To compile a C++ application using gtkmm in Code::Blocks, do the following steps:

1. Open Project > Build Options…
2. Select your project.
3. On the Compiler settings tab, select Other options and add this to the field:
   `pkg-config gtkmm-3.0 --cflags`
4. Select the Linker settings tab and type the following line in the Other linker options text area:
   `pkg-config gtkmm-3.0 --libs`

I have installed Ubuntu 11.10 on my laptop but I noticed that it drained a lot more of the battery than it should do. Apparently there are a couple of fixes to this:

• Tweaks To Extend The Battery Life Of Intel Linux Notebooks
• Linux Kernel Power Issue / Overheat Workaround

To add pcie_aspm=force, i915.i915_enable_rc6=1, i915.i915_enable_fbc=1 and i915.lvds_downclock=1 to GRUB, do the following steps:

1. Open the terminal and run: sudo gedit /etc/default/grub
2. Add:
   pcie_aspm=force i915.i915_enable_rc6=1 i915.i915_enable_fbc=1 i915.lvds_downclock=1
   to
   GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT=”",
   so it should look somewhat like:
   GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT=”quiet splash pcie_aspm=force i915.i915_enable_rc6=1 i915.i915_enable_fbc=1 i915.lvds_downclock=1″
3. Close gedit and save the document.
4. Now run the following line in the terminal to update GRUB:
   sudo grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg
5. After a restart of your computer the new settings should get activated.

When I the other day tried to set up Egit in Eclipse Indigo with Github I had major problems with guides not working. Two of the tutorials I tried where:

• http://wiki.eclipse.org/EGit/User_Guide
• http://www.vogella.de/articles/EGit/article.html

I got many errors and such… :/

But I found a really good post describing how to set it up in a current version of Eclipse:

2. In eclipse, configure the remote push
a. Window > Show View > Git > Git Repositories will add a repository explorer window.
b. In the repository window, select the repository and expand and right-click Remotes and choose Create Remote.
c. Copy the github repository URI from the github repository page and paste this in the URI box.
d. Select ssh as the protocol but then go back to the URI box and add “git+” at the beginning so it looks like this: git+ssh://git@github.com/UserName/ProjectName.git
e. In the Repository Path box, remove the leading slash
f. Hit next and cross your fingers. If your get “auth fail” restart eclipse and try step 5 again.
g. When you get past the authentication, in the next dialog select “master” for source ref, click “Add all branches spec” and “Finish”.

Now try a push to github. This worked for me but with all the fiddling around I’m not sure these instructions are perfect….

Link to the post: http://www.eclipse.org/forums/index.php/mv/msg/200890/648905/#msg_648905

Today I managed to install and configure software to make my computer automatically start and download torrents. So now my computer will by itself download episodes from series I have specified as soon as they are released. What you basically need (for my solution) is the torrent client Deluge, the application FlexGet and a RSS feed where the torrents are indexed.

Hereunder follow descriptions of what you have to do to get this working (on Arch Linux with Gnome, but most of the steps should work on any distribution. However some commands may differ and such).

Deluge

1. First, download Deluge from your Linux distribution’s repository, if you don’t already have it installed. On Arch Linux, type the following in the terminal: sudo pacman -Sy deluge
2. Open the Preferences window under the Edit menu in Deluge. Then navigate to the Interface tab and make sure that Classic Mode isn’t enabled, which I think it’s by default. You have to disable Classic Mode to be able to run the Deluge daemon, which is Deluge without the GUI, in the background.
3. Next time you start Deluge (I think) it will ask you to start the daemon to make Deluge able to run. Under Edit > Connection Manager in Deluge you can reopen this window.
4. Then you have to reopen the Preferences window, and under the Downloads tab choose where the torrents (the downloaded content) should be downloaded to.
5. You can also start the daemon by typing deluged in the terminal. More information about the daemon can be found here: http://dev.deluge-torrent.org/wiki/Faq#Daemon. To see if it’s running, type ps -A | grep deluged in the terminal.

FlexGet

1. Download and install FlexGet. There are installation instructions in their Wiki: http://flexget.com/wiki. However, if you are on Arch and have a wrapper for pacman and the AUR installed, like Yaourt, type the following in the terminal: yaourt -Sy flexget. (On Arch you probably will need to do some button smashing to install all dependences, since many of them can be found in the AUR too.)
2. When you have installed FlexGet, create the folder .flexget in your home folder and in it create a file called config.yml. Now you should read a bit on FlexGet’s wiki to learn how you should construct the config file. Especially read the Configuration page. Here is how (a part of) my config file looks like:

   feeds:
     tokyotosho:
       rss: http://www.tokyotosho.info/rss.php?filter=1&entries=450
       series:
         - Fate/Zero
       deluge: yes

   Note the last line: deluge: yes. It’s necessary for making Deluge start the torrents. Also note that you have to specify a RSS-feed where FlexGet should look for new torrents to download.

3. Now FlexGet should be able to check the RSS feed(s), find the series/content you want to download and make Deluge download them. To test run FlexGet, run flexget --test in the terminal. Of course you can run flexget --help to find more possible commands. But to do a regular check in the RSS feeds, download, and all that stuff, just run flexget. Note that you don’t have to be running Deluge to download the torrents, only deluged is needed.

Start deluged with Gnome

1. Open a terminal and run gnome-session-properties if you are on Gnome. In the window that pops up you should add an additional startup program – in this case deluged. Just type that in both the Name field and the Command field. If you are using another desktop environment you sadly have to figure out this step by yourself (Google).

Make FlexGet run once every hour automatically

FlexGet only checks the RSS feeds when you run flexget in the terminal. So what we want to do is to schedule the computer to run it once every hour.

1. Start with adding the following two lines to the .bashrc file in your home folder:

   EDITOR=nano
   export EDITOR

   This will make the next terminal application use the text editor nano instead of whatever alien editor it uses by default.

2. Close all terminal windows and open a new one to apply the change.
3. Run crontab -e in the terminal.
4. Add 0 * * * * flexget to the file, and then save and close it with Ctrl + Shift + X. You can find more schedule options here: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Crontab. Please don’t make it run once every minute or something crazy like that, since that would use a lot of the server’s bandwidth where your RSS feed is hosted.
5. To see everything you have scheduled, type crontab -l.

Done!

Now your computer should be able to automatically download torrents for you. I hope you found this guide helpful. If you have any wonders or problems, please leave a comment below, and maybe I can help you get it sorted out.

Yesterday at school I heard from a classmate that there is a new Youtube interface called Cosmic Panda which you are able to try out.

To activate it, you have to visit the following page:

• http://www.youtube.com/cosmicpanda

As I’m writing this, I have only watched a single video with this interface. But it looked pretty slick on that video. The profile pages have also been updated.

Check it out if you are interested. You can always deactivate it by visiting the page and pressing a button.

I also saw that they have a page dedicated to testing stuff:

• http://www.youtube.com/testtube

There is a really nice lightweight music player to Linux called DeaDBeeF, which can be found on the following link:

• http://deadbeef.sourceforge.net/

The appearance is in many ways very similar to the Windows music player Foobar2000. So if you like Foobar2000 on Windows, give DeaDBeeF a try. It also has many (preinstalled) plugins and features.

One of the features it has is the ability to show album art right in the playlist. To do this, do the following steps:

1. Right click the bar right over the playlist and add Album Art from the Add Column window.
2. Right click the bar again and choose Artist/Date/Album under Group by.
3. Done!
4. If you don’t want it to separate the playlist by artist. Choose Custom under the Group by menu instead, and type [%y] %b in the Format field.

On my laptop where I run Linux Mint 11 I have been using the window manager XMonad for a while. It’s a tiling window manager, and it’s the first time I’m using one of those. If you don’t know what a tiling window manager is, you can check out Wikipedia’s page on the subject:

• https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Tiling_window_manager

Or this video of somebody fiddling around with XMonad:

XMonad works very well with Gnome 2, and it doesn’t conflict with the Gnome 2 panel at the top of the monitor. Here is a screenshot of my dekstop (click on it to show it in full-size):

I like that you open, resize and change active window, and move windows between workspaces with only the keyboard. This means that you don’t have to use the trackpad for those tasks.

I think that using a tiling window manager works surprisingly well, considering that it’s not a commonly used type of window manager. Sometimes do windows look a bit strange when they are forced to fill the whole screen tho, but that’s not often.

I recommend you to check out XMonad if it sound interesting. On Mint it’s really easy to change back to regular Gnome if you don’t like it, just pick regular Gnome on the login screen.

Links:

• XMonad
• Guide on how to use XMonad

Yesterday (around 3-4 AM) I installed Linux Mint on my laptop (Toshiba R830). So now it has Windows 7, Arch and Mint. To enhance the awesomeness, I downloaded a Ghost in the Shell wallpaper and added a Linux Mint logo to it which I edited with a brush. All work was done in GIMP.

Ghost in the Shell - Linux Mint Wallpaper - 1920x1200

Ghost in the Shell - Linux Mint Wallpaper - 1920x1080

My Desktop

Almost a week ago I ordered my first laptop, which I’m mainly going to use in the school. It’s a 13,3″ Toshiba R830 and it arrived last Friday. I have already installed Arch Linux and Gnome 3 on it and I’m currently tweaking power saving settings.

Anyway, when I first tried to install the operating system I did it with the netinstall image, version 2010.05, from their website. However, it didn’t work since eth0 wasn’t found during the installation. (ifconfig found wlan0, but I don’t have wireless Internet at home.) Instead I downloaded the core image, chose during the installation to install from the CD (USB memory in my case) and ended up with a working OS – but still no Internet.

