Fixing KSnapshot Quirks - and Programming the Linux Shell in the Process

KSnapshot is the best of programs, and KSnapshot is the worst of programs.

First of all, KSnapshot is a terribly nifty utility that takes screenshots of the current screen. It’s very flexible and allows you to grab the whole screen, a single window on the screen, an area of a window, a random rectangle on the screen, or even some weird shape that you draw on the screen. It’s got tons of opportunities for you to record what’s going on.

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Why You Should Wait to Buy a New Laptop

This will be an incredibly short post:

If you look up the best selling laptops on Amazon, you’ll notice striking pricing. The best seller is the Samsung Chromebook, 11.6″. The best selling “real” laptop is a Toshiba Satellite, at 15.6″ quite enormous.

The downside: here in two images.

The price on both is fluctuating, currently $250 for the Chromebook and $300 for the Satellite. I guess on an 11.6″ Chromebook that resolution is acceptable, but I imagine you can see the pixels on the 15.6″ as little ponds on the screen.

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L'America: What's the Nuclear Option in the Senate

Hooray! There is something new to explain! You have all heard about this Nuclear Option that Senate Majority Leader (Democratic) Harry Reid pushed through, and you don’t understand what it’s about, what’s going on, and why it’s a big deal.

I am not a Constitutional expert by any means, but I’ve been following this for a long time and here is my (potentially totally misleading and confusing) recap:

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Ancient European Divinities (No Letters Missing)

A list with ancient divinities from Europe, from Athena to Zeus Continue reading

Chinavasion Rear View Mirror Device

I just got myself a new car (a Subaru Forester) and I’ve been interested for a while in getting a **dash cam**. That’s the cameras you install inside the car to keep records of what’s happened on the street you’ve driven on. I am a fairly polite and safe driver, and if anything happens, it benefits me if I have a video showing what went on.

Amazon has hundreds of different models of the kind. They come with all sorts of functions, but none of them seems to combine them all. For that, I had to go to Chinavasion, a site that aggregates gadgets made in China and has them drop-shipped to consumers. You can get a volume discount, but there is typically no minimum sale.

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Nexus 5 - First Look

Do you like your 2 year contract? Do you like the $100+ bill for such precious commodities as the unlimited long-distance calls you don’t use, while you are stuck with a hard limit of 2GB (AT&T) or 5GB (Verizon)? Do you like the mysterious charges that show up in your phone bill?

I got fed up with all of that a while back. I guess quite a few people have, because contract-free phones are all the rage. And for those that love contract-free phones, there is no better one than the gold standard of Android: the Google Nexus 5.

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Beaches (No letters missing - with pictures!)

Dream of beautiful places by the sea and name successive releases after some of the most spectacular locations on Earth! Continue reading

People of Computing (No letters missing, but Q and X out of series)

A list of people famous only to computer geeks (like me) Continue reading

Sweets (No letters missing)

Sweets words in alphabetical order – single word only (you really don’t want to figure out how multiple words are spelled out in your VCS) Continue reading

Halloween (No letters missing)

A spooky list for all your ghoulish needs. Continue reading