A Noted Path

Personal blog of Theodore Nguyen-Cao

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Archive for the ‘geekery’ Category

I fired up Photoshop for the first time in a long time. I created a transparent PNG for an image that would be used as a CSS background-image. It keeps displaying with a gray background even though the page background color was something else.
This is a pretty well documented bug. Luckily, there are [...]

I decided I wanted to dedicate some time this weekend working on some side projects. Of course before I start, I needed to get the latest and greatest updates so I ran gem update and got the following error

theo@theo~/dev $ sudo gem update
Updating installed gems

Updating rubygems-update
Successfully installed rubygems-update-1.3.1
ERROR: While executing gem … (NameError)
[...]

Pair Programming > Code Reviews

With the rise in popularity of agile software methodologies, the practice of formal code reviews has been often put against pair programming.  There are proponents for both and some even recommend practicing both.
As time goes on, I’ve been able to do a little bit of both and I’ve developed a strong preference for pair programming [...]

I like Shiny New Things. So when I heard Eclipse Ganymede SR1 was available, I proceeded to replace the Stream Stable Build I was currently running.
This, of course, ended up causing me problems. After installing Subclipse and attempting to pull up any SVN history, I get an error dialog box that states:
“Unable to load [...]

Surprise your users

With the launch of Chrome today, the net is all the buzz around how great Chrome is/can be.  But this isn’t yet another post about chrome.
This is about me wanting to track the flight status of my parent’s airline that just came in from Cali.  Of course I could go to the American Airlines website, [...]

So, Pat got a new MacBook Pro.  Little does she know, I’ve start to install programs that I would use if I just so happened to be on her computer.  The laptop already had Leopard installed and all of its goodies but a bit of upgrading was called for. So, of course I had [...]

Discuss with disqus

I’ve replaced the commenting system on this blog with Disqus.  Please discuss and let me know what you think.

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I am in search of a good automated backup solution for my personal computer(s).  Previously, I’ve just uploaded important files I want to keep onto my slice or some web hosting site.  I also use a 250GB Western Digital External HD to backup pictures and mp3s.
But now, I want an online solution.  I want a [...]

Stickies to Quickies

Engadget posted on an MIT group that is reinventing the Post-it note. Pretty cool use of RFID and ink recognition technology.
This could power SCRUM retrospectives!

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How easy OS upgrades should be

I just upgraded my slice from running Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon to the newly released Ubuntu Hardy Heron.
The upgrade process:

Login machine
Execute the command “sudo do-release-upgrade”
Answer a few “Do you want to keep this older file or use this new file?” questions.
Done!

File this one under “That was easy.”

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