Rudkin On Linux, Mac and Tech

For the last couple of weeks I have been running the 64bit beta version of Ubuntu Jaunty Jackalope which will be released on 23rd April.

The computer I am using is a Dell 1525n which has an Intel Corporation Mobile GM965/GL960 Integrated Graphics Controller. After my initial install of Jaunty Jackalope beta all was well, the graphics card was detected and Compiz enabled. This however was short lived as some days later I applied some updates and Compiz could no longer be enabled.

On investigation I discovered that Compiz had ‘blacklisted’ my video card. I have yet to find out why because Compiz has worked without complaint on every version of Ubuntu since Gutsy Gibbon.

I was initially gutted and planned to downgrade to Intrepid, but not to be defeated I did some searching and found out that you can force Compiz to skip the black list checks. To do this you need to create the following file:-

~/.config/compiz/compiz-manager

and add the following line:-

SKIP_CHECKS=yes

After this I was then able to enable Compiz and continue working as I have done for the last year or so. So far I have not seen any issues, so it is still a mystery as to why the GM965/GL960 was blacklisted.

I hope this helps somebody!

Recently I saw some posts on twitter from @mled that contained short URLs linked to his own domain mled.me. After a few tweets I was introduced to the Phurl, the PHP URL Shortening Script which is the result of the hard work of Hidayet Dogan.

This script is very easy to get installed and running on a Linux box with a LAMP setup. I then started to use it. However when posting some Launchpad URLs that contained ‘+’ characters, I discovered that Phurl did not store the URL correctly therefore causing the shortened URL not to wok.

I emailed Hidayet with this question, and overnight I got a response that included the fix:-

in create.php

change:

$url = trim(urldecode(@$_REQUEST['url']));


to:

$url = trim(@$_REQUEST['url']);


This will ensure that URLs are correctly stored in the database, including those containing the ‘+’ character.

I am sure this fix will be included in the next release of Phurl, but to make sure your installation is free from this issue then make the changes above.

Taken from gPodder.org:-

We promised a new release every month, and this month we start out with a fresh bugfix release from the 0.15.x series. 0.15.2 brings lots of bugfixes that have been discovered during the last four weeks and some translation updates for the best (and probably most stable) podcast experience available at the moment

Thanks to all who were involved in this release:

* Anders Kvist (1)
* Bastian Kleineidam (1)
* Fabio Fiorentini (1)
* Gonçalo Cordeiro (1)
* Jim Nygård (1)
* Marco Antonio Villegas Vega (2)
* Paul Rudkin (1)
* Silvio Sisto (1)
* Steven Oxley (1)
* Thomas Perl (15)
* Torbjörn Wassberg (1)

The release contains a ChangeLog that contains detailed info on the changes since the last release. As always, you can also extract that information from the Git repository.

In the meantime, we have been hard at work implementing new features and cleaning up the code for the 0.16.x release series. You can check out the (unstable) code from our Git repository and report any bugs that you encounter, so that we can present you a fine new release in a few weeks.

Grab the new release from the download section or wait until the new package becomes available in your distro. As always, we provide .deb packages for Debian and Ubuntu users.