I’m used to putting my laptop to sleep/hibernate, and often times, Firefox stays open in a single session, until I restart the machine eventually. However, I noted that some websites didn’t update automatically when their tabs were closed and re-opened later on, and that a click on the refresh button was needed in those cases.

To make cache work as it should when Firefox is left open for ages, modify the browser.cache.check_doc_frequency setting in about: config. Its values can be set as follows:

0 – once per session (default)
1 – every time
2 – never
3 – automatically

Changing the setting to 1 does the trick.

I tried to install the Google plugin into Eclipse yesterday. Everything appeared to be doing well, but retrieving data failed eventually, on grounds that some module was missing (apparently a known issue on some systems). Nothing worked, so I figured some core upgrading would be needed; I selected all installed plugins and core eclipse updates, and let the process run overnight. This morning, again the error message, only this time the PHP file view was corrupted.

I proceeded to just download Ganymede all over again and re-install everything from scratch, which, fortunately, went perfectly well. The last install dated back to last November (7 months ago).

I wish there were a more seamless way to upgrade; seems the dependency facility only goes so far in identifying what it needs to do a proper update when the local installation starts to get a little too “old”.

Just found out about GoogleUpdate, a Google service that installs itself to check for updates to local Google installations continuously. I’m not entirely certain how often it checks, but I’m the kind who thinks checking for updates while the application is running should be enough… Shouldn’t it?

It basically ninja-installs itself as soon as you install a Google application (in my case, after a Google chat trial with David) and doesn’t really have an uninstaller. It came back even after I killed the process and disabled the service, because there were some extensions still active in Firefox; it appears to have given up now.

Some useful links: The invisible GoogleUpdate.exe, How to remove Google update.

I registered and have been using WinZIP for several years, and mostly didn’t have issues with it for the longest time. Then, a few months ago, as I attempted to unzip the latest WordPress package for a local installation, it failed repeatedly (cringed at seeing plugins.php and a few others, if I remember correctly). Not only was the problem reproductible on the .tar.gz file even after I re-downloaded it, the very same issue also occured on my older WinXP laptop.

Today, I tried unzipping the latest XOOPS — a 3.6 Mb .tar.gz file… –, and WinZIP just went unresponsive, sending the drive on what appeared to be infinite R/W access. Had to kill the process. It seems to be an issue with the untarring process.

7-Zip has been on my hard drives for a while. Hasn’t been complaining at all. Is generally faster.

Those using Firefox version 3.0+ may have noticed a tooltip comes up when you hover on the url icon, providing some details about the domain you’re visiting. While possibly useful, this feature, enabled by default, effectively prevents usage of the toolbar bookmarks via drag&drop, if the target bookmark toolbar folder lies just under the address bar.

The solution is to disable the tooltip, by setting variable browser.chrome.toolbar_tips to false in about:config.

It had been a while since I tried out the Gimp, probably a couple of years. Back then, being used to Photoshop, the Gimp’s interface seemed a little too fuzzy for my taste, with a plethora of tool panes that didn’t make much sense. I vaguely remember some instability too, and in short, wasn’t impressed enough with the tool to keep it.

This past weekend, I looked at the progress update on Pixel (dead link at the moment, but a very promising product which apparently found golden angels to finance it at last), and decided to look at alternatives. I quickly stumbled across Paint.net, an Open Source project that’s grown out of necessity, and looked at the Gimp again. I downloaded both tools, but installed the Gimp first (I think I really liked Wilber’s confused look).

It takes a little while to get used to the interface, but it’s been much improved since the last time I tried it. The first immediate stumbling block is how the Gimp handles layers. They’re pasted into a “floating” layer by default, and it took me a while to understand why pasting several clipboards in a row made them all end up collated into the bottom layer. Once I found out that I needed to create a new layer after pasting clipboard content, I ran into issues with the scaling tool, which produced a blank space in the overgrown area; the default highlighting scheme isn’t quite as easy to make out as it should, but I got used to it.

All in all, I was able to get going and do all that I usually do with Photoshop in a rather short amount of time, and was happy to notice all tools are solid and compare with my usual software.

Stability-wise, I only managed to make it crash once, when scaling the color palette to an unreasonably narrow width. In other words, it’s stable enough, and intuitive. Thumbs up.

Didn’t get to Paint.net yet. I blame Wilber.

WordPress has become a standard because of its simplicity and community. With the recent improvements to page handling and permissions system, it has become my tool of choice for dual website/blog installations.

Quite a few providers nowadays offer one-click blog installs as part of their packaged services, to get you going with the least pain possible. WordPress does require you to upload files and fill in a few details during the installation process, but it is, in general, one of the easiest tools to install. I looked at Spip* recently, and was pleasantly surprised to see the installation could be done from a single, small PHP install file to upload on your server.

Of course, php install files are not an option on providers that do not allow PHP scripts to initiate FTP connections; many large hosts offer one-click installs for that reason, and also to link the script to many other services, such as statistics.

