UALR campus is smoke free as of Aug. 16!

Then, a few seconds later, the very next message appeared:

Art of the Peyote Religion and the Native American Church

Hmm … cigarettes = bad but peyote = good?

Some may complain about the way Apple does things, but I recently had an experience with iTunes Music Store (iTMS) customer support that was incredible. I have to say that I’m even more of a fan boy of the iTMS than I was before.

First, you should know that I have always liked Winamp for playing music on the computer — not the really old version (Winamp 2.x) but the newer version with modern skins (5.x). Years ago, when the iTunes store first opened, I was very excited about the convenience of online purchasing of digital music, but I was not excited about being locked into using iTunes for playback. At the all the songs at the iTMS were encoded at 128KB and included digital rights management (DRM) which limited you to only using the songs on Apple iPods or (up to) five authorized computers, and only with iTunes as the playback software. This was a restriction I was willing to live with for the ease of online buying.

More recently, the iTunes store upgraded all their music to something called iTunes Plus, which is encoded at a higher bit-rate (=higher quality sound) and no DRM. This is freeing because now you can use any playback software you want (yay, back to Winamp!) Even better was how easy they made it to upgrade existing purchases to the new format: all you have to do is log into the iTMS and click the “iTunes Plus” link on the right side. You should be presented with the option to upgrade earlier purchases to the new format at a reduced cost, usually only 30¢ per song (if an upgraded version of the song is available.)

The problem was I didn’t get offered an upgrade for all of my old purchases. Specifically, I had 23 songs that I really wanted to update to the new higher-quality format but couldn’t through normal channels. Since everything sold is supposed to be iTunes Plus, I searched to see if all the songs I had were available and, with one exception, they were.

I called Apple support and they directed me to the iTunes Music Store support chat, http://tinyurl.com/c29va3 (bookmark that link!) After about one minute, Barbara B. joined me and asked how she could help. I explained the situation and she replied that it can sometimes take a while for the upgrade version becomes available — even if the higher quality version is available for new purchases. After a few more questions, she offered as a courtesy to let me purchase ALL 23 songs new and she would refund the charges!

So, not only did I get the rest of my library upgraded, I got to do it for free!

If you ask me, that just ROCKS!

I’m gonna miss you, mom.

Thanks to Tom Liu and launchpad.net, there is a binary build of PHP 5.2.8 for this version of Ubuntu. I know that real Linux studs would just compile their own, but I didn’t want to go through the build and fail, build and fail process and needed a quick fix. Here are the steps I followed to update my Hardy Heron to PHP 5.2.8.

The first thing I did was made sure my server was completely up to date, so I entered each of the following commands at a shell prompt.

The second step was to edit my sources list so that I can update using a new repository (launchpad.net, specifically Tom’s repository with PHP 5.2.8). So, first I made a backup of my sources.list file:

Then I edited the file (I used the editor “nano”) and added the following two lines at the bottom of the file (these are not commands to enter, but lines to paste in the editor):

Because the update program apt uses encryption keys to validate packages, I needed to import Tom’s repository keys in order to install stuff from his repository. I found the instructions on how to do this from this site. Here is the command I used:

Finally, I did the upgrade using apt and restarted Apache:

A quick check revealed I was indeed upgraded! Here is a list of references I used to do this:

• https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Repositories/CommandLine
• https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/php5/+bug/305393
• http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=116604
• https://help.launchpad.net/Packaging/PPA#Adding%20the%20keys%20in%20the%20terminal
• https://launchpad.net/~tarkus/+archive/ppa

A promotional video was just released by thisisnext.org for their upcoming conference and it is beautiful. Go watch it and be moved.

I e-mail you. You e-mail me. It all works together.

–Emma

Oh, so THAT’s how it works! Maybe you just have to know her, but this just cracks me up.

(It is actually Stark Sands that plays Lt. Nate Fick, but c’mon, you can see the resemblance, right?)

The father banned his 12-year-old daughter from going online after she posted pictures of herself on a dating site. Then after fighting with her stepmother, the father told her she couldn’t go on a school trip. The girl took the matter to court and — be afraid — seems to have won her case.

Madam Justice Suzanne Tessier of the Quebec Superior Court ruled on Friday that the father couldn’t discipline his daughter by barring her from the school trip.
…
Lucie Fortin, the lawyer representing the 12-year-old, said the judge found that depriving the girl of the school trip was an excessive punishment.

She said the girl has already been forbidden to use the Internet and her father also punished her by canceling her participation in an extracurricular event.

Please, please don’t let this foolishness come to the States.

Slowly but surely, we’re knocking ‘em down. Kate graduated high school this afternoon and the ceremony was super. The student speakers were excellent and polished, and the main speaker, Kirk Meyers, gave a great charge to the kids. In spite of this being the largest homeschool graduation in the history of the Pulaski County home school organization (67 students graduated) the whole event went smoothly and didn’t seem to last forever. In fact, it really flew by!

Congratulations, Kate. You have certainly earned it! I am so proud of you, kiddo.