Hailing Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid Ibex (and the Eee PC 701)

October 20, 2008 – 14:08

(Updated: new steps needed for wireless on Eee PC)

Each release of Ubuntu just gets more and more, well, grown-up.  When I started using Ubuntu on the desktop, it was a brave man who would upgrade when a new release became available rather than install from scratch (and keep your fingers crossed with drivers.)  But things have improved significantly - even on hardware which is new and typically less well supported (see my Eee PC 701 setup guide later in this article.)

Things I like about Intrepid over previous versions: (more…)


Integrating Subversion (SVN) with Bugzilla

April 2, 2008 – 21:31

It’s well documented why using a source code control system is a worthwhile investment. Change tracking, team working, a safety-net, release management, control and reporting. And Subversion, a.k.a. svn, is the leading light in the open source world, taking over the mantle from CVS.

Subversion is different. It takes a different approach to any other source code control system I know. It uses lightweight ‘copy’ operations to achieve tagging and branching. It’s intuitive. If you didn’t have source code control and you had a code base that you wanted to keep as “version 1″, you’d most likely take a copy of the directory and call the new directory “version 1″. Well that’s tagging in svn.

But, like I say, this is all well-documented. (more…)


Sync Google Calendar with iPod on Ubuntu Linux

October 6, 2007 – 10:45

Create a script to fetch the Google Calendar and copy it to your iPod:

# download the Google calendar ical file through the private URL
wget -c -N http://www.google.com/calendar/ical/yourname%40gmail.com/public/basic.ics

# copy it to the iPod
cp basic.ics /media/your-ipod-name/Calendars/google.ics
rm basic.ics

Now configure Ubuntu so that this script is run whenever you plug your iPod in. Add the following line to /etc/udev/rules.d/80-programs.rules:

KERNEL=="sdc1", RUN+="/path/to/your/script.sh"

(Replace sdc1 with the appropriate device name, which you can find out by typing “df”.)