Author Archives: Huy Tran

Regular-Use Android Apps

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Fancy Widget

OK, so this is a widget and not a standard app, per se. However, it is useful, especially when one doesn’t have an HTC phone with the already-present clock widget.
Pros: It is fully customizable. The widget shows an analog clock, the date, the battery level, and the weather.  You can choose to show whatever you want out of those options though. You can even customize the options when you tap on part of the display. For example, I have mine setup to go to the clock settings when I tap on the clock part of the widget. When I tap on the weather, a five-day forecast pops up and I customized it to go to The Weather Channel app on my phone when I tap on that forecast.
Cons: Sometimes the GPS is a bit off and you may have to refresh the weather forecast screen.
http://www.appbrain.com/app/fancy-widget/com.anddoes.fancywidget
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Free products for Web Content Filtering

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I figured I’d post about a few web content filtering solutions I’ve come across over the years. Good for setting up kid computers or an entire network for content filtering. There are products a church might recommend like CovenantEyes accountability software but why pay for something that is out there for free?
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Apt – PacMan – Yum

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I’ve worked with several package mangers, on several different distros. However my exposure to them has been limited by the popularity of Apt. That isn’t to say my primary OS only has one, as that would be an understatement. Ubuntu actually comes packaged with two package managers, Apt, and dpkg. And they are all kinds of different.

Apt is a high level package manger, while dpkg is a low level package manger. All this means is that Apt handles a varying degree of tasks, and dpkg is only concerned with the ones right in front of it.

For example, when you install an application with Apt your computer will search for the installation media on the server, find its dependencies, and ask for confirmation before installing them, while giving you details of conflicts.

Dpkg on the other hand will not download the media, it won’t download the dependencies, and it won’t ask confirmation nor search for conflicts. It might not even tell you that you are missing the dependencies.
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