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Blogs and such...
by James Elsey 10 Feb '10

10 Feb '10

When you come across an interesting article, or figure out how to do something with a new technology your messing around with, do you document it? This is a bit of a generalised question, just trying to find out what you guys do. I've gone for "Blogger", is there anything exciting Wordpress offers that could tempt me over? I'm using the web interface at the moment, its a bit clumsy, are there any good linux desktop applications that make it easier to type up and organise posts? If anyone has a tech blog, feel free to link me up, would be interested to see what others are doing Cheers! James Elsey

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ipv6 (with Virgin Media)
by Jon Dye 10 Feb '10

10 Feb '10

Hi, I would like to try settings up ipv6 at home in preperation for the global meltdown when we run out of ipv4 addresses. I currently have an internet connection with Virgin Media who I don't believe do native ipv6. I therefore would like to set up a tunnel to a provider. I was wondering if anyone had any recommendations for particular providers (brokers?), software or general tips (or specific tips relating to Virgin Media). I have several PCs (Windows and Linux) on a LAN which then goes through a router that doesn't have ipv6 capability. One of the linux machines on the LAN is a server that's on 24/7 so I was thinking of using that to do the tunnelling. I don't have a static IP on the router but it hardly ever changes (I think it's only changed when I've unplugged the router for more than a few hours). Suggestions? JD

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Chrome and Flash
by Bev Nicolson 09 Feb '10

09 Feb '10

I installed Chrome (for Linux) a while ago and am still playing with it but wish to install flash. I've found where it is installed already (and saved the relevant bit of text to copy) but it needs to go into another directory as far as I can tell. Do I do this from Terminal? And how? TIA. Bev.

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Re: [ALUG] curious behavior of audacity and usb mike (Peter Alcibiades)
by phil.ashby＠bt.com 08 Feb '10

08 Feb '10

From: Peter Alcibiades <palcibiades-first(a)yahoo.co.uk> > Disconnect the mike, and try to play back? Error message. > > Restart audacity? Now playback works, but recording does not. What > appears to happen on attempting to record is that the track > seems to be > trying to playback through the mic. Well, this is my > interpretation of > what is visible and audible. Probably correct Peter: I suspect the chipset used in the mic is bi-directional (I have a similar issue with an audio+video grabber that also claims to have audio out but no connectors). You should be able to select the appropriate recording device in the mixer applet (KDE or GNOME versions), and should also be able to see what channels your various audio devices claim to have. It's also worth checking what audio subsystem audacity is trying to use, it's probably Alsa for recording, but may be Jack or Pulseaudio depending on versions and audio arrangements in your distro. If audacity isn't using Alsa directly then you need to configure the appropriate sound server (Jack or Pulseaudio) inputs to use the correct underlying Alsa device for recording. Finally - be aware that USB audio devices can come up in any order, so if you want the external sound card to always be device 0 (Alsa hw:0), with or without the mic plugged in, you will need to edit the udev rules to identify each USB device and fix the numbering (this is tricker if >1 device use the same chipset and thus have the same USB vendor and device IDs, although I have been able to make this work using bus IDs instead). For all this GIYF :) Phil.

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Web picture gallery that has a 'narrative' with it - any ideas?
by Chris G 07 Feb '10

07 Feb '10

Are there any 'gallery' type applications (i.e. those like gallery2) which also allow quite a lot of text with them so that one can create a picture gallery with a narrative? -- Chris Green

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curious behavior of audacity and usb mike
by Peter Alcibiades 07 Feb '10

07 Feb '10

Something very puzzling. Well, lots of things are puzzling, but the latest one is this. I have a c-media usb mike. Start up audacity with it plugged in, and it records just fine. Play back the recording? Nothing. Play back another recorded track? Nothing. Disconnect the mike, and try to play back? Error message. Restart audacity? Now playback works, but recording does not. What appears to happen on attempting to record is that the track seems to be trying to playback through the mic. Well, this is my interpretation of what is visible and audible. What happens is that when you click record, the old track becomes audible through the headphones, and a new track appears to open under it in audacity, but it does not seem possible to record in it. So the bottom line is that if you want to record and then play back, you have to do this: start out with the mike plugged in, do the recording, disconnect the mike, restart audacity, then play back. If you want to play back and record, you have to go the other way, once you've played back, you can no longer record. Or I cannot figure out how to, without restarting audacity. The other puzzling thing is that krec does not seem to be able to record at all - or maybe this is me, I can't make it. Am I doing something stupid here or does this sound like a bug in audacity or a configuration problem? I have an external usb sound card, and the phenomenon seems to be the same whether using the onboard sound card or the external. Peter

