Do Know Evil – Tyler Mulligan’s Tips and Tricks

If you’re using ubuntu and having trouble with nvidia-settings saving to the /etc/X11/xorg.conf file, you may find the following tip helpful in relieving that annoyance.
Looking for something interesting when I login to one of my servers, I decided to whip up the following script I appended to my ~/.bashrc file.

close nvidia-settings

in terminal:

sudo mv /etc/X11/xorg.conf /etc/X11/xorg.conf.backup
sudo gedit /etc/X11/xorg.conf

paste the following:

Section "Device"
    Identifier     "Configured Video Device"
    Driver         "nvidia"
EndSection

save and close.

back to terminal:

sudo nvidia-settings

and save the file.

I started with rhythmbox like most new Ubuntu users. It seemed nice enough but not in the area I was concerned with, internet radio. I tried out many players but was disappointed with different areas of different players. From Ubuntu 8.04 to 8.10 I was using the “good” Amarok (for KDE 3.5). Disappointed by the exclusion of that version in Ubuntu Jaunty 9.04 and unimpressed with workarounds like the PPA’s, I decided to play the field. I came across Exaile, which I’ve blogged about in the past. It’s a good enough player… most of the time. It crashed too often for my likings and I’m getting sick of pkilling it.

It struck me today that I needed a simplier more streamlined solution for my simple needs. I needed a console application. Through a little research, I found moc, which happens to play shoutcast streams as I’ve become accustom to.

I then proceeded to set myself the following way:

sudo apt-get install moc
mkdir -p ~/Music/internet_radio && cd ~/Music/internet_radio
wget -r -l2 -nd -Nc -A.pls http://www.di.fm/index.php
for file in *.pls; do mocp -a $file; done
mocp

1) Installed moc
2) created a directory to download all the playlists from di.fm (since this is the station I listen to most often)
3) wget all the playlists
4) add them all to moc
5) start moc and [tab] to the play list side, enter to play

  enter  -- starts playing
  s      -- stops playing
  n      -- plays next item from the playlist
  b      -- plays previous item from the playlist
  space  -- pause
  p      -- pause

  S      -- plays at random
  R      -- repeats the same song in a loop,
	    Next (X button below) must be OFF
  X      -- switches to play sequentially
  o      -- plays a file from the Internet
  u      -- moves playlist item up
  j      -- moves playlist item down
  Ctrl+u -- adds the URL to the playlist
  g      -- searches marked string in file names
  /      -- searches marked string in file names

  r      -- rereads the directory
  T      -- switches to the theme selection menu
  f      -- toggles display mode of song titles
  TAB    -- switches marker bar between the playlist
	    and the file manager panels
  l      -- switches between displaying the playlist
            or the file manager panel
  P      -- switches full path in the playlist
  H      -- toggles hidden files view
  Ctrl-t -- toggles song duration time
  Ctrl-f -- toggles format file view
  m      -- moves to directory entered in config file
  G      -- moves to directory with currently played file
  i      -- moves to marked directory
  U      -- moves to upper directory
  a      -- adds a file to the playlist
  A      -- adds a directory recursively to the playlist
  C      -- clears the playlist
  V      -- saves the playlist
  d      -- removes marked item from the playlist
  Y      -- removes all empty items from the playlist

  < -- decreases volume by 1%
  ,      -- decreases volume by 5%
  >      -- increases volume by 1%
  .      -- increases volume by 5%

  x      -- toggles the mixer channel
  ?      -- shows help

  !      -- goes to a fast dir 1 (set in config file)
  @      -- goes to a fast dir 2
  #      -- goes to a fast dir 3
  $      -- goes to a fast dir 4
  %      -- goes to a fast dir 5
  ^      -- goes to a fast dir 6
  &      -- goes to a fast dir 7
  *      -- goes to a fast dir 8
  (      -- goes to a fast dir 9
  )      -- goes to a fast dir 10

  F1     -- executes ExecCommand1 (set in config file)
  F2     -- executes ExecCommand2
  F3     -- executes ExecCommand3
  F4     -- executes ExecCommand4
  F5     -- executes ExecCommand5
  F6     -- executes ExecCommand6
  F7     -- executes ExecCommand7
  F8     -- executes ExecCommand8
  F9     -- executes ExecCommand9
  F10    -- executes ExecCommand10

Above commands from polish linux’s article on moc audo player, great resource.

