Kubuntu Release candidate announced
KDE centric Ubuntu test release

Introduction to Irish gaelic
Common phrases, greetings in Irish

How! Yahoo! Got! Its! Mojo! Back!
Yahoo is gaining, rightfully, more and more tech-cred

There is a bug in the 2.6 kernel that causes the mouse to go erratic if you are using a KVM switch. Booting up without switching is just fine - its just that the mouse goes crazy if you switch back and forth between boxes. I have been trawling the net for answers, workarounds. Here's a few:

Use PS/2 to USB adapter for your 2.6 box
Knoppix 3.3 works with KVM switchers
Unplug the mouse cable on the switch and plug it back in

Add this to your kernel cmdline in grub or lilo
psmouse.proto=bare
You will lose your scrollwheel, but at least the mouse wont be erratic.


It appears to have been fixed in the 2.6.11 kernel
2.6.11 changelog

Input: psmouse - reset mouse before doing intellimouse/explorer
probes in case it got confused by earlier probes; switch
to streaming mode before setting scale and resolution,
otherwise some KVMs get confused.
Patch-by: Marko Macek
Signed-off-by: Dmitry Torokhov

BBC - On This Day
1979: Israel and Egypt shake hands on peace deal
In a ceremony at the White House, Israel and Egypt end 30 years of war with a handshake, after the signing of the Egypt-Israel peace treaty.
2000: Pope prays for Holocaust forgiveness
Pope John Paul II, visiting Jerusalem, has prayed for forgiveness for those involved in the Holocaust.
1981: 'Gang of four' launches new party
The Social Democrats launch their new political party pledging to 'reconcile the nation' and 'heal divisions between classes'.
1999: Record compensation for miners
Ex-miners suffering from lung diseases win the biggest industrial injuries case in British legal history.
1973: Stock Exchange admits women
Women are allowed on to the trading floor of the London Stock Exchange for the first time in the institution's 200 year history.

Dot con - how Infospace took investors for a ride

20 per cent Google time
Some more snippets on the inner workings of Google from Joe Beda, who works there.

Transparent screen meme on Flickr
Making laptop, cellphone screens look transparent.

From Coder to Courier
A cubicle coder ditches it all in for a life as a bicycle courier - and he reports back to Kuroshin.

Soft tissue found in T-Rex fossil

From CNN

For more than a century, the study of dinosaurs has been limited to fossilized bones. Now, researchers have recovered 70-million-year-old soft tissue, including what may be blood vessels and cells, from a Tyrannosaurus rex.

John R. Horner of the Museum of the Rockies at Montana State University, said the discovery is "a fantastic specimen," but probably is not unique. Other researchers might find similarly preserved soft tissues if they split open the bones in their collections, said Horner, a co-author of the paper.

The bone matrix was stretchy and flexible and there were long structures like blood vessels. She added that what appeared to be individual cells were visible, but could not say if they were blood cells.

Urpmi common tasks
Handy quick reference of commonly used urpmi commands.

Bittorent and Azureus

Newforge have this article on getting started with Bittorrent and Azureus. Azureus is a graphical Java Bittorent client.

37Signals

37 Signals better project
Inspirational reworkings of websites by 37signals. Check these guys out if you are concerned about your sites usability. They offer a service called 37 Express where , for a fee, they will revamp a page on your site to give you that boost of creativity and inspiration, and hopefully, make your customers less confused and thus, buy more.

Rolling with Ruby on Rails
An introduction to Ruby and the Rails framework

Ruby versus Java - a matter of taste

ruby musings

mysqlextension.rb - stored in /usr/lib/ruby/1.8/

require "mysql"

def older_people
query("SELECT * FROM people WHERE age>45")
end

def younger_people
query("SELECT * FROM people WHERE age<45")
end
end

mysqltest.rb:

# because mysqlextension.rb is in /usr/lib/ruby/1.8 its easily found by ruby
require "mysqlextension"
m=Mysql.real_connect( connection stuff )

#now here's the killer:

res=m.older_people

#so now i can do

while row=res.fetch_row do
print row[2], row[3]
end


why's that a killer? - well, yeah , you could do something similar with php, but the ruby way just feels kinda more elegant. lots more to read up on this. early days yet.

