Webs’ Random Ideas

Want to synchronize your Mozilla profiles? The directions are pretty straight forward, for Linux you will want to do the same thing essentially, but your folder names and location of those folders will be different. For instance Linux does not have “Documents and Settings”, it has “/home”.

So my setup:
Vista on C:
XP on E:
I want XP on E: to be primary profile location with Vista on C: to snyc to E:

You may want to stop and think a minutre here how you want to configure your setup…

Anyways, now we can start. First we need to copy the profile.ini file from the location the profile will be snyc’d to. In my case I go to XP on E:
E:\Documents and Settings\Devil\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox

Copy the “profile.ini” file by using CTRL+C or drag and drop. Then paste to:
C:\Users\Devil\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox

Now open the file in a text editor. And make the following changes (below is what my finished file look like):
[Profile0]
Name=default
IsRelative=0
Path=E:\Documents and Settings\jgwebe2\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\xl5cg5nh.default
Default=1
[Profile1]
Name=Guest
IsRelative=0
Path=E:\Documents and Settings\Yogi\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\Guest

Make sure you set “IsRelative” to 0 as above. Also, the easiest way to get your profile name and full path is to use My Computer and browse all the way to your location, like I did on XP. Then copy and past the location from the address bar.

Then save the file. And you are done.

As a side note, I did this while reading the directions from Mozilla Firefox, while in Vista. Once I was done I closed down Firefox and reopened it. All was well and it was snycing with the Firefox on XP.

Directions adapted from this very useful HowTo…

Dean Kamen, , has invented a wicked cool robot arm (video below). From a Wired Blog post.

Kamen’s arm, dubbed “Luke” (after Skywalker, I assume), is an incredibly sophisticated bit of engineering that’s lightyears ahead of the clamping “claws” that many amputees are forced to use today. The arm is fully articulated, giving the user the same degrees of movement as a natural arm, and is sensitive enough to pick up a piece of paper, a wineglass or even a grape without mishap.

Maybe Stephen Hawking could make use of this technology.

Found from Wired Blog Post linked above…

I already had Vista installed, but got fed up with it’s crappiness. I couldn’t take the annoyances of not being able to get work done and it just ran slow as hell on a Dell 755. So I installed Windows XP on a 2nd partition I created. After doing so I realized I could no longer boot to Vista, but the Vista partition was still recognized and usable. What to do?

Well for awhile it didn’t bother me too much, but now I want to see what files I have under Vista, what programs are installed, and I want to clean things up. A simple search on the web found me this site with directions for dual booting Vista and XP when Vista is already installed.

So I followed them and got to the point where Vista Bootloader is re-enabled. This causes a problem for me and my setup. I would attempt to login and Vista would tell it has lost the trust between the workstation and Domain.

So after a little more searching I come across this site in which a user recommends to unplug the network cable while attempting to login. This worked, I just had to use an older password that was cached for my domain account. Once in I immediately created a local admin account just in case this happens again! I also removed the machine from our Active Directory (AD) Domain.

I then restarted, logged in again and rejoined to the domain. Once rebooted again I continued on with the directions and installed EasyBCD. One little oddity there, EasyBCD would not let me choose the XP partition, it just kept it with the C: drive even though XP is on the E: drive. This seemed odd as Vista is the C: drive. But I didn’t bother and just left it.

Now I can’t login to XP with an AD account. I am working on correcting this and will post an update when I get there.

Want to get flash working on Opera browser under Ubuntu? Click here for a HowTo that actually works…

Firefox is trying to set a World Record for most downloads of a software title in a 24 hour period. Click below to find out more…
http://www.spreadfirefox.com/en-US/worldrecord/

What’s the AwesomeBar you ask? Well I have been using Firefox 3 for the last month and the AwesomeBar is the greatest thing since sliced bread!!! Well actually Firefox 3 is the greatest thing, but the AwesomeBar is pretty sweet too.

