Linux Commands

I've known for some time that it's possible to embed an image into CSS (useful for greasemonkey scripts), using a format like so:

...where [mimetype] is the mime type of your data (eg, image/png).

It's eluded me until now how exactly to get at the [data] bit of this equation. This is simply the base64 encoded string of the actual bytes of the file, which you can get like so:

This will spit a bunch of garbage to your screen, which you copy and paste into the [data] placeholder.

Choosing an alternative

...where <name> is the name of a symlink in /etc/alternatives. Some of the ones I've used:

You are then prompted to select among the various alternatives available. If the desired alternative is not listed, it will have to be installed.

Installing a new editor

wtf is vim.tiny??