I updated my Google framed results script that I use every day on my portal. Try it out and let me know what you think! Free attaboy to the first user. See the wiki for details.

UPDATE: v0.03, mo betta. Use the same link above.

TurboTax Online worked out marvelously once again for me this year, this time using Gentoo linux AMD64 + Firefox 2.0 + KGhostView (for PDF’s) + Gentoo’s nsplugin wrapper for 64-bit-browser flash support + my bank website (which uses PDF’s and flash(?!)) + OpenOffice Calc (for a worksheet to crunch charity numbers, medical expenses, etc.). The Turbotax “compatibility check” stated that you need Windows or Mac OS X, but linux took me from start to filed with zero problems, including always-available help and access to a great community-driven FAQ system that made even my fairly complex tax return as simple and clear as possible. Whee!

“4525 photos imported.” Whew. Not the biggest collection of photos, but enough to test my setup.

My requirements were:

  • Gather photos at several locations (Windoze PC’s) into one central media repository
  • Leave the photos at the original locations
  • Anticipate some maintenance of photos at the original locations
  • Use gallery (a great LAMP webapp) to manage the central media repository of photos
  • Management should include creation of a public directory for shared photos
  • Minimize duplication on the media repository

Yikes. Well, here are details on my best shot at this.

I usually yawn when the latest development “paradigm shift” rolls by. But there is a paradigm shift in source control software (software change management, software configuration management, source code management, version control system, revision control or whatever more “correct” term you want to use, geesh) with which I have fallen in love. In a word: distributed.

I am poking my toe in the ocean of mythtv development, and all I wanted to do was track my own changes along with the latest changes submitted by the main developers. Sounds totally basic, right? I traveled down a bit of a road though before I came to the best solution: git. Check out the git-for-open-source wiki article for the why and how. git fits like a glove.

Just as a teaser, here’s what you’ll end up with:

                   repo1
            mybranch<->master
           /                 \
public repo                   svn repo
           \                 /
            mybranch<->master
                   repo2

For some reason I haven’t seen this in the various MythTV HowTo’s:

mythfilldatabase --do-channel-updates

Note that this will wipe out any customizations you’ve done to channels. (continued…)