When I first switched to Linux, I was running a lot of things in WINE because I was having trouble finding good linux alternatives for a few programs I use every day. Many programs weren’t a problem because they were designed (or redesigned) to be open-source and cross-platform. Those of you who have been following along have seen me recommend some applications as I made the switch but for the record, here’s a quick breakdown.

Cross platform applications that didn’t effect my switch to linux:
Web browsing: Firefox
Email: Thunderbird
(S)FTP: Filezilla
Web browsing: Opera (used for testing)

Applications I used on Windows and their alternatives I’ve found for Linux:
Text Editing: – Notepad++ | Geany
IRC: mIRC | Konversation (tried kvirc for a while but it’s too buggy)
Music: MusikCube | Amarok 1.4 / Exaile

The other programs I use are either minuscule or obvious (e.g. AIM to pidgin).

Today I’d like to share with you another great application that has replaced uTorrent (which I ran in WINE for a while and disliked), Deluge. What I love about deluge is that it is a native application with an interface that looks and behaves much like uTorrent does. Right click open folder in uTorrent in WINE is very face palm because it would try to open it in the stripped down windows explorer type thing :shudder:.

Anyway… I started using deluge at version 0.5 or so and since then it’s had a major code rewrite and feels more solid and (appears it) is now more extendible. Below is a screenshot of how nice it looks.

It even has a web-ui (if you install the package). You need to run this manually with the following command:

deluge -u web

The only thing it’s missing (that it had in earlier versions) is a good RSS plugin. There are some “solutions” like the FlexRSS plugin or Feeder (web ui only; good luck, have fun with installing that) but they are inferior to uTorrent. However, that is not enough to send me away and I highly recommend this as a Linux torrent client.

To install the latest version in Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope, I added the following PPA to my software sources >> https://launchpad.net/~deluge-team/+archive/ppa

With more and more people using the Internet as a way to market themselves or find employees, it’s only a matter of time before it becomes the norm. As an employee, I find it an easy way to convey information about myself to employers. As an employer, it gives me an idea of a person’s professionalism and understanding of the age that I can easily reference or ask a friend for an opinion on.

I present to you my first two pieces of work released under the creative commons, 100% XHTML/CSS valid resume templates.

Resume Template – Modern v1 by Tyler Mulligan

View Live

Released under the Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License you may freely use and modify this resume template as long as you leave in the credit to me in footer, don’t sell it and release it under the same or similar license (see the link for details).

To use it Download the zip from the Resume link in the footer, extract the files, edit them for your liking and information, upload them to your server and then upload the zip so others may easily download the template from your footer.

Resume Template – Neo v1 by Tyler Mulligan

View Live

Released under the Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License you may freely use and modify this resume template as long as you leave in the credit to me in footer, don’t sell it and release it under the same or similar license (see the link for details).

To use it Download the zip from the Resume link in the footer, extract the files, edit them for your liking and information, upload them to your server and then upload the zip so others may easily download the template from your footer.

If you make any changes to these, I’d be glad if you told me. The XHTML is pretty solid but I was pretty conservative when it came to the CSS to keep the classic look and feel of a document.

I’ve been working on a tutorial for Nexuiz Ninjaz that requires a lot of screen shots. I’ve been utilizing the command line tool scrot to take screenshots on specific windows. These images however, are large pngs because the scrot date pattern wasn’t working properly when I tried to generate jpgs while repeating the same command. I went forward knowing I could find a way to batch compress these pngs later. Figuring I might as well “add a turbo while I’m under the hood”, I opted to both thumbnail the images (duh) and generate the forum thumbnail code (VROOOM).

So, to convert pngs to jpgs, I created a bash script which uses mogrify to convert, compress and thumbnail them and sed to assist in generating the forum code.

#!/bin/bash
#
# Convert pngs to jpgs, thumbnail them and generate forum code
# Created by Tyler Mulligan - www.doknowevil.net
 
condir=converted
if [ ! -d $condir ];then mkdir -p $condir;fi
pagename="http://www.nexuizninjaz.com/pics/howtos/map_link_a_ninja/"
 
# Convert to jpg and create thumbnails
echo -e "backing up originals...\n"
cp *.png originals
echo -e "converting to jpg...\n"
mogrify -format jpg *.png
echo -e "copying to converted directory...\n"
cp *.jpg $condir
echo -e "creating thumbnails...\n"
mogrify -resize 50% *.jpg
for file in *.jpg ; do mv $file `echo $file | sed 's/\(.*\.\)jpg/thumb_\1jpg/'` ; done
mv *.jpg $condir
echo -e "cleaning up\n"
rm *.png
 
# Generate forum code
for file in $condir/thumb_*.jpg ; do 
	tempname=`echo $file | sed 's/thumb_\(.*\)/\1/'`;
	echo "[url=${pagename}${tempname}][img]thumb_${tempname}[/img][/url]"
done

Future plans call for adding flags to support different image types, and including the ability to take screen shots and generate the forum code on a per screen shot basis.

