primeval soup

London Marathon

2009-11-30T20:52:00.012Z

Yellow Runner. Originally uploaded by mrtopp Earlier this year in a flash of hyper-optimism (well, that's the only reason I can find) I entered the ballot for a place in the 2010 London Marathon, and then promptly forgot all about it. So it came as a small shock to find out in September that I actually got a place. Lots of people try for years to get into the marathon, it's notoriously tough to

Dropbox plugin for Gnome Do

2009-07-12T19:10:00.007+01:00

Gnome Do 0.82 was released a couple of weeks ago, which includes my new Dropbox plugin. It's designed to work with the Files and Folders Gnome Do plugin, and has the following features. Start/Stop Dropbox Add files to Dropbox Share files with Dropbox Get public URL of shared files View revisions of a file View folder in Dropbox web interface You can read more about the plugin on the Gnome

IE8 in Ubuntu with VirtualBox

2009-02-11T22:22:00.027Z

2009-05-03 - Updated guide for Ubuntu 9.04, Virtualbox 2.2 and IE8 final. 2010-04-08 - Update - unfortunately, this is no longer a viable option, as Microsoft has changed its images to work only under Virtual PC. If you follow the directions above, you get a copy of Windows that has to be reactived, and will then shut down after 3 days (thanks anonymous). If like me you are an Ubuntu user and

WSXGA+ on an Acer AL2032WA with Xorg and Nvidia drivers

2007-01-27T16:49:00.003Z

After a recent apt-get dist-upgrade and upgrade of the Nvidia drivers on my Debian Etch machine, I noticed that my screen resolution was reduced to 1024x768 :-( Having invested a while ago in my lovely Acer AL2032WA flatscreen monitor, I decided it was high time to get the full value out of it. I had previously been running at 1600x1200 after failing to get 1680x1050 (WSXGA+) to work the last

MythTV box - Part 2 - Assembly

2007-01-16T15:29:00.001Z

Once I finally had all the parts, assembling them all was relatively simple, and it was all done in a couple of hours. The P150 is a nice little case, but it weighs quite a bit due to the steel plating used in its construction. The easily removed side and front panels enable good access to the interior, although things were bound to get a little cramped once the heatsink went in. Fitting

MythTV box - Part 1 - Hardware

2007-01-11T17:40:00.001Z

Over the last few weeks I have been engaged in the process of selecting, ordering and assembling the hardware for my new MythTV box. I was originally inspired to do this after reading Garry Parkers excellent MythTV Ubuntu HowTo. A quick experiment adding a capture card and MythTV to my existing Debian machine, and I was convinced. After doing a bit more reading about setting up MythTV systems,