A lightweight Getting Things Done workflow built around TaskPaper's plain-text format, with ways to manage lists on the desktop and the Web.

Using Firefox's It's All Text! extension to edit Web textareas in a desktop editor such as Vim, with UTF-8 support for writing Chinese.

Troubleshooting Firefox hangs by removing troublesome sessionstore.js files, avoiding the need to rebuild the entire browser profile.

Giving a Debian KDE desktop the look of Mac OS X Tiger with the Baghira widget theme, coordinated colors, and Compiz window decorations.

Using Vim's ManPageView plugin as an Info browser, with a shell wrapper that brings familiar key bindings and syntax highlighting to documentation.

Enabling inverse search in Vim's LaTeX-Suite so a click in the DVI viewer returns to the corresponding place in the TeX source.

Restoring a missing loopback interface fixes KMail hangs after removing the mepis-network package deletes the network interfaces configuration.

Using Vim's TOhtml command to turn source code into syntax-highlighted HTML for Drupal posts, with an integrated editing and publishing workflow.

Configuring Firefox or Debian's Iceweasel to open mailto links in a chosen desktop email program, using KMail as the example.

Revisiting dual-monitor setup with XRandR 1.2 to extend a ThinkPad desktop across its built-in screen and an external monitor.

Fixing directory-index errors when ordinary HTML directories share a Drupal installation, using per-directory .htaccess settings.

Setting up OpenSSH public-key authentication on Debian, from generating and distributing keys to managing access across multiple SSH servers.

Backing up a Debian laptop to a USB hard drive with rdiff-backup, Keep, and a custom udev rule for convenient incremental system backups.

Replacing the command-line man pager with Vim through ManPageView and a shell wrapper, with a fallback when a manual entry cannot be found.

Tracking down a Java MalformedInputException after moving a file-copying program from Windows to Linux, and resolving it with a locale change.

Running Windows Vista in VirtualBox on Debian for occasional Windows-only demonstrations, with installation notes and comparisons to a previous VMware setup.

Installing and trying Compiz-Fusion on Debian KDE to manage a crowded ThinkPad X61 desktop, with reflections on the usefulness of 3D window effects.

Getting ThinkPad X61 hotkeys working on Debian Linux with ACPI tools after tpb fails to handle the newer laptop's volume controls.

Using XRandR 1.2 to detect and control a ThinkPad X61's external VGA display, including clone mode for presentations without restarting X.

Installing SimplyMEPIS 7.0 on a ThinkPad X61, with notes on hardware support and replacing the laptop's factory Windows Vista setup.