August 2007 archive

Moving to NetBeans (from Eclipse)

NetBeans Projects Pane
I'm trying out NetBeans 5.5.1 as a Java IDE and I'm very impressed so far. Thought I'd cough up some related thoughts on programming environments and free software, mixed with some personal history:
MS Visual Basic
I began my corporate programming career using Visual Basic 4, and moved on up to VB6, which I continued [...]

Inside the Library

Just to show that you shouldn't always judge a book by its cover, and that the inside can be more warm and inviting:
This is part of the children's section at our local public library. I hope our daughter will have happy memories of going to the library and visiting all of the worlds it [...]

This Building is a LIBRARY

In case there were any doubts.
Stark, institutional, and maybe we would say ugly, but functional. You can, in fact, find, read, and check out books here.
It is certainly easier to identify from the road than some other buildings, and there is something to be said for that.

There is also a 2816 x 2112 version [...]

Citibank: You're on Notice

Updated, 29 September 2007: See below...
Citibank: Support free software--by supporting open standards and making your web site accessible--or become dead to me.
Free software users: please take the time to complain loudly but politely when you are prevented from using web sites that "require" Microsoft Windows plus Internet Explorer or Macintosh plus Safari or whatever combination [...]

Who will own (and police) our digital future?

So the RIAA and MPAA want the colleges and universities (and corporations and your grandmother and etc.) to enforce our out-of-control copyright laws. It's disturbing how much power these organizations already wield, and how much more power they think they should have in dictating how free the flow of information should be. Our [...]

Perfectly Cromulent Image Cropping with the GIMP

Make that extracromulent.
I'm guessing that most people with a digital camera or a web site have spent time cropping pictures. There are lots of programs that can do this. Often we start out by using the ones that happen to be installed, and we manage for better or worse with the functionality they happen to [...]

Remarkable Free (as in free culture) Photography by Paulo Barcellos

I've had it in mind lately to write some book/music/movie reviews about non-free culture, which I have mixed feelings about. This is a site ostensibly devoted to free software and free culture, after all. I may end up writing those posts, along with some hand wringing explanatory notes (namely that I'm all about "free association [...]

Friday Free Wallpaper Post: Patio

My patio. It was wet. I thought it would make a good desktop background.
This image is free and I'm releasing it in to the public domain. I took a 2560 x 1024 pixel slice out of it to use as dual monitor wallpaper, and of course you're free to resize it to [...]

system76 creative alternative support

I've been happy with the system76 desktop machine I bought last year pre-installed with Ubuntu. I got it partly to support a company selling GNU/Linux machines, and partly to avoid the Microsoft tax and possible complications with buying a cheap Dell machine and replacing Windows with Ubuntu. (This was before Dell started offering [...]

GNU/Linux Firefox image display problem caused by CSS padding

Do not adjust the picture on your television set. There is nothing wrong with the horizontal. That's what the accompanying image is supposed to look like. This image, with this post, but not most of the other images on this site.
Continuing on the theme from my last post of "moving to fewer [...]