I did some searching on the Internet (on my phone) and found the suggestion to download a more recent image of Arch Linux, from this site:

• http://releng.archlinux.org/isos/

I downloaded the netinstall image with version number 2011.06.10 and that worked out great. Since my laptop is fairly new I suppose the hardware wasn’t fully supported in the earlier image. Maybe the kernel has been updated since then or something.

So if Arch Linux doesn’t find Internet, try to reinstall it with a more recent image from the link above.

Google has a pretty clumsy URL for searching with SSL, like Wikipedia. However, the encrypted version of Google Search is currently only in beta, so it may be the reason behind it. Anyway, here is the URL to it:

• https://encrypted.google.com/webhp?hl=en

To change to your country’s version, replace the last two letters en to something more fitting. In my case sv since I’m from Sweden.

With the Firefox add-on Add to Search Bar you should be able to add an entry for this version to your search bar. And as with all other search fields in Firefox, it’s possible to add a keyword for the search field by right clicking the field and pressing “Add a Keyword for this Search…”.

However, if you care about your privacy, don’t forget to check out DuckDuckGo. Click here to read my short introduction to the search engine.

It was about one month ago that I distro hopped from Linux Mint to Arch Linux. I still like Linux Mint – it’s easy to install, it’s stable and since it’s based on Ubuntu, which has a large user base, is it easy to get help and there are many applications available.

But I realised that it wasn’t a distribution that really fitted me. For every application that I wanted to install I had to open my browser and search for a repository containing the latest version available. And this eventually became a bit tedious. However, the official repository in Linux Mint (and Ubuntu) is awesome if you want stable and tested software. But if you are like me and want the latest and greatest right when it’s released, then it doesn’t really work. I suppose this is the disadvantage with a non-rolling distro, or the advantage depending of what kind of user you are.

So, I really like that Arch Linux is a rolling distro that adds updates to the repository as soon as they are available. If a software can’t be found in the official repository, maybe because it’s too niched or it’s only in alpha or beta version, it can in almost all cases be found in the AUR (Arch User Repository). In the AUR can everybody add softwares, that then become available for the rest of the community to download and install in a really easy way. It becomes extra easy with the application Yaourt, which you can read more about in the ArchWiki. And I find it really cool that Arch Linux provides this service (the AUR) right on their own website.

Speaking of the ArchWiki. It must be one of the best documentations that I have ever seen. During my first days with Arch, I tried to find help and instructions by searching the Internet with Google or similar, which I’m used to. But soon I realised that it wasn’t the best approach, because the ArchWiki is overfilled with help, instructions and tips. Therefore I find it better to start looking there instead.

Some may find the lack of pre-installed packages scary and/or troublesome. Because when you are finished with an installation of Arch Linux you will boot up into the command-line. But I really like it, since it makes it easier to customize the system. You can from the command-line freely download and install a desktop environment that you like, and there isn’t an official Arch Linux desktop environment. Like Gnome on Ubuntu and and KDE on openSUSE. Since I’m really used to Gnome 2, I chose to install the smoking fresh Gnome 3.

I don’t think I have much more to say about Arch. It’s a great distro that really fits me, and I think I will stay with Arch for a long time, assuming there aren’t major changes for the worse in the future. If you have used Linux for a while and are looking for a customizable rolling-distro, then I highly recommend you to try out Arch Linux.

As far as I know will only the Account Settings page on Facebook encrypt your connection if you haven’t changed the default settings. Not even the login page seems to connect over SSL by default, which seems a bit strange for such a large site. Maybe they don’t really care about the users’ security.

However, on the Account Settings page there is an option below Account security that asks you if you want to browse Facebook on a secure connection. I can’t see a reason to not use it, so I advise you to go in there and update your account. I have done it myself on all my accounts, and I haven’t experienced any problems.

The flaw with this is that you have to be logged in to make Facebook realise that you want to use an encrypted connection. Therefore doesn’t the login page use SSL by default, so you have to manually add an s to http in the URL.

By using https will you be protected from applications like FireSheep, even if you are on a unencrypted network. And you will also protect your data from being read by others on the way between you and the server.

Some days ago I felt that my blog was really slow and sluggish, so I looked into that problem. I deleted plugins that I didn’t use and I installed the cache plugin W3 Total Cache. So it should run much better now, which I think it has done during these few days of testing since the installation.

When I did the performance tweaking, I also realised that the theme monochrome that I used was kinda ugly and boring. So I went to WordPress.org and found a really nice and free theme called Tarski. As always I had to do some tweaking to the code to feel satisfied; in this case was the largest change the randomizing banner. I hope you like the theme and find it pretty.

There is a pretty cool command-line based application that can execute keystrokes, mouse movement and mouse clicks, called Xautomation. It’s kinda useless if you are sitting at the computer with the terminal in the foreground. But it’s really awesome if you are coding an application that runs in the background and responds to signals from a remote control or similar. I have coded a little command-line based Python 3 program that does just that. It reads USB signals from my Arduino board which is connected to a IR receiver, and executes hotkeys that fits in Totem Media Player.

As an Arch Linux user it was a piece of cake to get Xautomation by downloading it from the AUR:

• https://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=7312

To use it, open a terminal and print:

xte --help

Then you will get a list of stuff that you can do with this piece of software, like:

xte "key a"
xte "str aAa"
xte "keydown Shift_L" "key a" "keyup Shift_L"
xte "mousermove 100 100"

To execute these commands from a Python 3 application, use this code:

import subprocess
subprocess.call(["xte", "key a"])

On my local library I stumbled over a really nice book called Effektivare Linux – Kom Igång Med Kommandoraden (its Swedish title), which essentially is a printed and translated version of GNU/Linux Command-Line Tools Summary. I don’t know if it’s available as a book in English, but it’s at least readable on their website since it’s licensed under GNU GPL.

I think it’s an excellent book for everybody who wants to learn how to use the command-line/terminal. Because it goes through 250 (170 in my revision from 2008) useful and common commands that will bring joy to your life. I have only read half the book so far, but I have already learn a lot of commands that may be useful in the future. I don’t think that I will remember every command mentioned in the book, but I think it’s good to at least know what is available, so can I look it up (on Internet) when I need it.

Links:

• The publisher’s website (Swedish)
• Here can you order Effektivare Linux (Swedish)
• The source code of the book (Swedish)
• The book in English online

I suppose many already know this, but at least I didn’t until I browsed around the Arch Linux forums. Anyway, it’s possible in Linux to freely customize your bash prompt (PS1). Doesn’t that sound awesome?

In the Arch Linux Wiki they have a great page about this:

• https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Color_Bash_Prompt

And in this forum thread you can find loads of nice looking prompts:

• https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=50885

This is how my PS1 looks like:

And the code behind this prompt is:

PS1="\[\e[2;37m\][\A] \[\e[0;33m\]\u\[\e[0m\]@\[\e[34m\]\h \[\e[32m\]\w\[\e[35m\] \[\e[31m\]\$\[\e[0m\] "

I’m pretty sure that customizing the terminal prompt should work on every Linux-distro.

For long I didn’t know that there even existed an encrypted version of Wikipedia, since you can’t reach it by simply adding an s after http. The regular address that you are used to looks like this:

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page

And the secure address looks like this:

• https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Main_Page

So it’s a bit lot longer and troublesome to access. However, that mustn’t be a problem. If you are using DuckDuckGo as your search engine and has set it to search through SSL, it will automatically change the outgoing Wikipedia links to the encrypted version. If you would like to have the encrypted Wikipedia as an option in the search bar in Firefox, you can add an entry for it with this add-on.

If you are curios about DuckDuckGo, read my short blog post about it:

• http://danielj.se/2011/06/27/alternative-to-google-search-duckduckgo/

A search engine that I have heard some talk about lately is DuckDuckGo, which I also recently have set as my default search engine in Firefox.

The advantage over Google is that they value the user’s privacy much higher. DDG doesn’t track you, you can set DDG to always search through their encrypted version (https), and you can also set DDG to prevent the sites you visit from knowing what keywords you used to get to them. On the following page you can find the privacy settings, along with many, many more options (far more than those Google offers for their search engine):

• https://duckduckgo.com/settings.html

What I like as a Swede is that they also have an option to choose region, which will increase the search results from that country. So I have in my Firefox search box added one entry for the regular DuckDuckGo, and one for it with the region set to Sweden.

If you wonder why you should be careful when you search stuff on the Internet, you can visit www.donttrack.us. It’s a homepage by DuckDuckGo that describes how the tracking of you works when you are using Google.
I’m not a person who searches for herpes, illegal stuff or something similar. But I can’t say that I really like to share all my keywords and data that I put into the search box with (advertisement) corporations and people around the whole world.

If you look around on DuckDuckGo you will find many smart features, like !Bang. So it’s a really competent search engine, that not only doesn’t track you and values your privacy, but offers good search results, loads of options and many features.

In the Arduino kit that I bought not long ago were an IR remote control and an IR receiver included. And I have found a really good library for Arduino that makes decoding the IR signals from the remote control really easy. So I have used this library and coded a short program to my Arduino card that reads the IR signals and then sends more logical signals to the computer through the USB cable.

