Firefox Find Highlight Color

The default highlighting color of Find text  is difficult to catch quickly against a colored   background. To change it edit or add a setting to about:config to your preffered color:  

ui.textSelectBackgroundAttention

PICkit2 bring-up

Finally dusted off the Microchip PICkit2 microcontroller programmer and debugger. Plugged it in, downloaded the latest PICkit 2 software, installed and tried to run with Wine. OK, what was I expecting?

There's a somewhat newer un*x command line interface, pk2cmd, that has this encouraging note from Microchip:

    Microchip Technology Inc. does not provide support for this Linux and Mac OS software, which is provided “as is.” See included Readme files for more information.

I downloaded the executable version. I put the executable in /usr/local/bin and the device data file in /usr/share/pk2 as suggested but balked at adding the latter directory to my PATH. The -B option successfully designates this path from the command line but the PICkit could not be found on the USB port.

I grabbed the source and tried to build after installing the required libusb-1.0-0-dev package. Or so I thought. After a bit of struggle it turns out that libusb++-dev is the required package. Also, this package gets installed in /usr and not /usr/local so the Makefile symbol LIBUSB needs to be changed to /usr.

Suprise. I go to bed early tonight.

Installing Eagle on 64-bit Linux Mint 13

After installation, trying to run eagle fails:

eagle-lin-6.3.0.run: 108: [...]eagle-lin-6.3.0.run: eagle: not found 

I found  good help at "Install Cadsoft Eagle 6.0.0/6.1.0/6.2.0 on 64bit GNU/Linux" In my case I just needed to install the missing 32-bit packages:

sudo apt-get install lib32asound2 lib32gcc1 lib32ncurses5 lib32stdc++6

lib32z1 libc6-i386 ia32-libs

Hostname

Problem: sudo unable to resolve host ... errors

When changing the name of the host by editing /etc/hostname remember to also change the localhost entry in /etc/hosts.

For example, if the new host name is "this-box" then /etc/hosts should include these lines:

127.0.0.1 localhost
127.0.1.1 this-box

Firefox Auto-Update Control

From Firefox 2 Tweak Guide

app.update.enabled (Boolean). Setting this option to true enables Firefox to check at regular intervals for updated versions of Firefox. Of late the main Firefox releases have been due to security issues and as such it would be recommended to leave this set to true. If you don’t require this functionality for some reason, set this to false. Note – This is the same as selecting the Automatically check for updates to - Firefox option in the Advanced, Update tab.

app.update.interval (Integer). The value entered here specifies the amount of time, in seconds, that Firefox waits before checking for updates. The default being 86400, aka 1 day. Of late the main Firefox releases have been due to security issues and as such it would be wise to leave this at the default to ensure you get notified of such updates ASAP.

app.update.auto (Boolean). When set to true (default) this enables Firefox to automatically download and install detected updates. The degree to which updates are installed automatically is determined by app.update.mode. Setting this to false allows you to determine the action to be taken when an update is available, i.e. install or don’t install. This is recommended where you want to have control over changes to Firefox, e.g. you may prefer to want on installing updates to ensure no unmentioned compatibility problems arise.

Setting this to false disables the automatic download and installation of detected updates. Note – Firefox can still check for updates regardless of whether this is set to true or false. This is the same as selecting the When updates to Firefox are found – Ask me what I want to do option in the Option menu’s Advanced, Update tab.

app.update.mode (Integer). This setting sets how the Automatic Updates features handles updates available for Firefox when app.update.auto is set to true. 2 options are available (Note - This is the same as the When updates to Firefox are found option in the Advanced, Update tab);

0. Selecting this option enables Firefox to automatically download and install any available updates. This is recommended for hassle-free Firefox maintenance and will ensure the latest security and other updates are installed when released.

1. This option specifies that Firefox prompts you where a Firefox update available will break compatibility with any installed Extensions/Themes. In such cases you may wish to wait for a compatible Extension/Theme to be released, or to install the update regardless.

browser.search.update (Boolean). Setting this option to true (Default) enables checking for updated version of installed Search plugins. Set this to false to disable such checks. Note – This is the same as selecting the Automatically check for updates to – Search Engines option in the Advanced, Update tab.

extensions.update.enabled (Boolean). Setting this to true enables checking for updated version of the Extensions/Themes. Set this to false disables such checks, which isn’t recommended. Note – This is the same as selecting the Automatically check for updates to – Installed Add-ons option in the Advanced, Update tab.

extensions.update.interval (Integer). The value entered here specifies the amount of time, in seconds, that Firefox waits before checking for updates to installed Extensions and Themes. The default is 86400 (1 day).