imeem on 64-bit ubuntu

Getting flash to work correctly on 64-bit Ubuntu can be challenging. By following various blog and forum posts I was able to get it to work, but never the flash player for imeem. Every now and again I would try to re-install flash and see if it would work for imeem but until last night I was never successful. 

It turns out that imeem will only work with the 32-bit flash player. After so much work to get the 64-bit player working in Firefox 3.0 and 3.5 I did not want to remove it so I downloaded Opera and installed the 32-bit player under its plugin directory and imeem works great!

• Download and install Opera
• verify that you cannot play music in imeem
• Close Opera
• download the 32-bit flash player in '.tar.gz' format
• extract the libflashplayer.so file from the archive
• then you will need to put this in the directory /usr/lib/opera/plugins/
• you won't have permissions to write to that directory unless you are in sudo mode
• open a terminal and type 'sudo nautilus'
• copy the file into the directory (you could do this from the terminal window also probably 'sudo mv libflashplayer.so /usr/lib/opera/plugins/libflashplayer.so'
• Open Opera
• check the plugins - type opera:plugins in the address bar
• you should see Shockwave Flash and it should be pointing to the libflashplayer.so file under opera plugins, by default my opera installation was pointing to /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/ for the flash plugin, my guess is opera looks for plugins in its own directory and if not found then looks in mozilla directory
• you should now be able to play music with imeem!

I am running Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope by the way. Here are some links that might work to get the 64-bit player working for Firefox

• http://art.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1297385
• http://www.ubuntugeek.com/how-to-install-adobe-flash-player-10-in-ubuntu-804-hardy-heron.html
• http://art.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1292438
• http://www.cyberciti.biz/tips/install-flash-10-ubuntu-linux-64bit.html
• this last one is probably the best bet, check the comments there

Factory Girl makes rails testing so much easier

Factory Girl makes rails testing so much easier. I watched a Railscasts on Factory Girl recently but had been putting off trying it out until last week. Glad I gave it a try - now I can say good-bye to fixtures and just write my tests!

• Factory Girl
• Railscast on Factory Girl

Factory Girl is developed by thoughbot; they have some great open source projects, check out Shoulda to make your rails testing even easier.

convert mkv files to dvd with ubuntu

Turns out there is a great program for this - my guess is it works well with other formats such as avi, mpeg, etc...

DeVeDe, if you are running 9.04 (jaunty) or higher it is in the repositories

System -> Administration -> Synaptic Package Manager

enter 'devede' in the search and then install

Procedure sp_droplogin, Line 93 Login is aliased or mapped to a user in one or more database(s)

Trying to remove a MSSQL login from a database server, recieve the following eror

Msg 15175, Level 16, State 1, Procedure sp_droplogin, Line 93
Login 'qa' is aliased or mapped to a user in one or more database(s). Drop the user or alias before dropping the login.

Solution: run this command to determine what alias or groups the login is associated with and then remove those; might be nice if they just added this to the error message?

sp_helpuser 'qa'

scrolling screen shot on ubuntu

I've been using ubuntu for the last 6 months, really like it! But also really missing SnagIt :(

so far I have come across these screen shot tools

• built in 'save screen' program - read this post for info about that and others
• Shutter

but none that I came across would do scrolling screen shots; currently I only needed scrolling screen shots of web pages and I just came across a great tool for that - a firefox add-on called Abduction, it is really easy to use.

For full page screen shots (including all scrollable regions) or for cropped sections of a page. Just right click on the page and select 'Save Page as Image', if you are over an 'element' it will auto select that as the cropped area, you can then adjust the crop and save, if you want the entire page the easiest seems to be right clicking where there are no elements below the mouse and then adjust the fully selected page as needed

The saved png can then be opened in Shutter for applying arrows, boxes, etc...

replace keyboard on Sony Vaio laptop PCG-K23 (PCG-9RLF)

just replaced the keyboard on my sisters Sony Vaio laptop - on the bottom is says it is a PCG-9RLF, but then it also says it is a PCG-K23? anyhow I had a hard time finding anything on the web, then I finally stumbled on this page which helped alot

http://www.laptoprepair101.com/laptop/2007/08/30/removing-replacing-laptop-keyboard/

• You don't need to loosen any screws on the bottom - I thought this would be needed and ended up wasting a bit of time going in the wrong direction.
• At the top of the keyboard is a plate that you need to pry up, there are 4 slots you can stick a flat screw driver under (you can't see them unless you press the keys down), this plate is also part of the screen hinge and the power cord that goes to the screen is attached so be CAREFUL!
• Then there are 3 screws that hold the keyboard in place, loosen those
• The keyboard will hinge up from the bottom
• Then you need to disconnect the cable that goes to the motherboard
• I ended up pulling this out without much effort
• but then it was really hard to get the new one back in
• turns out the slot has an open / closed 'mode', using a small screw driver I was able to get it to open up
• Then just put everything back, turned out to be relatively easy in the end, I am definitely not an expert when it comes to computer hardware but so far this has been a success!

Frontair Congress, Barcelona Spain

Alberedes 16
Sant Boi de Llobregat, Barcelona 08830
Spain

We ended up staying here our last night because it was 'close' to the airport and included a free shuttle to the airport. But since we were traveling by train and bus it was not so easy to get here the night before. If I was going to do it again I would stay somewhere closer to a metro stop near 'downtown'; there are trains running direct to the airport all the time.

They did have an indoor pool.

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