Has wicd gone stupid? There’s an easy fix

[I added a jump on this post as well for the same reason as for the poll post. -Peng]

If you use wireless networking in GNU/Linux it’s a good chance that you use wicd. When I switched from  a regular wired network connection to using the Linksys WUSB600N WiFi networking adapter back in January I had a devil of a time getting the wireless up and running so I ended up grabbing wicd and was finally able to get it running. The only problem is that a few months ago our wireless router went stupid on us, and in the process of switching over to the wired connection my settings for wicd got borked.

My Google Gadgets Gmail Notifier gadget issue is resolved

Last week I mentioned that the Gmail Notifier gadget that I used with the Google Gadgets (Sidebar) for Linux got pulled, and not having that gadget was a deal breaker for me since I rely on it so much. I did some checking and discovered that I hadn’t gotten it from the Google Gadgets Team PPA.

Some of you may wonder what the hell the big deal is since the google-gadgets package on the team’s PPA does includes the Gmail Notifier gadget again, but that gadget is definitely not the one I was looking for. You see, I have three accounts I have to have checked and I don’t have a ton of real estate on my desktop to put things. While you can collapse the Gmail Notifier gadget to a very small footprint it doesn’t show what account the specific gadget is for, which is something shown on the gadget I used before I did a fresh install of Ubuntu 9.04.

I did some searching and discovered that the gadget I was looking for is the No-frills GMail gadget by Daniel Faust. With that gadget you get a way to check for new email, get a glimpse at what email has come in, and go to your Inbox on Gmail, all without even having to collapse the gadget to reduce how much space it takes on your desktop. Plus, when I have a window covering the gadgets I can simply click on the icon in the Notification Tray and the gadgets come to the front, along with my WeatherBug Sidebar Gadget and any other gadgets I have running.

Now the only thing is to find them available for Linux, since you can’t simply download the Windows versions of the Google Gadgets and install them. Luckily my old brain remembered that I may have gotten it from GetDeb, and sure enough I saw versions available for both Hardy and Intrepid, although not Jaunty. I had already tried the Hardy version and it wouldn’t install on my system thanks to some dependencies that couldn’t be met. Luckily I snagged the package for version 0.10.5 for Intrepid and was able to install it. There is a warning that it won’t be updated, but that’s okay for me.

I know they’ve definitely updated the gadgets but as long as I can use my No-frills Gmail gadget and my WeatherBug gadget (since the Linux version of the Bug is still pretty fugly by comparison) I’m willing to stick with the old version.

Peng’s links for Friday, 13 Mar

[Corrected the first link. Thanks to Nick and Keba for pointing it out. -Peng]

I bet you guys thought I wasn’t going to post any links this week. I’ve actually been snagging a bunch of links into a gDocfile so I can share them without clogging up my feed reader with unread posts. Unfortunately there are a bunch of them, so rather than give you the link with my thoughts on each I’m just going to copy and paste the links for you. Feel free to follow any and all links that tickle your curiosity.