Yahoo!, for example, has a one-click install for WordPress, and a checkbox in the administration interface to update to the latest version automatically (always nice to use the latest version, it’s improved all the time). Problem is, I had a case yesterday of a WP blog hosted on Yahoo! that had remained at version 2.0.2, whereas the most recent version is 2.6.3.

In all cases, I prefer to retain control over the tools I use. While one-click installers on regular hosts typically don’t tamper with the installation process, big name providers tend to install quite a few non-standard modules and tamper with paths, which make them harder to upgrade when the time comes.

One small example with the Yahoo! Small Business one-click WordPress installation. Yahoo, for security reasons I guess, doesn’t let you change or even view the .htaccess file. The side-effect, well-known to all Yahoo! users who read the fine print, is that you lose your permalinks if you upgrade WordPress in the standard way. WordPress developers are nice enough to provide workaround modules for such cases.

One-click installs are a nice facility, and I’m sure they work as expected in most cases. As always, look around and see whether people have had issues with a host’s one-click installs. You’re usually better off in the long run if you perform a standard installation.

* By the way, Spip is a support character in Franquin’s Spirou toon albums, a slightly impatient and hazelnut-craving squirrel. Spirou and Fantasio albums were by far my favorite when I was a kid, and I still read them and marvel at the scenario, rhythm and effectiveness of the drawing.

Quite a few people have experienced Vista disk thrashing at intervals. There can be multiple reasons for this, as Microsoft has tried to be very thorough with security and enables, by default, the following:

• Index build for faster search: if you don’t search your computer for files every other day, might be a good idea to disable it. Runs in low priority.
• Drive defragmenting is typically scheduled once a week, set to Wednesday evening by default on my machine. Runs in normal priority, can effectively make your computer grind to a halt. Either set an idle date when you’re not at your desk to run it, or disable it and run the defragmenting manually.
• System restore points also run at intervals, typically when you’ve just installed a new piece of software. Best keep that going, it’s a nuisance at times but can save you a lot of trouble later on.

Famous poet and politician Aimé Césaire passed away this week. It’s fair to say most French people knew who he was, mainly for his long-lasting friendship with Léopold Sédar Senghor, who was a minister under de Gaulle, the first president of Senegal, and a member of Académie Française. Césaire himself was mayor in Fort-de-France, and a Member of Parliament for 48 years, to represent Martinique, and is known in metropolitan France, mainly for his discourses on négritude (literally, niggerhood), a term by which he meant to rehabilitate blacks, not in the eyes of colonizers, but also and mostly in their own eyes, after witnessing the living conditions and low self-esteem of his fellowmen in Martinique.

In spite of being aware of these trivia facts, and having listened with keen interest to his speeches (such as the famous Dakar discourse) when they were aired, I wasn’t acquainted with his writings. Until tonight. To honor his memory, TV channel France 3 aired an excellent program, a scenario enacting and symbolizing excerpts of his first published work, Cahier d’un Retour au Pays Natal, in which he shared his impressions upon his return to Martinique after having participated in WW1. An impressionistic, gutsy, shrewd, determined and positive outlook on slavery, its effects, its madness, its transmutation. A writing that resembles that of a saga, metaphors and catachreses that tell the tale of the blood of slaves, spilled across continents. Powerful.

Links:

• Wikipedia’s page on Aimé Césaire (French / English)
• The pages on Aimé Césaire on Radio France Outre-Mer

Stunning numbers heard on Mermet’s radio show about the US-Mexican border being erected: since NAFTA came into effect, Mexico has been flooded with cheap US goods and subsidized crops, resulting in 1.7 million Mexican farmers losing their livelihood. In turn, more and more people travel across the desert to try to enter the US, still an eldorado. Naturally, the US benefits from it, on the Mexican side in Maquiladora production lines, and on the US side, mainly in farmland labor.

The fence is viewed by some as a fresh new Wall of Shame, others as a necessary protection against a “cultural invasion”. With increasing numbers of human beings on this earth, and the issue of sharing wealth that’s never truly raised or addressed, the poorer countries will always be the first to suffer, and the rich ones, the first to protect themselves.

In the same radio program, a lady named Monica was interviewed, with her husband, four days after being expelled from Arizona, where new laws have been passed to crack down on illegal immigrants. She was a factory supervisor, had been in the US for 30 years (came in when she was four…), had a house, two cars, three children. They were caught at the factory and were thrown out just as they were; they were sleeping under a bridge just across the border, and owed it to Mermet and his crew to be able to call their kids who had remained behind. Senseless situations, where people who paid taxes, contributed to the local economy and were well-integrated in society for decades, become outcasts in just a few hours. Surely immigration policies should take into account how well people are integrated in their communities.

The situation isn’t quite as brutal in France, but the policy is to expel a certain quota, and that doesn’t make for much compassion either. A few people have already died trying to avoid the police. Some communities are actively protecting immigrants, especially when kids in schools are scheduled to be expelled, which typically creates a widespread uproar (RESF). Just today, we learned that a Chechnya family that managed to make it all the way here to escape the mess that’s Grozny, was being expelled and returned. Sickening.