Author: jcberthon

Head of Earth Observation and Science dept at CGI. Free/libre advocate, traveller, curious and cyclist. Views are my own. https://www.berthon.eu/
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Déjà Dup, an easy backup tool! Déjà vu?

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 “Déjà Dup, an easy backup tool! Déjà vu?”

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What is cloud computing?

Original author: AJ Ashton | License: CC Public Domain
What is?
For a short and quick answer, cloud computing is moving your computer experience from your desktop to the internet (the cloud!).

From the consumer of computing services perspective, it means having those services accessible from the internet:

  • Online application (e.g. Google Mail, Google Docs, etc.) ;
  • Online storage (e.g. S3Fox + Amazon S3, Flickr, Apple MobileMe, etc.) ;
  • Online services (e.g. Google Maps, Airline reservation, etc.).

From an IT person or software developer perspective, it means that you deploy your application on a (potential virtual) infrastructure or platform on the internet:

  • Virtual infrastructure or grid (e.g. Sun Grid, Amazon EC2, though both have their own specificities) ;
  • Platform (e.g. Google Apps Engine) ;
  • Identity verification, storage, payments, etc.
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Re: Why I love Windows 7, hate Linux, and think the Mac is lame

Source: ZDNet.com | IT Project Failures

The article on ZDNet is about why Michael Krigsman (CEO of a IT consulting company) loves Windows 7, hates Linux and thinks the Mac is lame. The article is pretty short and gives 3 reasons to be satisfied by Windows 7, by presenting an old screenshot of Linux to present it in a miserable way and displaying a fake version of Apple Mac vs. PC advertisement. All a good laugh if it was not serious.

After reading Michael’s post, I cannot help but remember this: “It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt.”

Continue reading “Re: Why I love Windows 7, hate Linux, and think the Mac is lame”

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On the road again

Happy travelling in Christchurch, NZ
Happy travelling in Christchurch, NZ

One month ago, we were back from our trip around the world. That was an amasing experience, it is so much a different way of travelling and getting to know other cultures! You may have read all about our experience along our way or seen our photographs from so many countries: Russia, Mongolia, China, Nepal, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Myanmar (Burma), Sydney, New Zealand, French Polynesia, Easter Island, and the northern Chile and Argentina.

And we did not get it enough from it! There are still so many places that we want to see, so many things to experience. So we decided to go again on the road.

Not too long, not too many countries this time, and changing of means of transport. Our next adventure will be in Patagonia (southern tip of South America, a region that encompass Chile and Argentina) on our own bicycle.

We will be touring Patagonia for a little less than 3 months with the up and down of the road, weather and our physical and mental strengths. But we anticipate it as a great and rewarding journey.

As with our world trip, we will try along the road to write some of our feelings and experiences on our blog, a dedicated section will open soon. And if the internet connections are not too bad, we will even add new photographs!

There is a whole magical world there, and we are going to explore it!

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Photon – A WordPress plug-in for PhpWebGallery 1.7

Photon 4.2.1 (non official release) by @jcberthon

You can find an updated (and non official version) of Jillij Photon plug-in for WordPress. It now works with PhpWebGallery 1.7.0.
This plug-in is licensed under the same condition as the original one: GPL
Instructions are included in a readme.txt file in the package.

If you are on Windows (XP or Vista), you might want to try 7-zip to open the previous archives. 7-zip is free of charge and is free (as in freedom). It has many advantages compare to the built in archiving facility of recent Windows release.

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A thousand miles journey starts with a single step (Lao Tseu)

Hello World, we are coming…That’s it! In a few days my partner and I will do the first step of a long journey around the World. We are going to travel for a whole year, spend time together, enjoy life, people, cultures, landscapes and food together. This World seems so beautiful and magical, that it feels natural to just let’s go exploring it!

