The HST is now law here, at least for the present time. For selling things on the web, and setting up your tax rates, to be current with July 1 2010 here is what needs to be set up to tax products in shopping carts:

• GST Only: 5%
  • Alberta
  • Quebec
  • Manitoba
  • Saskatchewan
  • Prince Edward Island
  • Nunavut
  • Yukon Territories
  • Northwest Territories
• HST 12%
  • British Columbia
• HST 13%
  • Ontario
  • New Brunswick
  • Newfoundland
• HST 15%
  • Nova Scotia

From what I have learned, you charge the buyer the tax rate relevant to their local. You may be in BC but you charge them HST 15% because they live in Nova Scotia.

Disclaimer:  I am not a fan of taxes. Just trying to help fellow developers out.

A simple tool for grepping without seeing all those svn files:

#!/bin/bash
# run this script with chmod 755 permissions.
# modified grep script
#

grep $1 $2 * | grep -v “\.svn” | less

screen
Got a shell connection to a dodgy host that keeps giving you the boot? after you login, run screen:
#screen -DD -R

You will still get booted, but at least you can get right back to where you were when you reconnect by replaying the above command.

tar
good old tape archive.
To extract:
#tar -xvvf filename.tar.gz
To archive:
# tar -czvf tarballname.tar.gz directory

wget
use wget to grab that tarball directly, for when you are grabbing such things off sourceforge or wherever.
# wget http://domain.com/pathtofile.tar.gz