I know that this is not the recommended way of configuring HTTP+HTTPS, but having two separate sections when the configuration is the same except for 3 lines (server certificates and listen 443) doesn’t make much sense.

I initially followed the official tutorial (most likely outdated) and added a part relative to PHP files

server {
    listen 80;
    listen 443 ssl;
    server_name domain.ext;
    ssl_certificate domain.crt;
    ssl_certificate_key domain.key;

    # ... rest of the configuration

    # PHP stuff
    location ~ \.php$ {
    include fastcgi_params;
    fastcgi_intercept_errors on;
    fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9001;
    # Fixes random Bad gateway errors
    fastcgi_buffer_size 128k;
    fastcgi_buffers 4 256k;
    fastcgi_busy_buffers_size 256k;
    fastcgi_temp_file_write_size 256k;
    }
}

Everything worked smoothly on two computers running Ubuntu 10.04 + Nginx and PHP-fpm from the Nginx PPA. I then tried to do the same on Ubuntu 11.10 and PHP-fpm installed from the official repositories: all hell broke lose.

All of a sudden the $_GLOBALS["HTTPS"] variable was not defined anymore even on secure connections. Setting such variable is an Apache specific behaviour, in all truth, but like most of the rest of the PHP community I learned to rely on it for secure connection detection.

Most of the guides I found online referred to setting the HTTPS variable explicitly in the appropriate server section via the fcgi_param directive, but I didn’t want to have two completely separate configuration sections.

I then resorted to a hybrid, which makes use of dual server sections and one include file.

The configuration file looks like this:

# Nginx config file

# HTTP server section
server {
    listen 80;
    include domain.inc;
}

# HTTPS server section
server {
    listen 443 ssl;
    server_name domain.ext;
    ssl_certificate domain.crt;
    ssl_certificate_key domain.key;
    include domain.inc;
    fastcgi_param HTTPS on;
}

The include file looks like this:

# Nginx include file: domain.inc

# ... rest of the configuration

# PHP stuff
location ~ \.php$ {
    include fastcgi_params;
    fastcgi_intercept_errors on;
    fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9001;
    # Fixes random Bad gateway errors
    fastcgi_buffer_size 128k;
    fastcgi_buffers 4 256k;
    fastcgi_busy_buffers_size 256k;
    fastcgi_temp_file_write_size 256k;
}

… and the magic is done!

[ALTERNATIVE]

The problem is due to the fact that the fastcgi_params file is not present. Even if it were, the $https variable is not defined anymore in recent versions of nginx.

The solution is to add the following lines to your nginx.conf file

# Assigns $https depending on value of  $scheme
# $scheme is either "http" (default), or "https"
map $scheme $https {
	default off;
	https	on;
}

and then create the fastcgi_params file with the following content (will set a few parameters commonly used by Apache/PHP)

fastcgi_param	QUERY_STRING            $query_string;
fastcgi_param	REQUEST_METHOD     $request_method;
fastcgi_param	CONTENT_TYPE           $content_type;
fastcgi_param	CONTENT_LENGTH     $content_length;

fastcgi_param	SCRIPT_FILENAME       $request_filename;
fastcgi_param	SCRIPT_NAME              $fastcgi_script_name;
fastcgi_param	REQUEST_URI               $request_uri;
fastcgi_param	DOCUMENT_URI          $document_uri;
fastcgi_param	DOCUMENT_ROOT      $document_root;
fastcgi_param	SERVER_PROTOCOL     $server_protocol;

fastcgi_param	GATEWAY_INTERFACE	CGI/1.1;
fastcgi_param	SERVER_SOFTWARE	nginx/$nginx_version;

fastcgi_param	REMOTE_ADDR             $remote_addr;
fastcgi_param	REMOTE_PORT             $remote_port;
fastcgi_param	SERVER_ADDR               $server_addr;
fastcgi_param	SERVER_PORT               $server_port;
fastcgi_param	SERVER_NAME              $server_name;

fastcgi_param	HTTPS			        $https;

# PHP only, required if PHP was built with --enable-force-cgi-redirect
fastcgi_param	REDIRECT_STATUS	200;

• the Windows 7 installer shows the blue background after “Starting Windows”
• You are still able to move the mouse pointer
• You do not actually have and FDD (Floppy Disk Drive)

Reset your computer, enter the BIOS, and check that your settings regarding FDDs are set to “Disable” (or “None”, depending on the BIOS).

