I use external drives to backup everything on my Synology NAS. My data easily fits on a single large drive so:
- I put two large drives in my NAS and use raid0 (mirrored disks)
- The entire backup (or even multiple backups) can fit on an external drive.
Software
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When I install the Palemoon web browser, I like to install some additions and tweak some settings.
Occasionally, a git source code repository needs to have something removed from it permanently, even from the history.
When I install the Mozilla Thunderbird email client, I like to install some additions and tweak some settings. This list was last updated when I upgraded to Firefox 24.5.
When I install the Mozilla Firefox web browser, I like to install some additions and tweak some settings. This list was last updated when I upgraded to Firefox 29.0.
I recently re-installed Ubuntu on my desktop computer. It was about 8 years since the previous full install. I'd kept it up to date with latest Ubuntu upgrades. I wanted to change the hard drive configuration and put most of the os on a solid state drive. There was also a lot of cruft that I had installed over the years and a clean slate would get rid of tons of software I no longer use.
The re-install worked very well. The most noticeable improvement was boot time. Partly from the solid state drive and partly from the removal of all the extra software. I didn't lose much in the process. I have a script that installs software that I use that isn't included by default. The script also tweaks a bunch of settings. But, the one thing that I lost was my global key bindings.
I've been using Nedit for at least 10 years as my primary text editor. It has standard features for a programmer's text editor:
- Syntax highlighting
- Line numbering
- Brace matching
There are a few areas in which the authors put in a lot of attention to detail. It outshines every other text editor that I've ever used in these areas.
The jar file format is common for distributing programs and libraries that are written in Java. Jar stands for Java Archive. Your browser may download Java applets in a .jar file or you may get a .jar file that contains a Java application that needs to be run. The file format is also by Mozilla and Firefox as the format for XUL applications, plugins, and skins.
The jar file format is a container and compression file format. Each jar file compresses and contains other files. Jar files are very easy to open. There are many programs that will act as an opener for jar files. In fact, any program that can open zip files can open jar files. The jar format is identical to the zip file format.
A good friend of mine from college, Andy, has been programming music visualization software for many years now. He started SoundSpectrum, a company based on his work. Recently another friend of mine, Anton, joined him. They just released their newest version of G-Force on June 8, 2005.
I'm a fan of the Bugzilla bug tracking system that came out of the Mozilla web browser project. It is a web based system that makes it pretty easy to track issues with pretty much any piece of software. Furthermore, it isn't that hard to set up, so I have used it in more than one employment setting.
At work, we have a private Bugzilla installation that is only visible to employees. Given that everybody that can enter bugs should know how to fill in even the more complex fields, the enter bug form seemed a little inadequate. Our QA department really wanted to be able to specify the target milestone for a new bug to be for the next release when they entered a bug for a regression during the full quality assurance check a few days before a release.