Making mutt *not* use mozilla to view html body/attachments

I don't know why it is non-obvious, but I finally tracked down to how have mutt use a text web browser (lynx|links) to display email with HTML bodies or attachments.

In your ~/.mailcap, put this:

text/html; lynx %s; nametemplate=%s.html

A cryptic reply here pointed to the right part in the Mutt manual

HP Photo Scanner 1000 works under Linux!

While at LinuxWorld I mentioned to a coworker that I picked up an HP
Photo Scanner 1000 and wanted to get it working under Linux (either Debian 'testing' or Red Hat 8.0) and he suggested just trying to mount it. Well, it works great!

This little script works well for me. Press the scan button and
wait for it to finish scanning and then run this script:

  #!/bin/bash
  mount /mnt/scanner
  cp /mnt/scanner/* ~/tmp/scans
  umount /mnt

Be sure to put this in your /etc/fstab to allow non-root users to
mount the device:

   /dev/sda /mnt/scanner vfat noauto,ro,user,exec 0 0 

and you have created

/mnt/scanner

previously...

If you want to get fancy, make a link to it from your KDE desktop or
copy it into Nautilus' scripts area -- ~/.gnome/nautilus-scripts/

LinuxWorld HP VIP Party

So far the best part of LinuxWorld/NYC 2003 has been the HP VIP party at Webster Hall.

Highlights:

• Gilbert Godfried -- Very funny, lots of hooker and 90 year old jewish man jokes.



• JT Taylor of Cool and the Gang -- A bunch of '70 hits and a 911 tribute song "America Family". Surprisingly it wasn't as bad as you'd think. Of course, this was after a few of the complimentary sambuca...

Debian saves time at work

Last month I was asked to put together a simple proof-of-concept web application and needed to connect to a Microsoft SQL database from a linux system. I prototyped it on my laptop running Debian/sarge -- all the needed packages where easy to install:



apt-get install sqsh libdbd-sybase-perl freetds0


Then I went off and wrote a perl script that connected to a remote database and displayed the data. Straight forward.

Yesterday I was asked to stage it on a demo system running Red Hat 7.3. I spent a good part of the day trying to find prebuilt RPMs to install those packages and not finding them started to build from sources. The sybase perl modules from cpan assume you are using the SYBASE libraries and not freetds and a little cryptic on how to use them. I eventually punted and installed debian on the demo system and was ready for a demo within a hour.

HP Photo Scanner

I've been meaning to scan in all the old 3x5 and 4x6 snapshots and find that using a full size USB-based scanner is slow going. This weekend's COMPUSA flyer had the H
P Photo Scanner for only $49!

Under W2k/W98 it works just fine, but I really want to have this working under Linux. It looks like it may be possible -- the windows software says it isn't a TWAIN but rather a USB mass storage device. Linux (debian/testing) sees it as an unknown storage device. Google hasn't turned up yet...

One drawback is it draws power from the USB cable, but my laptop's USB hub doesn't doesn't supply power. Desktop systems are fine.

Referer Risk

This is amusing. Everytime someone clicks on the image below a 2° by 2° piece of land is allocated to this site.

Read more by clicking on the link above and reading the instructions.

Gideon Taylor Family Bible CD

Between the chess and UNO attack games with the kids, I've started pulling together scans of the Gideon Taylor/Sarah Burr family bible as well as some pretty genealogy reports and will send them out to my wife's siblings.