It’s as stupid as it sound and it cost me 30 minutes.

Requirements:

• A computer running FreeNAS 8.0
• SSH access to said computer and root privileges
• A volume with a few megabytes free to download the packages
• A working internet connection

How does this work?

When installing FreeNAS 8.0 on a USB drive (at least when using dd to write the disk image), the UFS image used to mount the root partition has about 22 MiB free. Since MLDonkey (without GUI, made exception for the integrated web-server) and its dependencies require roughly 11 MiBs, there is more than enough space to install it.

Howto:

1. Login in your FreeNAS box as root (the password is the same that you set for the admin user)
2. Change directory to the one that will contain the downloaded files

   cd /path/to/directory/

3. Download this script (code shown below) by running

   fetch http://nexus.thenexus.it/install_mldonkey_freenas8.sh

   Please note that the script has been written by a lazy-bum (myself) and there is no error checking! Any improvements to the script are welcome.

4. Execute the script you just downloaded by running

   sh install_mldonkey_freenas8.sh

5. MLDonkey is now installed, you can launch it by typing mlnet, further information and guides vailable at

Note:

At the time of writing the available packages were the following:

• net-p2p/mldonkey-core-3.0.6
• graphics/jpeg-8_3
• graphics/gd-2.0.35_7,1

You might need to change the file names appearing in the howto according to new releases.

The script’s code

#!/bin/bash

ARCH=`uname -m`
MACHINE=`uname  -r | cut -d- -f1-2 | awk '{print tolower($0)}'`
SERVER=ftp://ftp.freebsd.org
ROOTDIR=/pub/FreeBSD/ports

fetch ${SERVER}${ROOTDIR}/${ARCH}/packages-${MACHINE}/graphics/jpeg-8_3.tbz
fetch ${SERVER}${ROOTDIR}/${ARCH}/packages-${MACHINE}/graphics/gd-2.0.35_7,1.tbz
fetch ${SERVER}${ROOTDIR}/${ARCH}/packages-${MACHINE}/net-p2p/mldonkey-core-3.0.6.tbz

mount -o rw -t ufs /dev/ufs/FreeNASs1a /
pkg_add jpeg-8_3.tbz gd-2.0.35_7,1.tbz mldonkey-core-3.0.6.tbz
mount -o ro -t ufs /dev/ufs/FreeNASs1a /

A damn mess... (This picture is somebody else's, but I couldn't find the author. All credits to him/her)

Things have always been a little confusing on the software side: depending on the operating system there is the chance to have software mixers performing the same task as the hardware one, but they usually require applications to explicitly support their API/communication protocol (e.g. JACK on Linux).

Furthermore, even in the case that the audio protocol is standard for the whole system, the application may not support per-caller streaming, which makes editing and mastering the levels in post-production extremely hard (although there are some tools, such as Levelator, that help in the task).

Now we all have an open-source, multi-platform alternative (runs on Linux, MacOS, Windows), and its name is Mumble.

Mumble is born as an open-source, standards-based, low-latency, high-quality Voice-over-IP communication tool for gamers: as opposed to common alternatives such as Ventrilo, Skype and TeamSpeak that are instead closed-source (TeamSpeak had a particularly bad history of slow upgrades).
While open-source is nice and everything, Mumble was not better suited than the rest of the pack when it came to podcasting, it actually was a little worse than some of the competition (there are multiple plugins for Skype that allow call recording).

But Mumble does now have a trump card to play: since version 1.2.3 it allows to record the conversations going on a channel in a server, either as a mixdown (one file for the whole conversation) or using one file per participant.

Notice the "Multichannel" option, that is what we all waited for!

Not only that, but multiple recording formats are supported: PCM uncompressed (wave), AU uncompressed, FLAC lossless compression, and OGG lossy compression.

There is even FLAC for all of us audiophiles.

The beauty of it all is that such freedom of choice also allows older, or low-power systems to be used as recording stations; while one would require a fairly powerful system to record a party of 10 in FLAC, I was able to record an OGG compressed multi-channel discussion between me and a friend on a 1.5 GHz Pentium-M with lots of headroom.

