Bad Idea™ of the day

I cracked up when I read this.

How to install Amarok 1.4 in Ubuntu 9.10 ‘Karmic Koala’

Amarok 1.4 is no longer included in the official repositories. Here’s how to install it in Ubuntu 9.10.

Option 1: Install Amarok 1.4 from the PPA for KDE3.5 Maintainers

Despite the switch to KDE4, there is a team of developers committed to keeping KDE3.5 available in Ubuntu.

KDE3.5 Maintainers

Maintainers of KDE3.5 for Ubuntu Intrepid and above. Emphasis is placed on keeping KDE3.5 as a viable Ubuntu desktop environment, easily installed and used alongside others, just like Gnome, XFCE, and KDE4.x.

Part of their endeavor includes maintaining a working package of Amarok 1.4 for the latest Ubuntu release. To install it,

1. Add the PPA. Go to the PPA for KDE3.5 Maintainers page on Launchpad and perform the steps under Adding this PPA to your system.
2. Install Amarok 1.4. Install the package amarok-kde3 using your preferred method.
3. Create a menu item. Add a menu item with the name Amarok 1.4 and the following command (all one line) as suggested here:

   sh -c "PATH=/opt/kde3/bin:/opt/kde3/games:/opt/kde3/bin:$PATH KDEDIRS=/usr/:/opt/kde3/ KDEHOME=$HOME/.kde3 XDG_DATA_DIRS=/opt/kde3/share/:/usr/share/ MANPATH=/opt/kde3/share/man amarok"

Option 2: Install Amarok 1.4 from Bogdan Butnaru’s PPA for Amarok 1.4 series

Ubuntu user Bogdan Butnaru is maintaining a PPA just for installing Amarok 1.4 in later Ubuntu releases. Bodgan’s PPA appears to be giving Amarok more special attention than the KDE3.5 Maintainers’ PPA is, though I can’t speak for its long-term availability. Also, at the time of writing, there is no official package for Karmic, but Bogdan explains:

The Jaunty version of Amarok14 works on Karmic Koala too. If you’re already using it on Jaunty you can safely update to Karmic, and it will keep working. If you have a new Karmic installation, you can add the Jaunty PPA and install. I won’t do a Karmic release until I have the time to add a patch for the Amazon cover fetching bug that many of you reported.

Given the special attention to popular issues, this may be the better PPA to use for now. To install Amarok 1.4,

1. Add the PPA. Go to the Amarok 1.4 series page on Launchpad and perform the steps under Adding this PPA to your system.
2. Install Amarok 1.4. Install the package amarok14 using your preferred method.

Option 3: Compile Amarok 1.4 from source

If you’d rather compile Amarok 1.4 from source, a helpful guide has been posted on the Ubuntu Forums:

How-To: Compile Amarok 1.4.10 in Ubuntu 9.10 “Karmic Koala”

Happy listening.

Triscuits

Several good snacking suggestions.

How to download The Ultimate Steal after 30 days

I purchased Microsoft Office 2007 via The Ultimate Steal last winter. The software is provided as a download through Digital River – but it is available for only 30 days after making the purchase.

So what happens if you lose your backup?

The order confirmation email reads:

DOWNLOADABLE PRODUCTS
Downloadable products may be accessed by looking up your order. When the order summary appears, click on the Download link next to the product name.

LOOKING UP YOUR ORDER
Go to http://store.digitalriver.com/store/msshus/DisplayHelpPage
You may also find other helpful information on this page.

Sounds promising. After signing in, it even displays a hopeful looking download button:

but clicking it returns the following:

Sorry,

It is too late to download this file. You were allowed to download within 30 days.

If you have any questions, please contact Digital River Customer Service at CustomerServices@digitalriver.com.

Fortunately, you don’t have to use this particular installer. You can use your license key to convert a trial version of Office 2007 to a full version. You can freely download the trial version from here:

http://msft-dnl.digitalrivercontent.net/msoffice/pub/X12-30307/X12-30307.exe

Once installed, the first thing it does is ask you for a product key. Yours is included in your order confirmation email.

If you haven’t kept that email, I think you’re out of luck.

I want a Google Wave to email bridge

Google Wave gives you a username in the form of username@googlewave.com. It looks like an email address, so I tried sending an email to mine. This is what I got back:

Delivered-To: username@gmail.com
Received: by 10.142.68.2 with SMTP id q2cs128805wfa;
Mon, 9 Nov 2009 08:07:48 -0800 (PST)
Received: by 10.142.201.18 with SMTP id y18mr791597wff.257.1257782838160;
Mon, 09 Nov 2009 08:07:48 -0800 (PST)
MIME-Version: 1.0
Return-Path: <>
Received: by 10.142.201.18 with SMTP id y18mr791597wff.257; Mon, 09 Nov 2009
08:07:48 -0800 (PST)
From: Mail Delivery Subsystem <mailer-daemon@googlemail.com>
To: username@gmail.com
X-Failed-Recipients: username@googlewave.com
Subject: Delivery Status Notification (Failure)
Message-ID: <000e0cd22a0c0faf950477f26437@google.com>
Date: Mon, 09 Nov 2009 16:07:48 +0000
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1

Delivery to the following recipient failed permanently:
username@googlewave.com
Technical details of permanent failure:
The recipient server did not accept our requests to connect. Learn more at http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=7720
[googlewave.com (1): Connection timed out]

----- Original message -----
MIME-Version: 1.0
Received: by 10.142.201.18 with SMTP id y18mr791597wff.257.1257782838160; Fri,
06 Nov 2009 05:58:43 -0800 (PST)
From: =?UTF-8?B?w6ZuZHLDvGs=?= <username@gmail.com>
Date: Fri, 6 Nov 2009 05:58:23 -0800
Message-ID: <152aefdf0911060558r6a4e7c75j55152d0c340f18de@mail.gmail.com>
Subject: What happens?
To: username@googlewave.com
Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary=000e0cd22a0ce641420477b43d62
What happens when I email this?

Maybe in the future this will be a wave to email bridge. In the mean time, there should at least be a more helpful bounce message.

No beep in Karmic

In the midst of upgrading to Ubuntu 9.10, this showed up:

Replace the customized configuration file '/etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf'?

Difference between the files:
-# Disable the annoying beep
+# ugly and loud noise, getting on everyone's nerves; this should be done by a nice pulseaudio bing (Ubuntu: #77010)
blacklist pcspkr

Finally!