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IPv6 - why?
by Mark Rogers 06 Feb '10

06 Feb '10

OK, so I know why it was invented: IPv4 running out of space. But having followed the various conversations about IPv6 capable ISPs, I'm left wondering why anyone wants to actually use IPv6 right now? That isn't to argue that they shouldn't, I genuinely want to know. I switched to 64-bit pretty early (because with Linux I could), and dealt with the occasional issues (flash, etc) in return for a system which was theoretically "better" but which felt no real different to a 32-bit machine. But (sad but true) I enjoyed the smugness of running 64-bit without (major) problems, something I couldn't have done with Windows. So what reasons are there to play with IPv6? Just because we can? Because we want to learn about it for the future? Or is there actually anything practical I could do with IPv6 that I can't with IPv4, or that just works better on IPv6? If you convince me that there is a good reason to play, my next question will be how to get started, so be warned :-) PS: For anyone with 64-bit capable hardware there really isn't any downside to using 64-bit Linux now as far as I can tell. -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0844 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) @ 13 Clarke Rd, Milton Keynes, MK1 1LG

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HTML embedded scripting, is it really this much of a kludge?
by Chris G 06 Feb '10

06 Feb '10

I've been trying to find out the rules about embedded scripting in HTML, things like PHP and JavaScript. It seems like it doesn't really have any rules! Part of the problem is that Google makes it impossible to search for anything other than alphanumerics so you can't search for things like <SCRIPT> or <?php. So, first question, is there *any* way now that Google rules the world to search for things like this? Moving on, how can one find what *actually* works inside a <SCRIPT> section in HTML? Is it only javascript that really works there in 'most' browsers or are there other possibilities? The other question is how does <?php work at all? I can't find anything that documents how or why it should allow PHP to do things. I'm maybe missing something obvious but given Google's total inability to look for such things doing any sort or searching is a bit difficult. I have O'Reilly books on HTML and PHP but neither of them really addresses how this works. I do realise that <SCRIPT> starts client side scripting so is limited by what's implemented in browsers, however it is at least a 'proper' HTML element. <?xxx seems more of a bodge, is it actually a bodge or is there some smeantic/syntactic logic to it? -- Chris Green

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Re: [ALUG] HTML embedded scripting, is it really this much of a kludge?
by phil.ashby＠bt.com 05 Feb '10

05 Feb '10

Chris asked: > So where is this <?php syntax defined? Is it part of HTML, is it a > bodge added by apache or what is it? That's really what I was asking, > I (sort of) know the difference between server side and client side > stuff (I think I did even say something about <SCRIPT> being client > side) and <SCRIPT> is at least 'proper' HTML. It's defined in the PHP specification, so it must be implemented by any PHP enabled server (be that Apache, IIS, Lighttpd, etc.), and since it never reaches the browser it's not part of the 'proper' HTML or subject to that specification. Here's the manual ref: http://www.php.net/manual/en/language.basic-syntax.phpmode.php Other server-side scripting languages use similar techniques, eg: ASP: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/k33801s3.aspx JSP: http://java.sun.com/products/jsp/syntax/2.0/syntaxref20.html Cold fusion: http://www.opencfml.org/dashboard.action Such syntax abuse all started with server-side includes back in the 90's: http://hoohoo.ncsa.illinois.edu/docs/tutorials/includes.html HTH, Phil.

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Re: [ALUG] lp printers and startup
by Peter Alcibiades 02 Feb '10

02 Feb '10

On Monday 01 February 2010 09:46:18 Wayne Stallwood wrote: > ..... > If the printer is configured as a raw device in cups and raw support is > enabled then you should be doing > lp -dprintername temprint.txt > > Then cups will manage the task of spooling the job until the printer is > online and it should all be managed properly. > > I see this is for a receipt printer because you are sending cutter and > drawer kick commands, you aren't hacking receipt printing support onto > phppointofsale are you ? If so I probably still have the stuff from when > I did that about 4 years ago, no doubt it would need updating and it is > so nasty it never got accepted as a patch to the main project :) > Yes, now I see. Finally! I'll have a go with this. It makes sense. It is a receipt printer, but the POS is my own hack. It works, but I'm painfully aware that it lacks a lot (all?) of the stuff professionally designed POS systems have. The reason why I am using a raw printer is money - the one we bought cost £40, new but discontinued model, and one from the same supplier that would be new and run in CUPS in native mode would have been a couple hundred. The difference was important. Still and all, with a used barcode reader and this package and using kbarcode and a bunch of other OSS things, the total cost of moving to bar codes was really cheap. It ran last season on a £35 reject machine, and was perfectly satisfactory. Peter

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