“Researcher Vinay Deolalikar from HP Labs claims proof that P != NP. The 100-page paper has apparently not been peer-reviewed yet, so feel free to dig in and find some flaws. However, the attempt seems to be quite genuine, and Deolalikar has published papers in the same field in the past. So this may be the real thing. Given that $1M from the Millennium Prize is involved, it will certainly get enough scrutiny. Greg Baker broke the story on his blog, including the email Deolalikar sent around.”

If this is true, we have one of the most incredible and revolutionary discoveries of the last decennia.

Here are the last few lines of output.


moc_formextractor.cpp
moc_mainwindow.cpp
Generating Code...
cl -c -nologo -Zm200 -Zc:wchar_t- -O2 -MD -GR -EHsc -W3 -w34100 -w34189
-DUNICODE -DWIN32 -DQT_LARGEFILE_SUPPORT -DQT_NO_DEBUG -DQT_WEBKIT_LIB -DQT_GUI_
LIB -DQT_CORE_LIB -DQT_THREAD_SUPPORT -I"..\..\..\include\QtCore" -I"..\..\..\in
clude\QtGui" -I"..\..\..\include\QtWebKit" -I"..\..\..\include" -I"..\..\..\incl
ude\ActiveQt" -I"tmp\moc\release_static" -I"." -I"." -I"..\..\..\mkspecs\win32-m
svc2008" -Fotmp\obj\release_static\ @C:\DOCUME~1\MASSIM~1.CIL\LOCALS~1\Temp\nmA2
E.tmp
qrc_formextractor.cpp
link /LIBPATH:"c:\Qt\2009.03\qt\lib" /LIBPATH:"c:\Qt\2009.03\qt\lib" /NO
LOGO /INCREMENTAL:NO /MANIFEST /MANIFESTFILE:"tmp\obj\release_static\formExtract
or.intermediate.manifest" /SUBSYSTEM:WINDOWS "/MANIFESTDEPENDENCY:type='win32' n
ame='Microsoft.Windows.Common-Controls' version='6.0.0.0' publicKeyToken='6595b6
4144ccf1df' language='*' processorArchitecture='*'" /OUT:release\formExtractor.e
xe @C:\DOCUME~1\MASSIM~1.CIL\LOCALS~1\Temp\nmA2F.tmp
NNNMMMNAAAMKKKAEEEK E::: :fff aaaftttaaaatllla leee rrrerrrrooorrrro rU
UU 111U000155508885:::8 : NMAKE : fatal error U1058: ttttteeeeerrrrrmmmmmiiiii
nnnnnaaaaattttteeeeeddddd bbbbbyyyyy uuuuussssseeeeerrrrr

SSSSStttttoooooppppp.....


To MIT have nowadays followed both the campuses of Berkley and Stanford with the initiatives Webcast and Stanford Engineering Everywhere.

These are websites to absolutely keep in your bookmarks and check quite often.

First it is a good idea to run unset LANG before running Matlab, otherwise certain GUI components, such as the directory selection modal dialog, will not run properly.

Second, it is necessary to modify the options related to mex, the C (or Fortran) to Matlab interface. The reason is that with GCC 4.x it is no more necessary to link against libstd and trying to do so will cause quite a bit of hassle (you can solve it on Fedora by installing gcc-compat, which is not available on Ubuntu, as far as I know). The solution is then to modify the file ~/.matlab/R14/mexopts.sh and simply remove the -lstdc++ option from the gcc section.

Finally I would suggest to run Matlab from console: KDE does not get along well with it.

Hope this helps.

Presentation Zen website

Luckily, thanks to the plastic case junctions, it still works perfectly.

Happy that I bought it…

Anyway, I had this strange problem with the ComboBox control of the .NET 2.0 framework (but I guess the problem would have been manifest with version 1.0/1.1 too):
I had some ComboBoxes that I had been binding to some DataTables generated as the result of some Stored Procedure calls on a DB server. Everything seemed to be working until I tried to set the ComboBox.SelectedValue property manually: disaster happened and nothing worked as it should have.

The reason for this strange behaviour was that I did not add the ComboBoxes to the form Control list BEFORE binding the source!
The worst thing of it all is that I have not been able to find any clue about the order in which these two operations whould be done on the MSDN, nor on various developer forums!

So rememeber:

• First add the controls to your form
• And only then you can correctly set the DataSource