• The Fridge: Ubuntu 9.04 Countdown Banners Wanted
• Neil Williams: Goodbye network-manager, hello wicd (I want to check this out some more since we changed out WiFi settings a week ago and I can’t figure out where the hell to update my settings)
• Dirk Demke: Ubuntu Certificate of Authenticity
• Dustin Krikland: Jaunty Encrypted Home Directories
• Stefano Forenza: Microsoft tax on Linux’s horizon?
• Omshivprakash HL: Playing WMA files on Ubuntu
• Sense Hofstede: Oggon your music player with Banshee
• Macenzie Morgan: Link to a shell escaping tutorial
• Ronnie Tucker: Full Circle Magazine Issue 22
• Jono Bacon: LoCo Directory Moves Forward
• Colin Watson: Bug triage rants
• Stemp Xan: WebKitGTK+ 1.1.1
• Stefano Forenza: [HOWTO] Candid theme in 2 minutes
• Omshivprakash HL: Jaunty-Elegant Notifications
• Oxford Archaeology: Evolution is better than revolution (not necessarily referring to the GNOME email client, but still a good read)
• Jeffrey Detras: Ubuntu Evolution (same thing thing applies here as well, and these are two completely different articles)
• Benjanmin Otte: browsing in GNOME
• Gerry Ilagan: Linux Foundation is new owner of Linux.com
• Daniel T. Chen: Triaging bugs in Ubuntu, or How Not To Tee Off The Most Important Person: Yourself
• Dustin Kirkland: Mounting your Encrypted Home from a Jaunty LiveCD
• Christer Edwards: How To Find What Package provided a File
• Colin Watson: Bug triage, redux
• Richard Hughes: Application installing
• David Baucum: Anothther reason I don’t run Windows
• Richard Hughes: Application installing (II)
• Daniel Burrows: Help make aptitude faster!
• Ken Van Dine: Pidgin sucks less for IRC
• Martin F. Krafft: Case Logic cases ruin your CDs
• Johannes Schmid: Filtering in gnome-system-log
• Christoph Langner: Is Ext4 ready for the desktop?
• Stefano Forenza: What’s this Ubuntu thing all about?
• Lionel Dricot: Getting Things Gnome! 0.1 – “Just 5 minutes more”
• Sense Hofstede: Thank a Dev Day
• Matt Zimmerman: Ubuntu is based on Debian unstable
• Greg Grossmeier: Jaunty Release Party – Aprin 25th
• Christer Edwards: New GDM Login Theme in Ubuntu 9.04 “Jaunty”
• Jeffrey Detras: Completing the MacOSX look – Global menu
• Steven Harms: Make your bash shell cool again
• Joege Castro: Desktop Deployments and Stuff
• Daniel Holbach: Packaging Training
• Christian Schaller: Theora in Empathy
• Michael Lustfield: Ubuntu Drupal 6.2.0 Released
• Matthew Revell: Shutter
• Matthew Helmke: Ubuntu Education
• Og Maciel: So you want to sell open source
• Philip Whitnall: Totem manual
• Tom Dryer: Free Disk Space by Reducing Reserved Blocks
• Bodhi.Zazen: How to Moonlight
• Keniv Kubasik: Making Silverlight Applications Available Offline
• Bastien Nocrea: Our new volume feature
• David Welton: Linux “Just Working”
• Matthew Helmke: French police save millions by adopting Ubuntu
• Scott Wegner: Testing Ubuntu Jaunty and Ext4 WITHOUT Trashing Your Data
• Stefano Forenza: LifeHacker’s best distro contest
• Stefano Forenza: Vote for game support in Linux at Ubisoft forums
• Nagappan Alagappan:  Announce: Linux Desktop Testing Project 1.5.1 released
• Risto H. Kruppa: Pay for your Open Source software!

Whew! That should give you some things to read over the weekend. I know some of the articles are from late last month, but that’s how long I’ve been grabbing these links and I wanted to make sure you guys had seen them.

Have a great weekend, and don’t forget to let your favorite open source devs know you appreciate all their hard work. And speaking of hard work, I have an idea for a promotional vid or two, and if all goes well I may have some footage for you guys to check out sometime in the next month or so. See y’all next week!

Peng’s links for Saturday, 7 February

I’m baaack! It was nice to get emails from readers asking when I’ll have a new post, but it took me longer to get caught up on two weeks worth of newsfeeds than I expected. A big part of that is thanks in part to the way some of the planets I’ve subscribed to are set up. Most newsfeeds are set up so that when someone’s feed reader hits the server it presents the 10-20 newest posts, with a few sites offering as many as 50 posts. Some of the planets I read went so far back that I’m not certain but I think I may have gotten all of the posts I hadn’t seen yet.

Anyway, I had over 100 posts waiting to be read from enough sources that when I finally got Evolution fired up earlier this week I ended up with over a thousand posts and messages to deal with. I’ve decided to not share many of the older links I had found before my power supply died (yoooouge thanks to the friend who bought me a new PSU!) but I do have some posts I want to make sure you guys and gals know about.

