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ASDA online shopping -- website doesn't seem to like linux?
by James Freer 23 Mar '11

23 Mar '11

using Ubuntu 10.04 [also tried on my old machine on 8.04 and clean install on spare PC Xubuntu 10.04] Does anyone shop online with Asda. I've been using it for over a year now. End of Feb it started coming up with "our website is experiencing difficulties... please try again later". So i did... and got the same message every time i tried. I thought i'd made a breakthrough when instead of first 'booking a delivery slot', did the shopping (didn't get their message) and then after booking the slot back it came. I telephone and filled out their online form and apparently the website is working fine. It seems a] their website has been updated and doesn't like linux (which doesn't make sense using Firefox browser) b] Macintosh machines seem to get the same message It would appear they've done something on the website so linux users have problems. Does anyone else shop online with Asda by any chance... any problems? Any suggestions from a geek what could be wrong or what i could suggest in my next letter? thanks james

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Media playing software - do they all build their own indexes or what?
by Chris G 22 Mar '11

22 Mar '11

I'm just beginning to dip my toe(s) into moving recorded music and other such things (e.g. radio programmes) onto a computer or computers. One thing I'd prefer is to be able to keep all the files in a directory hierarchy of my own making rather than using a media player's own way of doing things. How does most media player type software handle this? If you point them at a hierarchy full of sound files do they build their own indexes from the shape of the hierarchy and the content (as in genre information etc.) of the files or what? Are there any (all?) that work like Digikam with images for instance where you can tell it to keep *all* of the information in the image files (as well as building its own index) so that if you move the hierarchy or want to access it with other software everything works still? -- Chris Green

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OT: Embedded development project anyone?
by Phil Ashby 22 Mar '11

22 Mar '11

Hi all, I've been offered a small development contract that I can't take up at the moment, and was wondering if anyone hereabouts would be interested. Details that I have at present: Porting C from AVR to Cortex M3 based SolderCore board (www.soldercore.com) Rowley Associates IDE available Please contact me directly if you are interested in more info and I'll put you in touch with the request originator. Phil.

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Ubuntu Theme
by Simon Royal 21 Mar '11

21 Mar '11

Hi I use Ubuntu 10.10 and the default theme is an orange and black combo called 'Ambiance'. Every so often my EeePC boots to a different looking theme, a grey one that looks like a 9.10 theme. It doesnt do it every boot. I cant replicate it. If I go into Appearance then I can change it back. Any ideas? Simon -- --- Twitter: http://twitter.com/SimonRoyal - LowEndMac: http://tinyurl.com/macspectrum - Skype: Simon-Royal. --- Asus EeePC 701SD running Ubuntu 10.10. Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 Mini Pro running 2.1

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PLay CDs with shift of pitch?
by ted.harding＠wlandres.net 21 Mar '11

21 Mar '11

Greetings! The nub of my query: is there a program which will play an audio CD, with an option which allows the pitch to be shifted? Background: Since quite a while ago (at least back to the 80s) you could buy "Music Minus One" records (on 33rpm vinyl then), along with an appropriate printed musical scores. The idea was that you could buy, say, a piano concerto "Minus One Piano", so it just played the orchestral part, and you would play along on your piano. Likewise say a piano quintett "Minus One Piano", or a string quartett "Minus One Cello". If you are playing a missing string (e.g. violin) part, you can of course easily tune your instrument to the pitch at which the record-player is playing. Not so easy if you are playing the piano part -- you don't want to re-tune your piano each time! However, in those days you could find record players with a knob which allowed you to change the speed of rotation of the turntable, so you could tune the playback pitch of the vinyl disk. It seems Music Minus One is still available, but now they're on CDs, not on vinyl disks. And, for personal reasons, what I want is the "Minus One Piano". While I have a few of the old ones on vinyl, the disks are no longer in great shape, and also I no longer have a speed-adjustable turntable. Therefore, on the basis of the above logic, I'm looking for a program which can play back a CD with adjustable shift of pitch (and that's a "proportional" shift, of course, so that say lowering it by 1/4 of a semitone means 1/4 of a semitone throughout the whole bass-treble range). Any suggestions appreciated! With thanks, Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <ted.harding(a)wlandres.net> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 10-Mar-11 Time: 17:49:19 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

