I use Ubuntu like dancing bear; The magic in that is this: its not that the bear dances so beautifully, but that the bear dances at all.

So here's my Dancing Bear recipe for configuring Xampp to start up automatically for Ubuntu 9.10.

The first thing you need to know: There is something wrong with the directions the show for doing this in the Xampp FAQs. This isn't really anyone's fault. But the commands they offer for finding out crucial data aren't right. So don't freak out.

You really only need to know three basic things to set this up. Four if you count one of my excuses as a thing you need to know.

1. You need to know how to list and look at directories from the command line.
2. You need to know what runlevel the root user works at.
3. You need to know what a symbolic link is.
4. You need to not care about not having your machine log in automatically.

So lets get to it:

1. I'm not going to go over this. Even a dancing bear can type cd and ls to change directories and list them. That is, I think, the minimum required to call oneself a dancing bear.

2. The root user in Ubuntu works in Run Level 2.
How do I know this? Because if I change to Super User, by entering the terminal command "sudo su" I can type "runlevel" from the root-level command line. This tells me I'm running at "N 2." This is important, because it means that you have to put your symbolic links to the lammp launch script into /etc/rc2.d/

3.Go then. Make some symbolic links. But before you do, know this: You're making symbolic links to /opt/lampp/lampp in the /etc/rc2.d/ directory. You are going to give these symbolic links special names that will tell the system, when it's booting or shutting down, whether to call /opt/lampp/lampp in the context of starting xampp, or stopping xampp. If the symbolic links name starts with an S, that means, call it in the context of "start" when the symbolic link starts with a K, that means call the script int he context of "kill."
So what you need to do is create two symbolic links to /opt/lampp/lampp. I do this by changing to the /etc/rc2.d/ directory, and then using these commands:

• sudo ln -s /opt/lampp/lampp S99lampp
• sudo ln -s /opt/lampp/lampp k01lampp

What should happen then is that two little symbolic links will appear in the /etc/rc2.d/ directory. Those links are what tell the system to run the lampp start up script when the system is starting. You should also run "sudo update-rc.d lampp defaults" from the command line, but I don't know why or if it really matters. Remember, its not that the bear dances beautifully.

4. Finally, and here's something you'll just need to suck it up and get over: The way my system works, the machine does not enter Run Level 2 until you've logged into the system. That means, since my whole goal was to make the lampp server start without my intervention, I enabled the Ubuntu desktop system to automatically log me in. Problem solved. Unless you really don't care about security don't run your system that way, it's stupid. One day you will get burned.

I don't Tumble anymore, but I have friends who do. And their feeds are the only thing you really need to read on the whole wide Internet. I used this post at work today to emphasize that, in spite of all of our frustrations, I feel like our work in addressing the stigma issues that affect mental health is really making a difference.
"Let's treat every disease like depression" may well be the magnum opus of the millennials. They don't get much, but one thing they do really understand is that emotional states are real things.
My only wish is that the author of "Treat every disease" had offered her work under a creative commons license so I could properly share it with you here.

Just completed a rather lengthy and boring "social media" survey. I'm sure it's aimed at justifying some very high salaries of some very shallow people, and I understand how important that is to our economy, I really do...

But I couldn't resist when they asked for my "definition" of social media.

The rest of the survey was completed in all seriousness. Especially the part where I listed "www.hotchickswithdouchebags.com" as the next big social media thing. You're welcome, hotchickswithdouchebags.com.

Hey, HR. Ur Doin' it Wrong.

Gabe: But eventually, doesn't the surly mustang learn to love his captors?
Jeni: Um, no, he learns to fear them.
Gabe: No, they fall in love and have freaky centaur babies.
Jeni: Pain never brings respect; it brings. fear and underneath that fear is loathing
Gabe: There. Are. Four! Lights.
Jeni: Okay, I need to chart.
Gabe: Was it the Star Trek or the centaur babies that pushed you over the edge?
Jeni: All of the above
***Gabe wins.
Jeni: Sure, congrats

Gabe: I had the strangest dream. You were making me eat crow.
Jeni: What?
Gabe: It came in a large jar like bulk bird seed and there were little egg-shaped seeds you had to crack open with your teeth.
Jeni: What?
Gabe: "Don't you know that the crow is the only of the avians whose proteins are completely contained within a protective shell?" you kept saying.
Gabe: And I was eating the little black crunchies that were also in the jar, and you freaked out because those aren't really for eating, you said, they were just packing materials.
Gabe: Which is why they don't taste so good, I replied.
Jeni: Were you sleeping at your desk?
Gabe: No, this was last night.
Gabe: I woke up and felt kind of sick.
Jeni: I bet.

Gabe: It's snowing.
Jeni: Shut up!!!
Jeni: Is it accumulating?
Gabe: No accumulation.
Gabe: Just flurries.
Gabe: "Flurries" is one of our many words for snow.
Gabe: We're not so different, the Eskimos and us.
Gabe: Except they can see Russia from their igloos.
Jeni has gone away.

Here's my presentation about BarCampMilwaukee3 from Web414 last night. Hosted on Scribd, rendered in fancy iPaper.

Got a weird assignment at work today. Had to write a postcard for people who treat depression. So, you're not really selling anything to people who are depressed, you're selling something to people who know about depression. Or want to know more. Or something.
Regardless, I was really stuck. One of the things about being a "create on demand" professional is that you have to have little tricks to get your creative mojo cooking. I like to do mind maps. Especially to songs I love. So a mind-map on Depression Treatment: Rilo Kiley's "Better Son/Daughter" yields the following results:

A few computer/technology related tid-bits that in years past would have been much longer posts.

1. Look, I really kind of like K-Meleon, the lightweight, native Windows Implementation of the Geko Layout Engine. Think of it as Firefox for Windows without the Firefox part. On the Operating System of the Future (Windows 2000), K-Meleon is the browser of tomorrow.
2. If only there were a similar version of Pidgin. I am now taking applications for the windows native multi-service XAMP client of tomorrow.
3. I am currently experimenting with Windows Live Mesh. Mesh is Windows online folder syncing, basically, except that it also syncs to a "Online Desktop," so you can always get at your synched files, so long as you have access to a browser (even KM. So far, I've got my entire allotment of space allocated and it's still uploading. Nice! I wonder what that means. They say that there is a MacOSX Client coming. It has some kind of RDP or VNC built into it, but it's flaky and doesn't work as nicely LogMeIn, for example.
4. If I could add one feature to the Windows Platform, I would add Universal Spell Checking like they have on the Macs. Hands down, Universal Spell checking is OSX's best feature.
5. I still miss you, Linux. Do something awesome and I'll come back to you. Here's a hint. It's not being sold in a box at Best Buy. Hundreds of crappy software products have been sold in a Box at Best Buy over the years.
6. You should be using Evernote. If you're not, you don't care about keeping notes. I have a Ocono.com Story Ideas notebook that I'm publishing there, but it's not about publishing, it's about having your data synced up to the web and on every computer you use. Except for Linux.