• Jun Auza: Linux Keyboard Shortcuts: Safe Way to Exit During System Freezes. We’ve all had times where our computer seems to lock up in the middle of doing something. Windows users run some serious risks of borking their system if they simply shut the computer off and turns it back on (also known as a hard reset), but Linux users can do that with the risk of little more than losing any new data they were working on. Jun knows ways to get the system responding to you without the data loss that Ctrl-Alt-Backspace can cause when you force the end to your current session. I need to add these to my PDA so I have them handy the next time I need them.
• Jon Beebe: Installing Fonts in Ubuntu 8.10. It’s the rare user that never adds any additional fonts to their computer, and as the Mac4Lin dev team discovered the process changed when Gnome 2.22.2 was included with Ubuntu Hardy (8.04). Jon gives us the skinny on how to add fonts in Ubuntu Intrepid, and you’ll probably want to bookmark his post for future reference.
• Thomas Thurman: So why is Human so slow? It turns out that Human, the default theme on Ubuntu, takes longer then any other common theme to finish drawing the screen. (Thomas has numbers to back that statement up.) How do we fix that? (@infra: We may want to look at the Mac4Lin themes in the light of this article.)
• Michael Rooney: Gnome Do 0.8 released, awesomeness ensues! The latest version of GNOME Do has been officially released, and while I covered it when it was in alpha stage Michael gives some additional coverage to the one thing I dislike in it: the Docky theme. Some folks love it, but I’m in the camp that will stick to AWN for my dock.
• Ken Kovash: Some Firefox Users Still on Fx2. The metrics team over at Mozilla is wondering why some users haven’t upgraded to Firefox 3 yet. Ken looks at the issue, but probably doesn’t realize that some users hate the UI decisions that the Fx3 dev team made and may even hate Fx3 with the heat of a thousand nuns. I have Fx3 installed but I use it only as a backup to Epiphany and I’m considering rolling back to Fx2 as my backup browser. I sure as hell don’t want to touch Fx 3.1 with a 50-foot pole thanks to some of what I’m seeing in terms of UI decisions. (Granted, I haven’t even looked at the daily build threads over at Mozillazine in a while because I honestly don’t care that much about what the Fx devs are doing. That’s how much I hate what I’ve seen.)
• Michael Rooney: How Windows Vista, Digg, and Ubuntu landed me a Sweet Job. And you thought Vista wasn’t good for anything. Monkeys aside, Michael has a great story to tell, and anyone who has any interest in open source software should read it.

That’s almost it for now. I have two free PDF downloads that you’ll want to get onto your hard drive, but I’ll put them in a separate post.

Full Circle reaches a milestone

On Monday Full Circle, the independent Ubuntu Linux magazine, published their 20th issue. They’re marking their milestone by starting a brand new series on web development software for Linux users.

Of course that’s not all they have in their newest issue, and you’ll also find part four of their Programming in C series and a tutorial on backing up and syncing your music; a Command and Conquer article on using the Terminal; a book review of Ubuntu Kung Fu and a contest to win a copy of it; the top five backup solutions; a MOTU interview with Andrea Colangelo from Italy; as well as articles about making money with FOSS, Italians using open source software, Ubuntu Women, games, letters and more.

They also have a survey they’re asking everyone to take so they can get some feedback on how they can make Full Circle even better.

Peng’s links for Monday, 22 December

[Sis? Why is your name showing up as the author of this post? I'm pretty sure I'm the one who wrote it. - Peng]

Yes, I’m still alive. Just busy over the last few days do I’ve collected a bunch of links I’d like to share with our readers.

• Mozilla Developer News: Firefox 3.05 and 2.0.0.19 security updates now available for download. Alas, the support updates for Firefox 2 are over, and the Windows version has seen a 2.0.0.20 release to deal with a “non-critical issue” specific to that OS but other than that they don’t expect to release any additional security and stability updates for the once top web browser. At the end they decided not to include the Phishing Protection service that Firefox 3 offers, but that doesn’t break my heart since I’m pretty observant when it comes to possible phishing links. That and Gmail filters those out for me anyway. Once the holidays are past I’ll be on a full court press to see if Epiphany can be my primary web browser and I still have no intention of taking Firefox 3.1 when it comes out unless I have clear evidence that they’re going to let the users decide where the New Tab button goes. I know Cat Thief has once again ridden to the rescue, but I’m tired of having to install remove-ons just to countermand the questionable usability choices that the Firefox devs shove down or throats. Even if that means I have to pass on Firefox 3.1’s support for the <video> tag and Ogg Vorbis/Theora files. Otherwise when will enough be enough?
• Linux Today: The Wrong Way To Sell Linux and More Tips For Documentation Writers (You Too, Ace Coders). Mackenzie Morgan (a GNU/Linux chick who flat out rocks) was kind enough to pass these articles along to me. The first article has some great thoughts on how we promote our favorite OS and the second one should be required reading for all documentation writers. The second one may also show a great way to help support those favored FOSS OSes and apps that we can’t live without. Thanks for the links, Mackenzie!
• Normand Bissonnette: The Diversity Of Linux Window Managers. In Windows you have a choice, 95, XP or Vista, for how your desktop looks and behaves. OSX users don’t have much choice, but they like it that way. Linux users have a veritable alphabet soup of desktop environments (GNOME, KDE, and xfce just to name the three that can come with *Ubuntu -flavored distros), and it can be pretty confusing. Normand wrote a nice, fairly short article with a number of links as he looked at the freedom that having so many desktop environments give us.
• Jun Auza: Extensive List of Keyboard Shortcuts for Ubuntu/GNOME Desktop. People who have used computers for a while know what a time saver keyboard shortcuts are, but there are a number of possible places to look up shortcut key possibilities. Jun has been kind enough to compile a list of keyboard shortcuts for GNOME-based GNU/Linux distros. You’ll definitely want to bookmark this page so you can refer back to it until you learn what all the time savers are.
• Siegfried Gevatter: Nautilus: File size below the icons. I don’t know about you but I usually use Nautilus in Icon View and it can be tedious when I have to find out how bug a file is (select the file, look at the status bar to see how big it is, then select any other files you previously had selected, …), but Siegfried has a great tip for us that he came up with after reading am Ubuntu Brainstorm idea. I have to say it’s one of the best bits of info I found last week.
• Mackenzie Morgan: Adobe Flash: Avoiding Checksum Errors. Yes, another link from the über Mackenzie, this time a tip to make updating Adobe Flash easier along with an explanation of why it can be such a pain in the rear.
• Sayak Banerjee: VLC Celebrates Christmas! I haven’t been able to get it working myself due to something borked on my end, but VLASIC has a delightful little way of helping you celebrate Chrismukkuh.
• Matthew Revell: Launchpad news: Exaile media player. A number of users are discovering the GTK-based Exaile media player, especially with it’s recent updated beta release, and Matthew was kind enough to talk with the project’s founder about Exaile and why they decided to use Launchpad.

