Vim syntax highlighting on Ubuntu

To get vim syntax highlighting:

First, make sure you have vim installed in addition to plain old vi.

sudo apt-get install vim


Then, create a vimrc dot file.

vim ~/.vimrc


In that file, add the following:

:syntax on


Thats it! Next time you edit a file in vim, you should have syntax highlighting.

Pidgin (and Adium) not connecting to Yahoo

OK, I entered a phase where my yahoo login started failing in Pidgin with Ubuntu. I first went in through my.yahoo.com and reactivated my account. It turns out that yahoo turns off your account if you don't login for a few years. =)

After that, it was a problem with the underlying libraries underneath both Pidgin and Adium. On Mac, I updated to the latest version of Adium (1.3.5) and that fixed it.

On ubuntu, it turns out that ubuntu won't update to new versions unless their is a security problem. In order to get functional enhancements, you need to upgrade using pidgin's instructions here:
http://www.pidgin.im/download/ubuntu/

After you enter those two commands, start update manager and you should be able to upgrade pidgin.