read-only document after openoffice.org crash

•July 9, 2009 • Leave a Comment

After a crash of OpenOffice.org, the document I was working on would only be opened read-only. After an ls -a, I found out there was a hidden file in the same folder as the document, named .~lock.<document name>#. After deleting this file, the document opened normally again

blogging

•July 7, 2009 • Leave a Comment

Read an article on Linux.com about drivel (what an attractive name), and decided to see the SOTA on blogging outside the browser…

  • Drivel hasn’t been updated since 06.08.2006, that’s almost 3 years now
  • Gnome-blog hasn’t been updated since 12.01.2005, more than 4 years ago
  • BloGTK is at v1.1 since 18.01.2005
  • KBlogger seems to have a new version per year, with 1.0alpha3 released on 25.02.2009, but no stable release since.
  • Charm (or ljCharm) is active, but it’s console-based

So, unless I missed something, I found no valid alternatives to blogging from a browser window…

yelp

•July 4, 2009 • Leave a Comment

When you click help (or press F1) in evince, the command that the system runs is:

yelp /usr/share/gnome/help/evince/C/evince.xml

thunderbird: saved searches

•July 1, 2009 • Leave a Comment

To filter the type of messages you view, create a saved search (File-New-Saved Search). For example, you can create a “custom view” (like a virtual folder) with only the starred messages of your inbox in it.

Reference: http://kb.mozillazine.org/Saved_Search

google maps in firefox searchbar

•June 21, 2009 • Leave a Comment

Judd Antin has created a Google Maps search plugin for Firefox. Just download those two files (.src and .png) and put them in your firefox profile (under ~/.mozilla/firefox in Linux) into the “searchplugins” folder…

Mac4Lin

•June 19, 2009 • 1 Comment

I had some fun today changing the looks of my Jaunty Jackalope into a Leopard:

Note1: to install Mac4Lin, decompress and run the script…

Note2: Mac4Lin changes the position of the titlebar buttons to match that of MacOS, but I found it hard to get used to. The command to correct this is:

gconftool-2 --set /apps/metacity/general/button_layout --type string "menu:minimize,maximize,close"

Note3: Mac4Lin also changes the Gnome menu icon, from the Ubuntu (”circle”) icon to the Gnome (”foot”) icon. To change it back, do the following:

  1. Run gconf-editor, go to /apps/panel/objects/
  2. Find the object where object_type == menu-object (in my case, it was object_0)
  3. Check “use_custom_icon”, and then set “custom_icon” to /usr/share/icons/Human/scalable/places/distributor-logo.svg
  4. Restart the panel with killall gnome-panel

Credit for Note3: http://binarypirate.blogspot.com/2007/08/change-gnome-menu-icon.html

txt2pdf

•June 12, 2009 • Leave a Comment

a2ps <test.txt> -o – | ps2pdf – <test.pdf>

switch spell plugin for pidgin

•June 8, 2009 • Leave a Comment

This is another feature I’ve been looking for for ages: switch spell checking dictionaries in Pidgin. I now discovered bug #246905, which led me to mbudde’s ppa.

AAO w/ slow Intel SSD

•June 7, 2009 • Leave a Comment

You can see this in the BIOS screen: if it’s Samsung, it’s fast, if it’s Intel, it’s slow

Some have replaced it with a 266x or 300x CF, but you need to take it apart…

checkgmail sound

•June 6, 2009 • Leave a Comment

command to execute on new email:

/usr/bin/mplayer /usr/share/sounds/ubuntu/stereo/dialog-question.wav