Imaginary Robots Recent Activity

Pinball on the iPad is pretty good. Typing on the ipD sucks. #ipad4amonth

Tue, 07 Sep 2010 02:50:36 +0000

iSSH - AN SSH Client for iPad

Thu, 02 Sep 2010 16:18:44 +0000

Answer for Alternative desktop managers

2010-09-02T16:17:53Z

You can install either KDE or XFCE environments easily from an existing ubuntu installation or from their liveCDs. I will assume you already have a working ubuntu install and want to switch desktops without reinstalling.

For a full KDE environment plus KDE applications, install the kubuntu-desktop meta-package from the main repositories. Kubuntu is focused on being "friendly", which might match up better with your usability needs. Their website is http://kubuntu.org.

For a full XCFE environment plus lightweight applications, install the xubuntu-desktop meta-package from the 'universe' repository. Xubuntu is focused on being fast - their website is http://xubuntu.org .

These are official ubuntu packages and use most of the same underlying systems and applications as the standard Ubuntu desktop. You can install these alternative desktops easily using your package manager/software center by looking for the appropriate package listed above. Note that kubuntu-desktop in particular will bring in many applications/libraries as dependencies, since it uses the KDE equivalents of a lot of Gnome software (Koffice rather than Evolution, Amarok rather than Banshee, etc).

Jesse has an iPad for testing purposes. If only it were a real computer!

Thu, 02 Sep 2010 09:49:10 -0600

Jesse got mistaken for a mechanic last night.

Wed, 01 Sep 2010 09:31:26 -0600

Checklist for Scaling a Web Application

Tue, 31 Aug 2010 18:26:11 +0000

After reading Todd Hoff’s list of scaling lessons learned, I decided to put together my own list of scaling tricks. These were all learned the hard way as well, and will scale you up to thousands of concurrent users. It’s worth noting that many of these don’t cost anything beyond programmer-time, and take less time [...]

Japan 2010 - Fuji

Sat, 14 Aug 2010 05:41:54 +0000

Japan 2010 - More Tokyo

Sat, 14 Aug 2010 05:41:54 +0000

Japan 2010 - Tokyo

Wed, 11 Aug 2010 08:09:12 +0000

Japan 2010 - Nikko

Tue, 10 Aug 2010 08:09:12 +0000

Japan 2010 - Samurai Class

Sun, 08 Aug 2010 07:00:00 +0000

Dancer in Shared Hosting

Mon, 02 Aug 2010 17:15:57 +0000

The current version of my website runs on a lightweight perl framework called Dancer. It’s easy to learn and avoids the massive weight of Catalyst, making it ideal for use in shared hosting (paying to get a VM just so you can install thousands of perl modules is not cool). Dancer runs under fastCGI, mod [...]