Yearly Archives: 2007

You are browsing the site archives by year.

16Nov 2007

ActiveState Komodo Edit

⋅ 3 Comments

Recently I’ve been looking for a new coding editor to meet my own specific needs. I’ve settled on one, but am always happy to look at potential replacements, if they’ll make my life easier. Anyway, my intention is to add short reviews of these editors as I look at them.

Today I’m looking at Komodo Edit from ActiveState. However, before I start, I should really state what I’m after.

I hand code everything, so I’m not after anything WYSIWYG. However, I would like functionality to preview anything in a number of different browsers (and if I can define them myself, that’s even better). The code should be syntax highlighted with line numbers and, optionally, ident guides. I should be able to word wrap too. Oh, and it has to be free.

And that’s about it. Simple. Sweet.

ActiveState Komodo Edit

Download from… http://www.activestate.com/Products/komodo_edit/

Download size… 29.7Mb Installation size… 95.5Mb

So… Komodo Edit. It’s a sub-set of the full commercial Komodo IDE and is a rather good, if basic, editor. All the functionality I want is there but the browser support is limited – strangely to my default (Firefox) and those it’s detected – two different routes to, erm, Firefox. I think it wants me to use Firefox. I can’t find anyway to specify anything different.

It’s also very slow to start-up. You can see from the details above that, once installed, it takes a whopping 95.5Mb. In comparison my current editor, which is far more feature-rich and has numerous plugins installed, takes up 3.5Mb.

Code highlighting is good though and it has the full plethora of my display requirements (line numbers, etc).

Summary of ActiveState Komodo Edit

Although it has most of what I want, it’s basic-ness means that the occasional time I am looking for another function, it’s unlikely to be there. Along with its bulk and its browser limitations, it means I can’t rate it too highly
Star Star Star Star Star


Reviewed by David Artiss on 16th November 2007.

12Nov 2007

Netgear DG834GT Firmware

⋅ Leave a Comment

Netgear has recently released a firmware upgrade for its DG834GT router. I have that modem and one of the enhancements was to VOIP, which I’ve started using in the last week. Ideal.

Except I spent many frustrated hours yesterday wondering why the wireless connectivity on my daughers laptop wasn’t working. Then I tried my work laptop and that didn’t work either.

Both are on WEP security (insecure I know, but I also have a Nintendo DS on the network and that doesn’t use WPA). I found that switching to WPA temporarily worked (as did turning off encryption). Eventually I rolled back to the previous version of the routers firmware and it worked again.

Having read about other people having this issue on various Netgear forums, it would seem to be a problem impacting Super-G and G wireless – hence why the Nintendo DS continued to work even with the new firmware installed.

Meantime, Netgear continue to have the firmware download available on their site. I can only assume they don’t read their own forums, so I’ll be submitted a fault report to them. Hopefully they’ll then pull the link.

12Nov 2007

In for me, in for me, they’ve all got it in for me

⋅ Leave a Comment

A recent post on a computer forum..

I have a pop up box that tells me that it wants to install an upgrade.RealNetworks has identified a security risk in RealPlayer that may make your computer vulnerable to viruses and malware. RealNetworks has issued a fix and it is highly recommended that you download it at this time. The vulnerability has been identified as a malicious Web page which affects the import method of an Active X control to cause a stack overflow in the RealPlayer. CVE-2007-5601. This posting is applicable to versions of the product downloaded before October 25th, 2007. There is then a link that promises more information. I’ve had no problems using Real Player. Is this genuine or is somebody out to get me?

Now, if I’d had a chance to get their first, I’d have suggested he stop being so paranoid and run it. The same forum is full of people scared about security issues – here is a Real pop-up box telling them to install a critical update to protect them. And they don’t want to.

This was closely followed up with…

Real’s own site mentions upgrades, but when i asked for information on the 26th October upgrade none was available. As I’ve had no trouble with it I think I’ll stay with the version I’ve got.

Arrrgghhhh. Well I hope he gets hit by the vulnerability.

As I’ve said before the paranoia about computer security is at absolutely epic proportions, but a little common sense is all it takes. Why bitch and complain about PC’s being unsecure when you won’t install critical security updates? More often than not, the people on these forums are even too paranoid to run automatic Windows updates. Personally, I wish there was an option to automatically install non-urgent updates to Windows as well.

But maybe that’s just me.

03Nov 2007

VirtualBox Additions

⋅ Leave a Comment

There’s a facility with VirtualBox to install “Guest Additions” – various utilities for a particular OS that will enhance it’s capabilities to work with VirtualBox. Most of the other virtualisation software has its own equivalent.

However, I’ve struggled to get it work until I came across an article in PcPro (October 2007) about how to do just that. It’s for Ubuntu but works just as well for Kubuntu.

First of all mount the Guest Additions disk. Now run the following…

sudo aptitude install build-essential linux headers-uname -r

When that’s done you’re supposed to change to the CD rom and run the following…

sudo sh ./VBoxLinuxAdditions.run

For some reason I can’t get to the CD Rom via the terminal program (well I could, but it said there was nothing on it). Instead I found, by more luck than judgement, that I was able to install it at root via clicking on the CD Rom icon.

Anyway it worked. Amongst other things I can now resize my Kubuntu window up to the full 1280×1024 of my monitor. I’ve also got seamless mouse use – no more using a special key to move in and out of the virtual window, back to the host. All very handy.

Lastly, the same article gave details of a useful command line program provided with VirtualBox for making clones of your virtual hard drives. The command iis in the VirtualBox folder and is…

VBoxManage clonevdi {source disk} {output file}

The source disk is the full path to where you have the virtual drive stored.

22Oct 2007

Gutsy Gibbon

⋅ Leave a Comment

Now that Kubuntu has been upgraded from Feisty Fawn to Gutsy Gibbon, it was time to re-install my copy on VirtulBox. Why re-install instead of simply upgrade? Well, I did try that but the update seemed to regularly crash. In the end I had an upgraded version of Kubuntu but it wouldn’t install and future updates. Which is obviously bad. So I decided to try afresh instead.

Now, the install is a breeze but, as before, I had 3 browsers to re-install. However, since my original instructions I’ve got it down to a more fine art. And, as before, Konqueror comes as standard with Kubuntu (hence me choosing the KDE interface).

So here are the rest…

Firefox Go into Add/remove programs Search for & install Firefox

Opera Browse to http://www.opera.com/download/ and download the latest version to your desktop (it should be a .deb file) Right click and select “Open With” followed by “Gdebi Package Installer”

SeaMonkey This is the tougher one. Download and install (as with Opera) the automated script. Open up a command window and change to root Now run the following command…

ubuntuzilla.py -a install -p seamonkey

Top
%d bloggers like this: