To hide a secret in the open

Suppose you want to write a system, which requires a password to do something. Not a login system, but just a shared secret. Suppose also, that you need to show someone the source code, but you don’t want him or her, the secret password can you do that. Sure. Here’s a simple way to do it with PHP.

Gallery2 - moving to new URL

Long ago I installed Gallery2. It was initially just a test installation to see if it worked, as it should. Being a test install it was just placed at /g2/ on this server. Time passed. It just worked and before long, there were a large number of photos (with metadata) in the gallery. So how do you move it to a slightly more suitable location without breaking too many things? I tried it a few times before, but with very little success. Now it’s done, I can only wonder why it seemed difficult to do it in the past – it’s really quite simple. Here’s how to do it:

Switching browser in Ubuntu

In Kubuntu the default browser is Konquerer, but as a longtime Firefox user I wanted to use that as the system default browser. Googling around, I found a way to switch to the browser in Thunderbird, so that links in mails opened in Firefox, but it didn’t change in desktop links and other applications. Now another switcher found the solution. Acutally there isn’t much of a solution in it. It’s more a configuration thing, once you know where to fix it. In the /etc/alternatives/ there is a bunch of links, which points to default applications in several different areas.

Kubuntu update

The new scheduled update to Kubunu hit the net as planned a few days ago. The new release is named Edgy Eft (the previous release was called Dapper Drake). This is not a Long Term Support release, but it is a stable release, so I upgraded. While it wasn’t a completely smooth process, I was running and at full speed within an hour. Here’s how I did it. The Dapper Drake was fully patched to the newest version of all installed packages. I had earlier on removed all packages I was (absolutely) certain I wouldn’t need – not as a preparation for an upgrade – less (software) is more (stable/bug-free). It’s really no too hard to install any packages you’ve removed, should you ever discover you need them.

Look Sharp

After finishing the redesign project on tdc.dk, I found a few hours to finish the redesign of this site. The former look never really got around to looking somewhat decent in Internet Explorer and never worked very well in general (except for some prettier colors). This look is an odd mixture of nifty cube, Yahoo User Interface Library, Movable Type and some homebrewed components. Should you find any serious issues, let me know.