I’ve got more links to share, as well as a response to a post by Jono Bacon, but they will have to wait until tomorrow as my time’s getting short. I don’t know why we’re getting so much traffic today (over a thousand hits today after usually staying in the 300-400 range), but if you’re new to our little blog then welcome! I hope Nanci and I have some content that will give you reasons to visit us again.

Peng’s links for Wednesday, 10 December

(Yesterday was so bad I inadvertently lagged my comp to hell and back and was unable to post this. I’ll add today’s links and get it posted. Sorry ’bout that! -Peng)

Holy, crap! Is it Wednesday already? It seems like every time I plan on doing something specific (like making new Usplashes for Mac4Lin 1.0) something else comes up and insists that it get higher priority. Either that or the weather changes (like we’re having now) and everything goes a lot slower because I feel like George Carlin’s kitteh (especially at about 35 minutes into his classic HBO special).

I ended up having to disable GlobalMenu because it was lagging my computer’s arse off but I’ll be checking back with it from time to time, especially since it looks like they’ve fixed a bug I’ve been monitoring. But enough about me. I have some links to share. Some may be a few days old, but I wanted to make sure you got the info.

• David Futcher: Playing with CrunchBang Linux. You may have heard about this kind of new distro that shoots for a balance between speed and getting stuff done. I haven’t looked at it, but David has, and if you’re looking at a backup distro CrunchBang may be a good candidate.
• Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency: Precautions for extreme cold weather. I got this in a feed from the City of Boston but it’s good reading no matter what cold weather climate you are in. It’s got information on what to do both before and during an extreme cold emergency.
• Tom Dryer: What’s Been Bugging You in Ubuntu 8.10? Yes, Ubuntu Intrepid isn’t nearly as ready to rock out of the box that Hardy was. If you’re looking at trying Intrepid you may want to check out Tom’s list of annoyances.
• Window Snyder: Malicious Firefox Plugin. A bad add-on for Mozilla Firefox was making it’s way around the interweb earlier this week, and Ms. Snyder has the official Mozilla Security report on the matter. It’s all the more reason to only get Firefox add-ons from Abominations.Mozilla.org or from the developer. Or perhaps from the Addons Mirror. Aza Dotzler also has a post on it, complete with a link to the one other place I’d go for the real scoop. Because some folks are just getting it wrong.
• Fabián Rodríguez: The single most important thing you should know about Ubuntu… Fabian has a link that may strike some of us semi-oldtimers as kind of a “duh” link, but how many time have we gone through the hassle of compiling software from source code, only to find out that there’s a pre-built package of the software (often in the exact version that you want to install) already out there? Read it. Learn it. Love it.
• DesktopLinux.com: Open source office suites compared. Most of us know that OpenOffice.org version 3 is a pretty good alternative for us non-Microsoft users, but did you know they’re not the only game in town?
• Luis Villa: why I’m not a big fan of OOo, part 53240. Yes, not everyone loves OpenOffice.org, and I think Luis’ concerns need to be seen by more than just Planet GNOME readers.
• Lydia Pintscher: Amarok 2.0 released! The über KDE media player (so good that a lot of us non-KDE desktop drivers use it) has finally rolled out version 2! I have a few blog posts about it but Lydia has the best links so I’ll point you toward hers.

