
2000s
After 'destroying' my HP Pavilion desktop and having some issues with HP customer service, I decided to get a new PC from ebay, I don't remember the specs but when it arrived at my house it wasn't working, I sent it back got a replacement and the replacement wasn't working either. That's when I decided to for something new. Around that time a 'new' OS was starting to get a reputation of being Unix-like, Mac OS X. I had never been an Mac OS (8/9) fan, honestly, I couldn't stand them, but because of the Unix-like features, and being annoyed by the issues I'd had with PCs, I decided to give Apple computers a try... and for many years to come I was hooked!
iBook PowerPC G3 600 Mhz: I know plenty of people who hates them, but IMHO, Mac OS X is possibly Apple's greatest 'invention,' I know they like to see themselves as a hardware shop, but the idea of putting a great looking-easy to use Graphical Interface on top of a Unix-like OS was great, specially back on those days. Although, I did use Linux at work constantly, since part of my job was being a System Administrator, for the next few years, I did not use Linux as my main OS because of OS X.
I don't remember the specs, but because I jumped trains to Apple computers, I did keep a PC-server-like around the house running Linux for various tasks.
iMac G3 Snow: I ended up getting a second Mac right after the iBook, and eventually my 4 year old son taught himself how to read by playing online educational games on this machine.
Powerbook G4 667Mhz: Within a few months, I sold my iBook and got a Powerbook G4, during that time I started enjoy photography quite a bit as well, and an application like iPhoto really helped contribute my new hobby. It was also around this time that I got my first iPod, which since then I've owned at least 10 different versions/incarnations of the product...
Powerbook G4 1 Ghz w/ Firewire 800Mhz: By now, one could say I had become an Apple fanboy, and I just 'needed' to upgrade to the shiniest and greatest models.
Dell Inspiron 5100: I think this laptop was a 2.4 Ghz Pentium 4, and I had upgraded it to 1 Gb of RAM. I changed jobs somewhere around this time, and decided to dive in back into Linux. I ran the very first versions of Fedora Core on this laptop.
Dell e1750: This laptop was the first and only 17" display laptop I've ever owned. It was a beast, heavy, too heavy, but what really disappointed me on this laptop (which the price was comparable to an Apple Powerbook [now being called Macbook Pro]) was the fact that for that price I didn't get a webcam nor a built-in microphone. I sold this machine within a couple of months of buying it, and never bought a Dell computer for myself ever again.
Black Macbook Intel Core 2 Duo 2.0 Ghz: This was my first mac with the Intel processor. My biggest problem with this laptop was this 'bug' on the lid which given enough time of opening and closing the lid, it would start making these horrible suspense-movie like squeaky door noise. It was unbearable, and even though sending it to Apple to get it fixed temporarily, it was annoying... but as far as the looks, it was possibly my favorite Macbook to date.
Macbook Pro Intel Core 2 Duo 2.33 Ghz: After getting very annoyed by the squeaky sound of the Black Macbook, I upgraded to a Macbook Pro with some help from my employer at the time.
MSI 1.8 Intel Core 2 Duo Laptop: In 2007, I got a new job at the company I'm currently employed. I decided to go 100% Linux. I still own this computer, my wife uses it now, and still running great. I wrote a review about this laptop a few years ago.
Eee PC 700: Fun gadget, but it was too slow, and the keyboard too small. I did write an article about how to get a spin of Fedora running on it.
Macbook Pro Intel Core 2 Duo 2.4Ghz: The last model before they released the unibody versions. It was a great laptop, and I actually dual booted OS X and Fedora Linux on it. It worked great.
Eee PC 900: Much better than then 700, but the keyboard was still tough to use. It worked really well with Fedora, the Xandros distro that came with it wasn't very good.
Eee PC 1000: Greatest Eee PC (IMHO), I never sold it, my kids use it now, I did upgraded the SSD to a RunCore, which made write speed 2.5x faster.
HP Pavilion a6700y AMD Phenom 9150e Quad Core 1.8 Ghz w/ 4 Gb of RAM: The first desktop I've owned in almost 10 years... pretty crazy!
