You try starting, stopping or connecting to MySQL and receive the following error, “Error: Found option without preceding group in config file: /etc/mysql/conf.d/char_collation_set.cnf at line: 1″. The error message my vary but comes to the same issue. MySQL may not start or might experience connectivity issues.

This issue was experienced on Debian Squeeze v6.04 AMD64 system with MySQL v14.14 Distrib 5.1.61.

Solution

This issue is caused by a improperly formatted MySQL configuration file(s) and refers to one missing the group heading (e.g. [mysqld], [mysqld_safe], etc.).

Source: MySQL 5.1 Reference Manual :: 4.2.3.3. Using Option Files
Source: [Solved] Mysql won’t start. my.cnf problem.

At times one may need to quickly reference what the week number is for a given week. The steps below will describe how to add week numbers to the calendar in Microsoft Outlook.

Solution for Microsoft Outlook 2003 and 2007 Calendar

1. Click on the menu “Tools” then “Options”.
2. Under “Preferences” tab click on the button “Calendar Options…”.
3. Under “Calendar Options” place a check mark on “Show week numbers in the month view and in the Date Navigator”.
4. Click on the “OK” button.
5. Click on the “OK” button.

Solution for Microsoft Outlook 2010 Calendar

1. Click on the menu “File” then “Options”.
2. Click on Calendar.
3. Under “Display Options”, place a check mark on “Show week numbers in the month view and in the Date Navigator”.
4. Click on the “OK” button.

Source: Add week numbers to Microsoft Outlook Calendar [How-To]

Alma from Rodrigo Blaas on Vimeo.

Full Screen recommended

Written and Directed by: Rodrigo Blaas
Produced by: Cecile Hokes
Music: Mastretta
Art Director: Alfonso Blaas
Lighting Supervisor: Jonatan Catalán
Character Technical Supervisor: Jaime Maestro
Character Design: Bolhem Bouchiba, Carlos Grangel,
Sergio Pablos, Santi Agustí
Animation: Daniel Peixe, ManueBover, Remi Hueso
Sound Design: Tom Myers and David Hughes
Post Production Coordinator: David Heras
Special Thanks: Keytoon, Next Limit, UserT38

Full credits: almashortfilm.com

Source: Tony Porter: A call to men

I using PHP v5.3.3-7 PDO running a MySQL v14.14 Distrib 5.1.49 on Debian v6.0.4 64-bit and executing a SQL load data infile statement.

I received “PHP Warning: PDOStatement::execute(): SQLSTATE[HY000]: General error: 126 Incorrect key file for table ‘/tmp/#sql_66f_0.MYI’; try to repair it”. My database table in this instance is using the storage engine of InnoDB and therefore one can not use the “repair table”.

From my experience I’ve found that this error can mean one of two issues however I have not found information from MySQL confirming this.

Solution – Repair Table

The error message may mean the database table is corrupted and requires a repair.

1. Run repair table on the associated database table.
2. Re-run the previous query.
3. The issue will now be resolved.

Solution – Free Disk Space

The error message may mean the system does not have enough free disk space.

1. Verify the free disk space. On Linux execute at the console “df -h”. On Windows open “My Computer” to see free space available.
2. If low or out of disk space, free up some space or follow the next steps to change MySQL server setting to point to a new temporary path.
3. Edit the MySQL server configuration file, my.cnf (on Debian, /etc/mysql/my.cnf).
4. Change the “tmpdir” path variable to a new location with more available free disk space (ex. /var/tmp or D:\temp).
5. Stop MySQL daemon/service and then start MySQL daemon/service for the configuration changes to take affect.

Source: http://tedxtalks.ted.com/video/TEDxIowaCity-Dr-Terry-Wahls-Min

My name is Raegan MacDonald, a member of the Access team. I’m Canadian, and I want to know what is happening to our country! By now you may have heard about Bill C-30, a new proposal in Parliament which would force ISPs to turn over your online data to law enforcement — even if police don’t have a warrant! What’s worse, they want to be able to monitor your online activities in real-time.

Public Safety Minister Vic Toews has resorted to using scare tactics to push this outrageous bill through, saying that if you’re against C-30 then you are siding with child pornographers!

But we know better than to bow to fearmongers who use children as political shields. The good news is that support for C-30 is starting to waver and we can deliver the knock-out punch. Tell the Conservatives to abandon C-30, respect the rule of law and protect our right to privacy as citizens in a democracy, and we’ll deliver it to the Prime Minister before this bill proceeds any further :

https://www.accessnow.org/a-license-to-snoop

Because C-30 requires telecommunication companies to hold your data for an extended period of time, maintaining this huge database will become expensive — meaning that taxpayers will be footing the bill for the government to invade our privacy. And with all of our information vulnerably stored in a central location, our private data could be a treasure trove to hackers.

This is Canada, not a repressive regime that surveils its citizens without court oversight. Rather than allocating resources to store the information of every citizen online, lawmakers should seek to empower police within the rule of law to find those suspected of crimes against children, and improve education about child predators among teachers, parents, and children.

Tell Minister Toews and the rest of C-30′s supporters that we will not sacrifice our rights in the face of vague and hyperbolic threats. Follow the link below to sign the petition, and share it with your fellow Canadians:

https://www.accessnow.org/a-license-to-snoop

With hope for Canada,
Raegan
Access Policy Analyst

SOURCES:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/story/2012/02/18/pol-thehouse-vic-toews.html
http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/Bill+provokes+privacy+fears/6142986/story.html
http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/6316/125/
http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/story/2012/02/17/pol-online-surveillance-to-committee.html
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/technology/digital-culture/ivor-tossell/toews-gaffes-aside-bill-c-30-has-real-dangers/article2344551/

1992 UN Earth Summit Speech by Severn Suzuki

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Severn_Cullis-Suzuki

When working with “tar” one may come across the message of “tar: Removing leading ‘/’ from member names” while using tar. I wondered why this was happening and how I could stop it. I will first start off by explaining why this is happening and then some possible solutions that one may consider taking.

Why “tar: Removing leading ‘/’ from member names”?

By default GNU tar drops the leading slash (‘/’) on input and output as a precaution. This is done to ensure the archive is compatible with a non-GNU tar
program(s) otherwise there will be some difficulty at extraction time. So what this means is that all member names are striped of the leading slashes when putting members into an archive therefore allowing the extraction of individual files to where one desires. An example of this would be if one would add the file “/home/foo/foo” to an archive it would be done but the member name will be “home/foo/foo”. If the stripping of the leading slash was not done then at an extraction time the files would be extracted to there absolute path. So again if the member name of was “/home/foo/foo” it would be extract out to that exact location start from the root of the file system.

Solutions

So this brings one to, how do I get rid of this message? There is a few solutions to that as I will explain below however it shall be warned that this message is important and ignoring it could cause some serious issues later.

Solution One – add the GNU tar option –absolute-names (-P) to archive or extract files relative to the root directory.

Solution Two – Redirect messages to no where by doing $ tar -c -f archive.tar /home 2> /dev/null. Be warned this is a dangerous solution.

Solution Three – Change to the root (“/”) directory first and then avoid absolution notation. $ (cd / && tar -c -f archieve.tar home) $ tar -c -f archive.tar -C / home

Source: GNU Tar: Absolute File Names

Every time one types an email address or name in the message window fields of “To”, “Cc” and “Bcc” of Microsoft Outlook 2003/2007/2010, a list will appear offering suggestions of users and email addresses that one can choose from to save on typing. This feature is known as “Auto-Complete” and Outlook automatically builds the list of suggestions according to the a given users activity and saves it into a file with a “NK2″ extension.

The “Auto-Complete” suggestions can be cleared, edited, or disabled by using one of the follow solutions below.

Solution – Clear Auto-Complete Suggestions

1. Open Outlook.
2. Click on the menu “File” -> “Options”.
3. Click on “Mail” at the top left side of the “Outlook Options” dialog.
4. Then scroll down to where you see a heading of “Send messages”.
5. Click on “Empty Auto-Complete List”.
6. Click on the “OK” button.

Solution – Edit Auto-Complete Suggestions

Please follow the instructions and information provided at the author’s web site when using NirSoft’s NK2Edit.

NirSoft NK2Edit

Solution – Disable Auto-Complete Suggestions

1. Open Outlook.
2. Click on the menu “File” -> “Options”.
3. Click on “Mail” at the top left side of the “Outlook Options” dialog.
4. Then scroll down to where you see a heading of “Send messages”.
5. Uncheck “Use Auto-Complete List to suggest names when typing in the To, Cc and Bcc lines”.
6. Click on the “OK” button.

I will explain how to resolve the following error message when trying to merge/import a Windows registry file.

“Cannot import C:\foobar.reg. The specified file is not a registry script. You can only import binary registry files from within the registry editor.”

Solution

1. Open the registry file in a text editor.
2. Change the encoding to “ANSI”.
3. Save the file.

Note: If you are not aware how to change the encoding, the simplest solution is to open the registry file within Microsoft Windows’ Notepad and then save it.

Source: “The specified file is not a registry script” – How encoding can ruin your morning

The progress of a task in TaskFreak! is shown as a percentage value and is not exactly visually appealing to quickly spot the progress. With a few minor alterations we can show the percentage completed bar that fills as the task progresses and a gradient bar indicating the progress along with the percentage value.

