Rubenerd

From Skype's The Big Blog. I've seen bigger.

Skype for Windows 8 is almost here and we are incredibly excited by this important new version of Skype. This is our big step forward together with Microsoft to introduce a completely new Skype experience, which is designed to be always on, immersive, effortless and fun to use.

To be fair, there are things in Windows 8 you can't do on other platforms, just as there are things in iOS you can't do on Windows 8. Still, prioritising one platform for a multi-platform client is what we feared when Microsoft bought Skype.

I used the word platform four times in this post. Please mind the gap.

The discovery of an Earth-sized planet (artist’s impression pictured) in Alpha Centauri, the star system closest to Earth, is announced.

News from Wikipedia. I still get a giddy thrill from news like this, just like I did when I was a kid. To boldly go~

Running a fresh XAMPP install on Fedora 17 this morning, I kept getting this error. I even RTFM!

I can't guarantee if this will work for you, but I re-extracted the archive with the -p to preserve file permissions:

# xvpfz xampp-linux-1.8.1.tar.gz -C /opt

Now MySQL in XAMPP starts:

# /opt/lampp/lampp startStarting XAMPP for Linux 1.8.1…XAMPP: Starting Apache with SSL (and PHP5)…XAMPP: Starting MySQL…XAMPP: Starting ProFTPD…XAMPP for Linux started.

I'm thinking I should have a separate blog for tips like this. My neglected university hosted site, perhaps?

As an aside, the XAMPP icon in this post is by anekdamian on DeviantART. Much nicer than the default icon.

Just a quick tip of the hat to NetBSD for their 6.0 release. I use Fedora Linux on my laptop and Mac OS X on the desktop, but I'd prefer to be using NetBSD. As far as I'm concerned, it's the cleanest, most elegant operating system I've ever used.

I also made some My-HiME desktop backgrounds for NetBSD back in 2008. She was predominately orange, and so is NetBSD. I was in the zone.

NetBSD in an Australian VPS, now that'd be awesome. I wonder if they exist?

Little did I know when I posted that link back in August that I'd be seeing PSY perform Gangnam Style LIVE in Sydney with @hanezawakirika and @JamieJakov!

From the Sunrise breakfast show website:

Venue: Martin Place Plaza Amphitheatre, Sydney

Time: 6am-9am

Korean pop sensation Psy is coming to Sunrise! The man behind global hit “Gangnam Style” will be LIVE outside our studio on Wednesday 17th October and we want you to come and join in the fun!

Psy will perform “Gangnam Style” in what is destined to go down in Sunrise history.

Have you learned the dance yet? You’d better brush up – we want you all to join in!

Heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeey, sexy lady~!

I'm very, VERY picky when it comes to choosing my favourite songs of all time. My Rubens Top 40 List contains only 12 songs, to leave room for more. Most of them are jazz (and most of those are Michael Franks), but then there are timeless, TIMELESS songs like Surfin' Bird. Everybody's heard. From me. THOUSANDS of times!

A few months ago, our former Anime@UTS club president Dom introduced us to Gangnam Style. I'd explain it, but I could not hope to do it justice. It screams brilliant epicness. It's Korean. The dance moves are as addictive as they are wonderfully fun and accessible for a nerd like me. PSY has more style than a cobra. To a Westerner, the music video is wonderfully Monty Python-esque, but also utterly unique and friggen brilliant.

Most of all, I just feel so energetic and happy listening to it, and I still crack the biggest smile watching the music video. PSY has really created something special here, and I'm thoroughly unashamed to admit it. I've never danced as much before in my life. YOU KNOW WHAT I'M SAYIN'?

Ttwiineun nom keu wiie naneun nom

I'd worked almost all night on a data mining assignment, and I had to force myself out of bed at the crack of dawn to pull it off, but this morning I met with two of my dearest friends to see PSY perform for the Sunrise Breakfast show. And it was EPIC!

Much of Martin Place was fenced off with large… what are they called again? FENCES! Inside, a makeshift stage had been set up, and outside were packed an even mix of Koreans, other Asians and Westerners all jumping around waiting to see PSY. It was open air, and utterly free!

PSY came out wearing an utterly fabulous sparkly black vest with "PSY" in gold on the back, a bevy of dancers and bright lights that cut through the early morning sky like a thrusting pelvis appearing behind a lift door. He sang to the song with the pre-recorded synthed instruments, but otherwise jumped around did all the dance moves we know and love. Or at least, I think he did, given the crowd was so thick and I couldn't see much most of the time. The atmosphere was AMAZING!