Here is a link to the page where I found the library: http://www.arcfn.com/2009/08/multi-protocol-infrared-remote-library.html

Here is code that I have written for my Arduino board:

#include <IRremote.h>

int RECV_PIN = 11;
String in;
String cur = "";
String cur2 = "";

IRrecv irrecv(RECV_PIN);

decode_results results;

void setup()
{
  Serial.begin(9600);
  irrecv.enableIRIn(); // Start the receiver
}

void loop() {
  if (irrecv.decode(&results)) {

    in = String(int(results.value), HEX);
    irrecv.resume(); // Receive the next value
    cur2 = "";

    if (in != "ffff") {
      if (in == "a25d") {      // ON/OFF
        cur = "11";
      }
      else if (in == "629d") { // Mode
        cur = "12";
      }
      else if (in == "e21d") { // Sound ON/OFF
        cur = "13";
      }
      else if (in == "22dd") { // Play/Pause
        cur = "21";
      }
      else if (in == "2fd") {  // Back
        cur = "22";
      }
      else if (in == "c23d") { // Forward
        cur = "23";
      }
      else if (in == "e01f") { // EQ
        cur = "31";
      }
      else if (in == "a857") { // VOL-
        cur = "32";
      }
      else if (in == "906f") { // VOL+
        cur = "33";
      }
      else if (in == "6897") { // 0
        cur = "41";
      }
      else if (in == "9867") { // RPT
        cur = "42";
      }
      else if (in == "b04f") { // U/SD
        cur = "43";
      }
      else if (in == "30cf") { // 1
        cur = "51";
      }
      else if (in == "18e7") { // 2
        cur = "52";
      }
      else if (in == "7a85") { // 3
        cur = "53";
      }
      else if (in == "10ef") { // 4
        cur = "61";
      }
      else if (in == "38c7") { // 5
        cur = "62";
      }
      else if (in == "5aa5") { // 6
        cur = "63";
      }
      else if (in == "42bd") { // 7
        cur = "71";
      }
      else if (in == "4ab5") { // 8
        cur = "72";
      }
      else if (in == "52ad") { // 9
        cur = "73";
      }
    }

    if (in == "ffff") { // Presses down a button
      Serial.println(cur + "d");
    } else if (cur.length() == 2) {
      Serial.println(cur + "0");
    }

  }

  delay(100);
}

I’m not sure if this program is so easy to understand, but I hope that it’s at least little help if you are setting up your own program for reading IR signals (and later controlling your computer).

Basically will the loop decode a signal, convert it to HEX and then check what button was pressed down. If I press a button on my remote control it will send a normal, unique signal (which in hex is something like a25d or 629d). But if I keep it pressed down it will keep on sending ffff signals, regardless of what button is kept pressed down. Therefore I have to save what button that was initially pressed down, which I do in cur.

The normal signals will result in numbers like 11, 12, 33 and 72 are saved as cur, and behind that is a really simple system. The first digit is the button row of the remote control, and the second digit is the the column. So as you may understand, I have 3 x 7 buttons on my remote control.

Before sending the number 22, 33, or something similar, to the computer, is 0 added to the end if the button was just pressed down or d if it already was pressed down in the previous loop.

So if press the button on my remote control that says 8 (row 7, column 2) the program will in the first run through send the message 720 to the computer. If I keep it pressed down will the program keep on sending 72d to the computer. If I bring up the Serial Monitor in the Arduino software will the output be:

720
72d
72d
72d
72d
72d
72d
72d

I apologize for my crappy English. ^.^

I have heard some talk about Identi.ca on podcasts like Linux Outlaws and FLOSS Weekly, and today I took some time and checked it out. Identi.ca is a microblogging platform that works almost exactly as Twitter, but it’s based on the StatusNet software that is freely available for download and install.

What I find pretty funny is the kind of people that is hanging out on Identi.ca – open source geeks. This is obvious if you look at the page that lists the most popular groups, where you can see that the following groups got the most members: Linux, Ubuntu, GNU, Debian, Python and KDE.

I have also registered an account on Identi.ca, but I don’t know how active I will be. I never really got into Twitter, so I’m a bit dubious. However, here is a link to my profile: http://identi.ca/matachi/

Links:

• Identi.ca
• StatusNet’s wiki

One week ago I ordered an Arduino kit from Ebay with an Arduino Mega (ATmega1280) board and some other stuff included, like a breadboard, some LED lights and a LCD display. It costed me only 62 $, so it was a really great price compared to what it would cost here in a Swedish store.

I installed the Arduino software from the AUR (Arch User Repository), but the version of avr-gcc that was included was 4.6.0. If I have understood it correctly, is avr-gcc a compiler that is designed for AVR microcontrollers. However, apparently there is a bug in the versions 4.4 – 4.6.0 of the compiler, which makes programs on the Arduino Mega board unable to send and receive signals through the USB cable. So the Serial Monitor in the Arduino software won’t work.

On Arduino’s website they recommend that you use version 4.3.x of avr-gcc instead, therefore I thought it would be a good idea to install it. And that have I been messing with since Friday. But I finally got it to work just a moment ago, thanks to madworm on the Arduino forums. I’m not here going to describe every step that I took, but if you are having the same problem that I described above, check out the thread and see if you can get it sorted out:

• Link to the thread on Arduino’s forums.

I had totally forgot that I promised to upload some photos of Ergo Proxy – The Complete Collection Box Set half a year ago. However, yesterday I got a comment from a guy wondering what happened with the pictures, so here they are (better late than never ):

As you can see, the case isn’t of the highest quality. I wonder if it even is possible to produce a box more cheaply than this. Everything is made of plastic, no individual boxes, and they didn’t include any type of extra content beyond the discs.

For comparison; here is a photo of the Ghost In The Shell: Stand Alone Complex – Complete 1st GIG box that I also own, which is made of remarkable higher quality:

A couple of links:

• Where I bought the Ergo Proxy box.
• My first post about the box, where I promised some pictures.

When I installed Arch Linux on my computer I forgot to set a root password, so it was left blank. This became a problem for me in Gnome 3 when it said that authentication was required to modify the user accounts, and apparently it won’t accept a blank password. So I was forced to set one. If you are having the same problem, do the following steps to set a root password:

1. Press Ctrl + Alt + F1. (Press Ctrl + Alt + F7 to come back to the graphical interface.)
2. Log in as root.
3. Type:

   passwd

4. Now set your new root password.
5. Return to the graphical interface by pressing Ctrl + Alt + F7.
6. Mission complete!

EDIT 2011-08-07: I had typed 1 and 7, when it should have been F1 and F7. The post has been updated.

Today I downloaded some pictures drawn by somebody called Kantoku. Sadly I can’t find anything about him/her in English. Anyway, I have resized the pictures to 1920×1200 (HD) and added Arch Linux logos to them. Nothing advance, but I think that they look really good on the desktop.

Shizuku, Kantoku - Arch Linux

Kogamura, Kantoku - Arch Linux

Kurumi, Kantoku - Arch Linux

Kurumi 2, Kantoku - Arch Linux

Kurumi Shizuku - Arch Linux

Kurumi Shizuku 2 - Arch Linux

And here is a screenshot of my current desktop:

My Desktop - June 8, 2011

Not long ago did I also create some Linux Mint wallpapers with Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei characters which can be found here:

• http://danielj.se/2011/05/15/sayonara-zetsubou-sensei-linux-mint-wallpapers/

Today I installed Arch Linux on my computer and I’m liking it a lot, especially the whole rolling distro concept. I have also installed Gnome 3, which I try to get used to.

However, when I installed Wine all my default applications became messed up and Nautilus wanted to open text files in notepad and stuff like that. To reset this you only have to delete the .local folder from your home folder, and then should everything be back to normal.

Found this suggestion on:

• https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=116583

I just updated Emesene to version 2 on my Linux Mint installation and I noticed that the tray icon was gone. To bring it back, I did these steps:

1. Start Emesene.
2. In the main window, press Options, which you find in the top bar. Then select Preferences.
3. Click on the Extensions tab in the new window that has opened.
4. There, select tray icon from the Categories drop-down list.
5. And finally select Tray Icon from the Selected drop-down list, which is right beneath Categories.
6. Press Redraw main screen to apply the changes. This button can you find on the same window.

Last Sunday on The Linux Action Show they talked about free and open source applications that replaces Google’s services. One of the applications that they brought up was ownCloud, which is a is a file hosting service that works like Dropbox. ownCloud is a web based application that you host on your own web hosting service, which means that you have full control of both the application and of your files. The current stable version is 1.2 and can be downloaded from their website:

• http://owncloud.org

ownCloud started as a project not long ago, which means that the development hasn’t come very far yet. But I think it’s promising.

On the latest episode of The Linux Action Show they mentioned a really cool plugin package to Gedit that adds many useful features for programmers. It’s called GMate and can be found here:

• https://github.com/gmate/gmate

Here are the installation instructions if you are running Ubuntu (or Mint):

sudo apt-add-repository ppa:ubuntu-on-rails/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install gedit-gmate

GMate also comes with A LOT of themes and some syntax highlighting improvements.

The other day I found a pretty neat website with a huge gallery of background patterns for websites. The site has also a really cool editor that lets you change the colors of your choosen pattern in real time, and then it gives you a download link to the image file.

• PatternCooler

I just updated my Firefox installation under Linux Mint 10, so now I’m apparently using Firefox 7. Can’t say that I have seen anything new from what is in the Firefox 5 beta, but whatever.

Because I updated Firefox it disabled all my add-ons, as usually. To get them working again in Firefox 7.0a1, follow these steps:

1. Open a new tab.
2. Type about:config in the address bar.
3. Right click anywhere on the page and click on Boolean under New.
4. Enter this as the preference name: extensions.checkCompatibility.nightly
5. Click OK.
6. Choose false and then click OK again.
7. Restart your browser and all your add-ons should be runnable again.

Since we don’t have to type in the version number in the preference name any longer (extensions.checkCompatibility.XXX), I suppose that we won’t need to update this in future versions of Firefox.

I have for some time now tried to get games like Team Fortress 2 and Mirror’s Edge to run in Linux Mint 10 64-bit through Wine. However, it haven’t gone very well so I’m only able to play them with really, really bad performance. But maybe will some of the stuff that I found help somebody else, so I will post what I found in this blog post. The graphics card that I have is an Asus Radeon HD 6870, and the driver is the proprietary display driver (CCC 11.5) found on amd.com.

My games won’t start – nothing happens

Try to update your system with aptitude. That was what solved the problem for me.

sudo aptitude update
sudo aptitude install
sudo aptitude upgrade

(Not really sure why sudo aptitude install installed some updates when I first ran it)

No direct rendering

I had the problem that running glxinfo | grep direct in the terminal returned the following line:

direct rendering: No (LIBGL_ALWAYS_INDIRECT set)

However, if I ran it with sudo (sudo glxinfo | grep direct), it returned:

direct rendering: Yes

• Here is a link to a thread with somebody having the same problem. The first possible solution that is given in this thread is to add the following lines to your /etc/X11/xorg.conf file:

  Section    "DRI"
  Group      "video"
  Mode       0660
  EndSection

• The second one that is given in the thread is to add your user account to the video group. To find where you do this, open the MintMenu and search for Users and Groups.
• Another suggestion that I found was to type this line into the command line:

  unset LIBGL_ALWAYS_INDIRECT

  This did only work for me in the current open terminal window. So when I opened a new one, it went back to saying No.

• The final solution, that actually worked for me, was to disable the Compiz desktop effects.

Here is the thread where I got to know much of the stuff above: http://forum.winehq.org/viewtopic.php?p=61294. But as I said, I still have pretty bad performance in my games and I’m to lazy to fix it. I think I will keep on gaming on Windows, and doing all other stuff on Linux.

I have modified five Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei wallpapers that I found on the Internet with Linux Mint logos. Not much work done, but on the other hand it didn’t take much time. They are all in 1920×1200 (HD?).

Tane Kitsu - Linux Mint

Kanako Oora - Linux Mint

Meru Otonashi - Linux Mint

Miko Nezu - Linux Mint

Shouko Maruuchi - Linux Mint

If you, like me, have two monitors, you may find this wallpaper nice on your desktop:

Kanako Oora & Tane Kitsu - Linux Mint

Here is a screenshot of my desktop:

My Desktop

I found a really neat terminal application that monitors the bandwith to and from your computer. It’s called bwm-ng (Bandwidth Monitor Next Generation) and can be installed with the following command if you are using a Debian-based distro:

sudo aptitude install bwm-ng

Here is a screenshot of the program in action:

bwm-ng

You can find out more about this app on the following links:

• http://www.linux.com/archive/feed/52443
• http://www.gropp.org/?id=projects&sub=bwm-ng

Yesterday I was messing around in the terminal and googeling for cool and useful commands. I had seen the command aptitude being mentioned a few times before in forum threads and such, but I had never tried to use it myself. However, yesterday I did try use it didn’t take long time until I realised how superior it’s to apt-get.

Instead of ranting about what it does better than the other myself, I will link to an article from 2007 that describes everything very well:

• http://pthree.org/2007/08/12/aptitude-vs-apt-get

To make WordPress stop converting two dashes into a single one, follow this guide:

1. Open wp-includes/formatting.php.
2. Navigate to line 56.
3. Change line 56 and 57 from:

   $static_characters = array_merge(array('---', ' -- ', '--', ' - ', 'xn–', '...', '``', '\'\'', ' (tm)'), $cockney);
   $static_replacements = array_merge(array('—', ' — ', '–', ' – ', 'xn--', '…', $opening_quote, $closing_quote, ' ™'), $cockneyreplace);

   to:

   $static_characters = array_merge(array(' - ', 'xn–', '...', '``', '\'\'', ' (tm)'), $cockney);
   $static_replacements = array_merge(array(' – ', 'xn--', '…', $opening_quote, $closing_quote, ' ™'), $cockneyreplace);

4. Done!

The other day I found a really great manga when I was searching for an anime character on Google. It’s called Ubunchu! and it’s about, as the name suggest, Ubuntu!

The story is about the SysAdmin club on a Japanese school, and it starts out with the club’s three only members deciding what operating system to install on their computer. They agree to try out Ubuntu, and the following chapters are about different Ubuntu and Linux stuff. Like one chapters is about the terminal and how you use commands, and another one is about how you use the forums to get help.

Check it out, it’s really great I must say!

• The official Ubunchu! page
• International versions, free to download

I have just installed Disqus comment system here on my blog. The process was really easy and I’m happy with the result. I was also able during the installation to export all old comments, which was pretty neat.

The reason why I changed the original WordPress comment system to Disqus, is because I like how powerful it is. It’s easy for you, the readers, to comment when you can use the same account on many blogs. The notification function is also better.

Instead of having to retype your daily used terminal commands over and over again, you are able to give them aliases for easier access in Linux. Here is how you do it:

1. Open a terminal window.
2. Type gedit .bashrc and press enter (change gedit to kate, nano or any other texteditor depending on what you have installed).
3. In this document you are able to add aliases. Here is one that I have in my file:

   alias m='sh monitor.sh'

   The letter m in my case is the alias, and the command inside the single quotation marks is the terminal command that will be executed when m is used in the terminal.

4. Add your alias(es), save the document and close it.
5. Reopen the terminal and your aliases should work.

I have finally bought a new graphics card to my computer, a Asus Radeon HD 6870 DirectCU. It was a bit longer than my old card, a PowerColor 4870, so it was tough to fit in the computer chassis. But I made it at last. The reason why I purchased a new card, was because my old one was half broken and wasn’t able to run with the default clock speeds without getting artifacts everywhere on my monitors.

When I first started Linux Mint with my new card plugged in, I was welcomed by a black screen, which wasn’t very fun. So I booted up Linux Mint in Recovery Mode and tried to install working graphics driver. The driver I had from earlier was ATI/AMD proprietary FGLRX graphics driver from the Additional Drivers window in Linux Mint (and Ubuntu). This graphics driver didn’t work after a clean install of Linux Mint either.

I also found these two guides: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/BinaryDriverHowto/ATI and http://wiki.cchtml.com/index.php/Ubuntu_Maverick_Installation_Guide, which describes how to install ATI driver. But the terminal command aticonfig never worked for me, so I didn’t manage to complete the installation.

However, if you simply download the proper driver from AMD’s website, and then run it like a normal program, it works just as it should. So I can’t really see the reason why you would build the graphics driver into packages and install them and so on in 20+ steps. Maybe it’s easier to uninstall the driver in the future. But how often do you change video card or update your graphics driver on Linux?

Anyway, it works great now and I’m happy.

Apparently has the dudes behind Linux Mint decided that they want their own Google search engine in Firefox, which lacks many functions. Here follows some steps you shall take to change it back to the default search page:

1. Open a terminal window.
2. Type these lines after one another:

   cd /usr/share/linuxmint/common/artwork/firefox/
   sudo wget http://mxr.mozilla.org/firefox/source/browser/locales/en-US/searchplugins/google.xml?raw=1 -O google.xml.fixed
   sudo mv google.xml google.xml.orig
   sudo mv google.xml.fixed google.xml
   sudo cp google.xml /usr/lib/firefox-addons/searchplugins/en-US/google.xml

3. Maybe you have to restart Firefox now.

I found this solution on the Linux Mint forum: http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=29&t=17438

I got a bit tired on how my Ubuntu 11.04 installation worked, so I downloaded and installed Linux Mint 10. So now I’m a Mint user. However, it’s based on Ubuntu, so it isn’t that huge a step away.

Anyway, I realised that some fonts where missing in Mint, like verdana for an example. Instead arial was showing up on websites and such. If you also miss fonts and want them, follow these hardcore steps:

1. Open a terminal. (Ctrl + Alt + T)
2. Type this line:
   sudo apt-get install msttcorefonts
3. Go through the installation and then you are done!

Sometimes I download and listen to Retroresan, which is a Swedish podcast about retro games. Recently they talked about the game Disney’s Aladdin to Megadrive, and it sounded pretty fun. So I searched and found a emulator called Gens/OS that seems to work great on Ubuntu 11.04 64-bit. However, it isn’t made for 64-bit OS:es, but it runs fine if you force install it. Here are the steps you have to take:

1. Visit http://segaretro.org/Gens/GS, scroll to the bottom of the page and download the most recent version to Ubuntu.
2. Make sure you have ia32-libs installed by typing these commands in the terminal:

   sudo apt-get update
   sudo apt-get install ia32-libs

3. Then navigate to your downloads folder in the terminal, and type this line to install Gens/GS:

   sudo dpkg --force-architecture -i gens_2.XXX_i386.deb

4. Now the emulator should pop up under your Games category.

Here follows some links:

• A tread on ubuntuforms.org about Gens to 64-bit Ubuntu.
• An article about more Megadrive emulators to Linux.
• If you want to download Aladdin and play it yourself, visit this page.
• More info about the game Disney’s Aladdin can be found on Wikipedia.

I have cleaned up the code to the layout I wrote about in my previous post. It’s a layout written in XHTML 1.0 Strict and CSS, with a sticky footer that stays at the bottom of the page. I have validated both the XHTML and CSS, so it should work good in the most browsers (except IE6 maybe, as usual? ). It also has many semitransparent .png-images, which makes it pretty cool.

The layout is supposed to work as a WordPress theme (or to any similar blogging platforms), which shouldn’t be that hard to accomplish by integrate it with a existing theme.

It’s available to be previewed here:

• http://danielj.se/stickyfooterlayout/

If you easily want to download the complete layout, with the layout image file (.xcf (GIMP)) included, you can do it with the following link:

• http://danielj.se/stickyfooterlayout/stickyfooterlayout.7z

Check it out, get inspiration and/or steal the code!

I’m currently working on a small website in HTML and CSS for web design class in school. Though, I had major problems with positioning the footer at the bottom, get the background image of the layout to work right and shit. It didn’t become easier with my layout background image being an semitransparent .png-file. So messy…

However, I stumbled over two good website that helped me to get in the right direction with getting the footer to stay at the bottom. They didn’t completely solve my problems, but yeah, they helped much. Here are links to them:

• http://www.cssstickyfooter.com/
• http://ryanfait.com/sticky-footer/

EDIT: You can check out the theme here and download it.

