Min blog

Author: tha swoopy

  • In the USA

    Hey everybody. Im currently on my study trip to the US, so no writing will be done untill i get home 😉

    Have fun meanwhile peeps.Be back in around 1½ weeks.

  • Ski trip time..

    Off to my ski trip.. be back in 10 days 😀

  • gDesklets – widgets for linux

    Okay this time i want to share how to install, setup and use gDesklets for linux. More specifically as i always do using Ubuntu Linux. Its a small easy guide and there isn’t a lot too it, so lets get started:

    Installation

    First we, of course, need to get gDesklets installed. Right now i am writing from Ubuntu Feisty Fawn Herd 5, and gDesklets was already installed. But should you be using an earlier version of Ubuntu just open up a terminal (applications -> accessories -> terminal) and type in the following command:

    sudo apt-get install gdesklets

    It should prompt for your admin password, and after you enter it gDesklets will install. Expected more ? Well thats it 😉

    Configuration

    There is not alot to configure. We want gDesklets to startup everytime with gnome. So under System -> Preferences -> Session we will find a way to make gDesklets startup automatically. Under ‘Startup Programs’ we click ‘new’ and both under name, and command enter ‘gdesklets’.
    Now gDesklets will start automatically with you gnome. Since we are not a big fan of restarting just to see what we just installed we want to boot up the gDesklets deamon right away. Open up the terminal again and type:

    gdesklets &

    Now the gdesklets icon should pop up in your system tray in the upper right hand corner.

    desklets tray icon

    Now you can right-click the icon and either select manage desklets or configuration. There is not a big deal to configure, so we are going to jump straight to ‘manage desklets’.

    Managing desklets

    In the manage desklets dialog you can select various desklets to add to your desktop. Each desklet can be individually configured by right clicking it. Just to get you started we will add one of my favorite desklets, a simple countdown timer.

    gDesklets main windows

    Under the category ‘Misc/Utilities’ you will find ‘Countdown2’. simply double-click it, and move your cursor to the desktop. You will see the desklet following your cursor, and you can click again to drop it.

    Now you have your first desklet running, and it will start automatically upon next reboot.

    Finally a note about my own personal experience with desklets. They are awesome 😉 But not without grief. Some desklets wont work, some will only work with limited functionality ect. But even with the most basic desklets working they are still nice to have lying around. I especially use my countdown a lot for knowing how long too upcoming deadlines.

    Enjoy the world of linux with desklets 😀

  • Episodic content ? 😉

    Okay i give up for now on the video making. Takes an entire day to make one or two videos, and for the most part the linux videos i feel personally doesnt explain stuff as well as some of the numerous great articles on the topic.

    Also the linux distros are changing alot these days it seems so i feel its not worth the effort in making videos, and i simply dont have the time.

    Instead the articles section will be populated by various tips, tricks, hints and other goodies i find interesting. If anybody has any suggestions to content, or mini-articles on how they fixed a given problem give me a shout. I will gladly post it here, so that others might have benefit from your experience 😀

  • 1 Month later

    Well dont you know time flies.

    Its been exactly one month since the last post, and i figured i owed at least an update with the upcomming posting. Im currently setting up for recording two new videos on Linux. One will be introduction to the command line interface (CLI) and the other a basic introduction to the filesystem structure. A possible bonus could be about installing Beryl, but i want this to have maximum effect so i need to record that under Linux and i have not setup for that yet.

    Other than that im working frantically hard (or hardly working ?) to get money together for my upcomming ski-trip in couple of weeks time (prey for snow everybody) and also for my following study-trip to the US. Yep im going across the sea to make things shaky 😀

    Untill next post behave and take care 😉

  • VPN and Network Manager in Ubuntu

    Today i want to share my little knowledge about vpn connections using NetworkManager.

    Network Manager in case you dont already know is an amazing piece of software for your linux distro allowing easy hazzle free networking when switching to wireless network environments.
    An example would be the windows wireless list were its possible to see all the wireless networks found and click to access a specific one. Network Manager works much the same way.

    However one functionality that i know some people use, amongst others myself, is VPN connection. Its available for Network Manager through a plug in, and i can say it works great. Though there are a few quirks that i have discovered through my use of it, and it can also be a little hard to get a hold of 🙁 Why i dont know, so to help out i have provided a download link at the end of this article.

    First off to enable the use of the VPN plugin install VPNC from synaptic. You can also use the terminal and install using this command:

    sudo apt-get install vpnc

    If you for some reason forget to install this you will risk Network Manager simply crashing / disappearing on you when you try to connect to a VPN network. I had this bug recently and didn’t realize it until later when i installed vpnc and it worked. I haven’t investigated whether or not this is a known bug in Network Manager yet but in any case a valid point to know.

    So now we have installed the necessary applications for the vpn plugin to function correctly. Download the .deb file provided at the end of the article and simply double click to install it. After install you might need to reboot network manager to get your vpn plugin showing up. Either reboot the old fashioned way, restart gnome or open the terminal and do the following:

    sudo killall NetworkManager

    sudo NetworkManager

    Now when you left-click your network manager icon you should get a menu item called “VPN Connections” at the bottom. Now all thats left is simply to add your vpn network details and you are ready to connect.
    I have personally found this to work easily and well on my university network, but different vpn networks might not be that easy. But most of this should be pretty much straight forward.

    I hope this helped some people and especially the need to have “vpnc” installed before trying to establish a vpn connection could prove useful. So go forth and connect to vpn networks all over the world my penguins!
    Class dismissed!

