So, who got the private message from Google?

Take a look at the attached screenshot .

 Google__s_Private_Message.png ( 147.34K ) Number of downloads: 22

Leopard on Linux: Time Machine

Well, I've got the basic backup script done--another surprisingly easy task. Linux's Logical Volume Manager supports the creation of snapshots quickly and cheaply, so all I needed to do was create a snapshot and backup onto another vlume. To accomplish this, I used rdiff-backup. Rdiff-backup is a differential backup solution that supports versioning, just like Time Machine does. All the core backup script required was a short 10-line script and a daily cron job. It will automatically run once daily, and will delete file revisions older than 4 weeks. Unlike Time Machine, this can backup any arbitrary location to any arbitrary volume--external devices are not required, though they would be supported. However, I have not yet completed the GUI for this. If anyone has any suggestions for things they'd like to see, I'm all ears. Currently, all I've got in mind is a small dialog that lets a user select a particular file or directory, and (optionally) a previous revision, then lets them restore it.

Leopard for Linux: Spaces

I was posed an interesting challenge earlier today; To implement Leopard's new features in Linux. After a bit of consideration, I realized that a great many userspace features new to Leopard already existed, partially, on Linux. And so, I decided to go about collecting up these pieces and implementing these userspace features as best I can in the week that remains before Leopard's release. Starting with the easiest target first--Spaces. This one was actually fairly easy to implement, since everything needed was available as a Compiz module. All it requires is for the user to turn on the Desktop Wall and Expo plugins. Here's a video of it;

Spaces On Linux Video

Not terribly difficult, and it's a very close approximation of what Spaces does. Any suggestions on my next target?

Point of View

Articles need to be written from a consistent point of view. Unfortunately, some users seem to insist on writing things from different points of view. Specifically, many contributors have taken to writing from a second person point of view, as if the reader is being instructed how to do something. Please, please, please, refrain from using "you", if at all possible. It is not difficult to write from a third person perspective. It is particularly irritating when those of us policing the wiki go through the trouble to correct these POV errors, then have someone come through and undo it, for no apparent reason. Please, write from a third person perspective.

Dealing with hardware failure

Hardware failure. It happens to everyone, right? Well, it's happening to me. After 4 years of using this iBook (G4 933mhz, 14.1"), the hard drive is finally starting to die. With the amount of random disk errors I'm getting, it probably won't be long before it dies altogether. In addition to that, the battery is going to be due for replacement soon, and the keyboard is missing a key (and many aren't working as well as they should). So, I'm left with the choice of spending better than $100 to repair a machine that would not even fetch $400 or buying a whole new laptop. A replacement would run me about $1300 by the time I got everything I wanted. I'm leaning towards just replacing it. This machine is pretty slow, and it seems rather absurd to dump large amounts of money into fixing a slow example of an effectively obsolete platform.