March 27, 2008
UFO: Fake Or Real?
If the UFO in these pictures are faked, they sure are creative.
Strange Device Over Lake Tahoe. Extraterrestrial? | UFO Sightings
Posted by lsloan at 10:05 PM | Comments (0)
March 24, 2008
Catnip Sushi
This looks like a good idea for kids to make for their pets when they have nothing to do. (e.g. Summer vacation.)
Organic Catnip Maki Sushi Cat Toy
Posted by lsloan at 01:42 PM | Comments (0)
March 13, 2008
Babo: Korean Movie
This looks like a good movie. "바보" is pronounced "babo" and it is Korean for "fool".
:: 바보, 2008년 2월 그의 웃음이 세상을 행복하게 합니다 ::
Synopsis from http://ilove-koreanmovie.blogspot.com/ :
Ji-ho is a promising pianist, studying and playing abroad for years. But one night she had a stage fright and never recovers. In despair, Ji-ho comes home and meets her old classmate Sung-ryong. Once a very bright boy, Sung-ryong had an accident and now he is in late 20s with the mind of a six year old. He is very forgetful, but he has never forgotten his first love Ji-ho. Other half of Sung-ryong’s dumb mind is occupied with his only family – younger sister Jee-in. To take care of her, Sung-ryong sells toasts in front of Jee-in’s school. But Jee-in is embarrassed of her idiotic brother and ignores him. And Sang-soo is Sung-ryong’s old friend who understands Sung-ryong’s innocent mind. But he inevitably falls to the world of gangsters. Ji-ho is still in her slump, Jee-in falls sick and Sang-soo gets involved in a bloody dispute. But all of their agonies are miraculously saved by Sung-ryong in a way nobody has forseen.
Posted by lsloan at 12:44 PM | Comments (0)
March 09, 2008
Possible FLV to MP4 Conversion
The steps described here allow some (but apparently not all, according to my experience) FLV files to be converted to MP4 files, which can be used with iDVD.
The VideoLAN Forums • View topic - newbie needing major help
Posted by lsloan at 11:20 PM | Comments (0)
March 07, 2008
Looking for Korean Text-to-Speech
To help with my Korean phrases for taekwondo, I've been looking for a Korean text-to-speech (TTS) application. So far, I've found this one:
(Home page for it is: http://www.sinovoice.com.cn/e-voice.asp ).
I found this on this list of TTS applications:
http://www.laits.utexas.edu/hebrew/personal/tts/table.html
Posted by lsloan at 10:22 AM | Comments (0)
March 04, 2008
Curved Lego Structures
This person, higdon, has become pretty good at making curved Lego structures:
Another page in their gallery demonstrates a basic ring of Legos.
Posted by lsloan at 09:39 AM | Comments (0)
Creative Star Wars Legos
Posted by lsloan at 09:17 AM | Comments (0)
February 17, 2008
A GIMP Tutorial
Gimp Advanced Guide - Grokking the GIMP
Seems to be no shortage of these tutorials. This one look interesting.
Posted by lsloan at 08:24 AM
January 08, 2008
MOSX Tiger to Leopard Upgrade Leaves Old Manpages
Apparently, upgrading a computer from Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger) to 10.5 leaves old manual pages on the system and the new, compressed pages aren't displayed. A hint at macosxhints.com fixes this:
macosxhints.com - 10.5: View the new 'man' pages on upgraded systems
Posted by lsloan at 09:47 AM | Comments (0)
Build Your Own Space Shuttle!
While looking for large, detailed pictures of the X-33 spaceplane, I noticed this page with patterns to build space shuttles. Print them out, cut out the parts, and assemble them. They also have documents for other space vehicles and the space station. Instruction sheets are available, too.
Posted by lsloan at 08:43 AM | Comments (0)
December 12, 2007
Sapiens: Clever App Launcher
This is a very clever application launcher for Mac OS X. I like its design, although I haven't tried it yet.
