[Wed Oct 23 15:37:51 CDT 2013]

Here is an issue I just ran into. I tried to log into Facebook Chat using the Empathy instant messaging client, and encountered a network error. Yet, I was certain my username and password were entered correctly. I searched around and, sure enough, found plenty of people reporting the very same problem. In quite a few cases, I even found bug reports opened with this or that Linux distribution. However, in the end, the reason why I was getting the error was quite simple: unlike other services, Facebook Chat does not want you to enter your email address as the username (yes, I know, the actual Facebook website will accept it, but their chat service will not, it seems), so you need to use only your usernaeme. In order to find out what your username is (in case you don't know for sure), simply click on your name when you are on Facebook's main page, and see what it shows after the https://www.facebook.com/ web address. That's it. That did the trick for me. Empathy now works just fine. {link to this entry}

[Tue Oct 22 20:21:16 CDT 2013]

Today I have a couple of quick tips for users of Debian Wheezy. First of all, if you need to install the 64-bit version of Skype, simply follow the directions from this page. The steps are pretty straightworward, actually:

# dpkg --add-architecture i386
# apt-get update
(...)
# apt-get upgrade
# dpkg -i skype-debian_4.2.0.11-1_i386.deb 
# apt-get install -f
# dpkg -i skype-debian_4.2.0.11-1_i386.deb 

The other application is the Kazam screencaster. In this case, the instructions on how to install it on a Debian Wheezy system can be found here (in Portuguese, but easy to understand if you can read Spanish). Here are the directions, anyways:

# wget -c https://launchpad.net/kazam/unstable/1.0.3/+download/\
  kazam_1.0.3.tar.gz
# tar xvzf kazam*
# apt-get install python-distutils-extra
# cd kazam*
# python setup.py install

That's it. As easy as that. {link to this entry}

[Sun Oct 6 15:01:31 CDT 2013]

Sometimes, the easiest things are just a true pain in the rear. My oldest son recently asked me to download and burn the image to install Ubuntu 12.04, so he can give it another try on his old Dell Latitude D830 laptop. Pretty easy, huh? I've done it many times before. So, I head for Ubuntu's website, look around for the old image (my son wanted to install the Long Term Support version), downloaded it, and... well, it will not burn onto my 700 MB CD-R because the image is too large. What? How could this happen? They sure must have realized that. Yes, not only did they realize, but it appears to be Ubuntu's official policy, judging from this announcement sent to the Ubuntu mailing lists when 12.10 was released. Yeah, I know, that is for 12.10, and I was downloading 12.04. I have no idea. All I know is that the image was too large to fit into my CD-R media. So, in the end, I worked around the problem by download the minimal CD image instead. It is, after all, what I usually do with Debian. The network install works just fine with today's bandwidth. Still, it's a pain that I had to waste time going back and forth. {link to this entry}