Continuing my frustration with changing my password on this one Linux system, I tried to be clever. So I logged in as root, then used:

passwd accountname

to force set the password. So much to my surprise, when I tried that, and I saw this response:

I have sold my Apple MacBook Pro today, and since my order for the new one is still more than a month away I'll have to sell my soul for a little while to the dark side - Asus A7S.

My password on a Linux server was recently reset by the authorities that be, and the secure thing to do is naturally to immediately change your password upon logging in, to enhance privacy and security of the account. So much to my surprise did I encounter this response from the system:

-bash-2.05b$ passwd
Changing password for user waldo.
Changing password for waldo
(current) UNIX password:
You must wait longer to change your password
passwd: Authentication token manipulation error

So much for this company and their security policies. It sucks!

I have been developing a couple of sites now using the Drupal CMS. It works great on Mac OS X, but there is one challenging aspect when trying to get the image manipulation functionality to work, as this needs the GD library but Apache as it is distributed with Mac OS X Leopard does not include that library. Most sites will tell you how to compile the GD library, however you will find for a mysterious reason your GD support will be FALSE. This article explains why and how to fix it. The reason it breaks - and it breaks only on Core 2 Duo MacBook's and Intel Xeon Mac Pro's - is because these operating systems are using the 64-bit version of Apache. So your compiler flags must be adjusted. So the steps are:

1. Download libjpeg, extract and run:
2. MACOSX_DEPLOYMENT_TARGET=10.5 CFLAGS="-arch ppc -arch ppc64 -arch i386 -arch x86_64 -g -Os -pipe -no-cpp-precomp" CCFLAGS="-arch ppc -arch ppc64 -arch i386 -arch x86_64 -g -Os -pipe" CXXFLAGS="-arch ppc -arch ppc64 -arch i386 -arch x86_64 -g -Os -pipe" LDFLAGS="-arch ppc -arch ppc64 -arch i386 -arch x86_64 -bindatload" ./configure --enable-shared
3. then the normal make and make install
4. Download PHP 5.2.4 source, extract, change directory to ext/gd and run:
5. MACOSX_DEPLOYMENT_TARGET=10.5 CFLAGS="-arch ppc -arch ppc64 -arch i386 -arch x86_64 -g -Os -pipe -no-cpp-precomp" CCFLAGS="-arch ppc -arch ppc64 -arch i386 -arch x86_64 -g -Os -pipe" CXXFLAGS="-arch ppc -arch ppc64 -arch i386 -arch x86_64 -g -Os -pipe" LDFLAGS="-arch ppc -arch ppc64 -arch i386 -arch x86_64 -bindatload" ./configure --with-zlib-dir=/usr --with-jpeg-dir=/usr/local/lib --with-png-dir=/usr/X11R6 --with-freetype-dir=/usr/X11R6 --with-xpm-dir=/usr/X11R6 --with-gd
6. then the normal make and make install
7. Add extension=gd.so to your php.ini file.
8. Comment out the extension_dir = "./" like in php.ini
9. Enable the php5_module in apache2's configuration (make sure you use /etc/apache2/http.conf as the other file located at /etc/httpd/httpd.conf is for an older version of Apache.)
10. Should be all done now.

I am not a fan of watching movie clips, but these are really cool.