Category: Computer bits

Computer stuff

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PDF printing and Google Chrome oddness

Encountering some odd behaviour on the home computer with Fedora 18 that I have to dig into some more. I’m not sure if it’s Fedora 18 related, just something really odd going on with my installation, or some old config left over from versions ago.

Google Chrome (stable and beta) has been doing this weird thing on some pages where the page renders, but only a black page is displayed. I can move the mouse around and see where links are because they show up in the status bar, but everything is black. Page source is there and everything looks like it should render fine but nothing. Reinstalling Chrome and deleting ~/.config/google-chrome/ doesn’t seem to have helped. Very odd.

The other problem I’ve run into recently is printing PDF files. Pages with just text print out fine, but if there are any images on the page, only the first few centimeters of the page prints and the rest is blank. It’s like the printer is being told to print the page before it’s received all the data. Kind of reminds me of an out of memory issue. It’s not the printer, because I can print the same document from my laptop without any problems. More oddness.

Haven’t really had much time to sit down and do any serious troubleshooting. They’ve been more like annoying inconveniences than anything. Will have to sit down and do some troubleshooting.

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Reworking an old project

Now that I have my equipment database project living comfortably over at code.google.com, it’s time to think about how I want to rewrite it and what I want to do it with. The new version of whatever I end up creating will live over at github, since that’s what all the cool kids seem to be using these days.

Since PHP is what I know, it’s the most likely candidate for this new version (although I’m open to using something else). Leaning heavily towards using some kind of framework for it, although I haven’t picked one out yet.

I had a thought that I could maybe use Drupal to take care of the front end stuff with the back end being handled by modules that I would create. Each piece of equipment would be a Drupal ‘node’ and modules could be used to create the reports as ‘views’. I need to dig into Drupal dev more to see if something like this would be viable.

Lots of possibilities to choose from. All of them will force me to expand my rudimentary programming skills earn more skill levels in programming.

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Twitter archive

I just discovered that under your Twitter account settings, Twitter now lets you download a complete archive of your tweets. Scroll down to where it says “Your Twitter archive” and click the button. They’ll send  you an email with a link where you can download all your tweets packaged up nicely in a .zip file containing everything you need to view your tweets in a browser and in a CSV file to import into a spreadsheet or database of your choice.

You can check out my Twitter archive over here (up to 20-Feb-2013).

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Moving time

After a couple of months running with MovableType 5 at blog.ab4ug.net, I’ve decided that it’s time to close up shop here and start off fresh and clean.

This will be the last entry here at blog.imabug.net, but the site and archives will remain. The blog here has been active for nearly 10 years and has been through numerous MovableType upgrades starting somewhere around 2.1. The database has seen beta versions, upgrades, downgrades, switched back and forth between MT and OpenMelody at least a couple of times and seems to be showing its age these days.

Time to start fresh. New posts will show up at imablog.net, a shiny new installation of MovableType 5.2.3 with a brand new database.

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A place to stash some code

Long, long ago, I cobbled together a database and a bunch of PHP scripts to help me keep track of x-ray equipment and the dates I tested them. There are a few other things that I track with it, and a bunch more things that I’d like to keep track of.

For most of its existence, I was the only one who used it so features were added on an “as I wanted/needed them” basis. Worked well enough for my purposes. Made attempts to keep track of bugs and features I wanted using Bugzilla, but I never really used it very consistently.

Now my little database has been “discovered” by management at work and others are starting to poke around in it. They’re also starting to make requests for additions, so I decided it was time to start up again with some bug/issue/feature tracking. I didn’t want to go with something heavy like Bugzilla again. Wanted something relatively lightweight, that I could use to track multiple projects and wouldn’t be too difficult to install/configure/maintain. I also wanted to be able to access it online so I’d still be able to reach it if I wasn’t at work or home. I started looking at a few, then came across Google’s project hosting, code.google.com.

After looking at the docs for a bit, I decided it would probably work. Nothing for me to install, configure or maintain. Works with version control software. Has a wiki for documentation. Fairly flexible looking bug tracker. Pretty much everything I was looking for.

My little equipment database project has a home out in the wild now. With more people using it now, I think there will be a little more motivation to keep up with the bug tracking and continuing development (in what little time I have for it). Maybe it will help making the long wanted re-write a little easier.