This issue is also there when using Windows Explorer to view the music files.  Its seems that some MP3′s and M4a’s (AAC) do not show any ID3 information.  I know this information is there as its works perfectly with Rhythmbox on Ubuntu, or even Songbird on Windows but its seems that Windows has an issue with some files.

It turns out the answer to this problem is rather unsurpirising, Windows 7 does not support nativley ID3 v2.4.  The solution is to either use a different media player such as Songbird or to convert your ID3 v2.4 to ID3 v2.3.

I don’t care much for Songbird, Media Monkey, iTunes or any other media player I have found available for Windows and hope one day either Banshee or Rhythmbox will be available for the Windows platform, so until then I have chosen to convert my ID3 tags.  There is a great application for completing this task called Kid3 which you can download from Sourceforge here kid3.sourceforge.net/#download

Installing MySQL seemed to be a headache.  The installer would stop responding at Instance Configuration Wizard, however the solution to this problem is easy.

You need to punch a hole in Windows firewall for MySQL before you install.  Open up TCP ports 3306 for both incoming and outgoing and the installation will complete fully.

If you get stuck with a problem that I did where it installed MySQL without a root password even though you selected one, run:

$ mysqladmin -u root password NEWPASSWORD

Replacing NEWPASSWORD with your password.

If the command above does not work for you, you will need to use a full path to the command which may be in C:\Program Files\MySQL or C:\Program Files (x86)\MySQL or another location depending on where you installed it.

T-mobile is a little more difficult than O2.  You get a swipe card to top up with but you still need to select the usage you wish to use to deduct from your credit (daily, weekly or monthly).  This is easy with the connection manager software that comes with the dongles but all the software does is take you here www.t-zones.co.uk/apps/ebdc/en/purchase-redirect.

So its simple, get your dongle, use the swipe card and then visit the web address above and your good to go.  Your dongle will not be activated until you top up and after top up it could take up to 1 hour.

T-mobile also let you know that you can top up by using “my T-mobile” online.  However, this involves getting a pin sent to you by sms so you will have to use a Windows or Mac machine to receive this or put your sim card in a phone that will accept it.

This is slightly more hassle that the fantastic way O2 PAYG mobile broadband works as you just need to visit the website https://mobilebroadbandaccess.o2.co.uk pay and go.  No content locks or hassle involved.  With T-mobile though, you get a much better fair use policy on internet usage and you do not get charged for going over your usage, instead they may block video sites and downloads between he hours of 4pm and midnight, whereas every other provider will charge you stupid amounts or stop your usage.

Just as a re-cap, the connection deatils for T-mobile PAYG mobile broadband are

APN: general.t-mobile.uk
Number: *99#
Username: user
Password: pass

Contract

Pay as you go

I took my hard drive out of my old laptop which had Intel GMA graphics and put it in my shiny new Studio 17. Everything seemed to be fine until I tried playing a video in Totem or VLC. The video was very dark and reddish. I tried installing the proprietry crap fglrx which seems to suck at multi head if the external monitor has a higher resolution than the laptop screen. With this fglrx driver enabled the video completely disappeared and left just a blank black window in Totem.

The solution is easy, run

$ gstreamer-properties

On the Video tab on Default Output select X Window System (No Xv).

Testing with Telnet is real quick and simple,we are going to assume plain password authentication and no TLS or SSL.

1. We need to open a connection to the server

   $ telnet yourmailserver.com 25

   You should get a response like this

   Trying 74.125.79.16..
   Connected to yourmailserver.com.
   Escape character is '^]'.
   220 mx.yourmailserver.com

2. Now we need to greet the serer

   HELO yourmailserver.com

   Response

   250 yourmailserver.com

3. We need to authenticate ourselves with our username and password.  This may not be neccessary for all SMTP servers.
   We are going to use plain authentication but we need to encode it to base64.  Below is two ways to do this with Perl or PHP, with both methods you must leave in the “\0″ characters.

