Applications that I have lost while upgrading to a new laptop

PDFSAM: split and merge PDF files
Gallery remote: upload pictures to gallery
Cygwin: X-win simulation system under windows
Avaya IP Softphone: allow me to use my desktop phone on my computer
7-Zip: A group of compress/decompress tools, mainly used it for handling RAR files
SecureFX: complete broken on the new system, always crashes, have to use FileZilla instead
SecureCRT

After starting the new computer, I found that another important feature that I missed to backup is Macros for Microsoft word. All gone!

Baggage fees for different airlines

Here is a list of the fees that the airlines will charge you for domestic flights within US unless you have achieved certain status in their mileage program.

Airlines	1st Checked Bag	2nd Checked Bag
American	$15	$25
United	None	$25
Delta	None	$25
US Airway	None	$25
Southwest	None	None
Continental	None	$25
Alaska	None	$25
Midwest Express	None	$20

Uploading AVI or big images to Gallery

As long as ffmpeg plugin is installed properly, you should be able to upload video files to Gallery.

However, while using Gallery Remote, I kept getting some strange errors every time I tried to upload some AVI files. The error messages does not help much to resolve the issue. After some research, I found that the real problem is really the upload size limitation of your web server, nothing else.

One way to solve the problem is to change the upload size limitation within php.ini (usually located under /usr/local/lib/):
post_max_size => your preferred size
upload_max_filesize => your preferred size

Microsoft Word Tips: Copy/Paste with track changes

Copy text to another document with the tracked changes?

In the source document, turn off Track Changes.
In the target document, turn off Track Changes.

Now copy and paste.

However, if you have a table containing tracked changes and you select only the table, then the tracked changes won't copy into the new document. You need to select a paragraph before or after the table as well as the table itself. Now, the tracked changes will copy along with the text.

Web access authentication setup

1. Create user passwd file: "htpasswd -c /etc/httpd/userfile username"; if "-c" flag is included, existing file will be overwritten, so no need for it when adding extra users.
   
2. Insert directive in httpd.conf file:
• 
  
• AuthName "Restricted Area"
• AuthType Basic
• AuthUserFile /etc/httpd/users
• require valid-user

Setting up Gallery on Home Linux

• Apache server: already installed on my server, but not automatically started.
• PHP:
  
• in order to compile PHP, we need "apxs", use "yum install httpd-devel" to get it installed.
• It turns out that I don't need to compile PHP anyway, since it is already available. The only thing is that php.ini is located under /etc instead of /user/local/lib.
• I checked all the settings suggested on gallery website. All seems fine except that "gettext" option is not available. Leave it open for now since I may not need the functionality provided by gettext.

• Mysql: (use "yum search mysql" to find all packages related to mysql)
  
• "yum install mysql mysql-server php-mysql mysql-devel", Mysql 5 is installed.
  
• Image Libraries
• yum install netpbm ImageMagick gd GraphicsMagick
  
• Gallery
• yum install gallery2
• The gallery package is installed under /usr/share, I have to create a symbolic link in the web server directory:
  
• ln -s /usr/share/gallery2 /var/www/html/gallery
  
• Optional packages
• yum install gallery2-ffmpeg jhead
• dcraw already installed
  
• Load up the gallery web page and follow the steps to finish install
• If need to check PHP setting, then a simple php file containing "" can be used to show all the info on a web page.
  
• Step 4, can not set my own directory (even if I chmod 777 on whatever directories created, the installation complains about not being able to access it); so have to use the default
• Step 5, database setup
• mysql_install_db: run this to initialize database
• myql tables are located under /var/lib/mysql. "cd /var/lib/mysql; chown -R mysql:mysql mysql test"; otherwise, mysqld cannot be started because the owner of those directories is root.
• "mysqld_safe --user=mysql &": start mysql server
• "mysqladmin version": check mysql is running
• "mysqladmin -u root create gallery2": create db for gallery
• "GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON gallery2.* TO 'user'@'domain' IDENTIFIED BY 'pass'" after login in to mysql as root "mysql -u root"
• Installer complains about not able to access database
• Login in as root to mysql and use the following command to check user info:
• connect mysql;
• select * from user;
  
• try "FLUSH PRIVILEGES" or restart mysql server "mysqladmin shutdown", but neither works.
• try to recompile PHP "configure --with-apxs2 --with-mysql --with-gd --with-bz2 --with-curl --with-pic --with-png"; does not work either
• It turns out that context for SELinux is not set up properly to allow httpd to write to the socket, error message can be found in /var/log/message. I disabled SELinux for now (change /etc/sysconfig/selinux).
  
• Everything else works fine just following the steps.

DVD Ripper and IPOD video

Just collected a number of free tools to convert my favorite DVDs into ipod video files.

DrDivx is the tool I used to covert DVD into AVI (divx encoded) files. I also tried several other tools but none of them meet my purpose:
DVDx: This one can covert DVD to VCD format, mpeg or AVI. But somehow it is not working with the divx 6.4 codec I installed.
DVD Decrypter: Rip DVDs in file, IFO, or ISO modes. However, the size is not shrinked.
DVDshrink: Do not shrink the file enough.
The ripping process takes very long though. 4~5 hours on average for each of the 4.7G DVDs.

After getting the AVI file, Jodix is used to convert AVI files into mp4 files for importing into iTunes.

Another tool that I found useful for iTune/iPod is mp3tags. You can easily change tags for mp3 files in various ways.