Donelleschi Software :: Sapiens (New) :: introduction
Posted by lsloan at 09:55 AM | Comments (0)
December 08, 2007
Renewing UMOD Groups
Several of my UMOD groups are up for renewal. The renewal button isn't always available on groups, only when the expiration date is near. I think that by using the URL of the renewal action, I can probably update the expiration date of any group I own.
That URL is:
https://directory.umich.edu/ldapweb-bin/renew?changetype=renew&dn=put_dn_here
Posted by lsloan at 05:59 PM | Comments (0)
October 17, 2007
Cardboard Furniture
It's amazing what you can find by doing a Google search for "cardboard box". For example, Davidgraas: Furniture from Cardboard.
Posted by lsloan at 09:12 AM | Comments (0)
Entire Boba Fett Costume - Cheap!
And once you've finished your cardboard Boba Fett helmet, why not complete the look with a costume- using cardboard!
Posted by lsloan at 08:51 AM | Comments (0)
Boba Fett's Cardboard Helmet
Yes, this fellow shows how to make a cardboard costume helmet. Specifically, Boba Fett's helmet. The PDFs containing the templates are nicely done. It makes me think that one could make this out of other materials, like sheets of stiff plastic, thin sheet steel, or aluminum.
Posted by lsloan at 08:48 AM | Comments (0)
Halloween Pumpkin Spider
This Pumpkin spider is very creative.
Posted by lsloan at 08:11 AM | Comments (0)
October 03, 2007
Chinese Subtitling Competition
I found this NY Times article, "Chinese Tech Buffs Slake Thirst for U.S. TV Shows - New York Times", to be very interesting. It sounds like these Chinese are having fun making subtitles and they're learning about US culture. I wonder if what they're learning is all that good, though, since the show "Prison Break" involves US government conspiracy theories.
Posted by lsloan at 08:57 AM | Comments (0)
August 03, 2007
Nice Shirts
The shirts at The Territory Ahead are very nice, if pricey. I like the floral shirt, but my wife hates the collection of them I already have.
She might not make a fuss about the batik shirts, though. There is always hope.
Posted by lsloan at 09:24 AM | Comments (0)
July 30, 2007
Xubuntu: Lightweight Ubuntu Linux Distro
Looks cool!
Xubuntu Home Page | Xubuntu.org
Posted by lsloan at 11:17 AM | Comments (0)
H.323 Videoconferencing For Mac OS X
I haven't tried it yet, but this sounds like a useful tool: XMeeting - Powerful Videoconferencing Solutions for Mac OS X
I wonder how compatible it is with other videoconferencing tools, especially Windoze-based ones.
Posted by lsloan at 11:11 AM | Comments (0)
July 18, 2007
Screen Capture, Recording, and Sharing
The recently announced Jing Project is from a nearby Michigan company. It might be worth checking out. I wonder if it can save a screen capture every X seconds and make it into a movie or slideshow.
Posted by lsloan at 12:03 PM | Comments (0)
July 17, 2007
The Amazing, Long-Running Mac
Recently my wife remarked that the Firefox web browser on her Mac was running very slow. It loaded pages slowly, which was unusual. It was very gradually getting worse as days went by. In my experience, that's the kind of behavior I've seen on Windows machines after they've been used for a while, but our Macs usually don't do that.
When I finally got around to looking at her Mac, I saw that Firefox was slow, but the rest of the applications and OS were not. I decided it was only a problem with Firefox. Since Mac OS X is really just UNIX, I went to a shell and checked on the Firefox process with the "ps" command to see what I could find before I stopped that application.
I found it had been running for a month! Only after running Firefox for a month did my wife notice any degradation of performance.
I wondered how long the computer itself had been running if Firefox had been up for that long. I used the "uptime" command in the shell to find out.
It had been over two months since that computer was rebooted. It even had some updates from Apple applied without needing to reboot.
So, to solve the problem, I quit and restarted Firefox. It ran fast again, but I thought my wife would appreciate some new features of the latest version of Firefox. So I installed that and a couple plug-ins. It worked great.
When I was done, I still didn't reboot her computer. I've never seen a Windows computer that could run reliably with that much time between reboots.
Posted by lsloan at 10:52 AM | Comments (0)
July 16, 2007
Cheetos & Chopsticks? No. Origami Cup!
Sometimes the biggest discoveries are the simplest ones. I'm not sure that really applies here, though...
Anyway, for years I've used chopsticks for eating Cheetos. It keeps my fingers and keyboard clean as well as being a good source of chopstick practice.
Then my son asked for a snack in an origami boat he folded. That reminded me that I didn't have a good use for the origami cup (PDF) I folded. So I loaded it up with Cheetos and I was happy.
Turns out that the origami cup is even more convenient than chopsticks. Chopsticks have to be picked up the right way, whereas the cup is always ready.
I tried making my cup with a non-square, wide sheet of paper. It does make a wider cup that's easy to use, but the base doesn't line up with the rest of the cup. Works just as well, or better!
Posted by lsloan at 01:44 PM | Comments (0)
July 03, 2007
Where's Fluffy Been? Check His Camera.
http://www.mr-lee-catcam.de/pe_catcam.htm
Posted by lsloan at 10:30 AM | Comments (0)
June 29, 2007
C64 Emulator in Java
I just noticed the web site for
JaC64 - Java Commodore C64 emulation, games and demos - Home, a Java-based C64 emulator. It can be embedded in a web browser as an applet and the web site has several demo applications and games available.
Posted by lsloan at 07:24 AM | Comments (0)
June 18, 2007
Mac OS X GUI for FUSE
This looks like a handy tool for managing FUSE:
MacFusion | The GUI for MacFUSE
Posted by lsloan at 04:29 AM | Comments (0)
April 27, 2007
Say What?
It's finally happened. URLs can contain domain names that I don't even know how to pronounce. Here's the first example I've found:
If that doesn't work for you, try this:
I'm not sure if the latter is an ASCII equivalent of the former or if it's an alias. It doesn't seem to be a redirect. While the second one is pronouncable as a string of characters, it certainly doesn't roll off the tongue. And what if one doesn't know what the ASCII equivalent of the Japanese name is?
Gee... I guess this may be the same complaint that non-English-speaking Japanese people may have had for many years.
Posted by lsloan at 01:06 PM | Comments (0)
Tolerating MS Exchange Calendar
In my organization, I am required to use Microsoft Exchange's Calendar system for accepting and creating meeting invitations. Ugh...
Fortunately, since the web access has been enabled for our Exchange server, I don't need to run Microsoft Entourage to access the calendar. At least, not most of the time. It turns out I do need to have it installed for a few rare occasions.
Since I won't use Exchange's email system (I will continue using my trusty IMAP account via Mozilla Thunderbird or Horde Imp), I want to make sure that my Exchange inbox contains only meeting invitations and not other email messages. The reason I get other messages there is that there are some people here that use Exchange for email. Whenever they compose a message and choose my name from the user directory or enter my email address as a recipient, the Exchange server sends the email to me in two places. It sends it to my Exchange inbox and it also sends it to my IMAP account. That is a system configuration, I guess. There isn't any forwarding option that is set in my own Exchange account. So I end up with extra messages in my Exchange inbox.
The IT support folks here anticipated that some users, like me, didn't want to use Exchange's email features. They prepared a file of Exchange rules that would put all messages that are not calendar invitations into the "deleted items" folder in Exchange, which is automatically emptied periodically. The problem is that this rules file (a .rwz file) can only be used by MS Outlook for Windoze. It will not work in MS Entourage, which is for Mac OS X. I was told this ahead of time, but I tried it myself just to be sure.
The solution is to go to somebody's computer that is running Windoze and has Outlook, set up my account there, load the rules, then delete my account settings from that computer. That didn't appeal to me. Given MS' record, how can I be sure that computer won't be able to access my Exchange account at a later date? (Yes, I'm probably acting paranoid.) I happen to have Entourage already installed on my Mac as pat of MS Office 2004. (Just in case OpenOffice or NeoOffice had trouble reading a document and I needed to use Wurd.) So I decided to use Entourage to create the necessary rule on my own.
I sent myself a meeting invitation from the Exchange web interface. I examined the invitation messages carefully (message source and full headers) within Entourage, Exchange web, and my IMAP client. I found that invitations always included an attachment with MIME type "text/calendar" named "meeting.ics". So I set up a rule in Entourage to move all messages that don't have an attachment with that name to my deleted items folder. When executed, the rule moved all messages, including the invitations, to the deleted items folder. Not good. So I moved all the messages back to my inbox and altered the rule to look for messages that don't have attachments. Again, when the rule ran in Outlook, it moved my invitations as well. Strangely enough, though other email clients recognize these invitations as containing attachments, MS Exchange clients do not. (I should expect MS software to be broken, shouldn't I?)
Looking at the message source and headers again, I found this header in the invitation messages:
Content-class: urn:content-classes:calendarmessage
So, I set up a new rule to move all messages that do not have a "Content-class" header that contains "calendarmessage" to the deleted items folder. I moved all my messages back to my inbox and tried the rule. This time, I had success. All invitations remained in my inbox, while all others went to the deleted items. Hopefully this rule will be robust enough to work properly for a very long time.
What's in the rule file that the IT support folks sent me, I don't know. It's a binary file that didn't include any text other than the name of the rule. That makes me think they used some criteria other than searching for a header string that contains a certain substring. Oh well. I could ask the IT folks what's in the rules file, but they will just ask me why I didn't give in and use it on somebody else's Windoze computer.
Posted by lsloan at 09:26 AM | Comments (0)
April 19, 2007
Internet Radio Fights To Survive
I received an email message from Tim Westergren, founder of an innovative Internet radio service, Pandora. Mr. Westergren says that Pandora and many other Internet radio services are at risk of becoming extinct, driven into bankruptcy by insanely high royalty fee increases imposed by the Copyright Royalty Board.
See Mr. Westergren's message here:
Tim Westergren - Internet Radio At Risk
If you've never tried Pandora, you should. It lets you create a personalized radio station. You tell them the name of an artist or song that you like, and it will find other similar songs that you might like. As each new song plays, you are given the opportunity to say whether you like the songs or not, influencing which songs Pandora will play for you next. This makes Pandora unique among Internet radio services.
Pandora, like many Internet radio services, present a lot of music you will never hear anywhere else. It is a great way for independent artists to get their music heard.
Even if you don't listen to Internet radio often, if you think Internet radio is worth saving, please consider doing something about the unjust royalty increases. Go to the Savenetradio.org web site and fill in the form. Faxes will automaticaly be sent to your congressional representatives to let them know about what's going on and that you would like them to put a limit on these royalties.
Update: On April 21, 2007 I received an email message from Congressman John D. Dingell's office to acknowledge the receipt of my fax to them. The email said I would receive a response to my message as soon as possible.
Posted by lsloan at 11:10 AM | Comments (0)
April 17, 2007
What Does It *Do*?
Posted by lsloan at 09:45 AM | Comments (0)
Box Rivets
My friend Jason Sonnenschein pointed out this web site that sells cool "box rivets". They are plastic fasteners that snap together. Good for holding boxes together.
Jason liked the castle. I think that's cool, but the spaceship is awesome. My sone would have fun with this. He loves boxes.
Posted by lsloan at 09:41 AM | Comments (0)
March 12, 2007
Interesting Mac OS X Remote Backup
Howto Backup your Mac incrementally over SSH
Posted by lsloan at 08:56 AM | Comments (0)
January 28, 2007
Walk-In Bathtub
These specialty bathtubs from
Premier Bathrooms
are marketed towards seniors with mobility problems. But I think they're kind of cool.
Posted by lsloan at 10:44 PM | Comments (0)
January 05, 2007
Korean Kids' Games
OK, I can't read a word on this web site, but the games are fun.
What do you mean the games are for little kids? *sigh*
Posted by lsloan at 11:19 PM | Comments (0)
January 03, 2007
Wake Sleeping Macs Remotely
Posted by lsloan at 11:51 AM | Comments (0)
December 13, 2006
MiracleSight Screensaver for Cameras
The Miraclesight application looks great. A cool camera toy and a screensaver in one. But it doesn't work on Intel-based Macs yet. Pity.
Posted by lsloan at 02:51 PM | Comments (0)
November 06, 2006
Apple Patent for Embedding Camera in LCD Screen
Apple patent embeds thousands of cameras among LCD pixels - Engadget
Posted by lsloan at 11:08 AM | Comments (0)
October 25, 2006
Web-based Personal Organizer Works Offline?!
Posted by lsloan at 01:12 PM | Comments (0)
October 11, 2006
An OLED Display In Every Key
This is a very cool looking keyboard:
Optimus keyboard
Of course, their other designs are cool, too:
Art. Lebedev Studio Industrial Design
Posted by lsloan at 09:34 AM | Comments (0)
September 30, 2006
Use Your Apple Remote for Anything
Products > Remote Buddy > Overview // IOSPIRIT - fueling creative minds worldwide ..
Posted by lsloan at 12:04 PM | Comments (0)
September 23, 2006
Extracting Audio from MPEGs
While my family was in Singapore and Malaysia, we bought a VCD (a CD containing video in MPEG format) of some Buddhist chants. We really like it a lot, so my wife asked me to extract the audio from the video to play on an MP3 player and to burn to CD.
I thought that would be easy.
I knew that the player in QuickTime Pro could save the parts of an MPEG separately. But when I tried that, I found that the video had been MUXed. I can't explain MUXing very well at this point, but let it suffice to say that the audio and video were combined in a way that QuickTime Player wasn't prepared to separate.
So I did a Google search and found a suggestion for MPEG Streamclip. The description claimed it could demux and export, so I gave it a try. It did great, extracting the audio to AIFF, an uncompressed audio format. Given that the chant video was over an hour long (the half-hour chant was played twice), the AIFF file was about 635 MB. I used iTunes to make it into an MP3, but with the chant repeated, some introductory crap at the beginning, and some dead air, it was still almost 58 MB. I needed to cut it down.
I looked around for free audio editing applications and found Audacity. It's a good, free, open-source application that was straightforward to use. (At least, it was for me, since I've played with audio editors before.) I cut the chant down to one full performance and eliminated a lot of the dead air.
The only problem with Audacity is it doesn't save directly to MP3 unless the LAME (that's what it's called, it's not my description of it) MP3 encoder is installed separately. I didn't feel like fooling around with it, so just exported the completed audio to the stinking Microsoft WAV format. I don't know why Audacity couldn't export to AIFF...
After that, I loaded the WAV into iTunes and converted it to MP3. We've been enjoying it ever since.
Posted by lsloan at 06:12 PM | Comments (0)
September 14, 2006
CrossOver Mac
This product,
CodeWeavers - CrossOver Mac,
claims that it can run Windoze applications "seamlessly integrated on Mac OS X". I wonder how well this actually works without setting up a virtual machine and filesystem for Windows to run these applications with. It it worked well, it might be nicer than Parallels Desktop. (Which I also haven't tried yet.)
Posted by lsloan at 09:09 AM | Comments (0)
August 29, 2006
Free Audio Editor
Audacity: Free Audio Editor and Recorder
This is a good, free audio file editor program. The only problems I had with it are that it requires a separate installation of the LAME encoder in order to save MP3 files and when I told it to save my work as its own project format, it deleted my original MP3 I was working from. I reported the latter problem.
Other than that, it's great. It's no GarageBand, but I didn't need anything that fancy anyway.
Posted by lsloan at 08:42 AM | Comments (0)
August 10, 2006
Malay is Agglutinative
My friend Kevin, a linguist (among other things), pointed out that Malay (Bahasa Melayu) is an example of an agglutinative language.
Posted by lsloan at 10:19 AM | Comments (0)
August 08, 2006
Topless Sandals
This is very odd. Flip-flops that stick to the soles of your feet.
Posted by lsloan at 11:29 AM | Comments (0)
August 07, 2006
XnView image viewer for Pocket PC
Looks like a useful tool for Pocket PC.
Posted by lsloan at 11:23 AM | Comments (0)
June 29, 2006
Treadputer
This man has a computer that's designed for use while he's walking or running on his treadmill. If the treadmill were set up to power the computer, that would really be something.
Posted by lsloan at 03:50 PM | Comments (0)
June 21, 2006
Krrish: Indian Superhero
Looks like an interesting movie. I will have to wait for the version with subtitles, though.
Posted by lsloan at 10:32 AM | Comments (0)
June 20, 2006
AIM Videoconferencing with Mac and Windoze
videoconference tutorial using iChat and Windoze AIM
Explains which Windoze firewall ports need to be opened to allow videoconferencing with iChat on Mac OS X.
Posted by lsloan at 01:59 PM | Comments (0)
June 16, 2006
Vista Imitates Its Superior: Mac OS X
Windows Vista Beta: A lot like Mac OS X - Lifehacker
It's true that Microsoft's Windoze Vista may look a lot like Mac OS X, but I think Microsoft's choices are a bit limited. Unless Microsoft went out of their way to design every bit of the Vista UI different, which would upset users, they had to go with this paradigm. I even see web sites that have designs similar to those described here.
Still, it is humorous to see Microsoft playing catch-up. They've been trying to keep up with Apple since the late 1980s. But at least Microsoft has captured the market on virus compatibility.
Posted by lsloan at 08:25 AM | Comments (0)
Boot Camp or Parallels to Run Windoze on a Mac?
Guide for Choosing Boot Camp or Parallels to Run Windows on an Apple MacBook
This article compares the two methods for slumming in Windoze on a Mac. Personally, as long as Parallels works well, that's what I would use. I would only want to run Windoze just long enough to run some specific software then get back to the safe haven of UNIX in Mac OS X.
Posted by lsloan at 08:09 AM | Comments (0)
June 09, 2006
North American Box Turtles
North American Box Turtles (Terrapene) - Steve Zuppa
I've had my pet ornate box turtle, Henry, for about 22 years. The desert box turtle looks very similar. In fact, I may have to look at Henry a little closer to see which he is.
Posted by lsloan at 12:04 PM | Comments (0)
June 03, 2006
Add Special Message "Tags" to Apple Mail
MailTags 1.2.1 - Meta Data Plugin for Apple Mail.App
MailTags 1.2.1
Posted by lsloan at 03:50 PM | Comments (0)
June 02, 2006
This is one HOT display
Imagine a visual display that covers several square feet. Oh, yeah... And the "pixels" are made up of real, live flames. You would have the Infernoptix. They say that gas is a cheaper energy source than electricity, but I think that running this display would eliminate those savings.
Infernoptix - Digital Pyrotechnic Matrix
Posted by lsloan at 04:50 PM
Easy Mosquito Trap
DIY:happy � Quick and Dirty Mosquito Trap
Quick and Dirty Mosquito Trap
Posted by lsloan at 04:32 PM | Comments (0)
Web Sites as Graphs
Websites as graphs
Posted by lsloan at 04:23 PM | Comments (0)
May 26, 2006
MacBook motion sensor malarkey
MacBook motion sensor malarkey gets useful | Reg Hardware
MacBook motion sensor malarkey
Posted by lsloan at 10:10 AM | Comments (0)
SmackBook Pro
Medallia Blog: SmackBook Pro Archives
SmackBook Pro
Posted by lsloan at 10:08 AM | Comments (0)
TV-B-Gone
Posted by lsloan at 10:06 AM | Comments (0)
May 22, 2006
Magazine for Big Thinkers
MakeZine.com: MAKE: Technology on Your Time
For me, this is just a fun magazine to look at and wish I had the time and money to do some of this myself. For other people, those who do more than think big, but can actually do big, this magazine is probably even more useful.
Posted by lsloan at 10:44 AM | Comments (0)
Innovative Electric Vehicles
This web site (which I found through an ad on makezine.com has a lot of interesting electric-powered cars, scooters, motorcycles, and bikes. I wish the web site were easier to get around and showed more pictures. Their PDF brochures didn't display well in the PDF plugin I use or Apple's Preview application.
Posted by lsloan at 10:27 AM | Comments (0)
April 21, 2006
Email Addresses for Training SpamBox
It's important to note that people who use mail programs other than the U-M web mail at mail.umich.edu can also train the SpamBox filter. In addition to the "This is Spam" and "This is Not Spam" web mail links mentioned in ITCSDocs: Using SpamBox for E-Mail Spam Filtering (S4314), there are two email addresses used for the same purpose.
To train the filter that a message is spam, just bounce, resend or forward the message to this email address:
spam.your_uniqname@mail.umich.edu
To train the filter that a message isn't spam, use this address:
notspam.your_uniqname@mail.umich.edu
Posted by lsloan at 12:25 PM | Comments (0)
April 07, 2006
Run Linux (or Windoze) under Mac OS X
Parallels invites people to "Experience the First Virtualization Solution for Intel-powered Macs!". It allows people to "use Windows, Linux and any other operating system at the same time as Mac OS X".
I guess if you have to slum in the Windoze world or do some Linux cross-development, this would be useful!
Posted by lsloan at 02:56 PM | Comments (0)
Finding RPMs Is a Pain
I was helping somebody set up a SuSE Linux server for some Python web applications. The Python code needed to use libxml2 and libxslt to produce output from templates written in XSL. My friend had installed the libs, including all the "devel" and "python" ones. The only problem was that there wasn't an RPM for libxslt-python-1.1.14-3 to be found. It just wasn't included with his SuSE distribution.
So I turned to Google.
I found a page called Novell: SUSE Linux 10.0: libxslt-python. That seemed like just the place to get what we needed. But it wasn't.
It was only a description. And there were links to their FTP server and other mirrors of it where the file might be available. But the SuSE FTP sites are just horrendous. It's very hard to find the files you need. Just when you think you've made it into the correct directory based on system architecture, OS version, etc, you can't find the file.
I ended up going back to Google, searching for the specific file name mentioned on Novell's page, and checking the results carefully. I finally found the file in a mirror of OpenSuSE. We downloaded and installed it. It worked right away.
So, I wonder... Why doesn't Novell just put a direct link to the file on that description page? Why don't they make it easy to find the file on their FTP site and mirrors? It shouldn't be necessary to resort to Google or rpmfind.net to find Linux RPMs.
Posted by lsloan at 02:46 PM | Comments (0)
April 05, 2006
No Work and All Stress Makes Jack a Sick Boy
Study results from the Univ. of Michigan Institute for Social Research claims that job insecurity leads to poor health:
Epidemic of job insecurity takes a major toll on worker health
Posted by lsloan at 09:23 AM | Comments (0)
March 02, 2006
IBM developerWorks Reviews OpenLaszlo
Last week, IBM developerWorks pulled through again with this nice overview, "Web clients fatten up with OpenLaszlo".
Posted by lsloan at 05:53 PM
February 18, 2006
Virgin Mobile Email is Stupid!
I just recently got a Virgin Mobile pay-as-you-go cell phone. Immediately, I want to test sending email to it through my U-M Online Directory email group I keep for my pager. My new phone received the message alright. But Virgin says the message is "From" the bounce address for my group. That means anybody who sends email to my pager group will result in a message on my phone "From" the group. I'll never be able to tell who the messages are from.
Thanks a lot, Virgin Mobile!
Looks like a call to customer service is in my future...
Posted by lsloan at 07:46 AM
February 17, 2006
Half Man, Half Amazing
You've probably wondered what happens when a holding cell full of questionable characters in the city of Rompton receive some... nourishment... from heaven, split it up, and eat it. At Mackrosoft.com, you can finally find out.
Mackrosoft.com - Where do you want to ho today?
Mackrosoft has been around quite a while. It's almost a classic Flash web site in my opinion. It has nice comics/cartoons and some good groove MP3s that sound as if they'd be right at home in an adult movie.
BTW, don't let the comics/cartoons throw you, it's definitely rated PG-13.
Posted by lsloan at 01:25 PM | Comments (0)