An Icelandic Saga

Posted on July 16, 2010 by jcberthon

On the road...We are on the edge to write a new Icelandic saga. In a few days, we will embark on a plane direction: Iceland.

10 years ago we were leaving Iceland after an incredible time there. Now we are going back with our bicycle to explore it differently.

Iceland is an amazing place, but it is a difficult one too, especially on a bike. The weather is harsh, the wind strong, the roads are tricky and bridges only exist on road #1! But Iceland is a magical place, it’s wild, it’s colourful, it’s warm and cold.

Just let’s go exploring it!
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Posted in Cycling, General, Iceland, Travel | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

How do geeks have fun?

Posted on July 15, 2010 by jcberthon

How do computer geeks have fun?
Warning: If you are not a geek, you better not read further for 2 good reasons:

  1. you will not find that funny at all!
  2. you will be scared about the psychic health of geeks and ask the police to arrest them.

While installing a software, I stumble on this small message:

If you are a hardcore computer nerd staring at this file through your favorite text editor, you are probably hunting [the build instructions!] Well it’s not here. [...] Because all the build instructions are now in Apache’s cool web-site.[...]

Continue reading to learn more about the context.

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Testing DNS response time

Posted on December 6, 2009 by jcberthon

Since Google released its Public DNS, I was curious about how it would really perform. Thus, I have looked around and I have found a script on the internet that I ran at home, here are the results:

+------------------+--------+--------+--------+
| Domain           | My ISP | Google | OpenDNS|
+------------------+--------+--------+--------+
| lifehacker.com   |  17 ms |  68 ms |  68 ms |
+------------------+--------+--------+--------+
| facebook.com     |  18 ms |  69 ms |  68 ms |
+------------------+--------+--------+--------+
| manu-j.com       |  19 ms |  79 ms |  70 ms |
+------------------+--------+--------+--------+
| reddit.com       |  58 ms |  88 ms |  66 ms |
+------------------+--------+--------+--------+
| tb4.fr           |  16 ms |  64 ms |  67 ms |
+------------------+--------+--------+--------+
| bbc.co.uk        |  55 ms |  65 ms |  67 ms |
+------------------+--------+--------+--------+
| lemonde.fr       |  58 ms |  63 ms |  78 ms |
+------------------+--------+--------+--------+
| dailymotion.com  |  58 ms |  66 ms |  68 ms |
+------------------+--------+--------+--------+
| faz.de           |  57 ms |  65 ms |  99 ms |
+------------------+--------+--------+--------+
| gmx.de           |  56 ms |  62 ms |  68 ms |
+------------------+--------+--------+--------+

Google Public DNS and OpenDNS performed quite similarly. However, my own ISP is still quicker to respond, a possible answer is that Google DNS in Europe are located in Frankfurt, Germany.

N.B.: these tests were performed on a wireless link under Mac OS X Leopard in Toulouse, France. If you want to run the script on a Mac, you should change the first line of the script to #!/bin/bash

Update 2009.12.10:

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Surfing the web in 64 bit

Posted on September 10, 2009 by jcberthon
Adobe Flash plug-in 64bit

Adobe Flash plug-in 64bit

The major problem faced by 64-bit Linux users is getting Flash Player to work properly on the platform. With the latest version of Ubuntu, it installs the 32-bit release of Adobe Flash Player along with the necessary 32-bit libraries so it can work.

However, using 32-bit Flash is sometimes buggy (when it is working). What about a 64-bit version of Flash Player?

Gnash, the free (libre) alternative is not enough mature to work on all web sites. But Adobe is currently working on a 64-bit version of its player. It is now available in the labs for download. This is still a pre-release, so using this plug-in could make your browser unstable (also see warning at the end of this post).

Before installing it, you should remove any previous installation of Adobe Flash Player, you can use Synaptic (System -> Administration) for this purpose.

The downloaded file has the extension .tar.gz, it is a compression format like ZIP. You can double-click on it and extract the file (libflashplayer.so) to your home directory, or use the command line: “$ tar zxf libflashplayer-10.0.45.2.linux-x86_64.so.tar.gz“. Now, you need to copy the extracted file to a system directory. It is assumed that the extracted file is in your home directory.

$ sudo cp $HOME/libflashplayer.so /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/

You can now launch Firefox or Chromium on your 64-bit system and watch Flash media content. My own experience is a more stable system! But do not forget, Flash is not a free software.

Updated 2010-06-08: Adobe issued a security warning for all Flash players (all platforms) covering 10.0.45.2 and earlier release. Which most probably means that it includes the 64bit version as well (this is not confirmed). The only safe version (recommended by Adobe itself) at the time of writing is Flash 10.1 RC which is sadly 32bit-only.

