Category: Computer bits

Computer stuff

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Fedora Live USB?

I wonder if I can put the contents of the Fedora 7 LiveCD onto a USB drive and boot off it.

Now wouldn’t that be cool. I’ll have to search the interwebs to see if anybody has done it yet.

Update: I guess it can be done.

Now I’m going to have to get a USB thumb drive to try this out on.

Update 2: Got the LiveCD onto my 2 GB thumb drive. Tested it out and it’s very cool Way faster than using a CD. The best part? I can still use the remaining 1.2 GB that’s not taken up by the LiveCD stuff for porting things around. So cool.

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MT4b3 impressions

After futzing about with MT4 doing various things to see what I can break, I’ve got it settled down using my current set of templates. Everything seems to be working fine on the front end. There are still a few issues with the back end UI that need to be ironed out, and a few issues that I’m working through to figure out if it’s a problem with MT or on my end.

Some of the things I’ve found so far:

  • Display options settings in entry creation page don’t stick. Also doesn’t get settings from Preferences/Blog Settings/Entries (known bug)
  • Preferences/Blog Settings/Entries: If I select All and then Save Changes, the selection reverts back to Custom.
  • Basename text field is only one character wide
  • JS dropdown menus drop down too quickly
  • Would be nice if the publishing settings for a template could be set from the template listing page, rather than having to edit each template individually to set the publishing setting. i.e. Check the templates and select something like Dynamic or Static from the More actions dropdown
  • Comments take a really long time to publish
  • Name/email address fields don’t go away when a user is signed into Typekey like they do with my MT3.35 blog
  • Autosave kicks in even when nothing has been changed
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Kicking MovableType 4’s wheels

Finally got around to getting MT4b2 up and running on the server. It’s taken a few days for me to get the plugins copied over from the previous version and all the new default templates restored, but now everything seems to publish and work. I’ve got it running with a fairly plain default look right now.

There’s a lot of stuff in MT4 to wrap my brain around. The default templates have a new structure that give it much more of a programming type feel. Most of the tags look pretty much the same, so I probably could have gone with the templates I’m currently using, but I wanted to start off fresh to check out the new templating structure. It’s going to take a while for me to figure out, but it looks pretty cool. Very modular.

Not all the plugins I’m currently using are compatible with MT4, but none of the ones that don’t work are vital, so I can wait until new versions come out. I’m really digging the new UI. It has kind of a Vox-y feel to it almost. Lots of new features to investigate and check out.

It’s going to be fun to play with. MT4b3 should be coming out soon (tomorrow according to a recent email on the ProNet list). A little more testing and tweaking, and I think I might try switching over to the new version for some bleeding edge testing.

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Linux transition phase 2

The move to Linux (Fedora 7) on my desktop at work is coming along nicely (much better once I remembered to punch a few holes in the firewall so I could establish NFS and Samba connections to various other computers). I’ve got calendaring and task lists going through Evolution. Still using Thunderbird for mail, although I might move that over to Evolution too.

One stumbling block I’m running into is that most of the spreadsheets I use for equipment testing have significant parts that break under OpenOffice, likely because they use functions that aren’t implemented in OO. It’s going to take a while to go through them all and figure out what functions are causing the problems and how to work around them.

One significant benefit is that I can test out things like software and config changes a lot easier from my desk before implementing on the server.

The IT folks are planning a move from Groupwise to MS Exchange and Outlook. Not sure how I’ll deal with that when the switch happens. Just one more thing to work out.

A few things on the to-do list:

  • Work out GPG integration with email
  • Figure out why some apps aren’t launching properly
  • Database replication
  • Fix my spreadsheets
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Oooo, MT4

MT 4 is out a little earlier than I expected and is now open source no less (even more unexpected). I’m eagerly anticipating getting it running to kick some tires, but that will have to wait until next week when I get back. My new Fedora 7 desktop will make the perfect test platform too.