Todd Boss

If every app did this, I wouldn’t need a scroll wheel…

Using a few free tools, you can create your own Dropbox-esque system on your own network.  Due to its sheer simplicity and cross-platform awesomeness, I think I’ll stick with Dropbox for the time being.  However, this article turned me on to inotify, which you can use to automatically monitor a file tree in Linux.

Inotify will watch the specified folders for changes and notify you when they happen.  I’m actually pretty excited about this since I’ve got a need to do just that in my master’s project, and I was dreading the idea of writing a polling algorithm to repeatedly walk the whole tree (to say nothing of the performance implications).

If you’d like to try inotify (it’s included in Linux kernels since mid-2005) check out the fileschanged command here.  With one quick command, you can set it up to watch a folder and report changes any way you want.

Next, I’ll be checking out inotify-java and JNotify for potential use in my Groovy/Java project.

This guide shows you how to install Mac OS X in a VM on your Windows or Linux PC using VirtualBox, the great (and free) virtualization platform.

Note: This configuration may violate Apple’s terms of use.  Proceed at your own risk.

Wubi is a great way to try out Linux without messing up your existing system.  It allows you to install Ubuntu on your Windows PC without partitioning the hard drive.  You can then uninstall Ubuntu directly from the Windows Control Panel (although I can’t imagine why you’d want to). ;)

The Ubuntu Netbook Remix is specifically designed for small netbook screens, and is a big upgrade to a stock Windows install.  Check out these screenshots: