Here's how to configure firefox to work with the very nice KDE RSS feed aggregator, Akregator. These instructions were written for Kubuntu Edgy, but they'll probably work with other distros. The versions of the software used are:

• Firefox 2.0
• Akregator 1.2.5
• Kontact 1.2.3
• KDE 3.5.5

Amarok is a wonderful media player and audio library management tool for Linux. It allows for extensions by third parties via a nice script system.

Amarok has some in-built support for subscribing to podcasts, however, at time of writing, there is no convenient way to manage deletion of downloaded podcast episodes en-masse. Presently, the only way to delete downloaded podcast files from amarok is to traverse the podcast list, right clicking on each downloaded podcast episode, and selecting delete from the contect menu. This is quite cumbersome, particularly considering the fact that ever deletion provokes a confirmation dialog.

I listen to a lot of podcasts, and I wanted a better way to manage my downloaded podcast files, so I wrote a small script to delete downloaded podcast files.

I've seen several rather convoluted methods to record a Skype conversation on Linux, some requiring more than one computer, or using special software packages not typically available in standard distribution repositories. This method is very simple, works on budget sound cards with only one channel (e.g. using the snd_intel8x0 driver), and requires no special software.

I've long been interested in computer generated graphics, especially when the computer does all the work. Back in the 16-bit days I remember something of a craze among magazine cover disk makers for including fractal landscape generators. These were a lot of fun. One of the modern day descendants of these programs is Terragen, which is capable of generating amazingly realistic and beautiful landscape images.

Sadly, although Terragen is free for personal use, it's not open source and there is no Linux version. Enter WINE - the Windows compatibility layer which allow some Windows program to run under Linux.

Lastminute.com and Coolgorilla.com have teamed up to produce some rather nice little language tools for iPods. The language packs allow users to select phrases using their iPod's menu system, and have the translated phrase spoken to them.

Sadly, the creators of these tools don't provide instructions for us Linux users. Here's how to install them when you don't have access to iTunes on a Mac or Windows.

One of the natty things about KDE is that you can use a program to periodically generate an image to use as your desktop background. The excellent Xplanet program offers a way to render beautiful images of the Earth and other planetary bodies. These images can be generated every so often and used as the desktop background in KDE. In this way, you can see the Earth's shadow creeping round the planet, see city lights on the night-side and so on. It's very cool.

XPlanet also has a facility to overlay images over the planet map. This feature can be used to put satellite cloud maps over the surface of the planet. Here's how to automate this process so that you have up-to-date clouds on your Xplanet desktop background.

I recently got hold of an HP ScanJet 5100C flat bed scanner. A quick look at the SANE project's compatibility list showed me that it is fully supported, with one caveat - that it requires the ppscsi and epst kernel modules. Here's a step by step guide to getting the scanner working.

While I was away on holiday, the team slipped out the new version of Stellarium. Not only that, but Stellarium was nominated project of the month at sourceforge!

I can't believe I missed out on the opportunity for surfing my ego by answering the developer questionnaire which is sent to the developers of projects of the month, and to get my mugshot on the sourceforge POTM page :(

In any case, I've been beavering away over the last few days to update the user guide, the draft version of which is now more or less complete.

If you're reading this, porpoisehead.net has been successfully migrated to a new hosting company. With a little luck there shouldn't be as much (any!?) downtime as there has been over the last few months, and I hope the response of the new servers will be a little faster too.

There are new versions of MediaWiki (for WikiWikiWalks), Coppermine (for the picture gallery) and phpGedView (Genealogy). There's also an updated set of genealogy data.

Plans for the near future are to re-vamp WikiWikiWalks, and to create some sort of repository for Stellarium texture files, landscapesand so on. Stay tuned.

I finally got round to getting a webcam. After spending some (rather frustrating) hours earlier this week playing with gnomemeeting I decided it'd be nice to do the "whole thing" and get something for sending video as well as audio.