Ruby on Rails

Loud Thinking has announced the Ajaxing of Ruby on Rails

Interesting stuff - i've dabbled in Ruby a bit, so i guess i'll have to dabble a fair bit more now.

Loud Thinking has a getting started with Ruby page with lots and lots of links to Ruby stuff.

First Direct Detection of Light From Extrasolar Planets

For the very first time light from extrasolar planets have been detected.

WOW!!

Cambridge, MA--Two teams of astronomers announced at a press conference today that they have directly detected light from two known planets orbiting distant stars. This discovery opens a new frontier in the study of extrasolar planets. Researchers now can directly measure and compare such planetary characteristics as color, reflectivity, and temperature.

5000 menus from 1856 to 1930

The most expensive album never released

Google introduces Ad Links

LinkDump

Rising Energy Needs Renew Nuclear Interest (AP)
New Signs of Recent Glaciers, Volcanoes and Flowing Water on Mars (SPACE.com)
Scam Artists Dial for Dollars on Internet Phones (Reuters)
New Sharp 3D Notebook Available with Linux
British TV Station Offers Downloads
Mandrake 2006 Will Integrate Conectiva Components
Novell Linux Desktop
Thoughts on Flickr and Yahoo
An Enemy of my Enemy...
FeedHacks.com

BBC - On This Day
1976: Princess Margaret and Lord Snowdon to split
Buckingham Palace announces that Princess Margaret will separate from Lord Snowdon after 16 years of marriage.
1982: Argentine flag hoisted on Falklands
A group of Argentines land at the British colony of the Falkland Islands in the south Atlantic and plant their nation's flag.
1970: Willi and Willy meet in East Germany
Crowds of East Germans cheer West Germany's Chancellor Willy Brandt as he meets East Germany's leader Willi Stoph for the first time since the two countries were divided.
1992: Fergie and Andrew split
Buckingham Palace announces the Duke and Duchess of York are to separate due to irreconcilable differences.
1964: 'Ambitious' plans for south east
Three new cities are proposed for south east England as part of the largest regional expansion plan in Britain as the population is expected to boom by three million.

Linkdump

Next Star Trek film will take place 160 years before Kirk
Film due out in 2007 - will feature entirely brand new characters.
Microsoft and Sun server love-in
Sun kit is installed at Microsoft
Nanotech storage shown at Cebit
IBM show off prototype capable of storing 25 DVDs worth of data in an area the size of a postage stamp.
How to do anything photographic

Trouble in Firefox?

Mike Connor, one of the core Firefox developers, laments the lack of larger hacker community in Firefox development.

"This is bugging me, and its been bugging me for a while. In nearly three years, we haven’t built up a community of hackers around Firefox, for a myriad of reasons, and now I think we’re in trouble. Of the six people who can actually review in Firefox, four are AWOL, and one doesn’t do a lot of reviews."

The Genius Of Peter Kay

Peter Kay asks some questions the rest of us havent thought of...

1. Why does your gynaecologist leave the room when you get undressed?

2. If a person owns a piece of land do they own it all the way down to
the core of the earth

3. Why can't women put on mascara with their mouth closed?

4. Is it possible to brush your teeth without wiggling your back side

5. Why is it called Alcoholics Anonymous when the first thing you do is
stand up and say, 'My name is Bob, and I am an alcoholic'?

6. Why is there a light in the fridge and not in the freezer?

7. Why does mineral water that 'has trickled through mountains for
centuries' have a 'use by' date?

8. Why do toasters always have a setting that burns the toast to a
horrible crisp no one would eat?

9. Is French kissing in France just called kissing?

10. Who was the first person to look at a cow and say, 'I think I'll
squeeze these dangly things here and drink whatever comes out'?

11. What do people in China call their good plates?

12. Why do people point to their wrist when asking for the time, but
don't point to their crotch when they ask where the bathroom?

13. Why is a person that handles your money called a 'Broker'?

14. If quizzes are quizzical, what are tests?

15. Why is it that when someone tells you that there are over billion
stars in the universe, you believe them, but if they tell you there is
wet paint somewhere, you have to touch it to make sure?

16. Did you ever notice that when you blow in a dog's face, he gets mad
at you but when you take him on a car ride, he sticks his head out of
the window?

Peter Kay's Universal Truths

1) Triangular sandwiches taste better than square ones.

2) At the end of every party there is always a girl crying.