Aussie Aussie Aussie… PSY PSY PSY!

After the performance which was broadcast love across Australia, the morning show hosts performed their regular small talk. He took off his trademark glasses, and was handed a plushie koala and kangaroo. He was utterly gracious. I'm saying utterly a lot, it's utterly too much!

To return to where this post started HEEEEEEY SEXY LADY I'm just so overwhelmed that I saw a performer on my top song list. He's the first one.

Years from now, I'll remember this, and smile. What a defining moment ^_^

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I can confirm it works brilliantly, and better than the stock internal wireless card on my ThinkPad X61s!

You won’t let me connect?

The Intel PRO/Wireless 4965 card is an odd beast. It can connect to any wireless network I throw at it, enterprise or otherwise. That is, until I take my ThinkPad X61s to UTS (my university) and attempt to connect to their PEAP WPA2 network. Occasionally enough to be weird, it'll troll me and connect, otherwise I'll be prompted for my password four times, then it'll fail. It's like interfacing with a customer support hitline.

I mistyped "hotline" as "hitline". I think I'll leave it.

I'd all but given up and decided to start researching replacing the internal wireless card. As much as I'm a fan of Apple's minimalism, I'm also a fan of ThinkPads modular design with easily accessible bays for all the major components, and replacing the wireless card would be trivial.

And then I remember I had an alternative. It came to me in a vision. Or a drawer, or something.

You’ll let me connect?

I bought this Belkin F5D7010 G wireless CardBus card originally when I ran FreeBSD on my Armada M300. The same card you see in the photo above can be seen in this post from 2008.

As people who run FreeBSD and Linux can relate to, typically we have to be a bit more careful about what hardware we use to ensure compatibility with our more limited set of drivers. It had worked flawlessly on FreeBSD, so I thought I'd give it a whirl on Fedora.

I took it to UTS, and it's connected almost every single time, without trouble. Well, without any more trouble than we all face connecting to UTS wireless. Mmm-hiven-maven.

The Belkin F5D7010 is based off the Broadcom bcm43xx chipset, which thanks to the tireless efforts of reverse engineers (sounds like people building a backwards bridge) and later Broadcom releasing more limited drivers, this card works flawlessly on Fedora (and FreeBSD). If you have an older laptop, buy this card with creamy, chocolate filled confidence.

XAMPP is currently only availably as 32 bit application. Please use a 32 bit compatibility library for your system.

Aaaaaaaah!

The problem

We've all seen that famously misspelled error message when attempting to install XAMPP on our 64 bit desktop Linux machines. I wonder how many people using XAMPP are still on 32 bit? I suppose enough to justify keeping it 32 bit. Speaking of which, this Kingston biscuit is falling to bits. Munch munch.

Here's the install scenario that will result in that error.

# tar xzvf xampp-linux-[version].tar.gz -O /opt
# cd /opt
# ./lampp start

Chemists have solutions

Other guides I've come across ask you to install a slew of things, and changing the launch script. For me on Fedora 17 x86_64, I was able to run it just by installing this:

# yum install glibc.i686

This also pulls in nss-softokn-freebl.i686.

Now you can run XAMPP without modification:

# tar -C /opt
sudo ./lampp start
XAMPP: SELinux is activated. Making XAMPP fit SELinux…
Starting XAMPP for Linux 1.8.1…
XAMPP: Starting Apache with SSL (and PHP5)…
XAMPP: Starting MySQL…
XAMPP: Starting ProFTPD…
XAMPP for Linux started.

In my quest to finally give GNU Emacs a try, the first thing I encountered was a lack of line numbers. Easiest way to have them appear persistently is to add this to your ~/.emacs:

(global-linum-mode t)

Alternatively, you can load linum-mode at runtime:

M-x linum-mode

The EmacsWiki has a ridiculously exhaustive list of other options, including more Emacs lisp that I'd care to throw a stick at.

Sitting at a coffee shop this evening with my lovely girlfriend, one of my favourite songs of all time started playing on the speakers. My parents used to play this to calm me down as an infant, and it still renders powerful nostalgic feelings in me. That and it's just a really beautiful song.

This is not to be confused with Albatross the food, distributed by Monty Python audience snack vendors. They didn't even give me wafers with it.

Speaking of short blog posts today, setting up a VPS this evening I noticed a CentOS favicon appearing in Nautilus on my local machine. A Fedora tip of the hat to a somewhat related distribution?

I might look into this. Icons are pretty. I like icons. Having them appear to represent an SFTP session is wild!