Lenovo Thinkpad T500 w/ Intel Core 2 Duo Processor P8600 (2.40GHz 1066MHz 3MBL2) and 4 Gb of RAM: My current personal laptop, running Fedora 12.
Like I said in the beginning, I think this list is at least 90% accurate, and it has been fun to research the information online, and try to correlate the years of my life and the different stages I've been through with what computer I was using at the time. If I remember of more details, I will make sure to update this post.
1980s
TK 85: I was probably around 8 or 9 years old when I got this computer from my grandfather. As far as I remember, the computer didn't even work anymore, so it was more like a toy than an actual machine.
DGT-100 (aka TRS-80): I started taking an after school course in BASIC programming language when I was around 10 years old. My grandfather gave me this computer when he realized I could write some code. He bought this computer in the late 70s with US$5,000 that he was given as a bonus from work to buy a car instead he bought a computer. This particular setup was hooked up to a black and white tv, and a cassette tape recorder as the storage device.
MSX Expert 1.1: This computer was again a loving 'hand-me-down' from my grandfather, and it was great, it had cartridges with games, a color display, sound and a drawing program as well. Even my brother used this computer. The MSX Expert was built on the 8-bit Z80 processor.
1990s
IBM PC XT: My dad's company were getting rid of their outdated PCs and he was able to bring one home for me. Now, this computer had an amazing 10 MB hard drive, and I used to run DR-DOS 6 on it.
486DX2 66 MHz PC: This computer was bought by my father to me as a Christmas present, and built by my uncle's side business (back on those days). If I remember correctly the computer had 8 MB of RAM, and it started with DR DOS and Windows 3.11.1994 - I went to US, and left my 486 back in Brazil. When I got back in 1995, I remember getting an AMD 586, but it was mostly my family's computer by now, so I am not including it on this list.
1996 - Back in the US
Packard Bell 133 Mhz, 32 MB of RAM: I remember the price, it was around $1,300. This was my first computer in College and it was the first and last computer I bought at Sears... and now that I think about it, it was the first and last Packard Bell I bought as well. I remember having an issue and being on hold with them for over 2 hours! This was also the first computer I've ever installed Linux on as well. Red Hat Linux 3.0.3
HP Pavillion 800Mhz w/ 64-128MB: I bought this computer in 1998 right after I got married. It was the first computer I bought with my very own money. Pretty sure, I bought this one on Circuit City. Eventually, I ended up 'blowing up' the BIOS of the desktop by accident, and having to sell parts and trash the board.
My first laptop, I don't remember the specs, but it was an HP Pavillion, and I did run Linux on it, although there were plenty of hardware compatibility issues :-)2000s
After 'destroying' my HP Pavilion desktop and having some issues with HP customer service, I decided to get a new PC from ebay, I don't remember the specs but when it arrived at my house it wasn't working, I sent it back got a replacement and the replacement wasn't working either. That's when I decided to for something new. Around that time a 'new' OS was starting to get a reputation of being Unix-like, Mac OS X. I had never been an Mac OS (8/9) fan, honestly, I couldn't stand them, but because of the Unix-like features, and being annoyed by the issues I'd had with PCs, I decided to give Apple computers a try... and for many years to come I was hooked!
iBook PowerPC G3 600 Mhz: I know plenty of people who hates them, but IMHO, Mac OS X is possibly Apple's greatest 'invention,' I know they like to see themselves as a hardware shop, but the idea of putting a great looking-easy to use Graphical Interface on top of a Unix-like OS was great, specially back on those days. Although, I did use Linux at work constantly, since part of my job was being a System Administrator, for the next few years, I did not use Linux as my main OS because of OS X.
I don't remember the specs, but because I jumped trains to Apple computers, I did keep a PC-server-like around the house running Linux for various tasks.
iMac G3 Snow: I ended up getting a second Mac right after the iBook, and eventually my 4 year old son taught himself how to read by playing online educational games on this machine.
