MozRepl is broken in Firefox 20 but there is a patch

I use the MozRepl Firefox add-on a lot but it stopped working with Firefox 20. But there is an updated version available. More info with the patch here.

Diablo 1 strategy guides

I decided to play some with Diablo 1 again. Here are some useful strategy guides:

• Freshman Diablo (list of guides)
• warrior strategy – Diablo – GameSpot Forums
• level up strategy
• Diablo 1 strategy guide
• Diablo
• Wolfslayer’s warrior guide

Troubleshooting
Under Windows 7 I had some problems with Diablo 1: the colors looked strange. The fix is very simple: just kill the process explorer.exe and Diablo works fine. Here is a batch script for launching the game correctly:

@echo off
taskkill /f /im explorer.exe
diablo.exe
pause
start explorer.exe
exit

Install Ksplice

“Ksplice is an update service that automatically applies patches to the Linux kernel without requiring a reboot of the computer. This way you can keep your system up to date and secure without losing precious uptime.“

Visit this page for a step by step install guide.

Notes:

You will have to ask an access key in e-mail (free).

For Ubuntu 10.10, you’ll have to add these lines to software sources:

deb http://www.ksplice.com/apt maverick ksplice
deb-src http://www.ksplice.com/apt maverick ksplice

Patch to Google Translate https pages

Problem

When you want to translate a page with Google Translate that uses the HTTPS protocol, you will get an error. Translation only works with HTTP addresses. Here is how to reproduce the problem:

• We will use https://ubuntulife.wordpress.com/ as our test subject (Spanish site).
• Visit Google Translate.
• Paste “https://ubuntulife.wordpress.com” (without quotes) in the text area.
• In the dropdown list next to “From:”, select “Detect language”.
• Click on the button Translate.

You will get a beautiful “Sorry, this URL is invalid” error.

Explanation:

This a known bug on the side of Google but they don’t rush to correct it. In the address bar you have the string “http://translate.google.com/translate?js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&layout=2&eotf=1&sl=auto&tl=en&u=https%3A%2F%2Fubuntulife.wordpress.com%2F”. Notice that the address to be translated begins with https. In the upper frame, Google Translate transforms this address to “http://ubuntulife.wordpress.com:443/”, i.e. port 443 is added automatically.

Update (20110211): Google has a clarification. In this thread, Google guy Josh says the following: “Currently our webpage translation service will not translate secure https pages. This is because such pages often have secure content, that you wouldn’t want to send over the wire plain text to Google Translate.” That is, they know about this problem but they don’t have a good solution.

Manual workaround #1:
Remove the port “:443″ from the Google Translate textfield and press the button Translate.

Manual workaround #2:
In the address bar, locate the string https and change it to http. Then press Enter to reload the page. The port “443″ will also disappear.

Workaround for the lazy ones

Let’s use a simple bookmarklet that implements the manual method #2:

javascript:
var l = document.location;
var h = l.href;
var https = encodeURIComponent('https://');   // https%3A%2F%2F
var http = encodeURIComponent('http://');   // http%3A%2F%2F
l.href = h.replace(https, http);
void(1);

Installation:
Open this page in a new tab. There, you will find a link “ReTr” (re-translate). Drag and drop that link to the bookmark bar.

Usage:
Once the ReTr (re-translate) bookmarklet is installed, try to translate an HTTPS page. When you get the error message, just click on the ReTr bookmarklet and the page should be translated correctly.

Translate with Flagfox

Flagfox is a Firefox add-on that can “display a country flag depicting the location of the current website’s server and provides a multitude of tools such as site safety checks, whois, translation, similar sites, validation, URL shortening, and more…“

How to translate a page with Flagfox: right click on the country flag in the address bar -> select Google Translate. You will get an error message with HTTPS pages, but you can correct it with the previously mentioned “ReTr” bookmarklet.