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Channel: Sam Hewitt's Blog
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Caring About The Little Things

In one respect, design is the culmination of the careful consideration of many elements that together make a finished product and what makes really good design is paying attention to the fine details...

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For the Obsessive Data Hog: Logging Your Launchpad PPA

Since I operate a few Personal Package Archives over on Launchpad I wanted a way to log the number of downloads for each package and file them by date. Fortunately there’s Launchpad’s API and Python....

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New Site 🎉

Having read about how static sites are way more lightweight and the codebase can be quite minimalistic, they sounded right up my alley. So, I basically rewrote the entire site in static HTML, using...

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Using Custom Vector Icons on the Web

When I need a custom icon asset on a website I’m rather fond of using Scalable Vector Graphic (SVG) icons, especially for simple, pictographic icons, precisely for the reason that I can style them...

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Pure HTML & CSS Buttons

I love doing things as simple as I can and that includes in web development, like buttons: Sam on Twitter In my mind a button is a glorified link and a nice simple button is a style class or two away....

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The Year of the Linux Desktop (Schism)

The phrase “The Year of the Linux Desktop” is one we see being used by hopefuls, to describe a future in which desktop Linux has reached the masses. But I’m more pragmatic, and would like to describe...

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Plagiarism in Free Software

Something that I take rather seriously is the copying and redistibution without credit (intentionally or otherwise) of free software, i.e. plagiarism. There’s a huge difference between something being...

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TunnelBear, or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Browse in Peace

I’ve recently started paying for a VPN (Virtual Private Network) service because I wanted to secure my Internet activity and enjoy a degree of privacy online. Even though I am probably technically...

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elementary OS Freya is Released!

Today is the day to get the latest version of elementary OS and it’s a release I’m proud to say I was a part of. So, congrats on all the good, hard work, everyone. 😄 For those who weren’t aware: I...

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Compute Freely

In my continuing effort to increase Linux adoption, I’ve created: “Compute Freely”. A website that I intend to be a friendly jumping in point for people completely new to the concept of Free and Open...

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DOS Gaming

C:>OPEN DOSGAM.TXT I still consider PC games of the DOS/WIN95 era a much more influential a part of my childhood than console games of that time, such as those on Nintendo (even though I did spend a...

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Aeropress, My New Coffee Brewing Favourite

The Aeropress is rather a cult coffee brewer and few non-coffee-nuts know about it. But from the first cup of coffee I brewed with it, I was hooked. I now use it regularly for making coffee and my...

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Some Thoughts on Apple Music

Yes, I’m going to talk about Apple Music, like literally everyone else online these days. So I cancelled my premium Spotify subscription after using Apple Music for literally a few days, mainly for one...

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Dealing with Password Hell

Out of the blue, I got an email that I had redeemed an Xbox Live Gold gift card to an unused Microsoft account which was very exciting but seeing as I don’t have or ever have owned an Xbox, I suspected...

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Using a Linux Server for Time Machine Backups

Since Mac OS is one of my daily operating systems, I use the in-built Time Machine software for backups, and since I have a server running Linux it seemed apt to make it Time Machine compatible. To...

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A DIY Linux Minecraft Server

Since I have a local server already running, I’ve set it up to run Minecraft so I can play (usually with my nephew) at home and not worry about keeping the world on my laptop or another computer. I’ve...

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What's up with Unity 7?

After being so rigid on the design of Unity for so many releases now, the team seem to be giving people what they want these days. Such as this new config option added to the pre-release 16.04 to place...

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Deploying an IRC Server on Ubuntu

For fun, and mostly because I can, I deployed an IRC Network on my home server and I thought I’d write up the experience and steps of doing just that. IRC Server with InspIRCd Despite the punny name,...

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Lenovo ThinkPad T460s Review

To replace my aging and broken ThinkPad E Series (the cheaper and plastic-er ThinkPad), getting the latest and greatest in ThinkPad was decidedly the best course to go. After much deliberation, the...

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Extending the Ubuntu Icon Spec.

So you have a new Ubuntu application, you’ve built it in QML with the Ubuntu SDK and now you’re going to give your app a brand shiny new icon? But you go and visit the official documentation and you go...

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