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Free Stuff (computer desk, Monitor, PC)
by Steve Fosdick 17 Sep '08

17 Sep '08

Free to anyone prepared to collect: A PC desk, Width 762mm, Depth 755mm, Height 710mm A 17" monitor (1280x1024@60Hz or 1024x768@85Hz) An AMD K6 PC More details here: http://pelvoux.gotadsl.co.uk/freecycle/index.html

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Self-hosted DDNS
by Mark Rogers 17 Sep '08

17 Sep '08

Are there any free (preferably as in speech) dynamic DNS packages, to provide services similar to those offered by DynDNS? Just to be clear, I'm not looking for something like ddclient (which connects to services like DynDNS), I want to set up my own DNS server which can be updated by those types of clients. (The application is industrial hardware we're supplying as part of other solutions which will often be set up with Internet access, often with dynamic IP, and we want to keep track of them.) -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0845 45 89 555 Registered in England (0456 0902) at 13 Clarke Rd, Milton Keynes, MK1 1LG

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Looking for an alarm/reminder program for Gnome (or X)
by Chris G 17 Sep '08

17 Sep '08

Having decided that there's no application out there that can manage both my calendar/time management *and* my reminder/alarm requirements I've decided to look for a dedicated alarm program. My requirements are:- Must run in the background or be driven by cron so that alarms will appear regardless of what I'm doing (I will be running an X desktop but that's the only guaranteed thing, actually not quite, Firefox is always running too). When an event is due I want to be able to pop up daily reminders from a specified number of days before the event and to be able to stop them when I have 'done' what is required. I'd like the pop-up (flag, whatever) to be permanent until I acknowledge it, something like an icon in the Gnome Panel would be OK. Events need to be specified by date, time of day is unlikely to be significant. For most things a yearly repeat would be fine (e.g. a 'birthday' type reminder), I also have several which are quaterly but I'm prepared to deal with them by setting up four annual reminders if necessary. Kalarm seems to fulfil most of my criteria - any other ideas? Is there something more 'Gnome friendly' or generic maybe? A PIM or groupware application which can do this might be of interest but I will *not* be running it all the time so note the first criterion above. -- Chris Green

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Text munging tool...
by Ruth Bygrave 16 Sep '08

16 Sep '08

The Mac, and other Unix systems, have fairly good text-munging things for mapping typos to corrected words etc. I use TypeIt4Me for on-the- fly corrections of mistakes I make all the time. I'm having a go at OCRing a book that fell apart: what's the best 'black box' for regex text munging (i.e. pour file in, get corrected file out?) for patterns that turn up again and again? Obvious examples from the book include: digits in whitespace between lower-case alpha characters (meaning page numbers); the string 'ddThe' (goodness knows how this happens, but it seems to be a scanning error for ". The"); lower-case letters with a spurious line- break between them; and so on. These are obvious simple regexes without false positives. Do I: 1) Try to use sed? 2) use something someone has already written in perl or python? or 3) try to write something in applescript? (posted to Alug because it's much more of a Unix question than a Mac- specific question) Regards, Ruth

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Debian 3.1
by CDW (Linux) 15 Sep '08

15 Sep '08

My son has picked up a Sun Sparc workstation which has Debian 3.1 on it. It was from a freecycle mail list but the preson donating it was a bit clueless - he said he worked for an Apple Store but the iMac he was also trying to make work, didn't. That was due to a blank boot CD and a dead hard drive. The Sun works and gets to a login prompt but that's the problem, no userids or passwords as you might expect. As my son doesn't have broadband and so can't easily download a full CD, is there an easy way to recover the machine, perhaps by blowing away a file containing the afore-mentioned userids? If so, what can I do to help him? -- __ __| |_ __ __ .-----------------------------------------------. / _/ _` \ V V / | mailto:cdw_alug@the-walker-household.co.uk | \__\__,_|\_/\_/ |_______________________________________________|

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Re: [ALUG] How's the EEE-PC keyboard - does anyone here have one?
by Bev Nicolson 14 Sep '08

14 Sep '08

Bamboozled and Confused, I wouldn't worry about it. regards mostly harmless. Bev. > > On Sat, Sep 13, 2008 at 08:17:21PM +0100, Bev Nicolson wrote: > > > > > Micro Mart also ran a comparison article in this week's edition. They > > > > > concluded that the Elonex WebBook was "best value". Apparently > > > > > CarPhone > > > > > Warehouse sell a version with ubuntu loaded. > > > > > > Huh! Last time I spoke to Carphone Warehouse (asking about > > > > Linux-compatible broadband dongles, no-one in the dhop had even heard of > > > > Linux... > > > > > > Someone needs to tell PC World that as they're running an ad that > > > compares their notebook with the one Carphone Warehouse are offering > > > and making it sound (to me) like Linux is a bad thing... > > > Bev. > I'm confused! > > How d'ye do, Confused: I'm pleased to meet you. I'm bamboozled. > > But, I keep a special bargepole with which not to touch PC World. I've > got another one now for not touching CarPhone Warehouse. > > <OT> Did you hear about the dyslexic pimp? > > He bought a warehouse... > > </OT> > > -- > Tony > http://www.users.zetnet.co.uk/hi-fi/ > > _______________________________________________ > main(a)lists.alug.org.uk > http://www.alug.org.uk/ > http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/main > Unsubscribe? See message headers or the web site above! > -- _______________________________________________ Surf the Web in a faster, safer and easier way: Download Opera 9 at http://www.opera.com Powered by Outblaze

