Thomas' Tidbits: A few tidbits from Thomas about a variety of topics like programming, gaming, sports and other things.



Post by Author: Thomas Hawkins

Welcome Back
By: Thomas Hawkins     Published Date: 2008-10-02 17:59:00

Hello everyone, and welcome back to my site (if any one ever really looked at it in the first place ...


Never ever, EVER use fixboot!
By: Thomas Hawkins     Published Date: 2008-10-18 18:12:00

I was trying to fix a friends computer recently.  It was a Windows XP machine which would boot ...


PHP Command Line Colouring
By: Thomas Hawkins     Published Date: 2008-10-25 18:04:00

If you are doing any PHP command line scripting, you may have wondered how you can add a bit of sim ...


CS2D Map Editing
By: Thomas Hawkins     Published Date: 2009-01-18 18:13:00

I’ve recently come across a game that I’m becoming quite a fan of.  CS2D  ...


Desire2Learn / Javascript Picture Library
By: Thomas Hawkins     Published Date: 2009-02-09 18:31:00

Introduction The picture library built into Desire2Learn doesn’t allow for instructors to cr ...


Migrating pwman3 Database
By: Thomas Hawkins     Published Date: 2009-03-13 18:45:00

I recently updated my server and I store a good number of passwords in my pwman database. ...


Adding a robot to awstats
By: Thomas Hawkins     Published Date: 2009-08-31 18:47:00

I’ve configured awstats to provide statistics on visitors of the websites on the server. I&rs ...


awstats Information
By: Thomas Hawkins     Published Date: 2009-10-22 18:49:00

Just surfing the web and came across this excellent site with advanced awstats configuration inform ...


Hesk Helpdesk (And Enhancements!)
By: Thomas Hawkins     Published Date: 2009-12-06 17:11:00

I created a number of enhancements for the free help desk software Hesk: https://www.hesk.com/ Thi ...


Useful Database Commands
By: Thomas Hawkins     Published Date: 2010-05-05 17:19:00

Here are some neat database commands I recently came across while I was trying to get statistics an ...


CBC Play On Hockey Tournament
By: Thomas Hawkins     Published Date: 2010-06-28 18:13:00

This past weekend, me and a few friends played in the National CBC Play On street hockey tournament ...


Desktop GUI Programming (Python (PyDev, pygtk) and Glade)
By: Thomas Hawkins     Published Date: 2010-07-29 18:18:00

I recently decided to get back into desktop applications. Since about 2000 I’ve focused on de ...


Change of pace, my garden.
By: Thomas Hawkins     Published Date: 2010-08-11 18:22:00

It is tough living in a duplex, with no lawn. My dream of a garden seemed to die with the purchase ...


Long Time No Post (Various Software and Plans)
By: Thomas Hawkins     Published Date: 2010-10-31 18:24:00

Hello Folks,Long time and no posting. I’ve been quite busy. So here are some updates: Update ...


New Discovery: Failure Heavier than Success
By: Thomas Hawkins     Published Date: 2010-12-02 18:26:00

Hello Internet Reader. You heard it here first; Failure is heavier than Success. I’m sure tha ...


Bandwidth Checker Perl Script
By: Thomas Hawkins     Published Date: 2011-01-27 18:28:00

Recently, I needed the ability to get a readout of the average bandwidth used on the server at one ...


Duke Nukem Forever/Flatout
By: Thomas Hawkins     Published Date: 2011-07-01 21:21:00

Duke Nukem Forever Well, I spent real money and actually bought a game recently.  And it was& ...


Tennis Court Catalog for Newfoundland
By: Thomas Hawkins     Published Date: 2011-08-07 21:21:00

I recently began working on a new website that will catalog all of the tennis courts in Newfoundlan ...


Diff in Filezilla
By: Thomas Hawkins     Published Date: 2011-08-09 21:22:00

Filezilla is a great ftp/sftp/… tool. But it is missing one feature that would make it more ...


Project Management Game
By: Thomas Hawkins     Published Date: 2011-12-07 21:23:00

Yeah, I’m a dork. But as a project manager, it was fun for a bit. http://thatpmgame.com Can ...


Speed Up X11 Forwarding
By: Thomas Hawkins     Published Date: 2011-12-24 21:25:00

For those who work on multiple Linux/Unix machines, we sometimes need to do work remotely. Sometime ...


Linux Mint 12 - Failure to Boot, and Video Problems (AMD/NVIDIA)
By: Thomas Hawkins     Published Date: 2012-03-31 21:26:00

A few weeks ago, I tossed Mint on an old machine to give it a try. Looking for something to replace ...