I’m going to call that a lid, mainly because I have to go cook dinner (mmmmm, tacos) but before I head on into the kitchen I want to point out to any Firefox dev reading this that there’s a reason you’re getting so many “me too” comments on bug 457187, ‘New Tab’ button should be customizable. It’s because once again you’re shoving a new feature down the throats of users that not only breaks a basic functionality of Fireofx, you’re doing it in a way that kills usablility. Users keep getting told that bitching on the MozillaZine forums is the wrong place to let devs know how we feel about one of your boneheaded design decisions so they’re using the best way they know of, on a Bugzilla bug. If you’d actually ask long-time users of Firefox about things before you throw it in you’d save yourselves, and us users, a lot of time and energy. Plus extension coders can stop having to make Remove-ons to undo your ill advised decisions. When will you guys learn???

@sasa:
I’m not ignoring your comment, I’m just trying to get some info to get you a helpful answer.

Peng’s links for Thursday, 4 December

• Stefano Forenza: Has Torvalds finally won? The father of Linux once said that he’d have won if Microsoft ever makes an app for Linux. Some people might say that the availability of a beta version of Moonlight, GNU/Linux port of Silverlight, means Torvalds got his win. But Stefano isn’t so sure.
• Jono Bacon: Governments And Free Content Policies. The current website for president-elect Obama used to protect their content with a traditional copyright. But not anymore. Jono has the details, if not the scoop.
• xkcd: xkcd store. You love reading the strips. You may even have some of them on your fridge or the wall of your cubical. Now you can slap it on your clothes. If you order by the 12th you’ll get it by Chrismukkuh Eve if you’re in the States. If you’re in the EU they’ll try to get it to you in time, but you need to order soon.
• TualatriX: Ubuntu Tweak became Brothersoft Editor’s Picks! Congrats to the gang at Ububntu Tweaks for their latest, and very well deserved, honor. And he says the next version “will come soon.”
• Uwe Hermann: Playing Starcraft on Linux using Wine. I wasn’t sure how big a deal this is until I mentioned it to a Windows-loving roomie and big-time gamer, and he was impressed. That tells me that I need to post a link to the story, especially since it’s a tutorial.
• Dr. Horrible News: DVD Launch on Amazon! Earlier this year we had the joy of enjoying a three-part video written specifically and produced for the web by Joss Whedon and company. The DVD is finally coming on the 19th of December, and it will include “Commentary! The Musical!” I can’t wait. Amazon also has a behind-the-scenes clip you can watch for free. Now if we could only buy a CD or tracks without having to go through iTunes. Do I need to have Jayne Cobb have a talk with Joss about it?
• Biella Coleman: FLOSS Manuals. I’m going to cheat here and tell you that Beilla has a very short post about an easy way to get manuals for a wide range of free and open source programs. You definitely want to go get the links from her. And my little blurb about her post is longer than her post is, but she’s got the links you want.
• Nick Ali: Linux Basics Classes at Micro Center. If you need a nice introductory course to using GNU/Linux you better get to MicroCenter and reserve a seat. Nick’s got the date and links.
• MJ Ray: Do Your Shop Photos Leak? Do you take pictures with a digital camera and then post them online? You may be sharing more information than you realize.
• Mozilla Developer News: Firefox 2.0.0.18 users to be offered a free upgrade! Firefox 2.x will soon reach the end of it’s support, and the Mozilla devs are giving users one more chance to use their upgrade mechanism to get Firefox 3 without having to manually download and install it. Although this is one user who is damned sorry to see Firefox 2 reach the end of its security updates, and I can’t promise it won’t be used from time to time. The interface is still better than Firefox 3’s because it doesn’t need remove-ons just to keep the default behavior that Firefox users have been using for so long. And Firefox 3.1 is going to bring the need for even more remove-ons. Sometimes I hate Mozilla devs with the heat of a thousand nuns because of some of the add-ons they fold into the base product. What the hell happened to using add-ons to add new behaviors rather than removing them?