As we are going to enjoy the real life, my virtual me is going to hibernate. This blog will no longer be updated for the coming year and maybe even more. As a temporary measure, I will close commenting just before our departure, which is scheduled on the 1st of August 2007. Closing commenting is just momentarily to avoid this blog being flooded by unsolicited commercial message during the coming 365 days.

I never yet talk much about my interest in bande dessinée (a special form of comics) or comics. Though, I definitely prefer the first ones, I am fond of the Calvin & Hobbes comic strip by Bill Watterson. I find this strip so refreshing and funny, if you do not know it, give it a try at your local library or bookshop! Fans of Watterson’s work may have noticed a small plagiarism I used earlier. To give credits to whom it deserves, here is the small strip that inspired us our travel blog name (magical-world.eu) and my previous sentence:

“It’s a Magical World (…) let’s go exploring!”

Credits: Bill Watterson

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Avahi – discovering services a network offers

Avahi - LemurAvahi is a protocol implementation that is using the Zeroconf protocol specification to discover services available (and advertised) on the network. Avahi really does simplifying the configuration and use of certain services that are supporting it.

The number of application integrating support for Avahi is everyday growing and you can even interoperate with client of other protocol implementation like Bonjour from Apple.

Of course, Avahi is integrated with Ubuntu and it is pretty easy to activate it.

In the Gnome main menu “System” -> “Administration”, there is an item called “Services”. Simply launch it and scroll down the list of services until you find Multicast DNS service discovery (avahi-daemon). Select it and close the application.

Application like Rhythmbox, Gaim/Pidgin, etc. will now be able to use this service. You can for example share your music on the local network. So, your siblings can access your music library and listen to it too. I will write a short article on it soon.

On some of my Ubuntu systems, I had to tweak a system file before it was working. Continue reading if you are in this case.

Continue reading “Avahi – discovering services a network offers”

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What about a Pretty Pidgin on your Feisty Fawn?

Pidgin 2.0 logoRecently, I have been configuring Avahi on my laptop and desktop computers and I wanted to evaluate its possibilities. The first obvious choice was using Rhythmbox to share music within the two computers. But that was too easy, basically once Avahi was configured, I had nothing else to do, it just worked…

Thus, I wanted another challenge and I was remembering that Gaim (now Pidgin) should support the Bonjour protocol. Bonjour is an implementation of Zeroconf made by Apple and release as open source. Avahi is another implementation of Zeroconf and is readily installed on Ubuntu by default, though not activated. However, the installed Gaim on Ubuntu 7.04 cannot create a Bonjour account. That was just the excuse I needed to take some times getting Pidgin and installing it.

The installation will describes how to install Pidgin with support for Bonjour and Avahi on Ubuntu 7.04, and I will try to keep it the easiest possible. However, you will have to use the command line. No worries, though, as I will try to make it easy! :-) A second little chapter will explain how to activate Avahi. This guide has been validated on both the 32bit and 64bit versions of Ubuntu.

Continue reading “What about a Pretty Pidgin on your Feisty Fawn?”

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Re: The Indulgences of Open Source

In reply from The Indulgences of Open Source (by Jonathan Cogley).

Jonathan, the author of the above linked post, is talking about free software projects and their relation with the understanding of “customers“. To illustrate his writing, he provides two examples of free projects: DokuWiki and AWStats.

Before I go in deeper analysis, let’s talk semantic. I am not an English native speaker, but I figure that English might be close enough to French so I do not make a misunderstanding. A customer is the person that buys or receives a product, it might not be the “end-user”, the one who is actually using the product. Knowing the philosophy behind free software, I also feel uneasy to call an end-user a customer when they go and download the project. Free software give the end-user the same rights and freedom as the producer, he can therefore be an actor and/or contributor of the project. Something not possible in the traditional producer and customer view.

Products and customers are bound to the commercial world, whilst projects and users belong to the free world.

Now, Let’s analyse Jonathan’s train of thought on each subject separately.

Continue reading “Re: The Indulgences of Open Source”