    Download Network Manager VPN plugin: (.deb) (.rar)
    PS: The version of Network Manager im currently using with this plugin is 0.6.3, so other versions might experience trouble.

  • january update

    Well been over two weeks since last post .. sorry.

    I had a spot of trouble with my hosting service, and still having some mail troubles there. Apparently they had a bunch of problems with the internet connection and a couple of servers. On top of that they moved me to a windows server (I liked my linux one better though) and apparently a bunch of things got messed up in the progress 🙁

    But on the bright side its working now, and only a few wrinkles left to iron out.

    Okay so what else is new ?! I have been busy with exams so of course i havent been making any content what so ever … feel bad about that but heck i have to prioritize. So i guess the few people who actually read this site will have to be patient, and im sure they are.
    My exams are finished in the end of the month and then hopefully i can get around to posting some of the content i have brewing…

    Untill next post, which will be a little while, keep the spirit alive !

  • Christmas update

    Hey everybody

    Been a busy christmas season, and as expected some inactivity due to .. well the hollidays.
    Well tomorrow it ends… a game review, a book review or two (if i can even write such a thing ;)) and who knows, perhaps a little round up of small tips i have been collecting.

    Ubuntu video tutorials will be comming next year which thankfully isnt that far away 😀

    Untill next post have a good holliday, and look forward to the new years celebration 😀

  • How To keep that in-box organized !

    This is the follow-up in the organizing your everyday life series. How to keep control of that pesky in-box filling up with e-mails.

    Get a spamfilter. Getting a spam filter, either by installing thirdparty filtering software, or using an e-mail client with a built in filter is a lifesaver. Most filters greatly reduce the number of spams you have to manually have to move to the trash folder. Most filters also allow you to “teach” it about the particulars of spam flowing your way. So over time the amount of spam should be greatly reduced.

    How does this help you.. well even if you are proficient in spotting spam mails it still takes time to find and remove them all. So even though it doesnt take a lot of time in itself its gonna amount to a big amount of wasted time just doing junk mail sorting. Why not let your computer do most of the work.

    I reccomend using Thunderbird for your e-mail client on windows, as personally i find the spam filter great! I get around 1-2 spam mails pr day at the most. Where it automatically sort away a large part of them. So far i have never had a false positive (legit mail, caught in spam filter).

    Make folders. Making folders outside the in-box is another great, but overlooked tip. Most people keep all their e-mail in the in-box. Why bother moving it they might think. The reasons for actually sorting are as follows:

    • Only new e-mails in the in-box
    • Easier to find old messages according to folders
    • pseudo to do list
    • archiving

    When you make your in-box exactly that you will only have new, unanswered mails in there. What i do is make a general archive folder for stuff i want to keep but that doesn’t have a specific category. Then i make several other folders for various topics and subjects i feel Im getting. Examples are a ‘jokes’, ‘important’, ‘client work’, ‘university’ and ‘work’.

    This allows me to have a virtual to do list in my in-box. I have only unanswered mails in the in-box and when I am done either replying or processing whatever a mail from the in-box contains i will move it accordingly (or simply delete it). This keeps the in-box clean and only filled with unprocessed mails.
    The final point was to archive mails, which generally allows you to faster locate mail according to folder topics. Example if i want to find the newest funny joke image my father sent me, i simply have to look in the ‘jokes’ folder. Furthermore i can keep my university stuff in a single folder.

    What i personally think makes people overuse the in-box is simply that they don’t believe they actually have any use for folders. Or that they overuse them when trying it out and make too many folders for themselves. Don’t make folders according to what people send to you, but rather instead of various topics the mails might fall under.

    Generalize the folders. ‘Archiving’ might be a perfect folder for simply keeping mails you don’t yet know what to do with. Perhaps a folder named ‘2005’ might be a great subfolder here. Making subfolders can make your e-mail archive even more organized should you ever need to walk through them.

    Finally don’t underestimate the search function of your mail client. Personally i try to keep my mails organized so i don’t have to use it, but if you frequently have to search for your mail using some folders might be a good idea, or perhaps rethinking the naming scheme of them 😀

    Hope this helps keep those in-boxes clean and a little more organized! 😀

  • Power up the terminal with Aliases !

    A little quick trick on how to add some nifty aliases for your terminal. What is an alias exactly. Well it’s another name for a specific command. A common alias e.g. could be to be able to type ‘dir’ (windows/DOS style) to list the directory content instead of ‘ls’. Then you make an alias saying that the ‘dir’ command should be the same as typing the ‘ls’ command.

    Now Ubuntu Linux comes with some of the common aliases already in your .bashrc file, but pr. default they are commented out. We simply need to uncomment them and also add our own extra ones if we want.

    gedit .bashrc

    Towards the bottom of the tile you should see a line like this:

    # some more ls aliases

    Uncomment the section below this line, by removing the ‘#’ at the beginning of each line. You should now be able to use these aliases. If you wish to add extra aliases just follow the same syntax as the ones already there and you should be able to quickly add your own.

    Personally i like to add an alias for the ‘cd ..’ command which allows me to also use ‘cd..’ without the space between ‘cd’ and ‘..’. An alias like that would like like this:

    alias cd..=’cd ..’

    There you have it.. how to add your own aliases to the terminal. If you don’t want to close the terminal for them to take effect, simply use the following command from your home directory to reload the .bashrc file.

    source .bashrc

    Enjoy the wonderful world of aliases 😉