Thu, 10 Jan 2008

Ekiga instead of Skype?

I like to use free software whenever possible. Ekiga would be an obvious replacement for Skype - hey, it even works with my webcam! Something similar to "SkypeOut" is available too, and at similar rates (calling a fixed-line number in Germany: US$ 0.02; calling a mobile number in Germany: US$ 0.211). However, I'm somewhat reluctant to give my credit card information to yet another company I don't know, and I'm not sure if Ekiga works as well as Skype. Also, I chat (and sometimes talk for free) with a lot of people who are on Skype, while I don't know anybody who uses Ekiga.

Posted on 10 Jan 2008 at 17:57 in /technology/phone. -- Permalink

Converting flac to ogg ...

... is simple indeed. In a directory containing your flac files, do:

oggenc *.flac

For better quality ogg files, use the switch -q 5 (-1 is lowest quality, 10 is highest).

Posted on 10 Jan 2008 at 17:27 in /technology. -- Permalink

K2 problem solved, sort of ...

I dragged the categories, search, recent posts and links widgets into the relevant boxes (great that the left box refers to the right sidebar and the right to the left ...); now everything in the sidebars is displayed again, even on static pages and with individual entries. In other words, I had to set up the sidebars from scratch. So far, so good - but how did this happen in the first place? I didn't update or change anything, neither WordPress nor K2, and updating WordPress didn't make anything better or worse.

Posted on 10 Jan 2008 at 14:43 in /technology/internet. -- Permalink

K2 sidebar problem

Suddenly, my "entries" blog has a problem with the sidebars. The theme I'm using is K2 (Release Candidate 3). Its sidebar manager has always been very slow and somewhat tricky to use. Now, the left sidebar (which I set to display the categories) has disappeared almost completely, only a blue bar at the top of the column is left. The right sidebar, which contains the search field, latest posts, blogroll and links, is displayed on the start page (also for older articles) but not on the other (static) pages or with individual posts. The sidebar editor ("Widgets" in the "Presentation" section) displays "Default sidebar" for both sidebars, informing me that the "usual sidebar" of this theme will be displayed because the 2 boxes are empty but I can drag widgets into them. I'm afraid that doing so would mess things up completely. (The problem is the same on different computers and in different browsers, so probably unrelated to the Amity website problem.) What now?

Posted on 10 Jan 2008 at 14:26 in /technology/internet. -- Permalink

Weird Firefox problem

The Amity website displays without any style information and without any pictures in my Firefox under Linux (2.0.0.11, Ubuntu 7.10/Gutsy). Nothing seems to be wrong with the website - it looks perfectly fine both in Galeon and in Firefox under Mac OS X, even after clearing the cache. Other websites look fine in Firefox under Linux, too. After killing and restarting Firefox, exactly the same problem. What the heck is going on here?

Posted on 10 Jan 2008 at 14:08 in /technology/internet. -- Permalink

Updating WordPress using Subversion

I just updated my "entries" blog using Subversion for the first time. Worked without a hitch and took no longer than a few seconds. I'm very pleased.

Posted on 10 Jan 2008 at 14:02 in /technology/internet. -- Permalink