http://my.galagzee.com Life in a Galagzee, Not So Far Away. Wed, 24 Sep 2008 05:00:25 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en I've today posted an update to the original 03 July 2007 article about the demise of the venerable Microsoft Trackball Explorer pointing device. Check out the original article, the update (following the original article), and the countless comments the post has received over the past year. What's the matter ... http://my.galagzee.com/index.php/2008/09/23/microsoft-trackball-explorer-discussion-continues/ I often want to open random files in my favorite text editor, UltraEdit Studio to take a quick peek at the contents. However, often the files don't have a recognized extension, have an extension that is associated with something else, or have no extension at all. Some time ago I ... http://my.galagzee.com/index.php/2008/08/18/open-with-ue-studio-context-menu-option-for-all-files/ I've been using Van Dyke Software's SecureFX for a long time for FTP transfers. It's a decent software, but I've always found its user interface a bit clumsy (floating windows inside a master window..). Recently the need for secure connections has become increasingly important, and SecureFX doesn't support Explicit FTPS, ... http://my.galagzee.com/index.php/2008/08/14/the-best-ftp-client/ I've been using Marteau's Total Uninstall for quite some time now, and generally it works very well.  It keeps the system clean of the junk programs generally leave behind when they're uninstalled.  However, couple of days ago Total Uninstall totally uninstalled my system.  I needed to print a listing of ... http://my.galagzee.com/index.php/2008/08/04/total-uninstall-expprint-total-uninstall/ I like Yahoo! Widgets (formerly known as "Konfabulator"). I use XP for some time to come and thus don't have the option to use Vista's widgets (the only thing in Vista that currently has some draw to it is DirectX 10, but I digress..). Every now and then a widget ... http://my.galagzee.com/index.php/2008/08/03/yahoo-widgets-off-the-screen-and-how-to-get-them-back/ bcron is a better cron (though the "b" in the name probably comes from the first name of its writer, Bruce Guenter).  It was created with security in mind, and is especially well suited for multi-user systems where the individual users need to be given access to their respective crontabs. ... http://my.galagzee.com/index.php/2008/06/30/installing-bcron-on-freebsd-70/ D. J. Bernstein's daemontools includes a service supervisor which ensures services it supervises are restarted should they ever stop due to a program/system error. Daemontoos is easy to install, and is best installed from FreeBSD's ports system at /usr/ports/sysutils/daemontools.  Be sure to also install the manual, which you can find ... http://my.galagzee.com/index.php/2008/06/30/installing-daemontools-service-supervisor-on-freebsd-70/ One one of the first things I do on a newly installed FreeBSD system is to move /var and /tmp to under /usr. Since I usually allocate about 4Gb for the root slice and the rest of a disk—usually several hundred gigabytes—goes to /usr (well, there's also the swap slice ... http://my.galagzee.com/index.php/2008/06/28/moving-var-tmp-off-the-root-in-freebsd/ Below is my FreeBSD 7.0 kernel configuration file.  I created it on my reference system, to be used on four production servers whose hardware configurations differ some.  For that reason there're few options (indicated as "[OPTION]") that are conditional for the configurations. I've also left in IPv6 options which are ... http://my.galagzee.com/index.php/2008/06/28/freebsd-70-release-kernel-optimization/ I've been running various versions of FreeBSD since 2001, and over that time the installation procedure has changed several times as new versions of the operating system have been released. Since I'm jack of all trades (or at least many trades), often several months or more passes without significant work ... http://my.galagzee.com/index.php/2008/06/28/freebsd-70-new-install/