I use Amazon's MP3 store and it's accompanying downloader application. It came time to set it up on another 64-bit machine and I thought this would be a good opportunity to document the install process.

First, you gotta have getlibs.deb installed by downloading the file and typing sudo dpkg -i getlibs.deb.

Before we can install the amazon downloader, you will need a few other packages. Use the following bash shell 1-liner to get them all.

Let's say you want to access a svn repo or perhaps even a working copy programatically through php without escaping to the shell, you need svn functions setup in php. Here is how you do it.

First off, you need to have a few packages installed. I assume you already got a web server and php up, in addition to this you will also need the following:

• php development libraries
• php pear/pecl
• subversion
• subversion development libraries

On a modern *buntu distro, the packages you need are:

The Situation

With the baby duedate approaching, it was time to join the 21st century and upgrade my camcorder. My old miniDV-based Canon ZR200 just made the video creation/editing process too cumbersome and it didn't record in HD. After a bit of shopping I found a Canon HF200 at Nebraska Furniture Mart with 18 months, no interest! While closing the order, the sales guy asked me if I was gonna use the camera with PC (by which I am sure he meant Windows) or Mac. I answered "Linux!" :)

The Problem

So you got a new customer site to do. You want a new host name for the development site (like customername.yourdomain.tld), so you modify your local hosts file OR, if you have any scalability in your setup, you go and add a new CNAME record to your name server setup and all is good, right?

Well, by client #5 this process begins to become annoying and by client #10 you are looking for an alternative method of managing these names.

The Problem

if a container div only contains floated divs, that container div has no height. the usual fix is to add an extra markup on the code with a clear: both (or left/right) style. but that is putting layout on the markup, which makes you go to css hell without 72 div virgins waiting for you.

The Problem (or how I broke it)

So here I am in this cool conference waiting for the sessions to start while doing some work and I decide play a bit with my kubuntu laptop... Maybe it was bootchart, maybe it was insserv, I don't know... what I do know is that after a reboot I got a kernel panic... you know, when the "scroll lock" and "caps lock" lights keep flashing at you in mockery?

The Problem

So, a while ago I saw in the blog of helios that there was a campaign going to raise awareness about the penumbra game trilogy - a series of games that had native linux versions - and you could get all 3 games for $5. Sounds like a good deal, right? On top of it you are also supporting a good cause, so I said "why not?" and bought the trilogy.

The Problem

Moodle's Face-to-Face module sends you an iCal invite that is not properly interpreted by MS Outlook client. The iCal invite comes through as a blank attachment. Apparently the iCal worked just fine on OWA and on Evolution running on Linux.

When I upgraded from Hardy to Intrepid I noticed that the root actions were gone from the context menu in dolphin (used to be in konqui).

Finally I found out that someone else made a fix for this using perl. Here it is:

A couple of sites that I support have been hosted by VPSLink for a while now and it was time I got the OpenVPN client in the virtual machine to talk to my server. Setting up OpenVPN was easy enough, as I got the config files and the certs all prepped before hand, getting it to work was a different deal... After the initial failed service openvpn start and a bit more sifting through log files, it turned out that the node for the /dev/net/tun adapter was incorrect! Fixing this was easy after a bit of googling around: