Over the past few weeks, I've been trying browser options beyond Firefox.  I've really enjoyed using the GTK-native browsers Epiphany and Galeon.  They are fast, both in loading and rendering pages.  But, the biggest issue I had is that 64 bit builds of these browsers can't use 32 bit plugins.  And Flash 9 is only available in its 32 bit version.  It's pretty hard to use the web these days without Flash, now that sites like Youtube have pushed Flash beyond advertisements and into the mainstream.Read more

Update: I'm getting reports that this has been fixed in Java 1.6 (aka Java 6).  So, I tested this with the latest Java 1.6 32-bit in Ubuntu Edgy, and apps seem to be working fine under Beryl.  So, you may not need to go to all the trouble below.  The latest Java 1.6 for AMD64 on Ubuntu Edgy, however, still doesn't work for me under Beryl.

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Currently, I have a simple copyright at the bottom of my website.  I want to replace that with something like a Creative Commons license. Read more

I love Java Web Start.  I think it does a very good job of solving many of the Java distribution issues.  It supports automatic updating of apps at the jar level, including dependencies.  It really makes life easy for the end user, and really is pretty easy to implement for the developer.

But, if you are running Ubuntu Linux for AMD64 like I am, it won't work out of the box with the 64 bit JVM.  For whatever reason, Sun hasn't ported it.  Not that I'm complaining.  Now that Sun freed Java, we all have no one to blame but ourselves.Read more

I ran into this over at Joe George's blog, and I thought it pretty funny.  If you can't laugh at yourself...

I think that today, we are a geekier crowd than the other two.  But, I know plenty of trendy people in the Linux community.  I think (or maybe I just hope) the stereotype gets less relevant each year.

Since I often hear from friends and people on the Internet about things they can't do in Linux that they could on Windows, I thought I'd write up a list of things I can do in Linux that I can't do in Windows. Read more

Last weekend, I switched the website from Plone to Drupal.  I know some people are contemplating this switch, so I thought I'd write about my experience so far.Read more

I recently built an AMD 64-bit dual core machine, and installed Ubuntu Edgy for x86-64 on it.  One thing I found (and had read elsewhere) is that 64-bit Eclipse is buggy.  It hangs and dies usually within 30 minutes, and sometimes on a few minutes.  And I found the performance improvements to be hardly noticable, so not worth the hassle of frequent crashes.

My solution was to switch back to the 32 bit Eclipse.  Not hard, but not dirt simple.  First install the 32-bit JVM ia32-sun-java5-bin.Read more

Sophos recently recommended computer users switch to Macintosh.  They recommended it because Windows users are being hit with malware more and more each year, and only one case of malware is known on Macintosh. Read more

I've tested XGL in the past, and thought it was really cool.  But it didn't include Xinerama (proper dual monitor) support, so I couldn't use it as my primary desktop.  I've since found a way to change that. Read more