Skype + Compiz + Cairo Dock

Apparently skype video has issues with cairo dock.   I can confirm this, it definitely doesn't work, where all other webcam apps (like cheese, or guvcview) work fine.  The recommend solution from skype is to simply turn off all visual effects and compositing.  Just like Adobe recommended all 64bit users switch to a 32bit browser just to use their latest flash player that fixed a rather nasty bug.  It's the "hit it with a big hammer corporate approach".

Thanks to the folks at http://forum.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=47&t=36236&p=208735 for this one.  Just add "export XLIB_SKIP_ARGB_VISUALS=1"  to /usr/bin/skype and skype.  And it all works.

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Firefox 3.5 Sounds

The 3.5 release of firefox has enabled sounds for an alert message. Everytime javascript decides to generate an alert() my speakers go "DING!". Bugs have been filed, and complaints made on many forums. The firefox devs seem to think that their sound scheme is now "doing the right thing".

I beg to differ.

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Greasemonkey + Facebook

Psst, facebook, I don't want to be friends with random people just because "we both went to UBC", or "we both live in Vancouver". UBC is pretty big, so is Vancouver. I also don't want to become fans of things just because my friends have. So.. bye-bye suggestion box:

Step 1, install greasemonkey: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/748

Step 2, install this greasemonkey script, just detaches the suggestion box from the HTML, making it disappear, the more elegant solution would be if facebook would just not send the HTML in the first place.. but that's asking too much mehtinks: http://slicer.ca/files/facebook_desuckify.user.js

Step 3, enjoy facebook without the stupid suggestion box.

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Recovering Ubuntu

A few days ago I did something bad.  I did a distro upgrade to bleeding edge Ubuntu (9.10) before release, all for the want of the latest version of libvirt on my antiquated laptop.

I know pre-release software might be rough around the edges, I know things might not work, but I didn't really care, after all these things are usually fixed over time.  However, what I didn't bargin for was that the upgrade process was to totally bjorked that it sent dpkg into an infinite loop unpacking the same packages, over and over again, until I stopped it.

Big mistake, but what else could I do?

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Error message FAIL

I'm trying to get libvirt working, just to play with it.  Here's the error:

libvir: Network Config error : cannot create bridge 'virbr0': Package not installed

Package not installed?  But the bridge utilities are installed.  After much googling, I discovered it's a bridge-utils error message, and here's my translated version:

Ethernet bridging support isn't enabled in the kernel

lrn2writeerrormessages.  kthx.

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nVidia blocking signal problem fixed

have been experiencing this bug since the 180.35 nVidia drivers were released.  The dreaded blocked signals bug.  The .37 driver was supposed to fix it, and did for many people, but not me.  Neither did .41, .44, .51, or the latest ones, 180.60.  This wasn't a big problem,  I reasoned I'd just wait until it was actually fixed and continue using the 180.29 drivers.  That waiting ended today when I upgraded to kernel 2.6.30 and discovered the .29 drivers don't build against that kernel.  Curses.

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Profiling PHP Code

I have a PHP script I wrote for my research that takes stupidly long time to run. Why? I don't know.  So on an off chance of finding something useful, I put "PHP profiling" into google.

So it turns out that PHP profiling is a huge topic, there are many websites ready to provide HOWTOs and tutorials for a zillion different techniques.  And, like everything in the computer world it seems, the solution is easy and sifting through all useless advice and "type-this-random-thing-into-your-console" is what takes the time.

Here's what gentoo users need to know:

1. emerge xdebug


2. Edit /etc/php/php-cli/ext/xdebug.ini , set xdebug.enable_profiling="1", and I also had to increase my max_nesting_level to "1000".  It took forever to figure this out, ALL the documents say "oh, just put the settings in php.ini.". WRONG.  They get ignored in there.


3. Install kcachegrind, and use it to load the profile dumps now being written in /tmp/cachegrind*

Done.

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