~chuck/blog

I discovered Cyanide and Happiness on YouTube the other day. It’s hilarious.

Also, I found a way to use GPG signing and encryption in Apple’s Mail app.

First, quit Mail. I know it’s hard, but you can do it!

Second, back up your GPG keys and REMOVE YOUR EXISTING ~/.gnupg directory if it exists. The configuration file that already exists somehow conflicts with the pinentry app that prompts for your GPG password. I back up my keys this way:

$ gpg -a –export me@ozymo.com >> me_ozymo.com.asc

$ gpg -a –export-secret-key me@ozymo.com >> me_ozymo.com.asc

Note that this will store your PRIVATE key in the file as well. This is necessary for importing, but not ideal to keep around on some random computer. Use your head.

Third, download this file. If you don’t trust me, look here on page 6. Or here. Same file. Once it downloads, drag it into ~/Library/Mail/Bundles. If there is already a GPGMail.mailbundle there, remove it and drop the new one in place.

Fourth, open Mail.

Fifth, be happy. And check out Cyanide and Happiness. It’s REALLY funny. I laughed my ass off and sewed it to a chair.

/cs

So, I needed a flash and a java plugin for Icecat, once I got it installed.

On Ubuntu, installing the Flash player is easy:

$ sudo apt-get install flashplugin-nonfree

What’s not so easy is getting Icecat to use it.

I installed Icecat in /usr/local/src, and symlinked “icecat” to the actual directory. So, my Icecat plugins are in /usr/local/src/icecat/plugins. Here’s how I linked the flash plugin in:

$ cd /usr/local/src/icecat/plugins
$ ln -s /usr/lib/flashplugin-nonfree/libflashplayer.so libflashplayer.so

I did this while Icecat was running, and immediately had flash capability. I confirmed by typing “about:plugins” into the URL box.

For the Java plugin, I downloaded j2se 1.4 (which is EoL’d, by the way!!) from here:

http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4.2/index.jsp

In much the same fashion, I cd’d to /usr/local/src, and moved the binary there. I ran this:

$ sudo sh j2re-1_4_2_18-linux-i586.bin

to extract the files. Then I ran the following commands:

$ sudo ln -s j2re1.4.2_18 java
$ cd /usr/local/src/icecat/plugins/
$ sudo ln -s /usr/local/src/java/plugin/i386/ns610-gcc32/libjavaplugin_oji.so libjavaplugin_oji.so

Keep in mind that this is for my previous icecat install.  For firefox, the plugin will go in /usr/lib/firefox-3.0/plugins, and for Iceweasel on Debian, it will go in /usr/lib/iceweasel/plugins.

This was also done while Icecat was running, without issue. Now, I can surf Hulu and YouTube and play java applet games at work! Shh, don’t tell!

/cs

The Digital Revolution is at hand. Why is it that my printer hasn’t been told yet?

continue reading…