Kmail opens hyperlinks in two browser tabs

I found the solution on the KDE community forums: Go to System Settings->Default Applications->Web Browser (not KMail settings) and remove the '%U' argument.

batch convert svg->pdf with Inkscape

for file in *.svg; do inkscape -z -f=$file -A=${file/.svg/.pdf}; done
In other words, RTFM ;)

Corrupted directory on NTFS partition

...which I hadn't done for 6 weeks (expect snarky comments from daWuzzzz below). Imagine my joy when Kubuntu came up with I/O errors trying to open my research data directory. Of course, it had to be the single most important directory on my computer, everything else on my NTFS partition was fine. And of course it had to happen at 2am. Windows wasn't more helpful and just displayed a 'corrupted directory' message. In retrospect, I suspect a damaged master file table. A quick summary of last night:

enabling Nepomuk/Strigi search eats up home directory space

A few days ago I decided to enable Krunner's desktop search/strigi implementation - strigi indexing was not enabled before.
It might have slowed down Medusa a bit, but the most noticeable feature was my 30GB home partition running constantly out of disk space.
File/directory size analysis with du -h --max-depth=2 | grep '^[5-9][0-9]\{2\}M\|[0-9]G' > listfile.txt and ls -lha | grep 'G' ~  found the culprit: a whopping 13 GB .xsession-errors file. This is a well-known problem, apparently Nepomuk/Soprano is pretty garrulous. 
First aid: delete the file and reboot. For a more permanent workaround, a poster in this discussion suggests linking .xsession-errors to /dev/null via an autostart shell script. As an alternative, I'd suggest adding ln -sf /dev/null /home/<yourusername>/.xsession-errors to your ~/.bashrc.
As an aside: for anyone puzzled by the redland/sesame backend debate, the current backend is virtuoso and supposed to be faster than any of the above.

openSuSE 11.4 on VMware Player Win

Since my Samsung P35 already choked on 11.3 and runs Kubuntu very nicely without hassle, but I still was curious about 11.4, I decided to install it in VMPlayer on my Windows 7 office machine.

Windows 7 SP1 is out…

… and I should know by now my MBR wouldn't survive it. Well, what do we have SuperGrub for? Still, there was too much trial and error involved in restoring it, so, for next time, here's my log on how to restore openSuSE's MBR on the ASUS u43jc after Windows wiped it.

openSuSE 11.4 update notes

As Kubuntu copes better with Medusa's hardware, SuSE isn't my productivity distro right now, so I decided to risk an online upgrade. I mainly followed the SBD instructions on http://en.opensuse.org/SDB:System_upgrade.

Attempting to sync an iPod touch 4G

How to live with an iPod Touch 4G and not too much Windows involvement...