This solution was posted by Searcher at Re: Taskfreak Customizing Status.

Solution

1. Edit at line #268 as shown below.
   

   Cod Before

   268	<th width="<?php echo FRK_STATUS_LEVELS * 2; ?>%" onclick="freak_sort('statusKey')" colspan="< ?php echo FRK_STATUS_LEVELS ?>" class="sortable">< ?php echo (FRK_STATUS_LEVELS == 1)?'X':$langForm['status']; ?></th>

   Code After

   268	<th width="80" onclick="freak_sort('statusKey')" class="sortable">< ?php echo (FRK_STATUS_LEVELS == 1)?'X':$langForm['status']; ?></th>

2. Edit at line #382
   

   Code Before

   < ?php
                       $s = $objItem->itemStatus->statusKey;
                       for ($i = 0; $i < FRK_STATUS_LEVELS; $i++) {
                           $j = ($i < $s)?(FRK_STATUS_LEVELS - $i):0;
                   ?>
                           <td id="est<?php echo ($i+1).$objItem->id; ?>" class="sts< ?php echo $j; ?>"< ?php
                           if ($objUser->checkLevel(14) || $objItem->checkRights($objUser->id,8,true))  {
                               echo ' onclick="freak_sts('.$objItem->id.','.($i+1).')" style="cursor:pointer"';
                           }
                       ?>>&nbsp;</td>
                   < ?php
                       }
                   ?>

   Code After

   <!-- status bar update -->
             <td>
               <table width="100%" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0">
                 <tr>
                   < ?php
                   $s = $objItem->itemStatus->statusKey;
                   for ($i = 0; $i < FRK_STATUS_LEVELS; $i++) {
                     $j = ($i < $s)?(FRK_STATUS_LEVELS - $i):0;
                     ?>
                     <td width="10" onmouseover="this.style.cursor='pointer'" id="est<?php echo ($i+1).$objItem->id; ?>" class="sts< ?php echo $j; ?>"< ?php if ($objUser->checkLevel(14) || $objItem->checkRights($objUser->id,8,true))  { echo ' onclick="freak_sts('.$objItem->id.','.($i+1).')" style="cursor:pointer"'; } ?>>&nbsp;</td>
                     < ?php } ?>
                     <td style="border:0"></td>
                     <td id="status_perc_<?php echo $objItem->id; ?>" style="border:0; font-size:8px; color:#000" align="right">&nbsp;< ?php echo ($s*20)."%"; ?></td>
                   </tr>
                   <tr><td style="border:0; height:2px"></td></tr>
                   <tr>
                     <td colspan="7" style="border:0"><img id="status_bar_<?php echo $objItem-/>id; ?>" src="skins/status.jpg" height="5" width="< ?php echo ($s*16); ?>" /></td>
                 </tr>
               </table>
             </td>
   <!-- status bar update -->

3. Download the status gradient bar image file from “http://demofreak.dracon.biz/skins/status.jpg” and the copy image file to the /taskfreak/skins/ directory.

Source: Taskfreak Customizing Status

Source: Dilbert – October 2, 2011

I will explain how to create a script that will run Rhythmbox Music Player at startup, enqueue a playlist and then begin playing.

Note: I have only verified this method to work on Ubuntu v10.04.

Solution

1. Using your favorite text editor copy and paste the following code below.
2. You may need to replace “–play” with “–play-pause” depending your environment.
3. Replace the following “/home/foo/playlist.pls” to where the playlist is saved (previously created).
4. Save the script to a safe location such as a user directory (e.g. /home/foo/.rhythmbox-startup.sh).
5. Using the “Terminal” under “Applications -> “Accessories” type the following without double quotes, “sudo chmod +x /home/foo/.rhythmbox-startup.sh” to grant the file execute permissions.
6. Close the “Terminal”.
7. Go to the menu “System” -> “Preferences” -> “Startup Applications” and then click on “Add”.
8. Enter the following into the corresponding dialog fields without double quotes, Name: “Rhythmbox”, Command: “/home/foo/.rhythmbox-startup.sh” and Comment: “Runs Rhythmbox with a playlist”.
9. Click “Add” and then “Close” buttons.

1
2
3
4
5
6

#!/bin/bash
sleep 10 &&
rhythmbox-client --hide &&
sleep 5 &&
rhythmbox-client --enqueue /home/foo/playlist.pls &&
rhythmbox-client --play

Source: Rhythmbox Startup Script for Ubuntu
Source: Rhythmbox – Community Ubuntu Documentation

Thank you to those that made these videos possible and providing the opportunity to allow these great innovative business leaders the opportunity to speak.

Steve Jobs at Stanford (2005)

Jeff Bezos at Princeton (2010)

Source: Words to Live By: 5 of the Best Commencement Speeches Ever