Adobe released a Linux version of the latest Flash player, version 9. You can download the libflashplayer.so plugin for firefox and/or the standalone player (I didn’t try it yet).

Actually it is still a prerelease, but it works very well to play almost all the latest flash content around the web. Finally, I’m able to browse those sites using exclusively (bastards) flash version 9, and more important, I can watch Matt Brett’s in game footages!!!

And now, after I saw the Tony Hawk’s Project 8 gameplay video, I know what I want for Christmas…a Xbox 360!!!! Please Mr. Santa…Bring me a Xbox 360 for X-Mas!!!

I finally received my new external hard drive:

As I was getting short on space on my internal drive (83GB dedicated to /home), I ordered a Lacie Porsche 320GB USB2.0 hard drive on Pixmania (the lowest price I found on the web). I received it some days later.

Although Linux is not supported according to the requirements, it worked like a charm once connected to an USB slot. Lacie drives are per default formatted in FAT, which is nice if you want to share your disk between window$ and Linux/Mac/*nix.

But I rapidly reformatted it like that:

# fdisk /dev/sdc
...
(p to print the partition table)
...
     Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/lacie1               1       37082   297861133+  83  Linux
/dev/lacie2           37083       38913    14707507+  83  Linux

One big partition (~300GB) formatted in ext3 journaled system, and a small one (~15GB) which I still have to format in FAT.

Here are some advantages of that way of formatting if you are using Linux:

• ext3 allows you to store files bigger than 4GB (DVD iso image, …), where FAT doesn’t.
• ext3 is not subject to fragmentation. FAT is!
• I mainly use this disk under Linux, to store backups, etc. Ext3 allows me to keep file permissions as on my system. FAT doesn’t…
• FAT is a window$ format… And as you know, window$ sucks!

However, I have kept some room for a FAT partition in order to transfer big files from windows to Linux and vice versa (some friends and family are still using windows).

The next thing I had to do was to configure udev to automatically populate /dev with lacie1 and lacie2 (corresponding to the two partitions), instead of the defaults sd*. That way, I can always access my drive with the same path, whatever the devices already connected (USB keys, camera, …). To do that, I created a new /etc/udev/rules.d/20-lacie.rules file:

The idVendor and idProduct data can be found using lsusb. Adding the appropriate rule in /etc/fstab is the final step:

/dev/lacie1     /mnt/lacie     ext3     auto,user     0 0

Something strange has been annoying me for ages in Thunderbird: when double-clicking on a message of my Inbox, a new window did indeed open as expected, but instead of heaving a simple window displaying the mail, I got a compose window, with my default address in the “From:” field, the original addressee of the mail (usually me) in the “To:” field, and the message as body…:grr:

This would not have been too bad if, when closing the window, that damned dialog box asking “Do you want to save the message” didn’t appear!!!

So tonight I seriously looked at the problem, and found the oddness that caused me so much frustration: if the folder “Inbox” is selected as folder to store the Drafts or the Templates (in the Properties -> Copies & Folders setting pane), such a stupid phenomenon will occur.

So I selected the folders “Drafts” and “Templates” to respectively store my drafts and my templates (I know, this is the default setting… :?), and that simply solved my problem!

[EDITION]
:dead: That only solved my problem until the next time I started Thunderbird…I’m getting sick of it!