Linux

Why some scripts in the cron.hourly directory do not become executed

Because I have a very basic mp3 player that cannot play back anything but ISO-standard mp3s, I often need to re-encode podcasts which my podcast-catcher downloads (I use Amarok). I created bash scripts to re-encode all downloaded mp3s and to generate a new RSS feed based on the directory content where the re-encoded mp3s get stored. However, the scripts did not get executed every hour and the reason was their naming ("podacst_downsampling.sh").

Binhexed attachments and Mozilla (hexbin, macutils)

OK, today I tried to open the final version of the manuscript for Cell & Tissue Research. My boss sent it to me as an e-mail attachment some 2 weeks ago. I use Mozilla Mail and saved the attachment. Open Office didn't manage to open it. Obviously my boss uses still Macintosh binhex encoding to attach files to his e-mail instead of MIME to make himself as incompatible to the rest of the world as possible. There is luckily the command line utility hexbin in Linux, which converts the binhexed file into some readable stuff:

hexbin -3 Lymphangio_review_CTR.doc

How do I run the Gene Construction Kit under Linux?

There are only a few Mac or Windows programs that don't have a good equivalent on Linux. One of these few is the Gene Construction Kit (GCK) from Textco. GCK is available for both Windows and Mac. So it should be possible to run it on an i86-Linux machine using wine (a sort of emulator). I tried that and failed (I didn't try really hard). However, probably any Windows program can be run under Linux using VMware. Unfortunately VMware is commerical and expensive (but there is a fully functional time-limited demo).

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