Did you miss the fireworks over Boston last night? You can still see them.

For several years I worked with WCRB radio here in Boston as they handed out “souvenir” trash bags on the Esplanade. It was a long day for me, but the best part of each year had to be watching the fireworks from the docks at Community Boating. ‘CRB lost the contract to broadcast the Boston Symphony and the Pops a few years ago so now I just watch the telecast on CBS.

For those who missed the broadcast, or just want to see it again, WBZ has the entire fireworks show on their website. And if you’re trying to figure out what a song was that got played with the Fireworks, Boston’s 4th of July website has the complete list.

Peng’s links for Saturday, 5 July

It’s Saturday? I woke up this am and after the holiday yesterday (with the busses in town running on a Sunday schedule) I honestly had no clue what day it was. Sorry about not making a links post on Thursday. A roomie of mine had Achiles’ tendon surgery last week and he had to go for a follow up appointment Thursday. Unfortunately we finished a lot earlier than expected so we had to wait for The Ride to come get us. Unfortunately he wanted the fresh air and while there were no seats outside other than in the sun (I’ve had enough sunburn in my life, thank you) I wouldn’t leave him outside while I sat inside, so I ended up standing about an hour more than I should. Needless to say, I was in no shape for blogging last night, even with the maximum allowed dosage of pain meds. I apologize for some of these links now being a few days old.

I trust everyone had a great 4th of July. I’ll have another post soon for those who’s like to see the fireworks in Boston but either couldn’t get down there or didn’t see them on CBS last night.

• Mary Colvig: We’re official! The Firefox community has been certified as setting a new Guinness World Record for the “largest number of software downloads in 24 hours.” Asa Dotzler has answers to some of the questions people keep asking about the record.
• Markus Thielmann: Adobe updates Flash 10 Beta. a number of bugs got fixed in the newest Flash 10 Beta, including the pain in the arse windowless mode bug, and Markus has information on how to install it, complete with a PPA so Ubuntu users can get updates automatically.
• Eddie Martinez: Best Buy sucks at selling computers. Ok, now I know to never go to the Best Buy on W. Roosevelt in Chicago, especially if I want to buy a computer. I just hope the corporate office reads his post, because I seriously doubt it’s an isolated incident.
• Frank Taylor: Google Teleases Street View for Tour de France in Google Earth/Maps. It’s the time of year when people who otherwise don’t care about competitive cycling go out of their way to keep up with a bicycle race. Thanks to Google we can get an even better look at the course in the first time they’ve posted Street View images for a country other than the US. He also has a nice article on using Google Earth for tracking storms, a very handy thing to know now that the new hurricane season is upon us. Just remember to use it carefully, as the storm tracking layers are designed to be used one or two at a time, not all at once.
• Wladimire Palant: Blocking malicious sites with Adbock Plus. There’s yet another fantastic use for the software add-on that web site owners hate so much. And since there’s security issues on Flash that are being exploited this news is out none too soon.
• BBC News: It’s not the Gates, it’s the bars. Sichard Stallman has a nice article about the retirement of Bill gates. Thanks to Xkutzy on the Ubuntu Forums for pointing this out to me.
• Christer Edwards: Printing Diectly to PDF in Ubuntu 8.04. I have my default printer set to create PDF documents rather than having to worry about killing trees and buying toner, but Christer wrote a great HowTo so you can do the same. Now I won’t have to dig so hard when I have to find this info to set it up on another computer.
• Ken Gurnick: Ethier leads Dodgers to ‘lucky’ win. Nomar and Andru were back in the lineup for the Dodgers after spending some time on the DL, and Joe Torre had to call a team meeting after the game. Yes, they won 10-7 more thanks to some Giants errors, but it was a pretty messy win, But hey, the Dodgers are now just a half game out of first place! Woot! We have some great highlights to enjoy, too.
• Kevin Smith: Curious George, the Shadow of the Bat, and Other Stuff. “Silent Bob” has some great pictures from working with George Carlin, as well a link to a great Newsweek piece he wrote about his friend. As  well as a picture from his newest movie, due out on Halloween.

Sorry about stuffing so many links in this post. I have one more post that Nanci said I had to write and then I plan on taking the rest of the weekend off. It is supposed to be a three day weekend here in the colonies, after all. :p

Ubuntu Hardy gets its first maintenance update

When Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron came out it was the latest in Ubuntu’s Long Term Support (LTS) versions, meaning that unlike most of their versions the LTS versions will get updates with newer versions of the included programs. Thursday afternoon the Ubuntu team rolled out Ubuntu 8.04.1 LTS, the first maintenance update for the popular Linux distribution.

This update includes over 200 program updates so there will be fewer updates to get online after installing it. Among the programs getting updated are

• Firefox 3 to include the final release rather than Beta 5. Of course this gives a little help to my complaint that Hardy should have had Firefox 2 as the default browser and update it to Firefox 3 Final in 8.04.1.
• Samba fixes issues connecting to some NAS and older Windows servers.
• The Fuse interface to GNOME’s new virtual file system fixed some issues with accessing network file shares.
• The timezone map in the Live CD installer is now simpler to understand and use.

And of course there are other fixes, so I’ll just point you to the official anouncement to get all of the release notes, upgrade instructions, and links to downloading ISO images.