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Writing Magazine

Phil  computers, Journalism, Linux  [+]

When I’m not writing technical features for money (or DIYing the boat) I try to write fiction. I attend a local writing group and a while ago a publisher, Collette Smith, from Writing Magazine joined us. For her it’s research, trying to get inside the heads of her customers, but it set me thinking. Writers use software and, it often seems to me, pay over the odds for it. I’ve used free software for years and written about it in techie magazines and on industry websites, so why not try a simple guide to free software for writers?

Here it is. (PDF approx 400KB)

And here is a sidebar I wrote to go with it which the magazine put online rather than in the print version.

Script kiddies

Phil  Uncategorized  [+]

It appears some goon has been trying to hack my website, I’ve found several files that don’t seem to belong. But I’m no expert and a bit cautious so I’ve renamed them. If everything works OK after a few days I will assume they are either malware or redundant and delete them.

Recent Diesel Car work

Phil  Diesel, Electric Vehicles, Fuel, Renewable Energy, Uncategorized  [+]

Just got PDF files for two recent pieces I wrote for Diesel Car magazine’s EcoCar supplement.

VeryParticular deals with arguments about where particulate pollution comes from and whether or not hybrids and electric vehicles are as bad as has been suggested in some publications.

UsedEVs is a look at the rapidly developing market in secondhand Electric Vehicles.

Phew

Phil  Journalism, Uncategorized  [+]

Back to business, we’ve finished moving stuff and got the house sorted. The office is functional the server is running and online, I got my accounts sorted in time for HMRC deadline day and I’ve no excuse for not touting for more work. But first, need to post some recent samples from Diesel Car magazine.

Nextcloud(2)

Phil  Cloud, computers, Linux  [+]

As promised the server now runs Nextcloud and MySQL. Unfortunately Nextcloud was forked from the latest version of ownCloud and requires the latest ownCloud client on the desktop. Which wasn’t supported by my operating system a LTS version of Linux Mint based on Ubuntu 14.10. So I waited for the next KDE version of Mint to arrive, which it did in September. Now Nextcloud syncs everything with my desktop, which is fine except that the desktop is temporarily set up in the garage of our temporary accommodation. Until we move to our (hopefully) final destination I’m using an old (Bodhi Linux) laptop which runs the client fine, but I daren’t sync too much because the disk isn’t that big.

The other ‘interesting’ issue is remote access to the server which is being blocked somewhere. It’s fine via the LAN but not via the Internet. I’m beginning to wonder if my new ISP contract has something to do with it, even though it’s the same company. More on this when I get to the bottom of it.

Nextcloud

Phil  Cloud, computers, Linux, Uncategorized  [+]

I’ve blogged about ownCloud before, and written a couple of features about it for MM. Unlike a lot of software that I’ve installed, tested, written about then forgotten, ownCloud is in regular use.

My entire /home/phil directory is synced to an ownCloud server, which is just an old Athlon 3500+ desktop sat in my office, and I can access it from anywhere with an internet connection. It’s so convenient I’ve installed the client on my wife’s PC and use a folder we can both access for simple file transfers between our machines. Changes are afoot though some falling out between the majority of ownCloud devs and the management of the ownCloud company which markets the supported commercial version has led to the majority of devs leaving.

Being open source of course they left with a full copy of the source code which they have forked to create Nextcloud, and have just put out their first release with instructions for upgrading from ownCloud.

We’re moving house soon (-ish subject to lawyers) so the server and network is all going to be packed away. Once we’re settled I think I’ll stick a new disk in the server and install Nextcloud from scratch, and do it right this time using MySQL rather than the default SQLite.

Garden Looking Good

Phil  Uncategorized  [+]

We’re selling up and moving house so I went round and took some photos of the garden looking at it’s best. (Click to enlarge)

 

Android, not Google

Phil  computers, Linux  [+]

I’ve written a few pieces over the last couple of years about ditching Gmail, Google Search, Maps, Docs etc but the final frontier was Android which I had on my phone and tab. Having manged to break the screens on both just before Christmas I treated myself to a new large format phone with a 5½” screen and CyanogenOS rather than regular (Google) Android.

Read all about it here: NoGoogleAndroid