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Making Chrome flashy on Ubuntu

Posted on August 30, 2009 by jcberthon
Giving Chrome its wings

Giving Chrome its wings

After making the chromes shine on Ubuntu, let’s make them flashy! In the previous article you learned how to have Google Chrome and Chromium installed, now that you have used them for awhile, you perhaps find out that you cannot play video on youtube.com or dailymotion.com, that you do not have annoying advertisement, etc. Yes, Google Chrome and Chromium Linux versions do not yet support Adobe Flash!

However, since you are not afraid to try a test version of these browsers on your favorite OS, you will not mind activating a test feature: plug-ins.

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Making Chrome shine on Ubuntu

Posted on August 26, 2009 by jcberthon
Chromium

Chromium

Google Chrome is an internet browser (or navigator) based on the free software project Chromium. Chrome is long available on Windows, but only really recently is it available on Mac OS X and Linux, though still under “beta” (meaning testing/experimental) stage.

I have been using Chrome or Chromium without any obvious differences (at least on Linux).

So why Chrome/Chromium when there is already Firefox? First it is a matter of choice, I could answer you why so many different vehicles? Second, I like the look and feel of Chrome, it optimises the use of screen real estate, it is not cluttered with many menus or actions on the toolbar and it seems to always know where I want a new tab to be opened. Third, it launches really fast.

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Overwhelmed by the press coverage

Posted on July 19, 2009 by jcberthon

First of all, as a free(dom) software advocate I am obviously biased towards all proprietary software makers. Anyway, this position can sometimes make me see things from a different perspective.

Now here is the big news these days: Microsoft had Windows 7 in pre-order for a bargain price, but only a limited amount of licences (e.g. 76 000 licences for France). And they were overwhelm by demands from users!?!

Wait a minute, how come overwhelm? Basically, many users (no numbers were published) connected to Microsoft servers to go through a couple of pages in order to pre-order Windows 7. Basically, this is just a few requests to some servers to download web pages (a few kilobytes). Does Facebook, Twitter, Gmail or even Windows Live (Hotmail, MSN, etc.) services just collapse because people are using them? In comparison, Facebook handles 120 millions connections per day!

So there are three solutions to the fact that Microsoft servers could not handle the amount of requests :

  1. Microsoft Windows servers are too poorly performing for such a job as handling web pages: obviously wrong as Windows Live seems to be able to handle such loads ;
  2. Because of the rarity of the amount of licences on sale, people rushed to be able to buy one. Thus, servers could be overwhelm by demands for a really short peek periods ;
  3. Microsoft purposely under-scale its servers for the big sell, so the web will relay the info.

First solution seems wrong. Perhaps it is a mix of the second and third solution, both can create a buzz around Windows 7 sales, and this is what exactly happened as many news related Windows 7 high popularity because so many people tried to buy it that even Microsoft could not handle their requests. Congratulations to the marketing guys, the operation reached its goal!

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You have 4 followers

Posted on June 29, 2009 by jcberthon

Counting until 4 is accessible to most people, and ought to be mandatory for any computer related software or web pages.
It seems that this is not the case for Twitter!

Twitter indicates 4 followers, but only 2 do exist.

Twitter indicates 4 followers, but only 2 are listed.

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Microsoft vs. the European Union: let’s boycott Opera!

Posted on June 16, 2009 by jcberthon
Butterfly browsing, Nepal

Butterfly browsing, Nepal

First of all, no I do not boycott Opera, but some persons do want that for the reason that Opera Software triggered the whole antitrust browser case in Europe. In support of Opera Software, I am now writing this news using their browser!

The big news that triggered it all is that Microsoft, in response to the EU antitrust browser case, will be removing Internet Explorer 8 from Windows 7 in Europe.

I have to say that I am happy and delighted to hear this news. My point is that Microsoft should only be shipping a raw Windows. The computer manufacturer should then integrate Windows with a software solution of their choice, a software solution that integrates of course a browser and other tools. Just like Windows does not shipped with an office pack, but major computer vendors are adding office software applications to their computers offers.

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Déjà Dup, an easy backup tool! Déjà vu?

Posted on February 23, 2009 by jcberthon
Déjà Dup

Déjà Dup

Déjà Dup is a Gnome-based backup tool that aim for easiness. It provides transparent encryption of your data, can store to an external hard disk or a remote storage (SSH server or Amazon S3) and offers schedule backup.

The tool is extremely simple to use. It offers two big buttons, one for manual backup and one for restoring. Those two functions are accessible in the menu too, as well as preferences and help. That is all.

So how does it work?
Continue reading →

Posted in Linux, Open Source, Ubuntu | Tagged , , , , , , , | 3 Comments