Linux, programming, computers and life

I stumped into qalculate, which is command line/gtk/qt calculator. It knows to do it all, just mention. Picture is worth 1000 words. I suspect making coffee will appear in one of the next versions . Command line interface looks nice. Until now, i used python as my calculator, qcalculate certainly is possible replacement.

Technorati Tags: calculator, linux, qalculate

After debugging a critical problem for two weeks (yes including weekends) i have to add a reminder to myself:

Everyone knows that debugging is twice as hard as writing a program in the first place. So if you’re as clever as you can be when you write it, how will you ever debug it? (Brian Kernighan)

Technorati Tags: programming, debugging, quote

It looks, that a lot of people wonder how to configure mplayer. I see a lot of enters to my short post (from google) about some mplayer configuration options. Here are some more resources to look at:

• a post on ubuntuforums.org which has a lot of explanations
• there’s example configuration file, usually at /etc/mplayer/example.conf
• mplayer official docs in english (other languages)
• my ~/.mplayer/config - nothing ingenious in there
  

  #======
  # Video
  #======

  # Set video driver.
  # vo=xv

  # Use double-buffering. (Recommended for xv with SUB/OSD usage)
  double=yes

  #======
  # Audio
  #======

  # Set audio driver.
  ao=alsa
  #==========
  # Subtitles
  #==========

  # VobSubs
  #========

  # Align subs. (-1: as they want to align themselves)
  spualign=-1

  # Anti-alias subs. (4: best and slowest)
  spuaa=4

  # Set language.
  slang=en,eng,heb,he,rus,ru

  # Text-based subtitles
  #=====================

  # Find subtitle files. (1: load all subs containing movie name)
  sub-fuzziness=1

  # Resample the font alphamap. (1: narrow black outline)
  ffactor=1

  # Set subtitle position. (100: as low as possible)
  subpos=100

  # Set subtitle alignment at its position. (2: bottom)
  subalign=2

  # Set font size. (2: proportional to movie width)
  subfont-autoscale=2

  # Set font blur radius. (default: 2)
  subfont-blur=2.0

  # Set font outline thickness. (default: 2)
  subfont-outline=2.0

  # Set autoscale coefficient. (default: 5)
  subfont-text-scale=4.4

  # OSD
  #====

  # Set autoscale coefficient. (default: 6)
  subfont-osd-scale=4.4

  #===========
  # Appearance
  #===========

  # Disable screensaver.
  stop-xscreensaver=yes
  

Technorati Tags: mplayer, configuration, mplayer configuration, tips, linux

Recently, i upgraded my internet connection from 750Kb/96Kb to 1.5Mb/128Kb (all in bits), with hope to get better skype/gizmo/other voip applications quality. But it somehow did not help at all . Skype to Israel works great, but to US the quality is unbearable. I tried ekiga (a gnome SIP soft phone) and several others linux SIP soft phone apps with a free sip account from voipbuster.com but once again the quality was intolerable. While my parents (i called them for test) were able to hear me, i was able to hear about 2-3%. And i do not know how can i debug these problems, where is the bottleneck and how to find it. I believe the connection is wide enough for voip calls.
So, anyone - how to debug these voip problems?

Technorati Tags: voip, linux, skype, problem, quality

Usually, if there’s a problem with some aspect of my linux system, i google a little, take a look at the archlinux forums, and usually find a solution pretty fast.
Now i’m trying to deal with a problem of low importance for me - mounting my usb memory stick - and i don’t know what to do. I did not even find where to look. I’m using thunar and xfce. Thunar, as far as i know, uses hal for mounting. The usb key is mounted, but with ’sync’ mode - which means every write goes down to the hardware, instead of being cached. This causes both slow performance and faster death of the memory stick. The mount should be done in ‘async’ mode. Here’s a thread in archlinux forums i opened, but so far no answers there.
Help, anyone?

Technorati Tags: linux, xfce, thunar, automount, usb, disk on key, sync, async

Firefox has great feature - keywords search. If I write “go word1 word2…” in the url bar of firefox, i’m taken to google search on these words. “tr word1″ takes me to a dictionary. The uses are endless. Here’s an article which explains how to define such shortcuts. I did not know that it’s possible to use multi-parameter keywords. Well, it’s possible.
One more reason to use firefox, if it’s not enough here’s another one.

Technorati Tags: firefox, keyword search

Recently, i needed to find out some passwords for extremely rarely used but very important sites. (That’s why they have real password, not the ‘junk’ password used for junk i don’t care about). I keep my passwords in an encrypted text file. gpg is used for encryption. While it’s pretty safe (it uses RSA after all), it’s a little inconvenient to work with. I need to: decompress-update-compress-remove_old_file. So i decided to try a password manager.
A looked at several screenshots and i liked keysafe (besides, it’s already on AUR, so installation is just typing one command ‘aurbuild -sa keysafe’). It’s really nice. The application is split to two executables: one for editing the password database (relatively rarely used) and another for getting the passwords - small and fast GUI. Both look convenient and work fast.
There’s one strange thing though - in the editing GUI the password is visible (not masked by * as it usually done) - which is ok, since it’s more convenient to edit it like this, but there’s a filed for password confirmation (usually used when password is masked the we want to ensure user did not make a typo). If the password is visible - why do i need a password confirmation?

Technorati Tags: linux, password manager, keysafe, security

I’m a Firefox user. It means i use it as long as i can, because there are sites which are developed for Microsoft Internet Explorer only. If i really need such a site (like my bank’s) I’m forced to use IE. (BTW, it can be used on linux!). Sometimes i click a link while in IE and get to some other site… and I’m really really annoyed.
I’ll tell you why. With Firefox i use the following wonderful extensions: AdBlockPlus, Adblock Filterset.G Updater and FlashBlock. These protect me against most of advertisement and flashes (unless i want them). When i see the site i know in IE, I’m just confused and annoyed - the difference is huge.
If you did not hear about these extensions - now it’s time to try them.

Technorati Tags: firefox, ie, advertisement, ad blocking