The AwesomeBar is the new revamped full feature URL address bar that can do a hell of a lot of stuff. When you start typing into it a list of possible URLs appears as a drop down list. At first it will likely be filled of sites that are a possible match and items from your bookmarks. But as you continue to use Firefox 3 the list will start searching through sites in your history too (porn surfers beware).

The way Firefox 3 does this is by utilizing a SQL Lite database that keeps track of sites you visit, bookmark, as well as other important info, and this allows for better tracking, management, and meta data applications. From what more intelligent minds than myself say, this is long overdue…

But if you don’t wanna take my word for it, Lifehacker has a 10 ten list of features for Firefox 3. Go check it out! Then download Firefox 3.

I could of written one, but that would be reinventing the wheel. Instead read this Ars Technica review of Ubuntu 8.04.

The review is very well done and convers some areas of Ubuntu I didn’t know existed. One complaint I have with the article is it seems to be written from the standpoint of, “If your Linux Distribution is not perfect I’m going to harp on you, and shame on you for not being perfect.” Maybe I read too much into it but I thought the end was a little annoying with this:

A strong 8.10 release with fewer problems out of the box would help put Ubuntu back on track.

I have yet to encounter any distribution of the big players (Windows, MAC, and Linux) that is without major flaws out of the box. There is so much work that goes into a distribution it’s incredibly difficult to catch everything. So the statement above just seems to me to be a pointless gripe about a piece of software.

The thing that’s great about Open Source Projects is the community of users. If there are major problems users can leave feedback and developers can fix the problem. If developers cannot fix the issues quickly, then anyone can step up and fix the problem since the software is Open Source. It’s a very efficient model and is helping to push Linux into wider acceptance.

Other than my one complaint the article is a pretty excellent review of Ubuntu 8.04. Go check it out.

This is really more of an update to my project of creating an Internet Kiosk Management Server.

The gist of the project is this: Currently we have a boot CD Linux distribution for Internet Kiosks, or walk up Internet/Email stations at work. What this means is that I have a Boot CD with a fully contained Operating System that runs off the CD. So no hard drive or floppy is needed. The system boots directly into Mozilla Firefox with no other applications or options available to the user.

Sounds wonderful right? Well yes, but I have been running into issues with this current system, called Boothbox. As mentioned in my previous posts on this topic, I have run into issues getting Boothbox to run on Dell Hardware. The problem is Boothbox is based on a really old kernel. And updating the kernel in Boothbox just wasn’t working out for me at all.

So a new system is in store.

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I always do the same thing before installing an OS, no matter which OS it is. I grab my handy Ubuntu 7.10 disk, boot up, and partition the drive. I don’t really install it as my favorite OS is Xubuntu, but the partition editor is really easy to use.

It’s important to note this can be done without touching a pre-existing OS install. Follow the directions below and you can be all set for a dual boot. Here is what I do when I need to partition drives:

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This one still has me baffled a little, as from what I can gather the differences seem very miniscule. From the MySQL 5.0 Reference Manual, scroll down to the comments and find “Eric Stevens”:

Please note that REPLACE INTO is a much slower performer than an UPDATE statement. Keep in mind that a REPLACE INTO requires a test on the keys, and if a matching unique key is found on any or all columns, a DELETE FROM is executed, then an INSERT is executed. There’s a lot of management of rows involved in this, and if you’re doing it frequently, you’ll hurt your performance unless you simply cannot do with any other syntax.

The only time when I can see where you’d actually need a REPLACE INTO is when you have multiple unique constraints on a table, and need to drop any rows that would match any of the constraints. Then REPLACE INTO becomes more efficient from DELETE FROM… INSERT INTO…

Makes sense to me.  I also found another link, I have now lost, that alluded to REPLACE being useful for older versions of MySQL and when a different database structure was used. I have no way to verify that, but it sounded scholarly.

Anyways, It seems to make more sense to use UPDATE to me. Does anyone else have thoughts or know more? I guess that’s the wrong question since everyone knows more about MySQL than me… Does someone with more knowledge want to weigh in?