tech

MJR: Miscellaneous Tech

I'm a software developer. That means sometimes I develop things that I hadn't meant to get involved with in a big way, like drivers, blog tools or servers. I'm not much good with hardware either.

This page covers stuff that isn't a big project for me - that is, it's not connected with bigger projects like web apps, debian, gobo, SPI, or koha.

National Archive should use Open Document Format

Posted by mjr 2008-04-11 (permalink)

There's a 10 Downing Street e-petition asking for the National Archive to use ODF and not Microsoft's OOXML as planned.

Not sure if we can really stop gov.uk selling our heritage to Microsoft now, but it seems worth the effort to sign it.

K. Ralho comments:

"This is probably the first (and last) time where I wished I was British."

Why? All these petitions get is usually a polite rejection from Number 10. At least it makes them aware of the issue, though.

What we really need is something like the Swiss direct democracy, where enough signatures triggers a referendum.

Comment form for non-frame browsers.

Comments are moderated (damn spammers) but almost anything sensible gets approved (albeit eventually). If you give a web address, I'll link it. I won't publish your email address unless you ask me to, but I'll email you a link when the comment is posted, or the reason why it's not posted.

More RAM is the stuff of gods

Posted by mjr 2008-03-26 (permalink)

I've been putting off upgrading my faithful old retai^Wlaptop for a while now. I finally added another 512Mb at the weekend (damnit, 640k should be enough for everything - remember the 80s?).

I usually slice my hands when I open desktop machines, but upgrading this laptop was surprisingly painless: undo one screw, slide off one panel, insert new stick, press down to click, replace panel and screw, boot.

The machine now flies along, even with Firefox^WIceweasel still leaking all over the shop when stressed.

rozie commented:

"If your firefox is leaking, try to disable cache in ram (about:options search for cache). I didn't notice my iceweasel (Etch version) having any problems with ram usage..."

I'll give it a go. Thanks for the tip.

Marcin Trybus commented:

"I'd go for "about:config" instead of "about:options". ;-)

Well, my ThinkPad T23 has 512MB RAM, and simultaneous running of FF, TB, multiple OOo windows, akregator and psi under Debian/KDE 3.5 poses no problem whatsoever. Of course the memory is 90% used + 10% cache, so it's not optimal, but I never have to swap anyway."

My brain auto-corrected the above:config thing...

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