Prius V Fuel Economy
By: Thomas Hawkins     Published Date: 2012-09-06 21:28:00

Haven’t posted in a while, but have been meaning to post this tidbit. We have been leasing a ...


awstats Suddenly Stops Processing Logs (Dropped Records) - FMS/Wowza Logs
By: Thomas Hawkins     Published Date: 2013-06-05 21:34:00

Recently had a problem where awstats stopped processing log entries from one of my sites while the ...


Rsyslog + LogAnalyzer + Logging to MySQL and Files
By: Thomas Hawkins     Published Date: 2013-06-21 21:32:00

The Goal Have all syslogs from all servers shipped to a central server so that we can query them i ...


First Garden Harvest - Celery
By: Thomas Hawkins     Published Date: 2013-08-07 21:34:00

Yesterday I harvested my first crop of celery from the green house. I started three heads of celery ...


Tournament Bracket Display (2014)
By: Thomas Hawkins     Published Date: 2014-06-24 21:35:00

As many of you know from my earlier posts, I’m always trying to display brackets online. Whil ...


CS2D in 2019
By: Thomas Hawkins     Published Date: 2019-03-27 18:15:00

Installing CS29 in 2019 on Xubuntu, and encountered an error with libsteam_api.so.


Launching New Website
By: Thomas Hawkins     Published Date: 2019-03-31 14:06:00

My announcement about my new website


Home Key Returning to Top of Document
By: Thomas Hawkins     Published Date: 2019-04-12 09:03:00

So for the last few days, my Home key has been returning my cursor to the top of the document, inst ...


Elections Coming
By: Thomas Hawkins     Published Date: 2019-04-12 15:42:00

We have a provincial election coming soon, and a federal election in the fall.  Have always be ...


Recycling (Leading by Example)
By: Thomas Hawkins     Published Date: 2019-04-15 07:49:00

I took the girls to McDonalds last week.  And while we were eating our meal I noticed just how ...


Install RDQA in rStudio in Ubuntu
By: Thomas Hawkins     Published Date: 2019-08-29 08:10:00

Instructions This tutorial will outline the steps I took to install RDQA for use with RStudio in x ...


New Commenting Feature
By: Thomas Hawkins     Published Date: 2019-09-14 22:56:00

I'm working on a new commenting system for the website.  I decided to ditch Hashover, partiall ...


Heroes of Might and Magic 2 Gold (GOG / DOS version)
By: Thomas Hawkins     Published Date: 2019-09-16 07:39:00

I recently got a copy of Dosbox running on my Chromebook allowing me to play my favourite old DOS g ...


Canadian Federal Election 2019
By: Thomas Hawkins     Published Date: 2019-10-21 15:05:00

As an individual with an interest in politics (and a degree in Political Science), I'm very interes ...


Creating Subtitles for Videos in Linux
By: Thomas Hawkins     Published Date: 2019-10-31 08:04:00

One thing we do at our workplace is produce video.  We have a team of producers, techs, and ed ...


New Car - First EV
By: Thomas Hawkins     Published Date: 2020-01-03 15:51:00

The lease on our 2015 Toyota Corolla recently expired.  Which required us to get a new car, ei ...


Fixing Grub After Windows Update
By: Thomas Hawkins     Published Date: 2020-02-29 19:59:00

I just recently installed a Windows 10 update, and after my reboot, I was faced with the lovely gru ...


Taking a Screenshot on a Schedule and Uploading
By: Thomas Hawkins     Published Date: 2020-04-15 17:24:00

My mother sent along a hard drive that was failing.  So, my task was to try and recover it.&nb ...


Moving to a VM for Daily Computing
By: Thomas Hawkins     Published Date: 2020-05-17 12:30:00

Since I've been home due to COVID-19, I found myself primarily operating in Windows.  Largely ...


RStudio Access Denied on Network Folders
By: Thomas Hawkins     Published Date: 2020-05-20 18:26:00

I recently tried to set up RStudio on Windows.  At work, we have network mapped Documents driv ...


Setting up Etherpad Lite on Linux with SQLite Database
By: Thomas Hawkins     Published Date: 2020-05-22 10:57:00

Ever since Etherpad (Wikipedia Entry) hit the scene, and lived a short life (2008 - 2009) before be ...


Setting up Etherpad Lite on Linux with SQLite Database (Part 2)
By: Thomas Hawkins     Published Date: 2020-05-30 20:32:00

Welcome to part 2 of my Etherpad setup tutorial using Centos7 and SQLite. In this tutorial, we are ...