The other day I saw two useful wallpapers on webupd8.org that lists many useful keyboard shortcuts in Ubuntu 11.04 with Unity. Here are two links where you can find out more:

• The article on webupd8.
• Here can you find the original page with the wallpapers in full-size.

Here is the steps you have to take to add a custom launcher to the Unity panel:

1. Right click on your desktop and create a launcher.
2. Customize the launcher until you are happy.
3. Navigate to /home/[username]/.local/share/applications in Nautilus. (Press Ctrl + H to show hidden folders (.local).)
4. Drag and drop your launcher to this folder from the desktop.
5. Now, drag and drop your launcher from the applications folder that you have opened, to the Unity launcher bar.
6. If the launcher is still on the desktop you can delete it.
7. Done!

I found a really good site that introduce you to Bourne shell programming. I have just started myself with trying to learn shell programming for various stuff, so I find the tutorial very helpful.

• Bourne shell programming

I wrote a short, simple shell script to easily enable and disable my secondary monitor in Ubuntu. I have saved it as monitor.sh in my home folder, and here is the source code:

#!/bin/sh
echo "Turn on: 1\nTurn off: 2"
read option
if [ $option = 1 ];
then xrandr --output DFP2 --auto --left-of DFP1
elif [ $option = 2 ];
then xrandr --output DFP2 --off
fi

To run it, just open a terminal window (Ctrl + Alt + T) and type sh monitor.sh. If you are really lazy, you can add an alias for the command in the file .bashrc in your home folder. I named my alias m.

In Firefox for Windows, you are able to double click a segment of the URL in the address field to select it. By default, this isn’t possible in Firefox for Ubuntu, instead selects a single click the whole address. Luckily, this is easy to change, which you can do by following these steps:

1. Open a new tab.
2. Type about:config in the address bar.
3. Press the I’will be careful, I promise! button.
4. Type selects in the filter field.
5. Change the browser.urlbar.clickSelectsAll entry to false by double clicking on the row.
6. Do the same as above with the browser.urlbar.doubleClickSelectsAll, and make sure both are false.
7. Done!

On ubuntuforms.org I saw a post by the user castrojo to two Unity video tutorials made by him. I think that they work as a good introduction to Ubuntu’s new user interface. However, Ubuntu 11.04 hasn’t been released yet, and Canonical says that they will do many changes until then. But I suppose that the basics will be the same, and that they only will add more functionality. Links to the two videos:

• How I multitask in Unity
• How I use the Unity dash

When I started Ubuntu 11.04 Beta 2 for my first time, I was really sceptical to Unity, so I changed fast to Ubuntu Classic. But then I gave Unity a second chance and I must say that it actually isn’t that terrible. I miss some stuff, like better support for dual monitor setups, the ability to right click the panels, and the ability add applets to the top panel. But I hope this will be fixed to the release of Ubuntu 11.04.

I have two 22″ monitors hooked up to my computer through DVI. But the other day I wanted to try out if it would work with three monitors too. However, my ATI/AMD PowerColor 4870 graphic card has only two DVI video outputs, so I borrowed my brother’s video card, which is an ATI 3650. After plugging it in to a PCI-E bus, I realised that it hasn’t even a Crossfire connector. I did some searching and found out that a Crossfire bridge is only needed when you want to take advantage of the extra video card in games and such, which I wasn’t interested of. Then I hooked up my brother’s 17″ monitor to the 3650 card. The monitor had only a VGA input tho, while the card only had DVI outputs, so I had to use a DVI-to-VGA adapter.

I started with booting up Windows 7, and it worked fine with 3 monitors. However, I didn’t test it for too long. Then I rebooted the computer and started up Ubuntu 10.10 instead, to see if it would work. I had to do some configurations in the ATI Catalyst Control Center, but then it worked there too. However, it worked a bit strangely, almost like its own desktop. The 17″ monitor had the standard panel configuration for a single monitor, and I wasn’t able to drag windows between it and the other two monitors. I didn’t have much time tho, and my brother wanted his card and monitor back, so I never solved that odd problem. Maybe I had to adjust something in CCC, or somewhere else, I don’t know.

To summarize this post: You can use three monitors by plugging in a second (AMD/ATI) graphic card. The card must not be of the same model, or even of the same generation (ATI 4870 and ATI 3650). You don’t need a crossfire bridge. Though, I can’t say if this applies on Nvidia cards too.

I’m currently reading the techno-thriller Daemon, written by Daniel Suarez, which I think is a really good book. I’m almost halfway through it and it has started to get really thrilling. Since there is already a good introduction/summary on Wikipedia, I’m going to quote it here:

Daemon

Daemon, the first book, begins with the death of wealthy, legendary computer game designer Matthew Sobol. At the time of his death, he had a program running that was scanning obituaries on the Internet. That program, coupled with his death (due to cancer), sets in motion a series of other programs (daemon) that move money, recruit operatives, and even kill. Detective Peter Sebeck initially leads two murder investigations which reveal The Daemon. Sebeck and others try to combat this murderous technological construct in an increasingly complex and interconnected world. But Matthew Sobol already anticipated Sebeck’s actions and frames him for murder.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daemon_(novel)

Here you can read preview chapters of the book:
http://thedaemon.com/daemonpreview.html

I found a sweatband with a Sackboy on it, that looks pretty nice. Maybe I will order one. It costs only 4.5 Euro and can be found on Archonia.com.

Direct link:
http://www.archonia.com/mangashop/en/article/96522/little+big+planet+sweatband+-+sack+boy/

I found a list with useful shortcut keys to Ubuntu:

General keyboard shortcuts

Ctrl + A = Select all
Ctrl + C = Copy the highlighted content to clipboard
Ctrl + V = Paste the clipboard content
Ctrl + N = New (Create a new document, not in terminal)
Ctrl + O = Open a document
Ctrl + S = Save the current document
Ctrl + P = Print the current document
Ctrl + W = Close the close document
Ctrl + Q = Quit the current application

Keyboard shortcuts for GNOME desktop

Ctrl + Alt + F1 = Switch to the first virtual terminal
Ctrl + Alt + F2(F3)(F4)(F5)(F6) = Select the different virtual terminals
Ctrl + Alt + F7 = Restore back to the current terminal session with X
Ctrl + Alt + Backspace = Restart GNOME
Alt + Tab = Switch between open programs
Ctrl + Alt + L = Lock the screen.
Alt + F1 = opens the Applications menu
Alt + F2 = opens the Run Application dialog box.
Alt + F3 = opens the Deskbar Applet
Alt + F4 = closes the current window.
Alt + F5 = unmaximizes the current window.
Alt + F7 = move the current window
Alt + F8 = resizes the current window.
Alt + F9 = minimizes the current window.
Alt + F10 =  maximizes the current window.
Alt + Space = opens the window menu.
Ctrl + Alt + + = Switch to next X resolution
Ctrl + Alt + - = Switch to previous X resolution
Ctrl + Alt + Left/Right = move to the next/previous workspace

Keyboard shortcuts for Terminal

Ctrl + A = Move cursor to beginning of line
Ctrl + E = Move cursor to end of line
Ctrl + C = kills the current process.
Ctrl + Z = sends the current process to the background.
Ctrl + D = logs you out.
Ctrl + R = finds the last command matching the entered letters.
Enter a letter, followed by Tab + Tab = lists the available commands beginning with those letters.
Ctrl + U = deletes the current line.
Ctrl + K = deletes the command from the cursor right.
Ctrl + W = deletes the word before the cursor.
Ctrl + L = clears the terminal output
Shift + Ctrl + C = copy the highlighted command to the clipboard.
Shift + Ctrl + V (or Shift + Insert) = pastes the contents of the clipboard.
Alt + F = moves forward one word.
Alt + B = moves backward one word.
Arrow Up/Down = browse command history
Shift + PageUp / PageDown = Scroll terminal output

Keyboard shortcuts for Compiz

Alt + Tab = switch between open windows
Win + Tab = switch between open windows with Shift Switcher or Ring Switcher effect
Win + E = Expo, show all workspace
Ctrl + Alt + Down = Film Effect
Ctrl + Alt + Left mouse button = Rotate Desktop Cube
Alt + Shift + Up = Scale Windows
Ctrl + Alt + D = Show Desktop
Win + Left mouse button = take screenshot on selected area
Win + Mousewheel = Zoom In/Out
Alt + Mousewheel = Transparent Window
Alt + F8 = Resize Window
Alt + F7 = Move Window
Win + P = Add Helper
F9 = show widget layer
Shift + F9 = show water effects
Win + Shift + Left mouse button = Fire Effects
Win + Shift + C = Clear Fire Effects
Win + Left mouse button = Annotate: Draw
Win + 1 = Start annotation
Win + 3 = End annotation
Win + S = selects windows for grouping
Win + T = Group Windows together
Win + U = Ungroup Windows
Win + Left/Right = Flip Windows

Keyboard shortcut for Nautilus

Shift + Ctrl + N = Create New Folder
Ctrl + T = Delete selected file(s) to trash
Alt + ENTER = Show File/Folder Properties
Ctrl + 1 = Toggle View As Icons
Ctrl + 2 = Toggle View As List
Shift + Right = Open Directory (Only in List View)
Shift + Left = Close Directory (Only in List View)
Ctrl + S = Select Pattern
F2 = Rename File
Ctrl + A = Select all files and folders
Ctrl + W = Close Window
Ctrl + Shift + W = Close All Nautilus Windows
Ctrl + R = Reload Nautilus Window
Alt + Up = Open parent directory
Alt + Left = Back
Alt + Right = Forward
Alt + Home = go to Home folder
Ctrl + L = go to location bar
F9 = Show sidepane
Ctrl + H = Show Hidden Files
Ctrl + + = Zoom In
Ctrl + - = Zoom Out
Ctrl + 0 = Normal Size

Source: http://maketecheasier.com/useful-shortcut-keys-in-ubuntu/2008/07/14

Have you played the Mass Effect games, but missed the three novels written by Drew Karpyshyn (the writer for Mass Effect on Bioware)? Then you should really check them out, since they are really great and add much to the Mass Effect universe.

