I wanted to store geolocation information in the photos I take with my digital camera. That way I wouldn't have to specify the photo locations manually when I upload them to the Picasa webpage. Since my camera doesn't have built in GPS support, I wrote this script to add the location information to the pictures when they are on the computer already.

While test-driving the new Gnome 2.28 desktop, I was surprised to see that among the default backgrounds, there was a "Cosmos" slide-show of several cosmic pictures of space that regularly transition on your desktop. While I had used this feature in the past when using KDE, I was not aware of how to create my own slide-show backgrounds in Gnome. By examining how the Cosmos slide-show works, I figured out how to create my own custom slide-show backgrounds. Read on and find out to create your own custom desktop background.

If you watched the video and wondered what the JavaScript code was for my "Move Junk" button in Thunderbird, then read on. If you haven't watched the video, this article describes how to add custom toolbar buttons to Thunderbird using the Custom Buttons addon.

I've written about bash quoting before, and yes, it's about as exciting as watching paint dry or listening to the corn grow. It can also be extremely frustrating when it doesn't do what you want, case in point: trying to script the updating of a field in a mysql table when the field to be changed contains quote characters.

For some, databases can be pretty intimidating. I remember some of the convoluted code I wrote years ago in order to avoid having to learn how to access a database from my programs. But it's actually not that hard to access a database, even in C/C++.

To kick off the upcoming 4th of July celebrations we present the following bash script for your enjoyment.

Do you know what this sequence of characters "/-\|/-\|" is for? A text based spinner. Still confused, read on.

Back when I worked in the Network Operations department at one of my previous jobs, we used to chuckle when a customer would call us reporting that “the Internet is down.” Now, I realize that there are otherwise intelligent computer users out there who don't understand why that might cause a technician to chuckle, and I'm not trying to make fun of them.

Using netstat, you can monitor programs that are making connections to remote hosts: $ netstat -tpe The -t flag limits the output to show only TCP connections. The -p flag displays the PID and name of the program making the connection. The -e flag displays extra information, such as the user name under which each program is running.

Unless you're a sysadmin you don't generally have to worry that much about getting email delivered, you just hookup your GUI email client to your external email account and you're done. But what if your system tries to deliver mail, for example from cron? Normally, this just goes to root or perhaps some designated user on your syst