iGoogle Gadgets cannot Sign In to Google Account

A while back, I noticed that two of my iGoogle gadgets had stopped working in Firefox on our Windows XP computer.  The Gmail gadget had stopped displaying any emails and the Calendar gadget had stopped displaying any appointments.  At the time I didn't particularly worry because I no longer relied on them for anything important.

Today I came across Gmail Tasks and decided to try out the iGoogle Tasks gadget.  It didn't work either.  It refused to accept that I was already signed into my Google account and kept prompting me to sign in again.

I had a look through my Firefox settings (Tools > Options > Privacy).  I already knew that iGoogle required cookies to be enabled and, sure enough, 'Accept cookies from sites' was ticked.  However, just below that was 'Accept third-party cookies' which was not ticked.  I ticked it and clicked 'OK'.

Now my Tasks, Gmail and Calendar gadgets all work as they should.

Redirecting Symbolic Links to Directories

Suppose you are developing a website for a Linux system and you want to release it in various stages to the users. One of the ways to do this is to have a separate subdirectory for each version and to use a symbolic link (symlink) to point to the latest one. However, redirecting the symbolic link can be a bit tricky and my first attempts ended up with the link sitting inside one of the directories, instead of at the top level. The secret is to use the -n option to suppress dereferencing. Here is a simplified example illustrating how I got it to work properly:

$ mkdir dir1
$ ln -sfn dir1 latest
$ ls -l
total 4
drwxr-xr-x 2 tristram tristram 4096 2010-04-01 22:13 dir1
lrwxrwxrwx 1 tristram tristram    4 2010-04-01 22:13 latest -> dir1
$ mkdir dir2
$ ln -sfn dir2 latest
$ ls -l
total 4
drwxr-xr-x 2 tristram tristram 4096 2010-04-01 22:13 dir1
drwxr-xr-x 2 tristram tristram 4096 2010-04-01 22:13 dir2
lrwxrwxrwx 1 tristram tristram    4 2010-04-01 22:13 latest -> dir2
$ 

The -s and -f options select symbolic (as opposed to hard) links and force overwriting of the existing link.  For more details see the Gnu Coreutils documentation for the ln command.

The Cost of Electricity

I have been looking at setting up a web server at home.  As this will involve leaving a computer running all the time, I have been looking at low-power PCs.  While estimating what the impact on my electricity bill would be, I was pleased to discover that, at current UK prices, running a 1 watt appliance for 1 year will cost approximately £1.  This pleases me almost as much as when I found out that I walk at a speed of approximately 100 metres per minute.

Norton Internet Security Icon Missing from System Tray

Yesterday I upgraded my Norton Internet Security from the 2009 version to the 2010 one.  This morning I noticed that the yellow NIS icon was missing from the system tray.  My heart sank.  I have had problems with this before and it took hours, even days to sort out.  However, this time I came across this article at the Symantec Norton support site:

Norton icon does not appear in the system tray after I install the latest updates for my Norton 2010 product or Norton 360 Version 4.0

I downloaded the patch, applied it, restarted my PC, and the NIS icon is back again!  I feel much better now.  Malfunctioning security software makes me very nervous, almost paranoid.

Unwanted Java Console Add-ons In Firefox

Recently I upgraded Firefox on our Windows XP machine to version 3.6.  Today I noticed that there were lots of versions of Java Console in the list of add-ons and it occurred to me that these might be slowing Firefox down (maybe Firefox was attempting to load them all on start-up?).  Anyhow I haven't used Java Console for a very long time (it is basically a tool software developers) so I went to uninstall them, but their Uninstall buttons were all greyed out.  Then I remembered that I installed Java from an administrator account, so I logged in as Windows administrator, started Firefox, and sure enough, I was able delete all the versions of Java Console from there.

Incidentally, you might also find Java Quick Start in the list of Firefox add-ons.  The sole function of this add-on seems to be to make Java start-up faster by making sure the core Java files are always in cache.  Of course this has the side-effect of slowing other things on your computer.  The best way to disable Java Quick Start is via the Java control panel in the Windows start menu:

Start > Settings > Control Panel > Java > Advanced > Miscellaneous

and then untick 'Java Quick Start' (you can always re-enable it if you really find that Java is unbearably slow in starting up).  You might also like to untick 'Place Java Icon in System Tray' while you're at it.