Island Linux Bits and Bytes of Technology

First you will need to install the following packages that Boxee needs to run, launch a terminal and run the following command:

To install Boxee on Ubuntu 9.10 first download Boxee from here (32-bit) or here (64-bit).

UTF-8 is hell. I have run into problems with UTF-8 before (see Migrating MySQL to UTF-8 encoding).

I moved a site that was displaying fine from an old Apache server to a new Apache2 server and quickly identified that the Apache2 server was displaying odd characters.

The site is running a PHP application with a MySQL backend. The MySQL database is using latin1_swedish_ci character encoding. The old site was displaying correctly. Both the new and old site are using the same database.

So what was going on?

Configuring Exim to use Gmail as the outgoing SMTP server is simple. This HOWTO will walk you through installing, configuring and routing email thru Gmail for exim.

The first step is to install exim4. Launch terminal and:

Run the following command to configure exim4:

Set the following:

General type of mail configuration: mail sent by smarthost; no local mail 
System mail name: (default)

The Sierra Wireless USB 598 currently offered through Telus *almost* works on Ubuntu 9.04 out of the box. A Windows or Mac box is needed to install the "Watcher" program that allows for the automatic online configuration of the Sierra Wireless USB 598. Aside from the requirement of Windows/Mac the card was immediately picked up and ready to go.

I was running into an issue with a vserver where the disk space usage was at 23% but I was getting a 'No space left on device' error message. I run vserver with 12 virtual servers and none of the other servers exhibited the same behavior.

Rogers is bringing the HTC Dream to Canada next month. As I mentioned in HTC Magic Reviewed I can not wait to get my hands on the Google Android operating system.

The HTC Dream is exactly the same as the T-Mobile G1. According to an article by Rob Jackson (HTC Dream vs. T-Mobile G1)T-Mobile rebranded the HTC Dream as the T-Mobile G1 to "cash in on the idea of the '1rst Google Phone' - or G1". Check out the HTC Dream specifications versus the T-Mobile G1.

The reviews of the HTC Dream include quotes such as:

• "The G1(HTC Dream) isn’t going to blow anyone’s mind right out of the gate." - Engadet
• "Unfortunately the Dream can't decide whether it's a touchscreen device or not." - The Sydney Morning Herald
• "Better Wait for HTC Magic, Forget HTC Dream" - wassup

Enough said. The HTC Magic is a better choice.

The HTC Magic is coming to Canada next month. I am excited by this new "smart phone" (aka mini-computer) and can't wait to get my hands on the Google Android operating system. All reviews are positive and position the HTC Magic as an open-source competitor to Apple's iPhone.

This phone is running Google Android 1.5 (nicknamed Cupcake) and boasts many improvements. For a detailed and informative review check out this HTC Magic review. For the technically inclined here are the HTC Magic Specifications.

Personally I would rather wait for some more phone choices before committing to a smart-phone and a plan. If I had to choose now I would take the HTC Magic over the HTC Dream (aka T-Mobile G1, see HTC Dream Reviewed).

I ran into an problem with sound on a Dell Inspiron 518 workstation running Ubuntu 8.04. I had paused Amarok and then viewed a Flash video on youtube. When I went to play Amarok again Amarok stalled and hung there. I had to kill the amarok process to shut it down. The syslog gave up:

When updating a MySQL database table to use UTF-8 I came across an error:

Initial research indicates that the maximum key size in MySQL is 1000 bytes. Given that latin1 uses one (1) byte per character and UTF-8 uses three (3) bytes per character some indexes will exceed the 1000 byte limit. This accounts for the generated error when converting tables with large or compound indexes from latin1 to UTF8 encoding.

According to the MySQL bug tracker this issue has yet to be resolved. Currently the only solution is to limit indexing on UTF-8 encoded tables or use latin1 instead. Not the best of choices to say the least.

While developing a content management system (CMS) using default MySQL settings an issue came to light in regards to UTF-8 encoding. Clients were sending in documents in Microsoft Word format that were encoded with UTF-8. When the data was copied from the document and pasted into the CMS WYSIWYG editor strange characters would be displayed after saving the document.

A second issue was identified where exported MySQL tables that contained UTF-8 encoded characters were being not being read correctly by Debian. Note that I am using an old installation of Debian (fully updated of course) that was rolled out before widespread adoption of UTF-8. Newer installations may already have UTF-8 enabled by default.

The goals of this HOWTO are as follows:

1. set newly created tables in MySQL to use UTF-8 encoding
2. convert existing MySQL tables to UTF-8
3. set default environment (command line) encoding to use UTF-8