   $ php -r 'echo base64_encode("\0username\0password")."\n";'

   or

   $ perl -MMIME::Base64 -e 'print encode_base64("\0username\0password");'

   Take the value given and pass it to the mail server

   AUTH PLAIN AHVzZXJuYW1lAHBhc3N3b3Jk

   Response

   235 2.7.0 Authentication successful

4. Now we start to send a test message by putting in who the mail is from

   MAIL FROM:me@mydomain.com

   Response

   250 2.1.0 Ok

5. Add recipient

   RCPT TO:me@myotheremail.com

   Response

   250 2.1.5 Ok

6. Start the message

   DATA

   Response

   354 End data with <CR><LF>.<CR><LF>

   Add a subject

   SUBJECT: Test message from me

   Press enter then add the message body

   Hi this is my test message

   Press enter and on the next line type a “.” then enter

   .

   Response

   250 2.0.0 Ok: queued as 666F4E0157

7. Thats it the message is on the way now quit

   QUIT

For now Roadsend can be used to compile CLI apps or webapps where you want to protect the source code.  The Roadsend Compiler is completely independent from the Zend Engine and actually compiles to a binary file for your operating system / architecture so very different from other source code protection systems such as Zend Guard, Ioncube or Bcompiler.  Roadsend also can use its PHP engine to interpret and run scripts just like the Zend Engine.

You will need to install the Bigloo package first then the Roadsend package.

Tested on Karmic (9.10)

• bigloo_3.2a-1_amd64.deb
• roadsend-php_2.9.8-1_amd64.deb

You will also have to change the LD_LIBRARY_PATH before it will work.  For some unknown reason putting this in .profile wont work so we are going to export this new path in our .bashrc file

$ echo 'export LD_LIBRARY_PATH="/usr/local/lib"' | tee -a ~/.bashrc

Tested on Jaunty (9.04), Karmic (9.10)

php-gtk_2.0.1-1_amd64.deb

Installation Instructions

Download the deb file for your version of Ubuntu above and double click this file when downloaded.

Once installed you will need to edit your php.ini file to get it to work.

$ sudo gedit /etc/php5/cli/php.ini

In the Dynamic Extensions part of the file add the line extension=php_gtk2.so

;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;
; Dynamic Extensions ;
;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;
;
; If you wish to have an extension loaded automatically, use the following
; syntax:
;
;   extension=modulename.extension
;
; For example, on Windows:
;
;   extension=msql.dll
;
; ... or under UNIX:
;
;   extension=msql.so
;
; Note that it should be the name of the module only; no directory information
; needs to go here.  Specify the location of the extension with the
; extension_dir directive above.

extension=php_gtk2.so

You may wish to do a simple test to make sure all is working (taken from http://gtk.php.net/manual/en/tutorials.helloworld.php).

<?php
if (!class_exists('gtk')) {
 die("Please load the php-gtk2 module in your php.ini\r\n");
}

$wnd = new GtkWindow();
$wnd->set_title('Hello world');
$wnd->connect_simple('destroy', array('gtk', 'main_quit'));

$lblHello = new GtkLabel("Just wanted to say\r\n'Hello world!'");
$wnd->add($lblHello);

$wnd->show_all();
Gtk::main();
?>

Fire up your text editor

$ sudo gedit /usr/share/mobile-broadband-provider-info/serviceproviders.xml

On line 1877 (or around if this file has been updated since I wrote this post) change the APN to m-bb.o2.co.uk from payandgo.o2.co.uk

<apn value="m-bb.o2.co.uk">
 <name>Prepaid</name>
 <username>payandgo</username>
 <password>payandgo</password>
</apn>

If you currently have a connection set in your Network Manager you will need to delete it and add a new mobile broadband connection.  Selecting O2 prepaid will now set you up with a working connection.

If you have no credit, don’t forget the only website you can visit will be O2′s Top Up Website.