Release of the Raring Ringtail

Ubuntu 13.04 (Raring Ringtail) was officially released today, although I was able to download and upgrade my server from Quantal last night, avoiding the rush. Upgrading to the latest Ubuntu server release is really becoming a non-event for me, which is great news especially since support for non-LTS releases has been cut to 9 months. Starting …

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A holiday slice of Raspberry Pi

The Raspberry Pi is a credit card-sized ARM-based Linux computer that costs just $25. It’s intended to be used as an educational device and instantly appealed to my inner tinkerer (and gadget freak). I ordered the Model B (256mb RAM, 2 USB ports, HDMI/composite video/audio jacks, and Ethernet) from Allied Electronics back in late September …

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Switching from Jungle Disk to SpiderOak

Back in October 2007 I started using Jungle Disk and Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service) for my online backups. At the time, it was one of the cheapest and more reliable ways of backing up my important documents across multiple platforms (Windows and Linux) to the cloud. Even after Rackspace acquired Jungle Disk in 2008, …

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Quest for the Quantal Quetzal

My server upgrade from Ubuntu 12.04 (Precise Pangolin) to the newly released 12.10 (Quantal Quetzal) tonight was one of the smoothest for me in recent memory. The only problem I had this time around was an issue with ZoneMinder due to some “non-standard” symlinks I was using. Once I corrected those, the package upgraded without …

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Eye-Fi Mobile X2

Since my new Canon PowerShot Elph 300HS required a Class 6 SDHC card to record 1080p HD video and also included native support for the Eye-Fi series of wireless-enabled SD cards, I decided to pick up a new Eye-Fi Mobile|X2 SDHC memory card. Let’s be up-front about this: you pay a premium for the convenience …

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ZoneMinder

Last summer, my mini-tech project was installing some wireless internet cameras inside and outside the house so I could keep tabs on things while I was away. For the past year I’d just been using the built-in features of each of the cameras (motion detection, e-mail alerts, etc.) which was hit-or-miss since each manufacturer offered …

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