Setting up Etherpad Lite on Linux with SQLite Database (Part 3)
By: Thomas Hawkins     Published Date: 2020-06-05 20:37:00

Welcome to part 3 of my Etherpad setup tutorial using Centos7 and SQLite. In this tutorial, we are ...


Fracas Game
By: Thomas Hawkins     Published Date: 2020-10-18 13:33:00

Update 2020-10-19: I updated my file and instructions to include registering the OCX files for net ...


Understanding SMART Drive Attributes
By: Thomas Hawkins     Published Date: 2021-02-13 09:23:00

Every year around this time, I take the time to clean out my office, clean up my computer, and go t ...


Back to Lockdown (COVID-19)
By: Thomas Hawkins     Published Date: 2021-02-13 15:45:00

Introduction The province of Newfoundland and Labrador (NL) has fared very well during the current ...


Lockdown Post 2
By: Thomas Hawkins     Published Date: 2021-02-18 18:45:00

Day 2: Feb 14th Happy Valentine's Day!  Turns out everyone's plan for this day was ruined!&nb ...


Installing snaps offline
By: Thomas Hawkins     Published Date: 2021-09-08 13:11:00

I was trying to install a Linux application that was packaged via snap.  For some reason, my v ...


Using Notepad++ As A Markdown Editor
By: Thomas Hawkins     Published Date: 2022-02-03 10:30:00

I've been looking for a new (free) markdown editor to replace Typora now that it is no longer free, ...


Ubuntu with Multiple Networks, Some Without Internet Access
By: Thomas Hawkins     Published Date: 2023-02-22 07:34:00

Go to Advanced Network Configuration Edit your Ethernet connection (or whatever) Go to IPv4 Setti ...


365 Days of Dog Walks
By: Thomas Hawkins     Published Date: 2025-01-08 08:20:00

Haven't made a post here in a long time but I recently decided to document 365 days of dog walks an ...


365 Days of Dog Walks
By: Thomas Hawkins     Published Date: 2025-01-08 08:20:00

Haven't made a post here in a long time but I recently decided to document 365 days of dog walks an ...


365 Days of Dog Walks - Day 2
By: Thomas Hawkins     Published Date: 2025-01-09 13:35:00

Day 2 Working from home today, so took Teddy on a short walk during my lunch break.  Still no ...


365 Days of Dog Walks - Day 3
By: Thomas Hawkins     Published Date: 2025-01-10 22:09:00

No photos today.  Took the dog for a walk in the evening in light rain/snow conditions.  ...


365 Days of Dog Walks - Day 4
By: Thomas Hawkins     Published Date: 2025-01-11 16:27:00

Another nice day for a walk! Walked 2.87km this time, in 35 minutes and 49 seconds.  Both gir ...


365 Days of Dog Walks - Day 5
By: Thomas Hawkins     Published Date: 2025-01-12 22:16:00

No photo today, but Kristina joined me on the walk. We walked 1.43km in 16 minutes and 55 seconds. ...


365 Days of Dog Walks - Day 6/7
By: Thomas Hawkins     Published Date: 2025-01-15 08:20:00

I'm still doing the walks!  Just getting lazy on the posting. 😉 On Day 6, I wasn't feeling ...


365 Days of Dog Walks - Day 8 - 12
By: Thomas Hawkins     Published Date: 2025-01-19 20:33:00

Still walking, just not posting as regularly as I should. Day 8 we went 1.49 km in 17:47. Day 9 w ...


365 Days of Dog Walks - Day 13 - 25
By: Thomas Hawkins     Published Date: 2025-02-01 18:34:00

I really need to post more often....The girls haven't been walking with me lately, so just Teddy an ...


365 Days of Dog Walks - Day 26 and 27
By: Thomas Hawkins     Published Date: 2025-02-04 21:33:00

Day 26 was a nice lunchtime walk with Teddy and Kristina.  1.34 km in 18 minutes and 32 second ...


365 Days of Dog Walks - Day 26 and 27
By: Thomas Hawkins     Published Date: 2025-02-04 21:33:00

Day 26 was a nice lunchtime walk with Teddy and Kristina.  1.34 km in 18 minutes and 32 second ...


365 Days of Dog Walks - Day 28 - 43
By: Thomas Hawkins     Published Date: 2025-02-20 08:05:00

Lots of days in this update. Day 29, .86km in 14 minutes and 26 seconds. Day 30, 3.48km in 43 min ...


365 Days of Dog Walks - Give Up?
By: Thomas Hawkins     Published Date: 2025-10-21 20:45:00

I know what you are thinking, he gave up after day 43.  Well, right and wrong.  I did giv ...


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