Tag: Linux
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Linux: Using dd to erase a hard drive (using pv to view progress)
I occasionally need to wipe a hard drive and give it to someone else. When I do, I’m always careful to make sure that I have wiped it clean. Of course, wiping a hard drive clean is a bit more complicated than just deleting everything or even reformatting it. If you really want to make…
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bypassing the “ssl_error_no_cypher_overlap” error in Firefox 34
Generally speaking, it’s a bad idea to override security protocols browsers have instituted as they are designed to keep you safe on the internet (in the “less likely to be hacked” sense). However, with a recent update to Firefox 34, a website I use all the time for my research that is run by my…
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Linux – Fixing PDFs opening in GIMP in Firefox/Zotero (instead of Evince or Okular)
I’m not exactly sure why, but with the latest Firefox updates, every time I download a PDF using Firefox or try to open one using Zotero integrated with Firefox, the PDF opens in GIMP. This didn’t used to happen, but it’s really annoying. It’s doubly annoying since you can’t solve it inside Firefox. It would…
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Linux: Using GIMP to wrap text in an image
I’m not an expert in graphic design, but I like playing around with images on occasion. I had an itching to modify a logo recently that included text wrapped in a circle. It took me a couple of hours to figure out how to wrap text like that in GIMP and the tutorials I found…
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Linux: Creating Maps on Linux with QGIS
For my job, I occasionally need to create maps to illustrate some concept or another. For instance, it can be useful to see a the racial makeup of the US as a map color-coded to reflect the percent of the population that identifies as black in each state. It provides a quick illustration of how people…
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ubuntu: HP Elitebook 8540p wireless
This is primarily a note for me, but I just spent 3 hours reformatting my HP Elitebook 8540p because I couldn’t get it to connect to my new 802.11n router. Turns out all I needed to do was switching the security on the router to WPA from WEP. So, anyone searching for how to get…
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LinuxMint or Ubuntu: Automount Server Share
(Updated to reflect changes in Ubuntu 12.04 LTS – 5/15/2012) While I’m still not 100% sure how I got my file server to share all the files across the network (whatever I did, it worked; when the server dies, I’ll figure it out and post it here). Regardless, I recently reformatted my desktop and had…
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LinuxMint: Keyboard Shortcuts to Move Windows Between Monitors
If you don’t have multiple monitors hooked up to your desktop computer, you’re really missing out. Having dual monitors is a delight when it comes to being able to see more than one window and work even faster. And to make the experience even more enjoyable, Ubuntu variants of Linux, including LinuxMint, my new Linux…
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Ubuntu: Adequate OCR for free on Linux
Even though I have mostly switched from Windows to Linux, I do have to emulate Windows for a few things just because the software for Linux either isn’t very good, doesn’t work, or in one case I haven’t learned it (R rather than SPSS). One of the reasons I would run Windows over Linux was…
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Android: An e-book reader that copies, pastes, and highlights text
As my regular readers know, Debi and I recently bought new cellphones that run the Android operating system. For about three years before that, we were running an old Windows Mobile OS (I think version 5). On our old phones, I had installed an ebook reader that allowed me to copy and paste text from…