General

Rants and Raves.

I built an Ubuntu Server image this week because I needed to test an application we built at work would work without X.org and GTK+ installed. Turns out it does. That’s good. But in testing I got annoyed with the 80 character width of the console. See, Ubuntu Server doesn’t […]

Mounting KVM images manually

Thu April 01, 2010 in General tagged GTK+ / ubuntu (updated 5781 days ago)

I'm working with libvirtd/virt-manager/qemu at work. I have a bunch of F11 systems installed and working just fine. Today I tried one of the extra lab boxes, same OS config, but when I tried to use the virt-* commands I'd get an error: mjhammel(tty0)$ sudo virsh –connect qemu:///system error: failed […]

virsh/libvirt error: failed to connect to the hypervisor

Wed January 20, 2010 in Fedora / General / Linux / virtualization tagged hypervisor / libvirtd / qemu / rpm / virsh / virtualization (updated 5852 days ago)

It’s a good thing I check my blog stats otherwise I never would have known about this. Linux Format has released, through TuxRadar, the PDFs for 18 of my GIMP tutorials from my column in their magazine. Pretty cool. I’d always hoped they’d get a wider net audience. Too bad […]

LXF releases PDFs of a bunch of my tutorials

Wed January 20, 2010 in General tagged GIMP / graphics / Linux / linux format / printing (updated 5852 days ago)

I've posted a page linking to my Slideshare presentation on Crunch Cloud, a product my company (or rather the software group) is working on. This presentation has the added bonus of audio – my voice reading from a script I wrote for the slides. Kind of a cool process to […]

New slide presentation with audio: Crunch Cloud

Tue January 19, 2010 in Audio / CEI / General / Links / Writing tagged Cloud / crunch / slide presentation

I'm in the process of creating a set of slides at work to describe a software product we're working on. Making slides is easy. I just use OpenOffice. Publicizing the slides is just as easy. I use Slideshare.net. An interesting feature of this site is the ability to add audio […]

Creating slides with audio on Linux for SlideShare

Mon January 18, 2010 in General tagged Fedora / gnome / Linux / Video (updated 5854 days ago)

The movie industry inundated us with 3D this past holiday season. If you didn't catch Jim Carey's take on Dickens, you didn't miss much. My wife and I saw it in 2D, sans glasses. Turns out the movie is a flop if you're not into being wowed by 3D tricks. […]

3D vision – get over it already

Fri January 15, 2010 in General tagged dickens / holiday / Lost / nvidia (updated 5854 days ago)

I’m was working on the 2nd edition of The Artists Guide to GIMP Effects tonight when I ran into an ugly bug. The documents I exchange with my publisher are in RTF format, possibly because its easier for them on the production side though I’m not positive of that. Anyway, […]

Hating RTF

Thu January 14, 2010 in General tagged dept 56 / dickens / GIMP / graphics / holiday / north pole (updated 5858 days ago)

In a twist of fate that I personally found less than humorous, on Tuesday I had to use an article I’d just submitted to Linux Journal to recover from my own stupidity. I had just submitted an article on doing automated backups to Linux Journal (due out in the March) […]

Using my own research: backup and recovery

Thu December 17, 2009 in General tagged Linux / linux journal / Lost (updated 5886 days ago)

I got word in late November that Linux Journal had accepted two more proposals for articles. The last acceptance (in mid November) was for an article to be published in issue 190 (Desktop) which I wrote and submitted without a proposal. The next two are for issues 191 (Systems Administrations) […]

Two more articles in the queue at Linux Journal

Mon December 07, 2009 in General tagged Linux / linux journal / lj / Open Source / Writing (updated 5896 days ago)

Despite the obvious geek bent of my blog it would appear, based on web stats, that once a year I'm far more popular for my Deptartment 56 village setups than I am for Linux and open source. The spike in visitors isn't huge but its obvious and they're all headed […]

Less Geek, More Art

Fri November 27, 2009 in Art and Graphics / dept 56 / General tagged Department 56 / dept56 / dickens / Geek / Lemax / village

I’ve opened a little shop on CafePress called Go Geek Early. I’ve made a few small designs and I’m working on some more. This is just a way to generate a little extra cash to help, for example, get my kid a beater car while she’s up at college. It’s […]

CafePress: Go Geek Early

Mon November 23, 2009 in Art and Graphics / General / GIMP / Open Source / Personal tagged CafePress / Geek

There is a discussion ongoing in the GIMP Developer mailing list about rumors of the Ubuntu distribution removing GIMP from the base installation in an upcoming release. The reasoning is that GIMP is a professional application and should only be included as add-on software similar to how Photoshop is not […]

What Linux Users Need. Or Not.

Fri November 20, 2009 in General tagged Fedora / GIMP / Linux / Open Source / ubuntu (updated 5913 days ago)

Michael J. Hammel

Building a better today…because tomorrow is in question…