Just a handy one for the IE6 png support: for i in `ls`; do x=`basename $i .png`; convert $i $x.gif; done

No doubt it’s been done elsewhere, but I spent quite a while trying to get this one working. Basically I wanted a horizontal css menu with decent markup and no hacks. I also wanted to have nice icons for each item correctly vertically aligned. On top of that I wanted the whole thing to be fluid so it would look right at any text size. Unfortunately because of IE6’s lack of support for :hover on anything but links I needed to use containing spans for the text on each list item (doh!

While pondering why my backup scripts weren’t working in /etc/cron.daily, I remembered that run-parts (the thing that runs stuff in that directory) doesn’t like running scripts with a .sh, or indeed probably any extension on them. Handy to remember that one!

Looks like the guys over at Innotek have been busy, probably old news to most but I just realised they’ve released version 1.5 of Virtualbox last year. Among a whole bunch of bug fixes and other improvements it seems they’ve added one cool feature that will make working with those windows only programs much easier - seamless window integration with your host OS (I think that’s linux only, but I might be wrong).

I recently got the ClearSilver PHP module working on my Ubuntu laptop as we use it on a number of our web sites and I needed to develop a site with it locally. Then this morning I stupidly upgraded PHP and of course the module had un-resolved symbols. Dohh! So I decided this time I’d write a better document on how to get it working, one which might actually help me and could perhaps help others.

Recently I’ve been using Skype a lot to speak to friends and family in the UK and Australia. It’s pretty good for the following reasons: There’s no need to configure your firewall Everyone else seems to have Skype already It’s pretty good quality wise. The webcam function is really good, especially in full screen Yes, it’s not ideal - it’s a proprietary network and the software is closed source, but on the other hand it just works.

Google recently announced it’s new open source Android platform for mobile devices. As a programmer and designer, it sounds fairly cool, and as an end user it sounds fairly cool too!! I think I’ll be getting one of these Android devices as soon as they’re released as it seems like mobile computing has finally landed! There’s a few interesting videos on the aforementioned site too.

Bit off-topic, but I’ve added links to the top of the site to access our travel blog and travel gallery as Laura (my partner) and I are going traveling. Check it out!

The latest and greatest version of the free, open source GNU/Linux operating system Ubuntu has been released just minutes ago. If you’re tiring of Windows, or simply want to have a look at what all the fuss is about, give it a whirl. Find out more at www.ubuntu.com. You can even run it from the CD, so there’s no need to erase your Windows XP install.

My girlfriend and I both have iPods. I have a 2nd gen shuffle, she has a 2nd gen nano. Both were working fine on my Edgy install, however, the 2nd gen nano wasn’t being ‘found’ by Gnome, and therefore not appearing in Banshee (which is what I really wanted). There is a workaround, it’s a replacement for Gnome’s HAL. Simply follow the instructions here for results: http://www.tigert.com/archives/2007/01/09/ipod-and-ubuntu-edgy/