Blog Archive

Managing your Ruby Version with rbenv

ruby gemstone

I use Git a lot. I’m not a terribly sophisticated user, because I don’t do a lot of branching. I mainly use it as a way to keep track of ongoing projects. But sometimes I need to do something a bit more complicated than I am used to and so I head over to the …read more…

Make Your Cursor (i.e., Mouse Pointer) Disappear in Linux (when you’re typing, that is)

Image of a mouse cursor

One of the most annoying things I run into when using a computer is that I click in a box to start typing, and the cursor is blocking what I’m typing, so I can’t see it. (This also happens at work when I’m Windows 11.) It’s annoying, because sometimes I make a typo and I …read more…

Extract Audio from Video using ffmpeg

The great thing about using Linux is that you have a number of command line tools that can accomplish tasks and are generally faster than GUI-based alternatives. The Linux tool for manipulating video files is ffmpeg. Its official documentation is here and one version of the man file is here.  General Use The format for …read more…

Adding Page Numbers to a PDF file

I create a lot of booklets. Usually, this is because it’s a great way for me to put together some files and take them with me. I can slip them in a briefcase or backpack, and pull them out to read whenever I have a few spare moments. I recently had a situation where I …read more…

Learning Linux by Studying the Man Pages

So I did a thing, and I posted it to Reddit: Most applications in Linux come with a man page—essentially, an online manual. You can invoke this for any installed app with  man <application> where <application> is the name of the app in question.  I will say that the quality (and size) of these vary by …read more…

Optimize a scanned pdf on Linux

I scanned a rather longish document (241 pages), which resulted in a 101.7 MB document. I needed to get the file size down, but couldn’t find a decent way.  Finally, after quite a bit of googling, I found this link. I don’t know why, but it worked. It got that 101.7 MB document down to …read more…

Adding Command Aliases to Bash

How to add aliases to your terminal to save time and keystrokes with your most used commands.

Chromebook

So…I bought a Chromebook. I’ve wanted one for some time actually, because they are small and lightweight, the batteries last forever, and unlike the laptop I do all of my development on, I won’t install any extra stuff, so I can use it to focus just on writing. Because this is basically a glorified typewriter …read more…

The last migration…to Opalstack!

The server migration is complete. There’s a long story here, but the bottom line up front is that I now host all my websites save one at Opalstack. Additionally, I have moved all my domain registrations to Gandi. Hopefully, I will be with Opalstack for the rest of my life. And seeing that Opalstack is …read more…

Controlling WordPress Post Revisions

If you’re familiar with wiki software such as MediaWiki or DokuWiki, you’re probably aware that most wiki software keeps a copy of every single revision made to a wiki article. If you’re not familiar with that feature, go to any random article on Wikipedia (which runs on MediaWiki), and click on the “View History” tab …read more…