how to point pdflatex at a non-packaged install of beamer?

[Robert P. J. Day]

  trying to make a long story short, i want to use the "beamer" to
write a slide presentation in tex, then convert to pdf.  i know there
is a latex-beamer package (version 3.07), and it's easy enough to
install it, write a simple tex file, then use pdflatex to convert it
to pdf.

  however, there is a newer version of beamer (3.10) that i can't find
as a ubuntu package but i'd rather use that.  now i just need a way to
tell pdflatex that, when i run invoke it against a beamer tex file, i
want it to use the untarred 3.10 beamer files rather than the 3.07
files that are installed under /usr/share/texmf/tex/latex.

  i'm guessing that, when i run pdflatex and have a tex file that
starts with

  \documentclass{beamer}

that command, by default, looks in that /usr/share/... directory.  but
i just don't see a pdflatex option that tells it to look elsewhere.
help?

rday

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Robert P. J. Day                                 Ottawa, Ontario, CANADA
                        http://crashcourse.ca

Twitter:                                       http://twitter.com/rpjday
LinkedIn:                               http://ca.linkedin.com/in/rpjday
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