I bought my books from Play.com, which have both good prices and free shipping to many countries in Europe.

Today I decided to reboot start blogging again. I have changed the theme too, to monochrome. =)

A few hours ago I installed KDE on Ubuntu, which means that I’m now using Kubuntu. It was really easy to switch to KDE from Gnome, since I found 2 guides that showed how. The reason behind my switch to Kubuntu was a mate in my class. He dislikes Ubuntu and wanted me to try out Kubuntu. And so I did. I have tried it out earlier (for a short amount of time), so I’m not a complete n00b in the interface. But I guess I have to use it for a while and see how it is like.

If you also want to install KDE on Ubuntu, check out these two links:

• How to install KDE on Ubuntu
• How to install KDE 4.6 in ubuntu 10.10

And if you didn’t like KDE and want to switch back to a pure Gnome on Ubuntu:

• Getting Back to a Pure Gnome on Ubuntu

Yesterday I downloaded Game Dev Story to my Android phone, and so far I have managed to play it for like 1 hour. I have to say that it’s a really fun and engaging game. The game is like an RPG where you start a game company, hire people and develope games that you later sell and make money off. The point is to make your company grow, level up your staff and so on. You really have to check it out if you own an Android phone.

• Game Dev Story

Yesterday I got really tired of how slow my rooted Samsung Galaxy Spica I5700 was. Up until then it was so slow that I had to wait like 10 seconds before the SMS window would show up. It was rooted with LK2.08 and I had also installed SamdroidMod Kitchen. But yesterday I downloaded the latest “normal” firmware to Galaxy Spica and installed it with Odin. The installation went fine, without bricking my phone. And it is sooo fast now compared to LK2.08! It feels so fun to use it now. I can’t understand why the phone became so slow with my previous configuration. However, if you want to unroot your phone and/or update the firmware of your Galaxy Spica, here are some useful links:

• Download Samsung Galaxy SpicaI5700 firmwares – (You can find usernames and passwords here)
• Flashing guide
• Another flashing guide
• A third guide

Below I have embedded 3 awesome, fresh Angry Joe videos that you must see. Enjoy! =)

Top 32 Reasons Why I Hate Fable III!

Cabela’s Dangerous Hunts 2011 Review

Top 10 WORST Games of 2010!

• Angry Joe’s website

My ability to autocomplete code in Eclipse just stopped to work. But the problem was easily solved by doing the following steps: Open the Preferences window, navigate to Java > Editor > Content Assist > Advanced, tick everything that sounds right and finally Press OK.

If you have another possible solution, please share it below in a comment.

Hi! In this post I just want to recommend a nice theme that is available to the popular text editors and IDEs Eclipse, Notepad++, Visual Studio and Vim. It’s called Prabir’s Dark Theme and I have a link to the download page below. I’m using the theme in Eclipse and it works great.

• Download the themes here
• Link to the creator’s blog post about the theme

Prabir's Dark Theme

I found and installed a really neat application to the Android SDK and pc. It’s called Sensor Simulator and is used to simulate the different sensors that can be found in Android phones, like the accelerometer, magnetic field sensor and the orientation sensor. I got this application working after that I managed to get the adb command in the terminal to work. Because it consists of two apps, one that you install on your virtual phone and one java app that you run on your computer. So it’s kinda useless if you aren’t able to install apps on your virtual phone from the computer. By the way, click on the image above to open it in a new window/tab to see it in the native resolution, in which you are actually able to read the text.

If you are interested, check out the links below.

Links:

• Here you can find Sensor Simulator
• Direct link to the download page

At first, the commands android and adb didn’t work in my Ubuntu terminal. But what I did to get them to work was modifying the .bashrc file in my home folder. It’s hidden so I showed it with Ctrl + H. In the file i edited the PATH lines to this:

#AndroidDev PATH
export PATH=$PATH:/home/teraspes/android-sdk-linux_x86
export PATH=$PATH:/home/teraspes/android-sdk-linux_x86/platform-tools
export PATH=$PATH:/home/teraspes/android-sdk-linux_x86/tools

I can’t really recall what they were from the start, and I don’t know if all lines are needed. But as long as the commands work I won’t touch the lines, because I will just mess something up and end up with trying to fix it four hours.

If it still doesn’t work for you after this change, try to restart your computer.

The other day I really needed a program that could stream a .mkv file to the family’s Playstation 3. I can’t understand why it isn’t possible, in year 2011, to connect an external harddrive, formated with the NTFS file system, to a console and be able to play the content on it. I don’t know if it works if the harddrive is formated with FAT32, but that file system does only supports files with a size up to 4 GB, which is pretty crappy on a drive with 1 TB of space where I want to store large files. It’s 2011! My drive doesn’t even shows up when I, with USB, connects it to the PS3.

However, I went to Google Search and asked for a program that could stream .mkv files, since it would take a couple of hours to convert the file to .avi. Because Windows Media Player can’t stream .mkv files to PS3, it even can’t stream .mp4… HOWEVER, I found a great software to stream media to PS3 from a computer called PS3 Media Server. It streamed the .mkv without any problems, and it was also really simple to add an external subtitle file to the video.

Thumbs up to PS3 Media Server – check it out! It’s available on Linux, Windows and Mac, but I have only tried it on Windows.

• Download it from Google Code
• The blog

Ummm… Lets see if I can explain what Jupiter Broadcasting is. The sub-title on their website is “independent entertainment, on demand”, and I think that pretty much sums it up. What I have seen, there are three persons making the videos, or at least I have only seen three in the videos. Maybe there are more behind the scenes, I don’t know. However, they have five shows (according to their homepage), where I find their show Linux Action Show the best. It’s broadcasted live every Sunday on their website, and then uploaded online for downloading and streaming. It’s usually about one hour long, and it’s fun and informative. But they don’t have that many viewers, according to the numbers below the videos on their Youtube Channel. Maybe many watch them live, or watch the episodes on their official website instead, or maybe download the episodes, I don’t know. But I really want more people to check these guys out, because they are doing a great work on their spare time – which they are providing to us completely free of charge.

So, check them out. I have added some links below. I hope you will like their work as much as I do.

Links:

• Jupiter Broadcasting’s website
• Their Youtube channel
• Add them on Facebook

The other day I found a really beautiful theme to Gnome called Orta. I don’t actually know what to say other than that, I guess you have to check it out by yourself to find out if you like it too.

Here you can find out how you install the theme:

• http://skiesofazel.deviantart.com/art/Orta-184118297

Today I finally finished playing Mass Effect 2! I actually bought it a couple of months ago and I played a lot, but then I forgot about it until now. Maybe I became a bit tired of it, since I had played through ME1 for my third time right before I started playing ME2. However, now have I finally “completed” the journey and I’m really looking forward to the last game in the trilogy.

Overall I think ME2 is an excellent game – one of the best games I have ever played. I really like the first one too, but this is even better. Bioware have removed most of the boring parts that were in ME1, for an example the vehicle levels and the looting system. They have also made a lot of improvements, like adding ammo to the weapons to make the game more actionish. The story is as always with Bioware’s games fantastic, and I must say that I really love how epic the ending is. The music in the game is also great, especially the music during the last mission and the trance music in the various clubs.

In ME3 I really hope that the choices that were made in ME2 will play a bigger role than those made in ME1 did in ME2. That was kind of a let-down, how little the choices from earlier game really mattered. Like, you had to choose between two characters who you wanted to save, while the other became killed. Then in this game (ME2) you will only meet that person at one occasion, have one talk with him/her and never see him/her again. That choice was supposed to have “great impact”. O’really. However, it was kinda fun to be recognized by people from the first game that I had helped, even if it hadn’t any impact on the story. But in ME2 you will in the end have to make, in my opinion, a great decision that feels will do a lot of difference in ME3. It was also possible to get a lot of your crew members killed, so if we don’t get a new crew again I guess that will make huge difference.

If you haven’t already played through ME2 – do it!

Firefly

During this winter holiday I have been watching through all episodes of The Big Bang Theory, and a few times has the character Sheldon in the series mentioned the TV series Firefly. So I got a bit excited and decided to check it out. I haven’t seen all episodes yet, but half of them. And there is also a movie called Serenity, which is a sequel to the series named after the crew’s space ship, that I’m planning on watching.

Even if I haven’t watched the whole series, I really want to recommend all of you to watch Firefly. Almost everything is great with the series. It has great and enjoyable characters, the space western theme is really awesome and the stories are all very exciting.

The only thing that I miss is that the episodes (that I have seen so far) are all stand-alone. I would rather see that the story and the characters developed during the episodes, and not that they ends where they started. But still, it’s a great series that you really shouldn’t miss! You will appreciate it even more if you enjoy science fiction.

For long I have been having problem with flickering flash videos in the Firefox 4 beta in Ubuntu 10.10 64-bit. Today I found a solution, and I have no longer any reason to use Chrome.

It seems that the problem with flickering flash videos only occurs with Adobe Flash Player 10.1. So, by installing the beta 10.3 of Flash Player, the problem is now long gone.

I don’t know how you install the Flash beta in the 32-bit version of Ubuntu. But in the 64-bit version you just need to type these lines in the terminal:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:sevenmachines/flash
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install flashplugin64-installer

I hope this solution works for you guys!

Okay, I’m not going to buy anything. But I was interested in what kind of anime merchandise there was online, so I searched a bit and found some websites that I want to share here.

