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Since most laptop and desktop computers these days can boot from a USB drive, one of the handiest utilities in my toolbox is an installation of Pendrive Linux.

Pendrive Linux gives you a bootable, fully-working linux system on a USB stick. I use a 2GB ByteStor flash drive personally, with the default install of the Pendrive Linux system. From what I've read, you can go as far as to install larger systems like Ubuntu on a flash drive, but I've stuck to this slightly more compact system (more out of laziness, to be honest).

Portable Operating System

One of the supposed uses of this type of system is portability - you can use it on virtually any hardware, bringing your full linux system and favourite settings with you anywhere.

It's an alluring notion - as someone who jumps between several different systems on a daily basis, having all your settings ready to go is a massive timesaver. However, I've used thumb drive Linux for other purposes...

I am continually making striving to improve the design of our community site, Unreality Shout. I'm quite fond of the grid-based design, but there's usually something that needs refined or improved.

A couple of days ago, I decided to move the search box to a more prominent place on the page. When I designed the site, I hastily threw in a search form as a sidebar block...right down around the bottom. I was never 100% happy about this arrangement, but my Drupal skills were weaker then.

However, I've been using Shout a lot more recently. And it started to bug me that I had to scroll to the bottom of the page to search for content. So I decided to bite the bullet and hard-code a search box into the top right-hand side of the header.

Tip for newbies: I thought I had all the code in place. But the search box failed to appear. Turns out that although I'd enabled the Search Box option in the global settings, it was switched off in my theme-specific settings. Whoops! Hopefully that's a time-saver for somebody else!

I've written here in the past about being obsessive about missing flights. And in my long career of taking flights for business purposes, I missed my first flight on Friday morning.

And not to do things by halves, I missed my second flight later that same day.

Missing the first flight was entirely due to the freak weather conditions around London at the end of the week. Snow? In winter? They never saw it coming.

First Flight

Missing the first flight was virtually inevitable. I was in good time, caught the train to Stansted, trying to keep warm against an extremely bitter morning.

The first hint of travel problems came when the train stopped at a station for a while and stayed there a bit too long. It eventually inched out of the station, but stopped in the middle of nowhere about ten minutes later. That's when people started looking concerned and checking their watches every few minutes.

Something I've hated about running community sites on Drupal is the cursed Spam Link Deterrent filter.

The idea behind this filter is that it applies rel="nofollow" to any links in user-generated content. And the reason this is necessary is that when you have a membership site and you allow users to create content on it, you inadvertently attract spammers who want to drop links back to their own site.

By applying the nofollow attribute, you are telling search engines not to count that link as 'editorially approved' - therefore, the spammer doesn't derive any value from the link. The problem with the Spam Link Deterrent is that it's an all or nothing solution - even internal links to other content on the site get this added to them. This means that your site loses a lot of value from natural internal links.

This is just a short note to say that I'm closing comments on this site for a little while. Over the last week or so, I've been deluged with spam, despite having Drupal's highly regarded Mollom module installed.

I'm not going to bother fighting spammers by moderating comments constantly. Even when reporting spam comments to Mollom, the same stuff just keeps coming back: mostly Tiffany jewellry and Ugg boots spam. If I can't see the benefit of reporting spam to Mollom, then why bother?

What to do instead?

If you've found one of the tutorials or photos on this site useful and you have a website of your own, please drop me a link back. If you're commenting on something I've written, I'll pick up the response via Technorati, and it'll help other people to find my blog.

I am available in other places on the web, like Unreality TV, Unreality Shout and Twitter. And of course, if you need to speak to me, use the "Get In Touch" link at the top of the page.

How do you change your password in Ubuntu? Well, using the command line, it's actually quite easy...

I'm going through a process of changing my various computer and web passwords. After the much publicised vulnerabilities with Google and MSN a few weeks ago, I thought it might be a good time to change my passwords.

Now, to change your password through the command line, you simply type in passwd and hit return. You'll be prompted to enter your current password first, then your new password twice. It's that easy.

A GUI Password Change?

I decided to do a little digging around to see if there was a GUI option to change your password. After all, how much use if Ubuntu for regular users if they can't accomplish basic security tasks?

Surprisingly, the GUI to change password can be found in System -> Preferences -> About Me. When you bring up this dialog, there's a Change Password button in the right hand corner. Follow the prompts and you'll achieve exactly the same thing as if you'd used the command line.

In the Windows environment, keyboard shortcuts help us get things done more efficiently, without wasting time using the mouse to navigate. Part of the difficulty in migrating to Ubuntu is that many of the old Windows shortcuts don't work anymore. In this post, I've hunted out some useful keyboard shortcuts to help you navigate Ubuntu more professionally.

1. Lock the screen

You'll want to lock your screen when you're away from your machine for any length of time - it's common sense security. Simply press CTRL+ALT+L and the screensaver will activate, requiring your password to unlock.

If another user wants to use the machine, they can log on without affecting your session.

2. Flip between workspaces

Ubuntu allows you to use virtual workspaces, so you can arrange different applications between these workspaces. Possibly most useful whenever you want to work on something confidential or you want to keep your web browser/IM tools seperate from your wordprocessing and office applications.

Rewind to two days before the funeral, his green Nissan Primera racing toward Ballycastle for the final time. But he’s not at the wheel, I’m the driver, my newly widowed mother beside me, still shell-shocked. Sister in the back seat, silent.

The motorway was crowded with delivery vans and people with places to be. We suddenly had a funeral to prepare for, and drove along in a bubble of silent devastation. Slightly envious of those people who had a normal day ahead of them.

I mention this, because the days leading up to my father’s funeral went by in a blur of relatives and blasts-from-the-past, and chain-drinking cups of tea. The beauty of a wake is that you don’t get a minute to dwell on your loss. That comes later. And although you wouldn’t think it, the constant stream of visitors was a massive comfort. Those faces from my childhood that I hadn’t seen in years, all with their own different connections to him. It was amazing to watch the enormous extended family rallying around, taking care of virtually everything and providing an endless supply of egg and onion sandwiches.

Firefox can be customised in many ways using the about:config URL. But sometimes, you may mistakenly enter a value or you may want to reverse an entry completely.

However, if you've ever tried to delete a custom entry, you'll know there's no option labelled "delete". It's actually the "Reset" option you want to choose if you want to remove a custom entry. Here's how it's done:

How does an Atheist deal with death? Two things have made me think about death and Atheism lately: a reading of Richard Dawkins' book, The God Delusion and the news that my father has terminal cancer.

Personally, I don't think my approach to death has ever been challenged by the death of a close relative. I've only attended a handful of funerals since my grandmother (on the McGarry side) died back in 1985. Of course, back then I was a fully subscribed Catholic, but I can only vaguely recall her decline and death. I might tell that story someday.

But for almost half my life now, I've been subscribed to an Atheist worldview. In later years, I've mixed in a little Buddhist philosophy with this: Buddhists don't shy away from the process of ageing and death, they accept it and embrace it. I read a few years back that some Buddhist monks meditate on skulls as a reminder that life is finite. Why pretend otherwise?