How to Rip DVDs on Ubuntu Linux 9.04 (Jaunty)

One thing that I really enjoy is to be able to watch my DVDs from any computer in the house, or from (almost) any of the TVs, without having to deal with physical media.  The way I do this is to “rip” the movies to my media server, and then transcode them to a smaller format.  This guide will discuss part one of this — ripping a DVD.  I know there are several utilities which will do this for me, but since I have very specific needs, and like things to be as automated as possible, I wrote a script to do this (naturally).
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My Perler Bead Pattern Tool

Last year, I wrote a tool called PerlerPal, to help make perler beading easier.  It’s been over a year now, and I’m cleaning out my closet, so to speak.  I have moved PerlerPal to it’s new home.   It might move to it’s own domain/site at a later date, but just trying to get things organized here.  Please use this post to comment good/bad about the tool.  I have moved the comments from the old blog (which is going away soon) to here, so the dates will be a little off.

How To Set Up a Two-Way Mirror Between Mac OS X and Ubunt...

After my hard drive crash a few months ago, I’ve been a bit paranoid about losing data.   By “a bit” I mean I’ve been sticking copies of my data on different machines to make sure I have various copies in case another hard drive dies, or a computer gets fried, melting everything inside, or my house burns down… Oh wait, I don’t have that scenario covered….  Time to fix that!  What I want is the ability to copy my data to an offsite location, and keep the backup up to date.  The main thing I care about is my family photos.   I was talking to my cousin Dave, and he had the same issue.  He wanted access to my photos, as well as have an offsite backup copy of his family’s photos.  I thought of a solution.  What if we could set up a two-way mirror between his machine and mine, and keep it updated nightly?  That way if he sticks something in the directory on his machine and vice versa, keeping a live backup.  I began doing some research, and I found the tool — Unison.

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