Sorta Off Topic: I’ve taken a swing at frameworks be developing a new layer of organization on top of cfg files in nexuiz. I’ve thoroughly documented this scalable, fully customizable package I’ve dubbed the Ninja Pack for Nexuiz

I was browsing around linuxappfinder.com today and came across Geany, which I’ve already gotten quite comfortable with.

Some features I found that make it similar to notepad++

- The hotkeys are very similar if not identical to notepad++ (gedit has different ones)
- It supports regex find/replace
- It supports ‘find in files’ – by using grep
- It’s a lightweight and efficient IDE

Some features Geany has that notepad++ doesn’t

- Status window with a history
- Scribble pad
- Built in terminal
- Color picker
- Support for projects
- Tight integration with my window manager
- The functions menu is expanded to contain all sorts of clever information that I can fold in a non buggy tree

Some features notepad++ has that geany doesn’t

- TextFX (neat macros that help you with string related pattern updates)
- GUI for changing theme colors
- Tabbed find/replace and find in all (nit pick)

Why I’m quickly choosing Geany over Notepad++

With tight integration with gnome (as opposed to notepad++ which I have to run through wine) and a package of dark themes which I was able to find quickly through the Geany’s FAQ.

I haven’t tried it on Windows yet but I’d imagine it’d run pretty well.. though you are missing out on a lot of things you can take advantage of in linux. If you’re a windows user and would like to give it a whirl, this will help you.

Yesterday the much anticipated 2.4 release of Nexuiz was had. This is a great milestone for the team as it includes many new features such as better graphics, smoother game play, newer and updated maps, better weapon balancing and new game types. The game now boasts over 10 game types both official and unofficial as one of the diggers describes, Nexuiz is like “Quake 3 on crack”.

Give it a whirl, it’s free!

And if you like the game, please Digg it!

Firefox 3 Beta 3 is looking pretty nice, I decided to give it a test run because Portable Apps released it yesterday.

The UI was a little strange to me a first but it started to make more and more sense. Here’s an opening shot for first impressions.

The navigation buttons have been streamlined a bit, putting more emphasize on the back button, combining the history into one drop down and moving the Home button to the bookmarks toolbar.

One of the first things I noticed (and love) is the google suggest style address bar that queries your history based off titles and URLs.

They’ve also added a star that signifies whether you have bookmarked the page or not and it allows for a quick uninvasive way to edit your bookmark for the page.

While I find this a nice feature, I don’t believe it solves the problem of organizing your bookmarks… but rather encourages sloppiness by requiring a second click to pick a folder. I’m not sure how this will fair on the ‘mom test’.

Something I ~love~ though, is the ability to search addons without going to the mozilla site.

In conclusion, FF3 is a vast improvement that certainly increasing my web browsing efficiency. Great work guys, I look forward to the final release.

A majority of my readers use Firefox to browse the web. I myself happen to be a big fan of Firefox, as some of my previous posts have indicated. Always striving for efficiency, I have made a few tweaks to lower my frustration and increase the enjoyment of my web browsing experience. Amongst these changes, one of the first things I do on a new install is to change the way the download dialog (ctrl+j) behaves.

To clarify, I don’t like the downloads box to pop-up when I start a download and I want to choose where to save my file. To achieve this, I go to Firefox options:

and select your options as noted below:

To access the infamous download box in the future, use the ctrl+j hotkey combination:

When I do group projects at school, I like to keep the team in check with a project management system to keep a centralized collection of work, including conversation and various files about said work. In the past I had been a big fan of the (once open-source) Base Camp clone, activeCollab. However, as many of you reading this may know, activeCollab is no longer free.

Fear not my friends! There exists a fork called Project Pier, which picks up where the the free version left off.

In my opinion, the default theme shies away from the clean cut web 2.0 freshness that was activeCollab but the folks at Project Pier were friendly enough to bundle some slick themes for those who are as nitpicky as I.