Upgrading from Fedora 41 to Fedora 42
If someone were to ask me which Linux distro has provided the best desktop experience, I wouldn't hesitate to answer: Fedora Workstation 41. So of course I upgraded to Fedora 42.
Philip Newborough - Web Developer and Linux Enthusiast
Pinned Demo: Canvas Animation: Particle Emitter #2
Another JavaScript particle emitter animation. The particles in this animation have a more organic feel to them with random changes to their direction of movement.
Blog
How to install PHP extension for Microsoft SQL Server under Fedora
I found myself needing to connect to a Microsoft SQL Server via a PHP application running under Fedora. Finding concise details about installing the necessary drivers and extensions was not easy, so here is a blog post detailing how I did it.
GNOME menu entries for Visual Studio Code projects
I work on a large number of code projects and I wanted a quick way to open any of my projects in Visual Studio Code, my preferred code editor. I figured the quickest way to do this under GNOME would be to create a .desktop file for each project directory.
How to set-up WatchGuard VPN with IKEv2 under Debian and Fedora
A blog post detailing how to set-up WatchGuard VPN with IKEv2 under both Debian and Fedora Linux. This guide works for me under Debian 12 (bookworm) and Fedora 40/41, but your mileage may vary depending on how your VPN service is configured.
My Debian 12 (bookworm) server set-up
I've been running Debian on my servers for years. It's dependable. I guess my server set-up is pretty common, consisting of Apache, PHP and MariaDB, but I figure it is still worth sharing details of how I provision my servers.
My Debian 12 (bookworm) desktop set-up
Creating a good Debian desktop experience is not too difficult, thanks to the excellent work of the Debian developers, but I thought it might be interesting to share how I set-up my Debian systems.
Upgrading from Fedora 40 to Fedora 41
A post describing my first experience of upgrading a Fedora installation. TLDR: The upgrade went smoothly and Fedora continues to impress me.
How I do todos
Details about how I've manage my todo list, past and present. Starting out with a single text file, before developing my own basic todo list application.
Creating a Bootstrap dark CSS colour scheme by inverting the colour values of an existing light colour scheme
I recently added a dark mode to my website. This post details how I achieved this by copying the existing light scheme's CSS and inverting the colour values.
How to add a custom search engine to Firefox
I thought it would be trivial to add a custom search engine to Firefox. To be fair, it is fairly trivial, but not quite as easy as navigating to the correct Firefox settings page and adding a new entry. Instead, I found the process to be somewhat hidden and less obvious.
Status
Just completed Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus on the Steam Deck. This game is all kinds of messed up, in a good way. Killing Nazis in an alternative timeline is a lot of fun and the story is twisted. Would recommend.
My Steam Deck arrived on Friday. This thing is proper good and has exceeded my expectations. Been playing some Doom, Boltgun, and Diablo, as well as a few survivor titles.
Ordered myself an OLED Steam Deck to replace my desktop Linux machine. Late to the party, as usual, but we're changing offices/bedrooms at home to make way for the grandchild and so I'm downsizing my gaming rig.
Best band in the world.
Got myself a cheap original Apple Magic Trackpad from Vinted. It works nicely with my Fedora/GNOME systems, apart from when I connect my Bluetooth earbuds to the same system, at which point it becomes laggy and unusable. I'll have to try and debug this at some point, but not today.
One week after purchasing my Google Pixel device and no buyer remorse yet.
Got myself a new Google Pixel 9 Pro XL device, replacing my iPhone. Might take me a while to get used to it but I'm liking what I've seen/played with so far.
Using ChatGPT to render images of our living room with different paint colours on the walls, before we go to the store to actually buy the paint. I think this is an acceptable use case for ChatGPT. I like sage.
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I spend a lot of time sitting in front of my laptop, but not as much as GNOME would lead you to believe.
Typing this on a £60 Xiaomi Redmi A3 device that I purchased from Argos. It’s not going to replace my current phone (iPhone 11) but I was interested to see how a cheap Android device performs and what it provides for the money. Long story short, it’s actually a usable device, which is a pleasant surprise. £60 to play around with Android, before deciding to drop iOS and purchase a premium device is an acceptable cost to me. Also, £60!
Bookmarks
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.htaccess: A Helper Script to Easily Block Website Traffic by Country · Jens Oliver Meiert Whatever the motivation for you to consider this—though after all, there are countries attacking, invading, and occupying other countries (e.g., Russia, Israel) and countries committing genocides (e.g., Israel)—, here’s one streamlined approach to geographic IP blocking via .htaccess
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IPdeny IP country blocks IPdeny offers country GEO IP address block downloads free of charge. Our country based IP zone files can be easily used in your applications and web sites to minimize on-line fraud, SPAM, floods and sometimes brute force attacks. IPdeny country IP block files can be used to set-up firewall or packet filter rules to disable specific service access and ports based on a specific country.
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Harper Harper is a free English grammar checker designed to be just right. You can think of it as an open-source alternative to Grammarly. I created it after years of dealing with the shortcomings of the competition.
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mobygratis In 2005, internationally renowned musician and activist Moby launched mobygratis as a free music resource designed to empower creative projects by students, non-profits, indie filmmakers, musicians, producers, rappers, singers, animators, choreographers, songwriters, remixers, and more. Over the past two decades, this groundbreaking initiative has supported over 50,000 indie films and media projects, becoming a cornerstone for creatives in need of high-quality, royalty-free music.
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My AI Skeptic Friends Are All Nuts · The Fly Blog A heartfelt provocation about AI-assisted programming.
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Some simple ways to make content look good - Piccalilli Something non-designers understandably struggle with is how to make things look good. One of those things is long form content that’s well set and readable. Luckily, CSS makes this easy, you just have to know what to change. That’s exactly what we’re going to teach you in this article.
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WML, WAP, & Microformats Demo! by ArtLung
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Introducing: Webbed Sites (Webbed Briefs) We (I) are (am) proud to announce our (my) new no-code website building tool. And we (I) are (am) very sorry indeed.
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Genymobile/scrcpy: Display and control your Android device pronounced "screen copy"
This application mirrors Android devices (video and audio) connected via USB or TCP/IP and allows control using the computer's keyboard and mouse. It does not require root access or an app installed on the device. It works on Linux, Windows, and macOS.Had a play with this today and it worked really nicely.
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I installed Linux (so should you) - YouTube Seems like some sort of cultural moment in time. Also, slightly amusing to see a high profile YouTuber experience a tech awakening.
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