Guanica, Puerto Rico Pictures

Continuing on with photographs from my (not so) recent trip to Puerto Rico.  These are photographs of Guanica, a small town on the southern Caribbean coast.  It’s a beautiful area that is much different then the rest of the country, being home to a tropical dry forest (with cactuses and all). All the pictures were taken either from the guest house or the hidden beach behind it.

If you are heading to that part of Puerto Rico, check out Mimi’s Guesthouse.  The location is nice and secluded, it is a short walk to an almost always private beach and the owners are friendly and knowledgeable about the area.

Here are the pictures.

Weekly Links - 2/16/2007

I’ve been meaning to do this for a while, but have always been destracted. There is so much good information ou there that it is impossible to find all the good stuff. Every Saturday or Sunday I will try to share the best stuff I have seen the previous week. So without further ado, here are the weekly links for week ending 2/16/2007:

Unasked for Advice to New Writers About Money - John Scalzi over at Whatever stirred up the hornet’s nest with this post. Regardless, it really contains some good advice for anyone (not just writers) for dealing with money. Check out the followup posts here and here.

What People Eat Around the World - Photos and food costs for a week of food from around the world. It’s great (and in the case of Darfur, incredibly depressing) to see it laid out like this.

Lori Nix’s Art - Lori Nix build beautiful surreal models and then photographs them. They are really fantastic.

1975: And The Changes To Come - What the future of 1975 holds! I love these. People of the 60s looking ahead to the wild world of the mid 70s. I’m pretty sure all our predictions will look as ridiculous to future generations.

Tor and Security

Maybe you have heard of Tor, a way to anonymize your internet traffic. Maybe you have even used it. I have and occasionally do. But as it gains popularity, it becomes more important to understand the limitations of Tor and internet anonymity. Most users confuse anonymity and privacy. Tor provides anonymity, but not privacy.

If that statement is confusing to you, your not alone. Recently a Swedish security researcher set up a sniffer (a computer with a network card that captures all network traffic) on the 5 Tor servers his company ran. He ended up capturing login credentials and messages, from embassies, human rights groups and corporations.

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Installing a Dell 720 USB printer in Ubuntu

* I’ve updated this with a better, more simple setup.  Click here to go to it.* 

I’ve finally installed my printer under linux. There didn’t seem to be any specific tutorials for this printer (probably because it is a rebranded Lexmark). I did find a tutorial that got me most of the way there, so I figured I would share how I did it.

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Self Hosting Is The Way To Go

Since I’ve started blogging, I’ve run into this issue in a variety of forums. The question is, if you want a blog or a homepage should you host it yourself or use a managed server? The responsible answer (that most people suggest) is it depends. I’m going to take a different tack. If you want to learn about web technologies, are serious about blogging, hope to ever make money with a website, or just build your “geek cred” then you need to self host.
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Open Wifi at Home?

Bruce Schneier has penned an interesting article over at Wired in defense of leaving your wireless network unprotected. Basically his argument is that the chance of a protected network saving you from some sort of abuse is small, and that open access points are a courtesy too your neighbors.
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Tiddlywiki Howto

Just a quick and dirty howto for tiddlywiki

Yesterday, Lifehacker posted a howto on setting up a portable personal wiki. To me (and a good portion of other commenters) it seemed like overkill. It also showed me that alot of people are looking for something light, flexible, and cross-platform. This perfectly describes a tiddlywiki.

A Tiddlywiki is a page that works as a notebook (although it is not limted to this). Generally, the way i use it is when I get an idea I create a new tiddler and add my notes to it. I’ll tag it, revise it, and hopefully do something with it eventually. The easist way to understand all this is to actually create a Tiddlywiki and start using it which I will walk you through.

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San Juan, Puerto Rico Pictures

Here is the first part of our trip to Puerto Rico in Sept of 2007. We spent several days in San Juan which is a beautiful city with lots of stuff to see and do. My one caveat would be if you are staying in Old San Juan, don’t rent a car until you need to. The driving is hilly, the streets are narrow and confusing (for someone who doesn’t know them). Walk or take a cab until you are leaving the old city.

Link to the photo galleries: San Juan

Now if I could just stop walking into walls…

Awhile ago I wrote about how I was having some issues with Google Analytics.   Turns out this was a technical problem known in computer circles as an “ID10t” error.

I left the last 2 characters out when I copy/pasted.

Site Redesign Finished

So the redesign I’ve been doing for seanelavelle.com is done. Here’s the new site and here is the old (both open in a new windows for your comparing enjoyment). I haven’t had a chance to upgrade the Wordpress installation like I had hoped, but the rest is finished. Readers of this blog shouldn’t see to much of a difference since it was mostly the static pages that I spent most of the time on.

I did hit one snag though. After I finished uploading everything, I showed Jess, and the first thing out of her mouth was “Wow, I hate that logo”. So several hours were spent Sunday redesigning it. By the time this posts, it will be the new logo, so I’m posting the new and old, side by side so you can compare.

Here’s the current logo:

Here’s the old logo:

Also, geeky web graphics tip that I learned: If you are doing anything that requires a transparent background, don’t save it as a JPG. Apparently (according to the Gimp’s export function) jpgs don’t do transparencies. Save it as a PNG and everything should be good.