• AnimeNation
• Archonia
• Play
• RightStuff

Maybe you will find something interesting on those sites. If you know any other good websites from the top of your head that fits the description, you are very welcome to leave the addresses in a comment below.

Earlier I was searching for a software that could extract the audio from a .mp4 video file. Then I ended up on a website with commands to a very useful text based program called FFmpeg, including exactly what I was searching for. You can find all necessary links below:

• FFmpeg’s website
• FFmpeg’s documentation
• 19 useful FFmpeg commands

Right now is the secret “organization” Anonymous fighting a war against opponents to WikiLeaks, as you can read in many newspapers. They are angry because Julian Assange was arrested two days ago, and now they are seeking revenge. The main targets have until now been VISA, Mastercard, Amazon and Paypal, since they disabled the ability to donate money to WikiLeaks. And donations are WikiLeaks’ only income source, so it definitely hurts them.

The attack actually seems pretty organized just for this once. There are plenty of websites where you can get information about the attacks and how you can help in the fight. For an example: http://pastehtml.com/view/1c8i33u.html. The attacks are also being discussed on web forums, like 4chan, and Flashback if you understand Swedish.

Here are three links to their Twitter feeds where you can read news about the attacks and which site that is the current target:

• http://twitter.com/AnonOpsNet
• http://twitter.com/Anon_Operations
• http://twitter.com/Op_Payback

If you want to get involved – I really recommend you to join the IRC server. There are a couple of thousands users logged in and discussing attack related stuff.

The attackers also have a radio channel, which a guys broadcasted live on yesterday. He was playing music and calling VISA and Mastercard, asking them what was wrong with their sites. You can find the URL to the stream on their IRC. But here are two links to the stream, don’t know if they still work tho:

• http://de1.tritnaha.com:8000
• http://radio.anonops.net:8000

Apparently they have created a new Facebook too, since their first one was deleted:

• http://www.facebook.com/pages/Operation-Payback-LIVE-Reports/181468958532609

See ya on the battlefield! I believe this can evolve into something really interesting. At the moment there are about 9000 computers performing DDoS attacks.

Some weeks ago I stumble across a really cool video where Hatsune Miku performs live at the 39′s Giving Day concert in Japan. There are also three other characters performing, but I don’t know their names. ^^

Check out Miku’s performance below:

The first time I watched the video I saw it in very low resolution, so I couldn’t really tell how the technology to show her worked. At first I thought that maybe it was a real actor in a costume or a robot, since Japan is a really robot friendly country. Then I googled to find answer and I found this article – stating that Miku on the concert was a 3D hologram. But I wasn’t sure if the article was right, which it wasn’t. Because I thought it sounded a bit too advance with 3D hologram.

If you watch the performance in higher resolution you can easily see that she is very pixely at close distance, which proves that she isn’t real or a robot. It is also possible to see that there is a huge frame on the stage with a net, that Miku is projected on with a camera from behind. So in reality it is only a 2D image on a net. However, it still looks awesome and the spirit on the concert is fantastic.

It was about a month ago or so that I saw this video for the first time. But it popped up in my mind just now and I thought it would be a good idea to promote it and give it some more views, because it’s a really good and interesting video.

In the video explains the author Roy Beck why mass immigration is not an effective way to solve poverty. So, sit back, relax, and enjoy the ride*:

*quote from Jon Hallur’s gig at the EVE fanfest 2006 where he played live. The mix can be found on the Internet if you are interesting.

In the days I read an article on the Swedish gaming news site FZ about Frank Gibeau’s, who is boss on EA, opinions about Mirror’s Edge and Dead Space. Apparently he doesn’t think neither of those two games lived up to expectations, because they didn’t have a multiplayer mode included. Still he thinks that Dead Space sold well, which it did, but yeah, that wasn’t enough.

I really can’t see how it would be a bad thing to not spend time on a mutliplayer mode that wouldn’t work in the first place. Try to imagine multiplayer in Mirror’s Edge. Would it be co-op where you with all optional paths and fast phased gameplay only would lost each other? Or why not death match? Or even better, team death match with cops against a bunch of runner? That would be awesome! (not)

No, let Dice develop a sequel to Mirror’s Edge and don’t force them to include something stupid as a multiplayer mode.

• Link to the piece of news on FZ (it’s in Swedish)
• Link to the original article

Kinect was recently released, and I guess all of you people that will stumble upon this text are already familiar with it. I can’t say that I have read very much about it, but at least some. And I have watched some videos where it have been showed, and some gameplay videos.

I don’t believe Kinect will replace the regular controller, like they say in the advertisements. It will be a nice extra type of controller that will work in some kinds of games, like Dance Central. But then there is a flood of games that are being pumped out with Kinect support, that would be played much better with a regular controller.

Besides that there are a lot of games that works better with a regular controller. The Kinect’s performance isn’t either very good. I have heard many people and critics complain about the high response time, that really becomes a problem in fast phased games. For an example boxing games, where you have to act very fast.

Even if the Kinect works well with some types of games, I believe some of  them are totally stupid. For an example you have Kinect Sports, which is a Wii Sports clone. Why would anyone pay money for an Xbox, a Kinect and for this game to be able to throw imaginary spears and discuses in front of the TV? I would rather go out and throw real sticks.

But I guess that only the future can tell if this piece of new technology will bring us any new, fun games.

Here is a really fun review of Sonic Free Riders, by Angry Joe:

Here is another video, where Kinect Sports is reviewed by Angry Joe:

And lastly a video where he reviews the actual hardware:

Until today I have usually added images to blog posts by linking them from other pages, found through Google Image Search. But from now on I will change that habit. Not that I won’t use Google Image Search any longer, but I won’t add images to posts that are hosted on other sites. Instead I will search for the image, download it, resize it in Gimp, save it in a compressed format, and finally upload and add it to the relevant post with WordPress.

This change will greatly decrease the loading time for my blog and posts. Because usually are the images unnecessary large and have to be resized on the user’s computer, which means that the user have to download the full image, to later make it smaller. This is pretty pointless.
The images are also often saved in formats that aren’t very Internet friendly, which takes up much space and will just increase the loading time for the user. Instead I will save all images as compressed jpegs.
The last advantage with hosting the images on my own web host, is that the transfer time will decrease since the user won’t have to access foreign countries around the whole globe to download images. And it also looks pretty bad when the site won’t stop loading, because some Russian server has a slow upload speed.

EVE Online

I googled after some tips for future pirates in EVE Online, and I found a really great PDF document that consists of 55 whole pages(!), describing the basics of piracy, strategies, tactics, ships and fittings. A really great guide which I really recommend!

Now I’m really eager to start with piracy, maybe with a frigate which I can afford without any problems.

Here are you able to download the guide:

• http://dl.eve-files.com/media/corp/TheOrangeGuy/Beginners_Guide_to_Piracy_2.1.pdf

Here is a thread on the official EVE Online forum about the guide:

• http://www.eveonline.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=936500

If you want to install EVE Online in Ubuntu, follow the steps below. I did it on Ubuntu 10.10 64-bit and it worked great.

1. Install Wine
2. Download the Windows-version of EVE
3. Run the installer for EVE by right clicki the file, select Properties, open the Permissions tab and bock the Execute-box.
4. Close the window, right click the install file and select Open with Wine…
5. Install EVE but don’t run the game after the installation.
6. Open a terminal window and type: “wget http://www.kegel.com/wine/winetricks”, followed by “sh winetricks corefonts vcrun6 d3dx9″ to install fonts, DirectX and stuff.
7. Close the terminal and go into Applications > Wine > Configure Wine.
8. Go into the Graphics tab.
9. Chose the “Emulate a virtual desktop” option.
10. Type in a desktop size that is smaller than your screen resolution. Since my monitor’s resolution is 1680×1050, I typed in 1440×900 in the Desktop size boxes.
11. Now, close the Wine configuration window and start EVE Online.
12. Profit!

Since I’m doing missions right now in EVE, I find this website very useful:

• http://eve-survival.org/wikka.php?wakka=MissionReports

And because I use projectile weapons, I also find this website useful to easily compare the different ammo types:

• http://www.eve-wiki.net/index.php?title=Projectile_ammunition

Here is another page with a great amount of good information about missions in EVE:

• http://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Missions_guide

EVE Online

Hi!

EVE Online

I haven’t written very much here during the past two months, but I’m going to start blogging here again.

Earlier this week I got an email from CCP in which they asked me to return to EVE, and gave me 5 free testing days. Now I have added even more time and are playing on my old minmatar character – Ytec. I got almost 2 million skillpoints and have recently bought a battle cruiser, the Hurricane. I’m trading, and doing level 2 missions to increase my standing with Brutor to do level 3 missions some time in the future. Doing missions is also a way to decrease the trading fees.

But back to the Hurricane. I didn’t really know what fit it with, so I went online, googled and found the website BattleClinic. On that website I found this nice fitting:

• http://eve.battleclinic.com/loadout/25797-Hurricane-Dark-Fusion-Terror-L3-Mission-Runner.html#loadout

I’m a bit poor so I haven’t bought any T2-items, and I haven’t played any level 3 missions yet. But so far it’s great and blows up everything in level 2 missions.

If you want to play Nintendo DS games on your PC I can recommends you to try out DeSmuME! I have tried it out on Ubuntu 10.10 and it worked great, but it’s also available to Windows and Mac.

You can download DeSmuME to Ubuntu through the Ubuntu Software Center, or by pasting this line in the terminal:

sudo apt-get install desmume

Here you are able to download it to Windows and Mac:

• http://www.desmume.com/download.htm

On Google’s official Android SDK website you can read about how to store data, work with databases and SQLite, but it’s not very much text there. Maybe there is an example that I have missed or something. Here is a link to the information on Android Developer-page:

• http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/data/data-storage.html

But I did also find a very nice “tutorial”, or maybe I should call it a article with sample code, that shows how to use SQLite in Android SDK. Very helpful! Here are the 3 steps/pages:

• Android SQLite Basics: creating and using a database, and working with sqlite3
• Android Application and AsyncTask basics
• Backing up your Android SQLite database to the SD card

Have fun!