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Alug Library
by Wayne Stallwood 14 Sep '08

14 Sep '08

As most of you know I have been the ALUG Librarian now for some time. However as of sometime around Christmas/Early next year I will be moving to a house with one less bedroom and I think I may run into problems storing the books, Also the house I am moving to is likely to be a building site for some time and really the less things I have around the easier life will be. Therefore this is a call for a new librarian to stand up or for us to discuss the future of the library. I am completely happy to continue to host and maintain the online library catalogue..it is only the actual storage of the books that might present a problem. This might actually also make more sense if someone who attends the meetings more regularly than me took over. Also this might be a good time to discuss the future of the library, at the moment and since I took over it is almost completely inactive. Part of this is I think due to the logistics of the books being in Bury St Edmunds in the possession of a member who rarely attends meets but mostly I think because the collection is quite out of date. The O'Reilly group membership has been processed and we have received exactly one book. To receive more free we really need to get something up to promote the books (or at least review them on our site) or actually request specific books and see what happens. There is also a group discount for members who want to purchase books, but I have not had time to figure out the logistics of this. These bits would require more time than I currently have whilst amongst house clearing/renovation to get set up but would hopefully result in a selection of up to date books for the library. Another option is to prune the existing collection somewhat to a size where it is more manageable for a member to take over (or perhaps even for me to continue to manage) and then for me or someone else to take steps to get some book donations to replace the purged books with more recent/more interesting books. Alternatively with minimal effort on my part the online library can support a distributed library where members share responsibility for storing the books and the loan is "permanent" until a member leaves or someone else wants to borrow it. The site can then mail the relevant person for each book to tell them that someone else wants to borrow it etc. Your collective thoughts and/or offers to store the library as it stands would be appreciated.

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Re: [ALUG] How's the EEE-PC keyboard - does anyone here have one?
by Bev Nicolson 13 Sep '08

13 Sep '08

Someone needs to tell PC World that as they're running an ad that compares their notebook with the one Carphone Warehouse are offering and making it sound (to me) like Linux is a bad thing... Bev. > > Micro Mart also ran a comparison article in this week's edition. They > > concluded that the Elonex WebBook was "best value". Apparently CarPhone > > Warehouse sell a version with ubuntu loaded. > > Huh! Last time I spoke to Carphone Warehouse (asking about > Linux-compatible broadband dongles, no-one in the dhop had even heard of > Linux... -- _______________________________________________ Surf the Web in a faster, safer and easier way: Download Opera 9 at http://www.opera.com Powered by Outblaze

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How's the EEE-PC keyboard - does anyone here have one?
by Chris G 13 Sep '08

13 Sep '08

My wife's laptop has just expired (or at least XP on it has started BSOD'ing, needs a re-install at the very least) so she's looking for a replacement. She doesn't *really* need a full-blown laptop and size and weight are important because she does have to lug it around with her quite a lot so the EEE PC might be a good choice. However she needs to be able to touch type on it, does anyone here have an EEE PC? Is the keyboard OK? Is the 'bigger' EEE PC keyboard better? Any other suggestions? -- Chris Green

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Linux PIMs and synchronisation
by Chris G 13 Sep '08

13 Sep '08

I have recently bought a Nokia E71 smartphone, mainly for its full keyboard and built in GPS, I'm looking for ways to connect it to my Linux box. Getting the data across isn't actually too difficult, I have it working with Funambol already but my problem is that there doesn't seem to be a simple and straightforward desktop (or web) application that lets me access (and edit) my contacts and calendar. It *feels* like Linux is going the Windows way of humungeous applications that do everything. There are lots of "groupware" applications that will talk to Funambol but they're all huge with web site maintenance, E-Mail and lots of other things that I most definitely don't want (as part of my PIM anyway). There seem to be no simple desktop PIMs that will talk to Funambol. The nearest things to what I want are Evolution (which needs some faffing about to get it to work, it's not "out of the box) and the Mozilla Sunbird and Lightning calendars (but what do I do about contacts?). The demo application that comes with Funambol just about works but it is a *bit* clunky, however it's about the nearest to what I want. Does anyone have any better suggestions for this whole thing? As it is it seems to me that Funambol is a bit OTT, there's about 200Mb of it! All I really want is a PIM that will talk SyncMl direct to my Nokia, I don't really need a server (Funambol) that allows me to synchronise with Outlook, Groupware systems, and everything else as well as my Nokia. -- Chris Green

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