Author: Rowan Rodrik

http://www.payformystay.com/

My day job is at YTEC, where I build tailor-made software (“maatwerk software“) for clients in logistics, healthcare and printing.

I like my day job, but I would like it even more to not have (and need!) a day job, which is why I built payformystay.com, an index of job offers for people looking for temporary work abroad. We feature job offers in many countries. Whether you want to polish your Spanish by working in Costa Rica or working in Honduras, or whether you rather go grape picking in France, we may have wat you’re looking for.

Getting my sister to forget the Google Desktop newsticker

My sister was so fond of the RSS feature that came with Google Desktop's sidebar that she kept it permanently visible at the right side of her screen. (What a news junkie!) Now that I got her stuck with Linux, she misses her precious Google Desktop and I'm trying to figure out an alternative for her. Read More »
By Rowan Rodrik, 1 decade ago, on November 27, 2008, at 21:11 | Comments closed

The road through Ubuntu

My mom bought a new laptop because of a broken screen on the old Linux machine that she had inherited from me (which wasn't wasn't a laptop, so I'm sure that the Golden Arrow of Consumption can explain why she didn't just replace the screen, although the new boyfriend who is kind of Windows-but-not-Linux-literate qualifies as a more probable reason for getting a laptop that is needlessly dragged down by Vista). Read More »
By Rowan Rodrik, 1 decade ago, on November 27, 2008, at 00:11 | 2 comments

The Story of Stuff

I've been a fan of Annie Leonard's Story of Stuff for a while. I don't want to spend any more time describing the video, since Annie does a splendid job herself: Read More »
By Rowan Rodrik, 1 decade ago, on November 23, 2008, at 21:11 | Comments closed

Change ext3’s reserved block count and gain Gigabytes

Wiebe was looking over my shoulder while I was running df to check the disk space that was still available on my Lenovo ThinkPad: Read More »
By Rowan Rodrik, 1 decade ago, on September 15, 2008, at 22:09 | 5 comments

png2ico: converting favicons to Windows’ ICO format

Even though, strictly speaking, I should be using favicons in anything but Windows' ICO format and refer to them from a <link>-tag at any location other than /favicon.ico, I sometimes like to help Microsoft break the web by putting an ICO file at the location that they reserved for it (/favicon.ico). Read More »
By Rowan Rodrik, 1 decade ago, on September 04, 2008, at 00:09 | 1 comment

Using wget to download all files on a page

Just a quick one-liner I used to download a bunch of MIDI files from an on-line listing of Chopin MIDIs: Read More »
By Rowan Rodrik, 1 decade ago, on August 27, 2008, at 23:08 | 5 comments

VIM modelines for per-file configuration

The MediaWiki developers use tabs instead of spaces for indentation. This can be annoying for someone like me who has configured VIM to work with spaces by default—annoying because I don't want to enter something like :set tabstop=4 noexpandtab shiftwidth=4 every time that I open a file. Adding different conditions for each project to my .vimrc is probably possible but not much fun. Read More »
By Rowan Rodrik, 1 decade ago, on August 21, 2008, at 20:08 | 5 comments

Remote pair programming with GNU Screen

I like pair programming. So much, in fact, that I want to do it even if I can't look over the other person's shoulder due to some geographical offset. Since I'm a real command-line freak, I can get what I want easily by using GNU Screen. Read More »
By Rowan Rodrik, 1 decade ago, on July 23, 2008, at 18:07 | 5 comments

Hardwood Investments Wiki

Before the company was forced by the Netherlands Authority for the Financial Markets (AFM) to seize most of its activities, Sicirec had always used it website to provide teak investors with a somewhat independent view of the hardwood investment market. It has to be said that Sicirec's critical view on the management of various teak plantation made the company a little unpopular with said managers (such as Ebe Huizinga of Flor y Fauna fame). Read More »
By Rowan Rodrik, 1 decade ago, on July 16, 2008, at 01:07 | 2 comments

Using Caps Lock as an extra Control key

With me mostly posting about computer stuff on this weblog, it might surprise you that, until May this year, I hadn't owned a personal computer in years while the last one that I did own was a slow pig grown from some old parts of an even slower pig and some second-hand replacements. So, you can image my joy when I got a shiny, new Lenovo Thinkpad 61 this spring. Read More »
By Rowan Rodrik, 1 decade ago, on July 15, 2008, at 12:07 | 2 comments