Autarchy of the Private Cave

If you want to fetch emails from some of your POP3-enabled mail accounts to Gmail, there’s a help article detailing the process. However, when using Ukrainian Gmail UI, clicking the link which should bring up the dialog box to add one out of maximum five Fetcher accounts, I got instead an offer to add the email address which I can use in the From field of my outgoing emails – and absolutely not a word about fetching emails from other POP3 accounts.

When I switched to English (UK) UI, everything went just as described in the help article, and I added one address to fetch emails from.

After fetching some mails, I switched back to Ukrainian UI, and – quite expectedly – the Fetcher part disappeared from the Settings/Accounts. Now I’m waiting to see if the Fetcher is nonetheless functional, or if it is also disabled… It’s functioning! So the only thing which was really changing in this case was the portion of the Settings/Accounts page not displayed while using Ukrainian UI.

The moral of the story is: when you think that some functionality is missing in the Google service you’re using – just switch to English UI!

It is possible to install gpedit.msc snap-in for MMC in Windows XP Home Edition. I found the list of necessary files on pagesperso-orange.fr (in French), which also had the archive of all the necessary (again, French) files and the installation batch-file.

Warning: you proceed at your own risk. If you do not know what you are doing – please don’t

Download (original) French gpedit-pour-xp-home.zip.

Download English gpedit for windows xp home.zip (also in 7zip archive).

Here are instructions for manual MMC snap-in installation. Original French-version archive had a batch file which does installation automatically, which I also added to the English archive (gpedinst.bat). But you must manually verify that batch file fits your system before running it! It might be safer to follow the instructions manually.

• Put these files:
  

  appmgmts.dll
  appmgr.dll
  fde.dll
  fdeploy.dll
  gpedit.msc
  gpedit.dll
  gptext.dll

  into %SystemRoot%\system32 folder (most often it’s just c:\windows\system32)

• put these files:
  

  system.adm
  inetres.adm
  conf.adm

  into %SystemRoot%\system32\GroupPolicy\ADM\ (create if this folder doesn’t exist)

• finally, run these commands one by one in the CMD window:
  

  regsvr32 gpedit.dll
  regsvr32 fde.dll
  regsvr32 gptext.dll
  regsvr32 appmgr.dll
  regsvr32 fdeploy.dll

That should make gpedit.msc callable as Start -> Run -> gpedit.msc.

Other language versions of the necessary files can be retrieved from corresponding-language installations of WinXP Professional; English version can also be downloaded directly from Microsoft website ( e.g. here , or search for “Group Policy ADM Files” at microsoft.com). Also, you can extract necessary files from available Windows distributions: just don’t forget, that “filename.dl_” is a compressed version of “filename.dll”, and can be uncompressed by using XP-bundled extract command.

See also this comment for alternative gpedit installation (get the file from badongo first), and also this comment for one more explanation of manual installation.

Geeks corner:

1. a comprehensive list of the “Group Policy/User Configuration/Administrative Templates” settings in Windows XP Home Edition
2. an extremely comprehensive Excel sheet, which maps numerous *.adm-file options to their registry equivalents – Group Policy Settings Reference (PolicySettings.xls). This file is for Windows 2000, Windows XP, and Windows 2003

Disclaimer: I do not know if modifying (e.g. by adding gpedit) your WinXP HE is a violation of any EULAs. It’s your own responsibility to check this out and comply with any such regulations. Also, be advised that modifying any settings using gpedit.msc on WinXP HE may render some parts of the OS inoperable (in my opinion). You have been warned!

Just a minute ago, I was shocked after logging in to mail.bigmir.net: instead of the bigmir’s own, HTML-only email interface, I got redirected at the gmail’s “Terms and conditions”, after accepting which I found my emails in the classic gmail mailbox.

First thing to think about: at least they did transfer all my emails to the new account.

Second: hey, they had given up their own email interface! Are they leaving the web-portal market of Ukraine? Was the part of their team (which later formed MI6) too important to handle their exodus with no consequences? Is that just a desire to give customers “better” interface and not invest anything into development?

I hope this won’t be a trend, for every service to have Google behind their servers. Or even just behind the name, to avoid extra complexity of having a server.

Finally, I think I’ll get used. But it was only yesterday, that I read the Google anti-utopia, where Big Brother’s name is (evidently) Google, and it’s webcams and microphones and search history define each person’s future AND guilt. Scary…

And I wonder which will be the next service of bigmir.net, “outsourced” like their email.

Update: there’s now a much more recent post on how to install libmp3lame-enabled ffmpeg on shared linux hosting.

As Gabe pointed out in my post with compiled ffmpeg Linux binaries, there is a relatively simple method of adding libmp3lame.so.0 file to your shared hosting so that ffmpeg executable will see the library:

You can upload libmp4lame.so as well to the shared hosting site and when you call ffmpeg, call something to set an environment variable right before the call to ffmpeg i.e. in php I’d do exec(”export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/path/to/lib/with/lame; /path/to/ffmpeg [ffmpegargs]”); That way you can use the uploaded lame. I hope that helps someone as I have been unable to find any info on how to use an uploaded lame. I’ve tried it and it works on godaddy.

Hope this helps.

Update: here’s libmp3lame.so.0.0.0 (from slackware 2.4.x, lame-3.97). I have no idea if it’ll work in your (shared hosting) environment; it is provided AS IS, use at your own risk etc. I can only state that the archived binary file at the moment of upload was indeed libmp3lame.so.0.0.0 from my elderly Slackware with 2.4.x kernel.

Get the driver!

There’s also another one, but provides read-only support.

Recently, I installed Debian Etch 4.0r1 onto my laptop. However, after the first boot into plain console, computer was dead-frozen after some console usage. I rebooted using the Power button – this time to gdm; and again, after some keyboard input system was hanging dead.

I found the reason at debianhelp.org forums. Basically, it’s the PC speaker module (pcspr) not functioning correctly. I suspect this problem manifests itself only on some types of laptops. The solution is either to somehow reconfigure the pcspkr module, or just disable it. More on how to disable the module below.
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Get it here. If you haven’t used any other theme except for default, and if you’re Firefox user for a long time – it’s time to try something new! I suggest you try ColorGnome – it’s bright, clear, vivid, cheerful and even funny! I’m using it for several days already, on all but one of my computer workplaces – and find it good enough to write about.

If you want something more strict/official-looking, try maxfox II or maxfox II graphite – I enjoyed these two a lot, currently maxcfox II is on the only computer which doesn’t have ColorGnome