If your running Ubuntu or some other Linux variant, and ClearType fonts like Calibri or Cambria look jagged and thin (or just ugly) in Open/LibreOffice, there is a fix. The problem is that for small font sizes, TrueType fonts use bitmaps instead of antialiasing, which just don’t look particularly good. To stop this from happening, create a file in your home folder called .fonts.conf (if it doesn’t already exist) and put this in it:

<match target=”font” >
<edit name=”embeddedbitmap” mode=”assign”>
<bool>false</bool>
</edit>
</match>

Save it, and then log out and log back in again. Your fonts should look great now.

I was getting this error when trying to access a remote database from a website: “Lost connection to MySQL server at ‘reading initial communication packet’, system error: 111″

It turned out that for whatever reason, MySQL did not like using a different port forwarded to 3306.  I guess you need to change the port in my.cnf and on your firewall.

If you’re noticing that Google Reader seems to load or scroll slowly, try disabling your ad-blocker (like AdBlock or AdThwart).