Since many years ago, I use "rsync" to make snapshots of my system and keep backups which are separated from the main system.

My daughter asked me recently to convert an audio file that a classmate of hers had created with an Ipad. It was a recording of a class. I looked around for converters and was pointed to Audacity, but it didn't work (it asked me to upload it as raw data, but once uploaded there was no reproducible audio). Other solutions such as "sox" where failing saying that it could not decode the source.

Reading further I seem to have understood that there is still no codec for Linux. I also looked to some free solutions in Windows and I found some, tried one and was also failing.

(UPDATE on November 26, 2011: the weather.com site has changed and  I have updated my scripts so that they still work)

Conky is a free, light-weight system monitor for X, that displays any information on your desktop. Yesterday, after a question I got in an Ubuntu forum, I decided to install it in my Ubuntu 10.10 desktop and laptop computer. It was not easy and I had to go to different forums posts and links, so I decided to write this post on what I did.

Since about a year ago I've lost my open IP in the University network and they forced me to move behind a VPN, with a lot of issues on how to maintain my workflow. But one of the most annoying things of this is that even the most basic things like using ssh or sftp may have new issues that are very hard to debug and for which I don't have any support whatsoever by the IT support staff.

It seems that talk has been started around the unification of packaging systems for various Linux distributions. There are currently different systems. Maybe the main ones are the Debian system (files with  .deb extension being used among others by Debian, Ubuntu or Mint) and the RPM system (with .rpm extension, being used by RedHat, Fedora, OpenSuse and others), but there are more, for instance the  Pacman system used by Arch Linux.

In recent months we have heard that some countries such as Ireland, Portugal and Spain, but also in a lesser way Italy or Belgium, are having trouble in issuing their debt because there is a lot of speculation and betting against them.

During the last decades in all developed countries new industrial firms have appeared that combine manufacturing activity with the services needed. Instead of traditional resources, this new industry is based on the intensive use of technological knowledge and the generation of value added through the design and the improvement of distribution channels and commercialization.