I am my primary audience for this section of the website so these hacks are written so that I can follow them. Therefore although I have tried to be helpful in how I write the entries, they probably assume a reasonable familiarity with the programs that I am familiar with. In particular, I am not a programmer but I have been using Linux for a decade now and have picked up the basics here and there. I figure I'm reasonably competent with perl and shell scripts and know my way around a typical system.

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To know whether or not this site is going to be useful, it may help to know what computers I run. When I originally set this up, I ran two Linux boxes, an iBook, and some other gadgets. The Linux boxes were PCs running Ubuntu, one Dapper Drake and one Edgy Eft. The iBook is running Tiger. Now, I have effectively replaced the Dapper Drake with a FreeBSD machine (again PC), and the Edgy Eft machine is currently out of service waiting for a new power supply for the monitor. The main use of my computers is work, and that involves reading and writing papers; for which I use Emacs and LaTeX. The majority of my hacks are designed to make this easier.

I have not enabled any form of commenting on this blog. Mainly that is due to the amount of space it would take up (I initially installed geeklog but that sent me way over quota before I'd even put in an entry), but also because I don't want to make it too easy to contact me. This isn't my day job. I'm happy to receive suggestions on how to improve these hacks, and I'm happy to help out with reasonable requests for help, but those can be done by email. If you can't figure out my email address then that's too bad. I get enough spam as it is without being so daft as to put my email address in more places than it already is.