David Andrzejewski

Python URLGrabber: Ignore System Proxy Settings

The Duke URLGrabber package for Python makes it incredibly easy to retrieve files from remote servers, and it abstracts urllib2 for you in a protocol-independent way, so you can focus on your application instead of spending time working with Python’s built-in urllib2. On Windows and Mac OSX, by default, urllib2 (and therefore URLGrabber) will use …

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FreeBSD: Monitor Your Disks’ Health with Smartmontools

Whether you’re using FreeBSD for your workstation, a simple home server, or in a complex IT environment where reliability is critical, losing the data on your hard disk(s) is probably the worst type of failure you can have.  I’ve already gone over a backup strategy for FreeBSD, but it’s best to try to prevent data …

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Control Your TiVo From Your BlackBerry Bold with Wonderful Remote

When Wonderful Remote first starts, you’re asked to enter your registration information (or leave it blank for the 48-hour trial), and then you’ll enter your TiVo’s IP address on your network. You’re then presented with the main screen, which provides a reference on the available functions. I went through and tried all of the options.  …

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A Simple Backup Strategy

I am a strong believer that most non-IT people don’t take seriously the need to have a reliable method of backup for their important data. Just ask yourself: What happens when you can no longer access the data on your computer? It doesn’t matter what happens – you could or lose your laptop or have it stolen, or the hard drive in your computer could fail. Any way you look at it, your data is toast. What, then, would you do to recover it? It’s always a good time to think about backups, and to help, I’ll show you what I do.