This hp/compaq nc6000 laptop/notebook that has an ATI card:


$ sudo lspci|grep VGA
0000:01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc RV350 [Mobility Radeon 9600 M10]


I have two head monitors working with both the ‘ati’ and the closed source ‘fglrx’ drivers.

Here are the configuration files:

Before you start hacking around with your xorg.conf, save a copy somewhere safe.

Before they left I set them up with a bunch of new F/L/OSS software,
a TheOpenCD V3.1 disk and free web-based services.

I just sent them list note about what we setup:

I installed the following software on the new HP laptop — they are
all from the CD that went home with you.

• OpenOffice V2.0 — This is a complete, free replacement for
  Microsoft Office tools like Word, Excel and PowerPoint. It will let
  you open documents that people may send you that those tools.
• GAIM — free alternative to AOL, Yahoo!, MSN, etc’s own version of
  IM or Chat programs. You still need free accounts on those services
  (and you already have them for Google, Yahoo and AOL), but you don’t
  need to have 3 different programs running to chat with people on
  each of those IM servers. GAIM connects for your to each of them.
• FireFox — free alternative to using Microsoft Internet Explorer
  (also known as MSIE, the blue E that I removed from at least Dad’s
  desktop). MSIE has a history of being plagued by virus, spyware,
  etc. Firefox is not completely immune, but much less of a risk.
  You may hear people refer to Mozilla browser, Firefox is a version
  of that.

There are other free programs on the CD — it is called TheOpenCD
(http://www.theopencd.org) and you can pass it on or give copies to
your friends — to look at the other stuff on there to to see if there
is anything interesting to you on it. You can install them on the
office PCs or the desktop PC at home.

I also setup a number of free accounts for both of you.

• Email — Instead of using Microsoft Outlook and getting your mail
  from Roadrunner or Frontier (which ever you end up choosing for
  email), just get your email from google’s free GMAIL service. Use
  any computer and go to http://www.gmail.com/ and log to do your
  email. (Account info below)
• IM — Dad and I got accounts for IM Chat accounts on AOL (sometimes
  you see it referred to as AIM), Google Talk and Yahoo!. (account
  info below) The GAIM program is all setup for each of those account.
  Just go to the menu Tool s then Account and click ‘Online’ for your
  accounts. It already has the password information set there. This
  will let you chat with my kids who use AOL, Lori that uses Yahoo!
  and me who actually has accounts on all of them.
• Photos — You already had an account on Flickr (now part of Yahoo!,
  http://www.flickr.com). You used your old AOL.COM address to create
  an account. and there is a way to change the email address to match
  your Yahoo! account. Dad and I also installed FlickrUploadr and
  there should be a link of the desktop. Double click on it to start
  it and then use the file explorer to drag and drop photos from your
  hard drive (or CD or Camera) to FlickrUploadr. Then press the
  Upload button and the photos will be copied to
  http://www.flickr.com/ where people can see them.

Account info that you can pass on to your friends:

• Email

  Mom: XXXXYYYYYY@gmail.com

  Dad: XXYYYYYY@gmail.com

• AOL IM (if your friends use AOL pay service or free chat only, which
  my kids use)

  Mom: XXXXYYYYYY

  Dad: XXYYYYYY

• Yahoo! IM (which Lori uses)

  Mom: XXXXYYYYYY

  Dad: XXYYYYYY

• Google IM (sometimes called Google Talk — anyone with a google
  email account can IM using the same account info)

  Mom: XXXXYYYYYY

  Dad: XXYYYYYY

• Photos — tell friends to see your public photos here:
  

  http://www.flickr.com/photos/12345678@N00/

  There is a way under ‘Your Account’ to pick a better address,
  similar to what I have:
  
  http://www.flickr.com/photos/marcn/
  
  You are currently using a free flickr account. For $25/year you can
  store many many more photos on flickr.com. If you start using
  flickr, that would make a nice start of a xmas gift from us.

See the other panoramic shots of Niagara Falls and others in my
Panorama Photos photo set on flickr.com.

The free (as in beer), Windows-only app autostitch does an excellent job stitching the photos together. Autostitch works great using the wine emulator on Linux (Ubuntu/Breezy)

# tar jxvf iPodder-linux-2.1.tar.bz2

# cd iPodder-linux

# sudo ./install.sh

(take the defaults)

The only glitch is wx libraries aren’t in the default PYTHONPATH, so set this environment variable either at the command line, or pop it in ~/.bashrc

export PYTHONPATH=/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/wx-2.5.3-gtk2-unicode/:$PYTHONPATH-unicode:$PYTHONPATH


Now clean up a little bit…


$ cd ../

$ rm -rf iPodder-linux iPodder-linux-2.1.tar.bz2


Now, you are all set to start iPodder!

Getting closer to not needing any special knowledge to get iPodder running on a GNU/Linux distro…

- – - – -

Just for searchers, this is the problem you see if you don’t set the PYTHONPATH:


$ iPodder
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "iPodderGui.py", line 38, in ?
import iPodderWindows
File "/opt/iPodder/iPodderWindows.py", line 4, in ?
import listctrl as listmix
File "/opt/iPodder/listctrl.py", line 296, in ?
EVT_DOPOPUPMENU = wx.PyEventBinder(wxEVT_DOPOPUPMENU, 0)
AttributeError: 'module' object has no attribute 'PyEventBinder'


So this evening I googled around for the magic Apache configuration commands that would prevent
JPG/GIF images from being embedded in someone else’s web page. (ie: one not hosted on
nozell.com)

For the record, just pop this in a file named “.htaccess” in the same directory as were the images
are located and it will refuse to let GIF/JPG images to be loaded from other sites.

Read Ken Coar’s Preventing Image ‘Theft’ tutorial for complete details.

Found through my ping-backs that zman has a patch to yadd.php so it doesn’t create empty entries on days where there are no new bookmarks.

Enjoy.

* Foxylicious — grabs your del.icio.us bookmarks and adds them to your local Firefox bookmarks.

* sitebar plugin — An alternative to del.icio.us. I started running a copy of the SiteBar server on my home Linux box, but it is just simpler to use del.icio.us and for private bookmarks to just keep it locally (internal corporate links, etc)

* webdeveloper plugin — I don’t use it much, but it is handy to find any links within a webpage.

* SwitchProxy tool — switch proxies as needed. Useful when if you connect to various networks with different proxies settings.

Months ago there was a picture of an allegedly maggot infested breast, but that was debunked on Snopes. To exorcise my personal demons, I started hunting for the real thing and found this — ‘Furuncular myiasis of the breast caused by the larvae of the Tumbu fly (Cordylobia anthropophaga)’.

And just what does that mean? Well, here is a better description:

We report a 70 year old woman who presented with a week history of itchy multiple discharging sinuses of the right breast. The sinuses contained wriggling larvae of C. anthropophaga. Fourteen larvae were extracted from the breast and the sinuses healed quite well after the extraction.

Head on over for the photos, but stay for the video.

Man, that is freaking gross! Check out how those suckers wiggle around! Ugh! Unclean! Unclean!