Peng’s links for Saturday, 7 June

[Updated to include a link to info on installing Google Gadgets in Ubuntu. - Peng]

Sorry about not posting links the last couple of days. Let’s just say this flightless waterfowl was pretty toasty when I finally got my list of dumb things I had to do done, and it wasn’t from drinking. Although I sure did want a drink when I was done.

• David Thomas/Planet Ubuntu: Google Gadgets for Linux. One thing that Linux users have been missing from our list of Google tools is Desktop Gadgets. Davis tells us that we may not have to wait that much longer for them. Sweet! UPDATED 12:26pm: I found a thread on the Ubuntu Forums with instructions on installing them on Ubuntu via a PPA.
• John Slater/Planet Mozilla: The T-Shirt History of Mozilla. I have a Firefox tee that I’ve loved wearing (not so much now that Firefox 3 is almost out, and watch for a post this week about exactly why I don’t love this new version). Some of the Mozilla folks put together a history of Mozilla tees that you’ll probably get a kick out of. It’s great to see how the clothing presentation of Mozilla has evolved over the last decade.
• Markus Thielmann: Installing Ubuntu Netbook Remix on Ubuntu Hardy 8.04. My last links post included a link to news about Ubuntu Netbook Remix. Markus wrote a piece on using it with Ubuntu Hardy.
• Ubuntu QA blog: Who wants a copy Ubuntu on the small screen…. Not only is Ubuntu coming to netbooks and MIDs, you will even be able to use it on your smartphone.
• Madhava Enros/Planet Mozilla: Get add-ons in Firefox 3. One of the nice things in Firefox 3 is that you can gett add-ons without having to point your brower to the Mozilla add-ons site.
• Alex Polvi/Planet Mozilla: State of the Add-ons Report: June 5th. Speaking of Firefox add-ons, Alex has a report on add-ons and their compatibility with Firefox 3.
• Mike Beltzer/Planet Mozilla: What’s new in Firefox 3? Here, let me show you! Mike has put together a screencast showing off the new features in Firefox 3. It’s already been on post by several others on Planet Mozilla, and I’m glad to say that it’s now been Stumbled.
• Wine HQ News: Wine 1.0-rc4 Released. The good people at WINE (Wine Is Not an Emulator) have stepped one step closer to the official release of Wine 1.0 yesterday with the release of their fourth Release Candidate. Ubuntu Hardy users can now get it if you have the hardy-proposed repo enabled.
• Ken Gurnick/LADodgers.com: Kuroda channels Dodgers history. Who cares about Dodger baseball you ask? If you’re a baseball fan you’ll want to read about this rookie from Osaka and his complete game shutout. It’s even more impressive when you see that he didn’t give up a single walk and struck out 11, including the last two batters he faced, and he only allowed four hits to the red hot Chicago Cubs. While you’re there you should check out some of the videos from the game, no matter what team you follow

Adorable Feline Pics of the Weekend

I have every intention of taking tomorrow off from blogging (I want to check out the latest SecondLife clients) so I’m going to give you a pair of kitties for the weekend. I didn’t get to post Thursday’s AFPotD, or one of the several pics from yesterday, so I hope these two kitties will brighten your weekend.

Damn but that pic looked like me the last couple of mornings, especially since my asshat neighbors kept me up until 11 pm Thursday night watching the damned Celtics game

This one may be me this evening. Except I have to watch out with my pain meds, especially after the last several days

Have a great weekend! I hope y’all can manage to keep cool this weekend. I know I plan on being in air conditioning as much as possible from here to Tuesday.

Peng’s links for Sunday, 25 May

• Mike Shaver/Planet Mozilla: fsyncers and curveballs. Many Linux users are having some issues with Firefox 3, and Mozilla’s Shaver wrote a very informative post about what’s going on, as well as why it can be such a bad idea to try to build Firefox yourself rather than use the compiled code for your platform from Mozilla (or your distribution’s repositories).
• Inside the Dodgers: Suddenly on the radar. If you’re a baseball fan you’ve probably heard that the Dodgers called up a 20-year-old rookie from their AA (not the higher AAA) affiliate. Clayton Kershaw is starting today, and rookie Blake DeWitt is looking pretty damned good, too.
• By Ken Devine: Blake DeWitt. Third base has been covered for the Dodgers by an amazing rookie while Nomar Garciapara is on the Disabled List. But Blake isn’t on the All-Star ballot, and that’s a bloody crime. Which is why you should write him in.