New Year Resolutions 2010

In my first post on this blog I declared an intention to learn non-Microsoft languages and technologies so that I was equipped to handle both sides of the fence (hence the blog title). During the last year I have been looking at learning PHP using Drupal as a platform for my development. This is progressing well and I have a few mini-projects underway – more about those in future posts.

Ok – that’s it. Windows 7 is outta here!

In an earlier post I detailed the upgrade of my Vista partition to Windows 7 Eval and how smoothly the process went. Well I’m afraid that the shine has gone off Windows 7 and after looking at the upgrade prices I’m hacked off enough to say that I’ll not be bothering.

Making an Audio version of the Ubuntu Podcast

I listen to a number of podcasts on a regular basis, mainly programming related, during my 45 minute commute to and from work every day. Now almost all of them are downloaded in audio format but recently the Ubuntu Podcast as stopped posting these formats. In a recent episode (#32) Joel and Nick explained they reasoning behind this and I fully support them in their decision – I mean, it’s an overhead for them in terms of time and storage/bandwidth. Add to that the fact that I can still subscribe via iTunes and some would wonder why I’m making a fuss (which I’m not btw!).

Sending EMail from the Command Line with Ubuntu Server

In a previous post I wrote about the problems I had encountered while trying to configure my Ubuntu Server to send emails from the command line (actually from a script but it amounts to the same thing). I overcame the problem in the short term by using curl to send messages via Twitter but I really wanted to work out how to end emails instead. Well after a bit more research and some testing I have cracked it 🙂

Keeping OpenDNS Updated with Ubuntu Server

In a previous post I explained how I configued my Ubuntu Server to send a tweet whenever my external IP address changed. Well I found that no only did my external IP address change with startling regularity but it was also causing my OpenDNS settings to become out of sync.

Basically in the house we have a single PC and the rest are laptops. Now I have the OpenDNS updater on the PC and this will syncronise my external IP address with OpenDNS when it is turned on – but what if the IP address changes and that PC is not turned on.? Answer, all my parental controls go out of the window!