I found an awesome looking, dark theme to Samsung Galaxy Spica i5700! I don’t know what to say else than it’s just awesome.

But the latest version (8.1) requires that you have a Spica phone running the custom ROM Samdroid v1.2.x or 1.3.1 deodexed. And to run Samdroid you must root your phone with the LK kernel. I only recommend doing these steps if you know what you are doing and are aware of the possible damages.

• Download GreenDevDroid here

I can’t download Angry Birds Beta from the Android Market for some unknown reason. And apparently I’m not the only one with this problem. So I found a website with the Angry Birds Beta APK-file that I downloaded, copied to my Spica and installed with Astro. Yeah, so now I’m able to play some… Angry Birds! Yey!

• Download Angry Birs Beta here

I found two great posts on Android Police that explain what custom ROMs are and what rooting is. If you are interested and don’t already know what that stuff is, check out these posts:

• Custom ROMs For Android Explained And Why You Want Them
• Rooting Explained + Top 5 Benefits Of Rooting Your Android Phone

Yesterday night I rooted my Samsung Galaxy Spica i5700 with the LK2.08 kernel from Leshak at the Samdroid forum. You can find the kernel on his forum. This kernel gives you root access to your Spica, changes the Recovery function and other stuff, you can see the full list of what the kernel includes in the opening post in the forum thread.

The only problem was that the guide in the thread, that described the steps to flash your phone, wasn’t very great. Only two steps that didn’t say much. But lucky me I found a much better guide about flashing LK2.08 to Spica on this website:

• http://mesonprojekt.com/blog/root-your-samsung-spica-with-lk208

The procedure went fine for me and now I’m sitting here with a rooted Spica. I rooted my phone because I wanted to be able to get the extra functionality out of my phone. And I have always liked to hack and take stuff apart, even if this only was a simple flash procedure. I also had to root the phone to be able to change the default theme to a black one. I’m such a perfectionist with my black notification bar.

Here are two other guides that show you how to flash your Galaxy Spica (but to 2.1). I don’t really know if they are any good, but at least they give some tips and images:

• http://www.greaky.com/2010/02/samsung-i5700-galaxy-spica-android-21.html
• http://www.addictivetips.com/mobile/how-to-upgrade-update-samsung-galaxy-i5700-1-5-to-firmware-2-1

EDIT:
I found another nice guide that shows you how to root your Spica with LK2.02:

• http://www.addictivetips.com/mobile/root-samsung-galaxy-spica-i5700-with-leshaks-kernel/

My mum and dad did just agree about buying a new TV from this generation! We have had an old, fat 20″ (or something) CRT TV until now.

The TV that will replace our current one is a LG 42LD420, that you can see in the name is 42″ large. With that size, full HD and LCD technology, it is a pretty big jump from our CRT TV. Now we will be able to use the HDMI-port on our DVD-player too. We will also be able to plug in a Playstation 3, that my brother is planning on buying. Even if it is possible to somehow connect a Playstation 3 to a CRT monitor by using a SCART-cable, the gaming experience wouldn’t be nearly as good as with a modern TV. I’m also looking forward to watch some Ergo Proxy on this beast, (beast compared to our current TV).

I have read a lot of good comments about this TV. The only two negative things, seem to be that you need a special remote control to unlock the ability to play videos from USB-devices, and that you need to calibrate the TV to get the right contrast, colors, brightness and stuff (which isn’t strange). I assume that there are a lot of better TVs out there, but this one seems to be one of the best for the price of 650 €.

For about an hour ago I ordered and paid for my first movie/series in my life. More specific I ordered Ergo Proxy – The Complete Collection Box Set (6 Discs) from Play.com.

It costed me something about 40 €, with shipping included. But I think it’s totally worth it. I haven’t seen the whole series yet, only the first 7 episodes, and those were awesome.

On the other hand, I could have bought Ergo Proxy in Sweden for only ~15 €, however that box was only in Japanese, with Swedish, Norwegian, Danish and Finnish subtexts. And I wanted to have the box in both Japanese with English subs and with English speech, which the box that I bought includes. I did also read a comment about the Swedish version saying that the Swedish subs were pretty awful. And I prefer to follow my own guideline when buying stuff – better to pay some extra and be happy with your purchase, than be greedy and be unhappy with your purchase.

I could have kept on watching Ergo Proxy streamed online, but I felt that this is an anime series that I really want to own and have in my shelf.
Another alternative was to buy the Swedish version, and then download English subs and/or extract the English sound from downloaded episodes. However, this would be pretty messy if I would want to watch the series on a TV connected to a regular DVD-player. And like I said before, I prefer to pay a bit more and avoid this kind of problems.

I hope that Play.com and the mail in Sweden manages to deliver my package to me, since I wasn’t able to write å, ä and ö in my address field. And I have two ö, three å and one ä in my address. That’s actually pretty much even for a Swede.

I’m planning on uploading some photos here on my blog of the box when I have got it in 1-2 weeks. I wanted myself to see how the box and the discs looked like in reality, but all I could find were images of the cover (like the one I have in this post). I wanted to see the actually box, now I have no clue how large it is and if the discs got individual cases or not. However, I’m really looking forward to the delivery.

Perhaps this is my first series of a future collection?

• Buy Ergo Proxy – The Complete Collection Box Set from Play.com

UPDATE: Click here if you want to see some photos of the box.

Last week I got an USB memory from my school, to use at the web design classes, and now after putting a lot of stuff on it I realised that the allocation unit size was way to high. The content took up 930 MB, and on my internal hard disk it had the size of 964 MB (because of the allocation unit size). So that wasn’t a huge loss. But on my USB memory it took up 1,28 GB! And that’s because of the default allocation unit size of the memory stick that was 32 kB!

To change this I formated the USB memory to the FAT32 file system and picked the default allocation unit size of 4096 bytes. Now does the stuff on my USB memory only use up 972 MB.

• Read more about size, size on disk and allocation unit size here

I live pretty close to Göteborg in Sweden, and from here it’s almost the same distance to Malmö as it is to Stockholm, as you can see on the images below. But that doesn’t prevent me from getting these shitty results with this HUGE speed difference:

What is the point with a internet speed testing server that isn’t able to upload more than 5-6 Mb/s?!

I don’t know why it doesn’t work to edit the tab width by editing the following two preferences in about:config in Firefox 4 Beta 4:

browser.tabs.tabMaxWidth
browser.tabs.tabMinWidth

But I found the add-on Custom Tab Width that does the job! The strange thing is that it looks like the add-on changes those two preferences, and that apparently works. I guess that the add-on edits something more… But it works!

• Download Custom Tab Width

I stumbled over a funny website were you can see how our modern games would look like if they were made during the 8 and 16 bits eras.

Check it out on the link below:

• http://www.geekosystem.com/8-bit-game-demakes/

I have downloaded Android SDK to Eclipse 3.6 and I have started to mess around and see if I can create something to Android. But when I opened [project folder]/res/values/strings.xml and tried to edit it in the Resources view, I got the following error message:

java.lang.nullpointerexception

This was solved by switching to the normal XML view and changing the following line:

<resources>

To:

<resources xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android">

And now does the Resources view work!

EDIT:
You also have to reopen the file after you have changed the code line.

Earlier today tried my little sister to start her laptop, but after Windows XP had loaded she got a Blue Screen which gave the error: unbootable_boot_volume. This is how I solved the problem:

1. Get a Windows XP CD.
2. Boot up from the CD.
3. When a menu pops up, choose to go to the Recovery Console.
4. Type chkdsk /r and wait until it’s finished (took like an hour for me).
5. When it has loaded to 100 % and you are able to type again, type exit.
6. Take out the Windows XP CD from the driver and let Windows start normally.
7. Now it should work again!

I have two monitors to my computer, and I like to have videos in fullscreen on my left monitor. But if you click outside of the video (on the second monitor) does the video goes back to its original size. Lucky for us has a guy came up with an idea to solve this. This solution can be found on this website:

• http://my.opera.com/d.i.z./blog/2009/04/22/watch-fullscreen-flash-while-working-on-another-screen

If you don’t know that Firefox Panorama is, which is included in the Firefox 4 Beta, check out the video on this page:

• http://blog.mozilla.com/blog/2010/08/24/firefox-4-beta-updated-with-sync-and-panorama/

I must say that I really don’t get the point of this feature. Why do we need to have this panorama thing to organize tabs? Why not just open a second window, which is much easier to switch to instead of messing around with this panorama stuff? The only feature that would be needed then would be a way to close Firefox and all windows at once and save all of their tabs.

My point is – Firefox Panorama is pointless.

Apparently changes Adobe Flash Player 10.1 my graphic card’s clock speed to the default clock when I start watching a YouTube-video. The graphic card that I have is a ATI Radeon PowerColor 4870 and the reason why this is a problem is because my card is kinda broken and I need to down clock it to not get strange dots all over the screen. I guess I have to download Flash Player 9 if I can’t find an alternative or a solution to my problem. I could buy a new graphic card, but I don’t know if I want to do that since this is working just fine when it’s down clocked a bit.

EDIT:
This version of Flash Player (10.0.45.2) works for me:

• http://www.oldapps.com/flash_player.php?old_flash_player=18

In earlier versions of Firefox I edited the browser.tabs.tabMinWidth in about:config to something about 20, to make my tabs smaller. But now it seems that this feature doesn’t work any longer, and all my tabs got their original sizes again. I feel a bit sad over this because I have always tons of tabs open (sometimes over 100 tabs, I’m serious!) and now it’s much harder to navigate through them.