As usual, you can download the script here. You should delete the old version by hand before installing this one, because I’ve updated the namespace to reflect my own site instead of Jon Udell’s (finally!).

If you don’t understand what this is all about, check my earlier post on the subject. (And if you don’t live in San Francisco it probably won’t be much use to you anyway. Try a Google search for a similar script that works with libraries in your area.)

Notes: These torrent files do not contain the OS itself. You will need a BitTorrent client to download the actual disc images, and you may also need blank CD-R media to burn them.

If you have a regular Pentium-type system, you should probably choose the i386 option. Only choose amd64 if you know you have either an AMD or Intel 64-bit chip (and you’re sure you want to use the 64-bit version of the OS).

Most people will probably want the desktop version; if you don’t intend to use Ubuntu primarily to run a Web server or some other “back office” purpose, you don’t need to download the server disc at all. You can still install a personal Web server (or any other software) on the desktop version.

(UPDATE 1 May, 2008) - Now that the initial rush has quieted down, I’ve replaced the links listed here with links back to the torrents on the official Ubuntu site. You can see still further download options on the Ubuntu 8.04 release page.)

Here are the links:

• Ubuntu 8.04 Desktop/i386
• Ubuntu 8.04 Server/i386
• Ubuntu 8.04 Desktop/amd64
• Ubuntu 8.04 Server/amd64

If you want to know more about this script and its history, you can check my earlier post on the subject.

If you just want to dive in and start searching for library books via Amazon, you can download the latest script here. (Note that you must have the GreaseMonkey extension for Firefox installed for this to work.)

It occurred to me this afternoon that it might be nice to have a native Ubuntu Linux partition running on my main Windows Vista machine. “Should be easy,” I thought. So I whipped out my trusty Feisty Fawn CD, resized my Vista partition with GParted, and proceeded to install Linux.

Big mistake.

The installation itself went fine and Linux started right up. The problem came when I tried to boot back over into Windows Vista. In a nutshell, it wouldn’t. I’d get the green “Knight Rider” screen, but then the system would switch to a black screen and everything seemed to grind to a halt.

The problem got worse from there. Supposedly there’s a Startup Repair feature on the Vista install DVD. Unfortunately, I was never able to look for it. Booting from the DVD only got me as far as the same black screen.

Some Web searches revealed that Vista apparently hates it when you muck with your partition tables using older tools. This goes not just for Linux, but Partition Magic and the like as well. Just about any tampering with the drive after Vista has been installed results in a system that cannot boot Vista.

(This is yet one more reason why many of us ask why on Earth we installed the stupid thing in the first place; but I digress.)

Luckily I wasn’t hosed yet. As I said, I had a working Ubuntu partition on my drive now. Fortunately there are tools under Linux that can fix this very problem.

The package you want to look for is called ntfsprogs. It’s not installed by default with Ubuntu, but it’s available from the official package repositories. You can download it using Synaptic or do a “sudo apt-get install ntfsprogs” from the command line. It’s available for most other distros as well, but I’ll leave it to you to figure out how to get it. (Hint: You can start with the project homepage at http://linux-ntfs.org.) The important thing is to make sure you have the latest version (1.13.1 as of this writing).

Once you have ntfsprogs installed, the rest should be easy. Assuming you know the name of the partition that’s having the problem (/dev/sda1 on my Ubuntu system), you simply open a terminal window, unmount the partition in question, and type “sudo ntfsfix partitionname“. It should fix the problems with the partition table in just a few seconds.

Once ntfsfix works its magic, reboot into Windows Vista. Windows should automatically force a chkdsk process. When that completes, you should be able to dual boot between Vista and Linux to your heart’s content.

Jon originally wrote the script for the libraries in his hometown of Keene, New Hampshire, but there are only so many different library catalog systems in use. The script is adaptable to any of them, and lots of folks have modified it to work with the systems in their own communities. I never found a good version for San Francisco, though, so I spent some time working with Jon’s latest code to get it working. It needed just a couple of tweaks.

You can click on the image below to see what an Amazon page might look like with the script installed:

To get the script working, you need to install the latest version of the Greasemonkey add-on for Firefox. This is the engine that runs the script automatically whenever you load an Amazon page. With Greasemonkey installed, you should be able to click the following link to automatically install the LibraryLookup script for San Francisco public libraries. It should begin working immediately.

The script isn’t perfect. It doesn’t sort the due dates on checked-out copies of books, for example, so you’re not always given the earliest date that a copy of a book will be back on a shelf. The SFPL’s system also doesn’t display every branch that has a copy of the book, only the ones it deems “most relevant” (which seem to be more alphabetical than anything else). And it can occasionally be a little sluggish. But, in general, this system gives you a good idea as to whether a given book is in the library system and is readily available for check-out. Take it for a spin and let me know if it’s useful to you.

UPDATE (2 April 2008): Version 1.2 uses a more complex query, which should return results for all of the branch libaries (instead of just the first few).

UPDATE (1 May 2008): Version 1.3 should now work with Firefox versions 2 and 3.

*The latest is that Jon claims to have gotten his script working with Internet Explorer, instead of just Firefox, but I can’t vouch for that. Read his blog post on the subject and see if you can get it working, if IE is your browser of choice.