Since my previous post I’ve tried: MEPIS 8; KDE 3, based on Debian 5; Ubuntu 9.04; GNOME 2, based on Debian 5; Linux Mint 7: GNOME 2, based on Ubuntu 9.04; Kubuntu 8.04; KDE 3, based on on Ubuntu 8.04. I’ve compared MEPIS 8 and Ubuntu 9.04, in what was called an unfair comparison by some. I think some of the commenters even indicated that Ubuntu 9.04 would’ve come up tops; I beg to differ.

I encountered this issue in a recent project. Basically I use SWFUpload to post files to a CakePHP controller. It worked beautifully, until I removed this one line in beforeFilter(): $this->Auth->allow("swfupload"); I was using the Auth component, and without the line above to allow unauthenticated access to the controller action, then we have a problem. Hope this helps somebody then.

I tried out Ubuntu 9.04 a week ago. I know I’m not exactly comparing apples with apples, since MEPIS 8 is based on Debian 5.0 and uses KDE 3.5, whilst Ubuntu 9.04 uses GNOME 2. I might be better off evaluating Kubuntu, the 9.04 release uses KDE 4, which I’d used previously, and disliked due to its gradual reduction in snappiness. But back to Ubuntu versus MEPIS. I’ve been running MEPIS on a (slow) Compaq nc8230, while Ubuntu runs on a (fast) IBM R52.

With reference to this event, I’ve decided to take my own shot at predicting the outcome of the 2009 NBA Playoffs. 5 points are awarded for correctly picking the winner, with an additional 2 for correctly picking the number of games played. First Round (27) LAL-UTA (LAL in 5) (7 points, LAL won 4-1) DEN-NOH (NOH in 7) (0 points, DEN won 4-1) DAL-SAS (DAL in 6) (5 points, DAL won 4-1) HOU-POR (POR in 6) (0 points, HOU won 4-2) CLE-DET (CLE in 5) (5 points, CLE won 4-0) BOS-CHI (BOS in 6) (5 points, BOS won 4-3) ORL-PHI (ORL in 5) (5 points, ORL won 4-2) ATL-MIA (MIA in 6) (0 points, ATL won 4-3) I picked Miami (Dwayne Wade), New Orleans (Chris Paul), Portland (Brandon Roy) over the Hawks, Nuggets and Rockets respectively.

With reference to this post, I decided to write my first Greasemonkey script. I don’t subscribe to cable TV, so I get my sports news fix mostly by reading. Now that the NBA playoffs are in progress, I use NBA.com on a daily basis to read recaps like this one. I’m upset enough that the Lakers – one of the eight teams I’m rooting for – lost, without having to right-click “Game Scoreboard”, copy the link, and replace “gameinfo.

I found this link useful. It helped me to get Java running in Firefox. The instructions are a bit outdated, so I’m reposting. First we need Java: apt-get install sun-java6-plugin Go to the Firefox “plugins” folder, and rename for the existing (not working!) plugin with a .bak file extension (or whatever you prefer), then create a symlink like so: cd /usr/lib/firefox/plugins mv libjavaplugin.so libjavaplugin.so.bak ln -s /usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun-1.6.0.12/jre/plugin/i386/ns7/libjavaplugin_oji.so libjavaplugin.so You’ll also need to restart Firefox for the changes to take effect.