Powerbook G4 667Mhz: Within a few months, I sold my iBook and got a Powerbook G4, during that time I started enjoy photography quite a bit as well, and an application like iPhoto really helped contribute my new hobby. It was also around this time that I got my first iPod, which since then I've owned at least 10 different versions/incarnations of the product...
Powerbook G4 1 Ghz w/ Firewire 800Mhz: By now, one could say I had become an Apple fanboy, and I just 'needed' to upgrade to the shiniest and greatest models.
Dell Inspiron 5100: I think this laptop was a 2.4 Ghz Pentium 4, and I had upgraded it to 1 Gb of RAM. I changed jobs somewhere around this time, and decided to dive in back into Linux. I ran the very first versions of Fedora Core on this laptop.
Dell e1750: This laptop was the first and only 17" display laptop I've ever owned. It was a beast, heavy, too heavy, but what really disappointed me on this laptop (which the price was comparable to an Apple Powerbook [now being called Macbook Pro]) was the fact that for that price I didn't get a webcam nor a built-in microphone. I sold this machine within a couple of months of buying it, and never bought a Dell computer for myself ever again.
Black Macbook Intel Core 2 Duo 2.0 Ghz: This was my first mac with the Intel processor. My biggest problem with this laptop was this 'bug' on the lid which given enough time of opening and closing the lid, it would start making these horrible suspense-movie like squeaky door noise. It was unbearable, and even though sending it to Apple to get it fixed temporarily, it was annoying... but as far as the looks, it was possibly my favorite Macbook to date.
Macbook Pro Intel Core 2 Duo 2.33 Ghz: After getting very annoyed by the squeaky sound of the Black Macbook, I upgraded to a Macbook Pro with some help from my employer at the time.
MSI 1.8 Intel Core 2 Duo Laptop: In 2007, I got a new job at the company I'm currently employed. I decided to go 100% Linux. I still own this computer, my wife uses it now, and still running great. I wrote a review about this laptop a few years ago.
Eee PC 700: Fun gadget, but it was too slow, and the keyboard too small. I did write an article about how to get a spin of Fedora running on it.Macbook Pro Intel Core 2 Duo 2.4Ghz: The last model before they released the unibody versions. It was a great laptop, and I actually dual booted OS X and Fedora Linux on it. It worked great.
Eee PC 900: Much better than then 700, but the keyboard was still tough to use. It worked really well with Fedora, the Xandros distro that came with it wasn't very good.
Eee PC 1000: Greatest Eee PC (IMHO), I never sold it, my kids use it now, I did upgraded the SSD to a RunCore, which made write speed 2.5x faster.
HP Pavilion a6700y AMD Phenom 9150e Quad Core 1.8 Ghz w/ 4 Gb of RAM: The first desktop I've owned in almost 10 years... pretty crazy!
Lenovo Thinkpad T500 w/ Intel Core 2 Duo Processor P8600 (2.40GHz 1066MHz 3MBL2) and 4 Gb of RAM: My current personal laptop, running Fedora 12.Like I said in the beginning, I think this list is at least 90% accurate, and it has been fun to research the information online, and try to correlate the years of my life and the different stages I've been through with what computer I was using at the time. If I remember of more details, I will make sure to update this post.
Goodbye VMware Workstation
Today I converted my last VMware disk image to Sun's Virtualbox on my Fedora 12 install. I converted a CentOS 5 image that I use as a sandbox for installs and upgrades of Koha, an Integrated Library System.
On my Windows XP image, I installed Boxee using Virtualbox's 3D hardware acceleration, and it work pretty well. I also watched a Netflix movie via Silverlight on the virtual machine and worked great!
I've been able to match every functionality I needed from VMware Workstation with Sun's Virtualbox with the same (or less) amount of hassle.
On my Windows XP image, I installed Boxee using Virtualbox's 3D hardware acceleration, and it work pretty well. I also watched a Netflix movie via Silverlight on the virtual machine and worked great!
I've been able to match every functionality I needed from VMware Workstation with Sun's Virtualbox with the same (or less) amount of hassle.
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