Shane Sveller

If, like me, you’ve built your Ubuntu machine using LVM for all partitions except /boot, you can do a live backup of your system using LVM snapshots and the dump tool. Read the rest of this entry »

• TextMate - Programmer’s text editor
• 1Password - secure password and information manager that integrates into your browser(s)
• AppZapper - clean up behind software you decide to axe
• Boot Camp - Yeah, there’s still some Windows apps I use. (built into OSX)
• Camouflage - hide those pesky desktop icons for focus and clarity
• CoverSutra - iTunes tool for keyboard shortcuts, album artwork, Spotlight-like search, and Last.FM integration
• Cyberduck - FTP/SFTP client with drag-and-drop and Growl notifications
• Firefox 3.0 - only in release candidate status, but already a contender to finally replace Safari
• Fluid - turn any website into a .app
• Handbrake - DVD-ripping tool for converting DVDs to digital video files for your iPod, AppleTV, XBMC, etc.
• iStat Menus - monitor your CPU, memory, and network usage in your menu bar
• MacPorts - install Unix/linux tools using a tool similar to apt-get
• NeoOffice - good, free replacement for the slow and bloated MS Office
• Parallels Desktop - run Windows or Linux inside OSX
• SquidMan - run the Squid HTTP caching proxy on OSX
• SuperDuper / Carbon Copy Cloner - great backup tool
• ted - Torrent episode downloader - track your favorite TV shows!
• Time Machine - great, simple, configure-and-forget backup solution (built into OSX)
• Twitterific - Twitter client
• WhatSize / GrandPerspective - a graphical overview of what’s eating up all your harddrive space (hint: pr0n.)

• Adium Multi-protocol IM client; supports AIM, Yahoo, MSN, MySpace, Google Talk, and loads more.
• Growl pop-up notifications for anything and everything
• Safari - included with OSX
• Mail and Address Book- included with OSX
• Quicksilver keyboard-based launcher; hard to explain what it does, but useful as all hell
• Firefox browser, though I don’t use it nearly as much on OSX because of Safari
• Schoolhouse homework manager or iProcrastinate
• Colloquy IRC chat client
• Google Mail notifier
• iBackup
• NetNewsWire RSS reader
• Skim PDF reader (Preview is good, Skim is better)
• The Unarchiver for zips, rars, aces, etc.
• Transmission bittorrent client
• VLC media player for files Quicktime won’t handle

If you, like me, use sysv-rc-conf to change the services that run a particular runlevel, i.e. so that runlevel 2 is actually only networked and not GUI as tradition holds, you can set the default runlevel to boot in Ubuntu by editing:

/etc/inittab:
id:3:initdefault

The number in the middle is the runlevel to start by default.

My SFF server machine has been configured to speed up my digital life. Read the rest of this entry »

In order for me to use the official binary drivers, version 169.12, from NVidia with my GeForce 8800GT on Ubuntu Gutsy, I had to do some research. Alberto Milone’s envy tool makes the whole thing almost idiot-proof.
Read the rest of this entry »

My desktop just grew by two 500GB Western Digital Caviar drives. Having installed those, I loaded Gutsy-AMD64 on one using LVM. The partition schema is as follows:

Drive: 500GB #1
Volume Group: server1
Volumes:
	swap_1 - 6GB - swap
	root_1 - 30GB - ext3 - mounted as /
	home_1 - 20GB - ext3 - mounted as /home/
Free space: ~398GB

500GB number two will probably wind up being a RAID mirror via my motherboard. This LVM layout allows me to dynamically allocate space for the many potential Xen DomUs I create.

To install Xen on Gutsy-AMD64 desktop version:
sudo apt-get install ubuntu-xen-desktop-amd64

Read the rest of this entry »

On my home server I’m toying with some Rails clustering and such, using nginx and thin, and now God to watch over things.
With this setup, I can add apps and port-ranges to monitor any time I like, and I can split off a particularly specific configuration group if an app has unusual trends or requirements, such as using loads of memory.
Read the rest of this entry »

In the pursuit of utilizing memcached on my 2008 MacBook with Leopard, I’ve been stuck for a while trying to get the memcached gem to compile and install properly using memcached installed through MacPorts.
Read the rest of this entry »

I got the idea for this post from Robby on Rails…

Things I’ve been using/playing with lately:

• GitHub / Gitorious
• Braid - here’s a braid with rspec tutorial
• Railify - [GitHub]
• Linode
• Nginx with an init script
• Wordpress 2.5 RC1 and now RC2

Read the rest of this entry »