Debian tor + privoxy

$ cat /usr/share/doc/tor/README.privoxy
Tor only provides TCP layer anonymity.  It does not do any protocol
cleaning, so if you are going to browse the web you still give away a
lot of information to servers.

The privoxy package provides a privacy enhancing HTTP proxy, which
is good at filtering headers, cookies, and much more.  To view the
description of the Debian privoxy package just run "apt-cache show
privoxy".  Please refer to the privoxy documentation for more details.

In order to use privoxy over tor, add the following line to your
privoxy configuration file:
        forward-socks4a / localhost:9050 .
(the dot is important)

Then configure your browser to use privoxy as its HTTP proxy.

--
Peter Palfrader , Tue, 17 Feb 2004 02:15:36 +0100

How to fix apt key problems

gpg --keyserver hkp://wwwkeys.eu.pgp.net --recv-keys 07DC563D1F41B907
sudo gpg --armor --export 07DC563D1F41B907 | sudo apt-key add -

Replace 07DC563D1F41B907 part with the part apt is complaining about.

How to write en dash

dash:    -
en dash: –
em dash: —

Prefer en dash with space to the longer em dash, because that's what most publishers do.

To write en dash in xorg, hit the following keys:
* Ctrl-Shift-u
* 2013
* enter

Tar + SSH

This would be the best way to recursively copy a directory over SSH.

tar cf - dir/ | ssh host.com tar xf -

Steps to make encfs work on Debian GNU/Linux

Compile or install a kernel with support for FUSE (found in `make menuconfig` under Filesystems).

sudo apt-get install fuse-utils
sudo vigr && sudo vigr -s # add yourself to the fuse group
su - `whoamì` # alternatively you can logout and login again
              # to update your group
mkdir $HOME/.crypt $HOME/crypt
encfs $HOME/.crypt $HOME/crypt

Answer the questions (pass phrase etc), go with default settings in most cases.

DONE!

NTFS on Linux

Use ntfs-3g to get good support for read/write on NTFS. FUSE is required.

Out Amarok, In Songbord

I've been looking for a replacement for Amarok. I don't like the idea of depending on KDE software unless I really need to.

I've settled for the really nice Songbird, which has a very active development team (blog) and is based on Mozilla (xulrunner). For me, it's perfect. I have a fairly large music library and it's nice to once again have the ability to discover it. One big playlist is actually a huge advantage compared to Amarok's design where your playlist consists only of a small, manually selected subset of your music collection. I know there are dynamic playlists in Amarok and blah, blah, but those features just didn't cut it for me. Plus it's nice to see there are quite a few plugins for Songbird.

It's not faster than Amarok but it's not slower either. There are a few bugs, most notably one regarding handling of symlinks in watch directory. I guess it'll be fixed in due time.

Unfortunately, it's not packaged for Debian GNU/Linux yet. You can still download it and run it from your home directory though. I urge you to try it out!

Get songbird.