I tried out the Kobo Arc 10HD for a few days, because it went on sale for $199.99, down by $100 from the regular price.

As I write this, the price is down $20 further, to $179.99 at BestBuy.

Here is a quick review of the pros and cons. Note that I am not evaluating as an eReader, but rather as a regular tablet.

Pros

When using nvflash or APX Tool to repartition an Acer A500/A501, some people get data errors, and assume their device is bricked, and is good only for parts.

For example, the command:

nvflash --bct flash.bct --setbct --odmdata 0x100c0105 --configfile flash.cfg --create --bl bootloader.bin --sbk 0x... 0x... 0x... 0x... --go

Will output:

failed executing command 11 NvError 0x120002
command failure: create failed (bad data)
bootloader status: failed to create the partition (code: 10) message: nverror:0x3 (0x3) flags: 0

Since I moved from cable TV to free HDTV over-the-air (OTA) ATSC TV, I have been using the Homeworx HW-150PVR as a PVR (personal video recorder) for HD TV.

Attached below are the slides from my presentation at the KWLUG on Virtualization using KVM and libvirt.

More and more large companies are implementing more restrictive email policies to fight increasing SPAM. These are mainly DMARC. Such companies include Yahoo, Cox, Verizon, and others.

As this happens, some of your legitimate email may be rejected because email servers are more restrictive.

In order to minimize the probability of your email being rejected, the following describes how to implement Sender Policy Framework (SPF) and DKIM on your already running Postfix mail server.

Now that OpenWRT has released a new stable version: Barrier Breaker 14.07, it was time to upgrade my D-Link DIR-835 router running snapshots to it.

Do do this, I first did the following:

1. Save a list of the packages, using the command:

opkg list-installed

Then using some scripting on the output to ignore the version numbers.

2. Updating the /etc/sysupgrade.conf file to look like this:

/etc/rc.local
/etc/syslog-ng.conf
/etc/crontabs/

Having moved away from Rogers Cable TV to over-the-air (OTA) using a TV Antenna, I needed a way to record programs so I can watch them later.

For this, I got the MediaSonic HomeWorx HW150 PVR, which is inexpensive ($50 with price matching).

If you are, like me, an Ubuntu user who is annoyed when doing aptitude full-upgrade because it stops and displays the changelog until you press "q", then here is why this happens, and how to change the behavior.

The reason this happens is that the package apt-listchanges is installed on your system. This package lists the changes before applying them.

However, by default, it stops the upgrade process until the user has provided input. The silly part is that there are no choices at this point, the user must dismiss the output and nothing else can be done.

As part of Software Freedom Day 2014, I gave a talk on how to make a living from free software.

The slides are attached below.

An audio recording is also available.

If you upgraded your Kubuntu KDE Desktop from 12.04 (precise pangolin) to 14.04 (trusty tahr), and tried to connect your laptop to a projector, you will be, like me, frustrated with the default "Monitor and Display" settings that pops up. You can't unify outputs easily.

To overcome this, install the kde-workspace-randr package. It will provide you with an icon in the system tray where you can unify the outputs and change each's resolution more easily.

Do it using the following command, or use your favorite software installation program: