∗∗∗ Voor iedereen die het ontvangen wil is hier onze kerstgroet. ∗∗∗ ∗∗∗ And for those who do not understand Dutch – according to Simon Stevin, AD 1586, the language spoken by Adam and Eve in paradise – we add our Christmas greetings in English. ∗∗∗
Bluetooth simplicity
To make my PC talk over bluetooth I need a wee USB adapter, aka ‘dongle’. It sits on a USB port and does its job in utter silence. Until it just stops working. Usually without any prior warning, and it only happens on my computer, not on the other ones in our house. Well, time […]
Microsoft fonts outwith Windows
To get out a word you need Word. That is how things usually work at most desktops around the globe. To be exact: Microsoft’s Word, not God’s. So, even if you happily work on LibreOffice, or another open-source office suite, you will come across Microsoft’s core fonts on a very regular basis. Of course all […]
Aye?
Nu Brexit gestalte begint te krijgen worden de Schotten wakker. Tweederde van hen stemde tegen het verlaten van de EU, maar desondanks staat dat nu toch te gebeuren. Welke opties hebben ze nog? Daags na de Brexit-stem kondigde de Schotse (deel)regering al aan af te koersen op een nieuw referendum over Schotse onafhankelijkheid. Zodat de […]
Herders in de velden
Ik ben predikant. Vanmorgen was ik bij de werkgemeenschap. Dat is de kring van dienstdoende predikanten in de regio. Classis heet zo’n regio in ons kerkjargon. De meesten wat grijzer, met heel wat ervaring, sommigen nog fris en jong. Onder ons geen sterdominees of wonderdoeners, maar allemaal zeer gemotiveerde en hardwerkende mensen. Goede herders van […]
Veilig berichten versturen
Al eerder schreef ik over veilig berichten uitwisselen, ofwel ‘WhatsApp vs Telegram’ (hier en hier – in het Engels). Recent heeft WhatsApp zijn gebruiksvoorwaarden aangepast, waardoor account-informatie en andere metadata nu worden gedeeld met ‘de Facebook-familie’. Er wordt niet gevraagd of wij daarbij willen horen. Bedrijven kunnen ons binnenkort rechtstreeks gaan benaderen via WhatsApp. Er […]
Strange characters
The other day I wrote about inserting special characters into text documents, advertising the use of KCharSelect for those happy users of the KDE desktop (or CharacterMap, its GNOME equivalent). Let me advertise it a bit further, because it has more in it than meets the – rashly looking – eye.
LibreOffice startup tweaks
In the good old LibreOffice days, when versions 3.x or 4.x were all around, I used to have the Quickstarter icon in my system tray. Twas useful to quickly open a (new) document or start from a template. Alas! tis gone in version 5.x. However, there is a tweak to solve this.
LibreOffice minor misfortunes
No-one is perfect, not even the most widely used open-source office suite, LibreOffice. It does have its small annoyances. From not printing a simple dash, to making your whole KDE desktop crash. How to deal with it? The first problem was solved by upgrading, the second seems to be persistently neglected and hence no solution […]
Upgrading Ubuntu Server
My home server runs on Ubuntu Server. So far that was the 14.04 LTS (‘Trusty Tahr’) version. But since Canonical has made available the first point release of the newer 16.04 LTS (‘Xenial Xerus’) version, i.e. version 16.04.1, upgrading became an option. Ubuntu actually makes this simple for users – but be forewarned, there are […]