Category: Community Content

Community generated content related topics

Getting Ubuntu to Boot *AFTER* installing Windows 7

Photo Credit: fallsroad - http://www.flickr.com/photos/fallsroad/13240207/From Google, and the various Linux community forums, this is a fairly common problem so, in an effort to be more useful than those who simply post a link to the GRUB man page, or an article which spells out how dumb it is to install Windows AFTER Ubuntu – I thought I’d drop my experience and the resolution here – I’m bound to need it at some point in the future.

The Fix:

While the suggested Boot-Repair GUI didn’t do the trick for me, the following  did result in an eventual #WIN.

  • Boot from a Ubuntu LIVE CD/USB
  • From a terminal, enter the following
    • sudo fdisk -l
    • This will identify the device / drive. For me (and most users) this will tend to be /dev/sda
    • If you are still uncertain you can also run sudo blkid for more details and review the partition labels & sizes
  • Mount the Ubuntu boot partition
    • sudo mount /dev/sdXY /mnt
    • e.g. sudo mount /dev/sda1 /mnt
  • Run grub-install as below to drop the GRUB2 files back onto the boot partition where they should reside
    • sudo grub-install --root-directory=/mnt /dev/sdX
    • e.g. sudo grub-install --root-directory=/mnt /dev/sda
  • Reboot (into your freshly resurrected Ubuntu installation)
  • Open a terminal and refresh the GRUB2 menu with:
    • sudo update-grub
  • That’s it.. you SHOULD now have both Ubuntu and Windows 7 detected at boot and be able to choose between them.

Thanks to the Ubuntu Community for this page – and all the others which pointed to different solutions and variants of this fix. If the above doesn’t work for you, Google is your friend – there’s a heap more articles out there which should offer you an eventual solution.

NetHui 2011 – Day 1: Globalisation, the Internet and the Law – The Internet as a Revolutionary Tool

Session Lead by: Brian Calhoun, Independent Consultant and co-chair of NZRise Inc

 “I see a gradual slide toward corporate and government control…by control I mean content”

The session started with a discussion of TOR / BitCoin / BitTorrent – all created specifically to circumvent control systems that were already in existence. The question then posed to the room was:

“How long before our government moves to block/disable these things? […] What is your bottom line? How pissed off do you need to get before you take action?”

Continue reading “NetHui 2011 – Day 1: Globalisation, the Internet and the Law – The Internet as a Revolutionary Tool”

Visualising Public Data – Auckland Transport

Chris McDowall is a very, very clever person. In addition to all the other cool stuff he’s done in the NZ data space, he has just released this post on taking the Maxx public transport data feed of movements over a day, and plotting it out on a map. It’s hypnotic and astounding in the sheer volume of movements – but you need to see it to appreciate how cool it is.


An animated map of Auckland’s public transport network from Chris McDowall on Vimeo.


Well done Chris, my hat is (once again) off to you sir – keep creating…

Barcamp Auckland 2010 – Redux

The following is intended to be a summary of various links covering Barcamp Auckland 2010 as my notes only capture what I was able to attend.

Much of the discovery was done via a twitter search, so I’m not expecting it to be an exhaustive list – please let me know if I’ve missed anything so I can update to include you [Note: I’m using your shortened links wherever I can to retain your ability to track clicks, so let me know what links you’d rather I use…]

Thanks once again to Ludwig Wendzich @Ludwigw for doing the hard yards to make it such a successful day.


Slide Packs:

Flickr Shots (please tag yourselves): Here & here

Coverage / Notes:

Notes from Barcamp Auckland 2010

Barcamp Auckland is an annual gathering of developers, designers, start-ups and social-media types. It’s a full day event held in an ‘unconference’ like style, where the attendee (see my attendee & interested folks list on Twitter) set the schedule – and people turn up to discuss topics which interest them.

The following are the session notes I took during this years Auckland Barcamp

Continue reading “Notes from Barcamp Auckland 2010”

Commentary on Corporate Approaches to Social Media

Honestly, this is brilliant – while the clip itself has been mashed up to cover everything from Hitlers replacement motorbike to his choice in gaming consoles, this subtitling by Laurel Papworth (original article) has a bunch of agencies across the ditch resorting to ad-hominems – a classic sign of “oh-bollocks-what-do-we-do-now”.

Disclosure: I have met and spent time with Laurel during a workshop a few years back and was well impressed then, as I have continued to be as I’ve followed her commentary on all things social media. For those interested, I’d recommend following her posts, and subscribing to her podcasts.

Education and the Future of Learning

As I gear up for this weekends unconference, I’ve been looking through my Delicious bookmarks, specifically on things around Education, which is one of the sessions I’d like to run, if nothing else – to get a different perspective from that discussed at this years BaaCamp where I was part of a similar session.

I came across this video, speaking to the one way approach many educators are taking to using the Internet as a resource. The presenter has written a supporting article (PDF) where he explains the different roles students can take to build engagement, and to collaborate with their global peers

Myths and Opportunities: Technology in the Classroom by Alan November from Brian Mull on Vimeo.

Food for thought – and a definite starter for our discussions at TelecomONE this weekend – how can we as an industry help support our educators and their students to become part of the global voice of learning?

Site Design and UI – An Educational Video

The embedded video came across my Twitter feed this morning (thanks @rgoodchild) under the heading of ‘The Perfect Geek Rapper’. Now while m0serious may not be in the same league as NerdCore rapper MC Frontalot,his material will still coax a smile from those of us who have an interest in site design, UI and Ux – as well as imparting some good coding behaviors…

Slap on your headphones and have a listen:

Peace out yo… (Man, I’m soo hip and street and stuff… *makes complicated gesture with fingers*)

Tanking Twimailer (and Trying Topify)

Dump TruckYesterday Alain E. posted the following comment on my Twimailer article

It is like Topify.com before less interesting. And in addition their twitter account is not even working. I personnally tried both and prefer Topify (first because their have a much nicer site) because their emails are better and allow follow back right from the message. In addition, I had too many down time with twimailer…

To be honest, I’ve not had any issues with the [Twimailer] service to date, but this comment sparked my interest – which peaked when I read this article on Read Write Web. It appears that Twimailer has been sold (for a somewhat paltry sum) to an unknown, who is in turn trying to flick off the service to another buyer less than a week after acquiring it.

As a result of this article, I have gone into my Twitter settings, changed my email back to the one used prior to the Twimailer service AND changed my password. I’d suggest that others do the same.

It may seem a little reactionary, but as I use my identity not only for my private tweets but also in support of my work, the potential threat of hijack is too high a price to pay for continued support for a service which has failed to inform its network of some pretty key changes in it’s organisation. Sorry Twimailer, it’s over between us, I’m moving on – and trying Topify

So my thanks once again to Alain for peaking my interest, and to the guys at RWW for keeping across these technologies – these are the reasons that you get my subscriptions to your Twitter and RSS feeds.

Photo Credit: USFarmer / Redman