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Re: [ALUG] Kiddy Friendly Browser
by Simon Royal 18 Mar '11

18 Mar '11

Simon Just thought I would point out a serious flaw with the Firefox addon. It has to be manually activated by clicking on the K icon in the Firefox toolbar. There is no way of launching Firefox ready in kiddy mode, which I think kind of defeats the point. Simon ----- Original Message ----- From: Simon Elliott To: Anglian Linux User Group Subject: Re: [ALUG] Kiddy Friendly Browser On 13 March 2011 16:21, Simon Royal <mrsimonroyal(a)gmail.com> wrote: > So at present they are running Windows XP on some good spec P4 Celeron > 2.5Ghz machines, but with all the anti-virus and anti-malware software > it makes the machines crawl. They are also using a kiddy safe browser > called KidZui which I think is a kiddy front end for IE You are mistaken.. Kidzui do a Firefox add-on. Problem solved? https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/kidzui/ Looks like it runs full screen when you click the K on the toolbar, I wonder if there's a command line switch to launch Firefox with Kidzui enabled full screen automatically, pop that in the start up applications and you'd be away. -Si _______________________________________________ main(a)lists.alug.org.uk http://www.alug.org.uk/ http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/main Unsubscribe? See message headers or the web site above!

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Any suggestions for a simple way to print four passport photos on one sheet of 4 x 6 paper?
by Chris G 17 Mar '11

17 Mar '11

Has anyone got any ideas of how to print four copies of a single image on a 4" x 6" piece of paper? I guess one way would be to put them into an Open Office document to position them but it seems a bit overkill for such a simple thing. -- Chris Green

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Is there a way to provide a secondary/backup SMTP server for Evolution?
by Chris G 17 Mar '11

17 Mar '11

We have (at least) two SMTP servers available to us for sending mail, in fact we have way more than that as we have two ADSL connections from different ISPs (hence two SMTP servers from them) and we also have two hosting services separate from the ISPs and they too provide SMTP servers. Is there any way that we can use these to provide some redundancy when sending mail from Evolution? At present I can't see any really easy way to do it as Evolution doesn't really allow for the use of more than one SMTP unless you manually change accounts. I run postfix on one of the machines here, I could point Evolution at postfix for sending mail, can one tell postfix to try an alternative SMTP server if the main/default one is down? It feels like the MX records for the 'smarthost' that we send our mail to (both from Postfix and Evolution at the moment) should provide this but I'm not convinced that it does. E.g. the mail relay I'm using for my local postfix is relay.mail.gandi.net and that doesn't return any explicit MX records in response to a query. The mail relay used by evolution is provided by my hosting at TsoHost and is mail.isbd.net, that does have an MX record:- chris$ host mail.isbd.net mail.isbd.net is an alias for isbd.net. isbd.net has address 188.65.115.75 isbd.net mail is handled by 0 isbd.net. I can manipulate the zone file for isbd.net but I'm not sure if that will actually do what I need. Can anyone help/elucidate/point me somewhere useful? A bit of Googling suggests that maybe Postfix's fallback_relay is what I need but I'd like to find a tutorial/howto because the basic manual is a bit concise shall we say. -- Chris Green

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Re: [ALUG] Ugliest sites on the net.
by Phil Ashby 17 Mar '11

17 Mar '11

On 16/03/11 12:00, Bill Hill <mail(a)wbh.org> wrote: > Following from the pubmeet talk about the worst websites out there, (frames, > flash, geocities, vbsript!) well, after a bit of searching I've found again my > contender for this hotly contested category. > > http://www.dokimos.org/ajff/indexpage.html Ye gods (literally!). Did anyone dare to click through to the main page? This appears in a large font: "Pressurous Moments Storybook Collection" It's almost as if someone is doing it on purpose ;) P

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Ugliest sites on the net.
by Bill Hill 17 Mar '11

17 Mar '11

Following from the pubmeet talk about the worst websites out there, (frames, flash, geocities, vbsript!) well, after a bit of searching I've found again my contender for this hotly contested category. http://www.dokimos.org/ajff/indexpage.html %-)

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