http://www.ryananddebi.com Public journal, baby stuff, travelogue, book reviews, and other stuff... (mostly written by Ryan) Mon, 26 Jul 2010 13:00:21 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0 http://www.ryananddebi.com/2010/07/18/ubuntu-adequate-ocr-for-free-on-linux/ http://www.ryananddebi.com/2010/07/18/ubuntu-adequate-ocr-for-free-on-linux/#comments Sun, 18 Jul 2010 15:13:03 +0000 ryan http://www.ryananddebi.com/?p=4830 Even though I have mostly switched from Windows to Linux, I do have to emulate Windows for a few things just because the software for Linux either isn’t very good, doesn’t work, or in one case I haven’t learned it (R rather than SPSS).  One of the reasons I would run Windows over Linux was [...]]]> http://www.ryananddebi.com/2010/07/18/ubuntu-adequate-ocr-for-free-on-linux/feed/ 0 http://www.ryananddebi.com/2010/07/13/android-an-e-book-reader-that-copies-pastes-and-highlights-text/ http://www.ryananddebi.com/2010/07/13/android-an-e-book-reader-that-copies-pastes-and-highlights-text/#comments Tue, 13 Jul 2010 14:24:10 +0000 ryan http://www.ryananddebi.com/?p=4828 As my regular readers know, Debi and I recently bought new cellphones that run the Android operating system. For about three years before that, we were running an old Windows Mobile OS (I think version 5). On our old phones, I had installed an ebook reader that allowed me to copy and paste text from [...]]]> http://www.ryananddebi.com/2010/07/13/android-an-e-book-reader-that-copies-pastes-and-highlights-text/feed/ 1 http://www.ryananddebi.com/2010/06/30/google-chrome-doesnt-work-with-youtube/ http://www.ryananddebi.com/2010/06/30/google-chrome-doesnt-work-with-youtube/#comments Wed, 30 Jun 2010 14:24:34 +0000 ryan http://www.ryananddebi.com/?p=4769 I just received an email from YouTube inviting me to apply for “revenue sharing” for one of the videos I posted on that has quite a few views (about 15,000).  I followed the link to apply for revenue sharing and clicked through as much of the process as I could.  But I got to one [...]]]> http://www.ryananddebi.com/2010/06/30/google-chrome-doesnt-work-with-youtube/feed/ 0 http://www.ryananddebi.com/2010/06/04/ubuntu-xbindkeys-to-replace-firefoxs-clippings-extension/ http://www.ryananddebi.com/2010/06/04/ubuntu-xbindkeys-to-replace-firefoxs-clippings-extension/#comments Fri, 04 Jun 2010 15:15:06 +0000 ryan http://www.ryananddebi.com/?p=4538 I’ve been a loyal user of Firefox for years and plan to still use it as my secondary browser (and will use it regularly for Zotero).  But Google’s new browser, Chrome, has really impressed me and I’m going to start using it as my primary browser for email, surfing the web, and every day online [...]]]> http://www.ryananddebi.com/2010/06/04/ubuntu-xbindkeys-to-replace-firefoxs-clippings-extension/feed/ 0 http://www.ryananddebi.com/2010/05/31/htc-droid-incredible-additional-thoughts/ http://www.ryananddebi.com/2010/05/31/htc-droid-incredible-additional-thoughts/#comments Mon, 31 May 2010 13:00:12 +0000 ryan http://www.ryananddebi.com/?p=4517 I posted before about our new phones – HTC Droid Incredibles.  Perhaps I’m just trying to justify the purchase to myself, but I’ve figured out a few new tricks with the phone that are worth mentioning. Perhaps the coolest feature I’ve found recently, which really makes this a smart phone, is what it does when [...]]]> http://www.ryananddebi.com/2010/05/31/htc-droid-incredible-additional-thoughts/feed/ 3 http://www.ryananddebi.com/2010/05/15/one-phone-to-rule-them-all/ http://www.ryananddebi.com/2010/05/15/one-phone-to-rule-them-all/#comments Sat, 15 May 2010 13:00:38 +0000 ryan http://www.ryananddebi.com/?p=4465 While I’m a major geek and I love technology, I’m also cheap.  Ergo, we’ve had the same cell phones for three years: HTC 8125s.  They’ve been good phones, but they ran a very outdated Windows Mobile operating system with limited functionality.  I eventually convinced Debi that it was time to upgrade to new smart/app phones [...]]]> http://www.ryananddebi.com/2010/05/15/one-phone-to-rule-them-all/feed/ 1 http://www.ryananddebi.com/2010/04/22/ubuntu-resizing-virtual-screen-in-x11/ http://www.ryananddebi.com/2010/04/22/ubuntu-resizing-virtual-screen-in-x11/#comments Thu, 22 Apr 2010 23:00:49 +0000 ryan http://www.ryananddebi.com/?p=4425 Thanks to a little surplus grant money, I was able to purchase a nice, large, external monitor for my office.  With my docking station, that meant I could use two monitors simultaneously – my laptop monitor and my external monitor.  I had been doing this previously, but the external monitor I had before was about [...]]]> http://www.ryananddebi.com/2010/04/22/ubuntu-resizing-virtual-screen-in-x11/feed/ 1 http://www.ryananddebi.com/2010/01/17/ubuntu-securely-erase-hard-drive-with-shred/ http://www.ryananddebi.com/2010/01/17/ubuntu-securely-erase-hard-drive-with-shred/#comments Sun, 17 Jan 2010 12:54:19 +0000 ryan http://www.ryananddebi.com/?p=4092 On Windows, I used the free program Eraser to wipe hard drives when I was finished with them. I looked for a while for something similar for Ubuntu Linux but couldn’t find any programs like Eraser.  Turns out, however, that this functionality is built into the operating system, though it is command-line only.  Here’s an [...]]]> http://www.ryananddebi.com/2010/01/17/ubuntu-securely-erase-hard-drive-with-shred/feed/ 0 http://www.ryananddebi.com/2009/11/29/remove-apostrophes-before-numbers-in-openoffice-calc/ http://www.ryananddebi.com/2009/11/29/remove-apostrophes-before-numbers-in-openoffice-calc/#comments Sun, 29 Nov 2009 16:56:02 +0000 ryan http://www.ryananddebi.com/?p=3863 The Problem: You have a spreadsheet that has a column of what you think are numbers in it.  The numbers display fine in their cells, but when you try to do something with them, you find that you can’t.  For example, you may want to sort them or use them as part of a calculation [...]]]> http://www.ryananddebi.com/2009/11/29/remove-apostrophes-before-numbers-in-openoffice-calc/feed/ 9 http://www.ryananddebi.com/2009/09/06/ubuntu-how-to-save-handouts-in-openoffice-impress-as-pdfs/ http://www.ryananddebi.com/2009/09/06/ubuntu-how-to-save-handouts-in-openoffice-impress-as-pdfs/#comments Sun, 06 Sep 2009 17:22:35 +0000 ryan http://www.ryananddebi.com/?p=3471 I’m not a computer programmer (sometimes I wish I was), so I’m going to guess that implementing the ability to save handouts as PDFs in OpenOffice.org’s Impress (OpenOffice’s version of Powerpoint) may be a very challenging programming task.  For those who have never used OpenOffice, one of its greatest features is the built-in ability to [...]]]> http://www.ryananddebi.com/2009/09/06/ubuntu-how-to-save-handouts-in-openoffice-impress-as-pdfs/feed/ 1