3) One of the most awkward things that can happen in a pub is when your
pint-to-toilet cycle gets synchronised with a complete stranger.

4) You've never quite sure whether it's ok to eat green crisps.

5) Everyone who grew up in the 80's has entered the digits 55378008 into
a calculator

6) Reading when you're drunk is horrible.

7) You're never quite sure whether it's against the law or not to have a
fire in your back garden.

8) Nobody ever dares make cup-a-soup in a bowl.

9) You never know where to look when eating a banana.

10) Rummaging in an overgrow garden will always turn up a bouncy ball.

11) Everyone always remembers the day a dog ran into your school.

12) the most embarrassing thing you can do as schoolchild is to call
your teacher mum or dad.

13) Every bloke has at some stage while taking a pee, flushed half way
through and then raced against the flush.

14) Its impossible to look cool whilst picking up a Frisbee.

15) You never ever run out of salt.

16) There's no panic like the panic you momentarily feel when you've got
your hand or head stuck in something.

17) No one knows the origins of their metal coat hangers.

18) Despite constant warning, you have never met anybody who has had
their arm broken by a swan.

19) the most painful household incident is wearing socks and stepping on
an upturned plug.

20) People who don't drive slam car doors too hard.

21) You've turned into your dad the day you put aside a thin piece of
wood specifically to stir paint with.

Leo's Lyrics
Massive song lyric database

Mandrake Audio Workstation Howto

Family tree of Greek mythology
Roman Empire timeline
From Parthenon Graphics via Kottke

Fuckwit
A new google bomb.

SCO was the best thing that ever happened to Linux
OSDL chief exec says that the SCO affair accelerated Linux adoption rather than hold it off.

How to Google for sound samples

"index of" + intitle:wav + rooster
This is how you find a rooster sample on Google


intitle:index.of + "wav" + "meow" -htm -html -php -asp
This finds wav files entitled "meow"

How to forward a mailbox?

Extracted from debian-user
Tip provided by Johnie Ingram
Q:How would I forward the contents of one mail box to another e-mail address? I'm using a sendmail/procmail setup.

Answer:
cat /var/spool/mail/user | formail -s sendmail other@address

Batelle: Adsense and Boing Boing

New York Library digital archive
275,000 digitised images from the New York public library.

Google are giving out Share Your Big Brain titled leaflets at college campuses:
Side 1
Side 2

CSS zen garden
thumbnailed gallery of CSS designs

BBC - On This Day
1966: Passenger jet crashes into Mount Fuji
A BOAC Boeing 707 crashes into Mount Fuji in Japan killing all 124 people on board, just 25 minutes after take-off.
1953: Soviet leader 'on brink of death'
Rumours are circulating in Moscow that Joseph Stalin, the long-time leader of the Soviet Union, is near death.
1973: Mid-air collision kills 68
Sixty-eight passengers and crew die when two Spanish aircraft collide in mid-air over France.
1956: US court victory for black students
The United States Supreme Court upholds a ban on racial segregation in state schools, colleges and universities.
1993: Johnson gets life ban from athletics
Disgraced Olympic sprinter Ben Johnson is banned from athletics for life after failing a drugs test for a second time.

Paris floods in 1910
Interesting photographs from 95 years ago.

Crap food and kids

Twizzlers and Ninja mums

Interesting blogpost on the crisis with junk food amongst UK kids , currently the topic of Jamie Oliver's new TV series.

Numa Numa

Numa numa
all hail the numa numa guy.

Life with Linus
Alan Cox speaks at Fosdem

Yahoo! Turns! 10! Today!
free ice cream

LinkDump

Japan Space Plan May Include Manned Moon Base -Paper (Reuters)
China Forecasts 120 Mln Internet Users by Year End (Reuters)
Microsoft Hires an Outsider to Run Longhorn Marketing (Ziff Davis)
IBM lifts PHP in development deal (InfoWorld)
EMC puts a super-Google in Centera boxes
German courts go techno
Engineers Devise Invisibility Shield
Is Your OS Tough Enough?
Japan Considering Moon Base, Shuttle Projects
Interview: Google Hack Honeypot Project
Yahoo! Search Web Services Launch!
Being mean is against the GMail rules...
Mobile QuickSilver-like User Interfaces
Greatest American Hero!!!