Ode to Amazon’s automated systems

Posted on Sunday, 19 May, 2013 by fnx

A week or so ago I received a parcel from Amazon.  It was addressed to me, but inside the only thing was an HP inkjet cartridge (I own a Canon printer) and the receipt was someone else's (their name, address, etc., nothing to do with me).  Turns out, Amazon can't cope with this sort of error.

Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Adding a guest WiFi connection to a Technicolor broadband router

Posted on Thursday, 16 May, 2013 by fnx

I recently had to switch out my older router to the latest PlusNet “stock” router as it was playing up.  The old one had a “guest” WiFi capability which I liked, and so I set about trying to add it to the new one.

Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

HDMI Audio in Scientific Linux 6

Posted on Friday, 22 March, 2013 by fnx

I had expected that this was going to be a long post with excruciating detail on what I had to do to get audio out of my new PVR's nVidia card HDMI output.  But like all correct solutions, the answer was simple.

Continue reading →

Posted in Software, Tech | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Migrating from Visual SourceSafe to Subversion

Posted on Friday, 21 September, 2012 by fnx

We migrated from VSS to SVN some years ago, but the question of how to do it still crops up every now and again, so I thought I'd post my notes on the conversion process that I happened to use.

Continue reading →

Posted in Software | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment

Changing the default iPod application under GNOME 3

Posted on Saturday, 4 August, 2012 by fnx

I've taken to using the rather nice cross-platform Clementine in lieu of Rhythmbox, which has been glitching and freezing since I upgraded to Fedora 16.  However, Nautilus (the file manager) was still proffering Rhythmbox when I plugged my son's iPod in.

Continue reading →

Posted in Software, Tech | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Read the current terminal size from within bash

Posted on Thursday, 2 August, 2012 by fnx

I've long wondered about a clean way to read terminal (xterm) escape sequence responses, especially from script/the command line.  I've just come across a need to query the terminal size, and so it was time to go digging. Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments

Using multiple fetchmail instances for instant gratification

Posted on Saturday, 14 July, 2012 by fnx

For various reasons I have 10 email accounts spread across various servers for the family and me, and have always used an instance of fetchmail to round-robin connect to these and download all emails locally (see my previous post about cloud email). But this means I might have to wait 5-10 minutes to get new emails! But no longer...
Continue reading →

Posted in Software | Tagged , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Pain with grub2 when upgrading from Fedora 14 to Fedora 16

Posted on Thursday, 21 June, 2012 by fnx

I meant to blog this when it was still fresh in my mind, but frankly, it was such a nightmare upgrading my Fedora 14 box to Fedora 16 that I just wanted to put it all behind me and get the basics working again. Continue reading →

Posted in Software | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

MythTV and the UK Digital Switchover

Posted on Saturday, 16 June, 2012 by fnx

We had part one of the Digital Switchover in our area on Wednesday, so I finally had to bite the bullet and do a proper DVB channel re-scan on my MythTV box.

Continue reading →

Posted in Software, Tech | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Removing the large resize grip / button in GNOME Terminal

Posted on Saturday, 16 June, 2012 by fnx

I like to have my GNOME Terminal scrollbar on the left (it reminds me of xterm then).  But in GNOME 3 there's a fugly triangular grip/button that sits in the bottom right obscuring text!

Continue reading →

Posted in Software | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment