Linux, programming, computers and life

May 30, 2007

using non-free apps while free analog exists

Filed under: Uncategorized

I very frequently see people who is using non-free (= cost money) applications while there are perfectly good free analogs out there. I do not mean “dump windows, use linux” (well, that’s a good idea, but it’s not that simple), i mean “dump WinZip or WinRar, use one of the free alternatives“.
Archivers are just one example. There are a lot of free applications for windows out there. Here’s is a list for example. And there’s always an option to donate to those free projects to help the developers.

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May 9, 2007

filtering rss feeds

Filed under: Uncategorized, internet

Today i finally decided i need to get less information. I’m using google rss reader which is great, and eliminates the need to check web sites for news (well, rss does this, any rss reader will do the job). Sadly, it’s not enough. Having a lot of feeds to which I’m subscribed i still get s lot of information which i have to skip manually or to read. The solution (at least partial) is to filter the feeds.
So, some googling brought me to feedshake. There’s no link here because it just doesn’t work. While it’s possible to add a feed and define filtering predicates, the resulting rss is not created, the error is something like (clearly a bug on the site):

<br />
<b>Warning</b>:  require(feed_parser.php) [<a href=‘function.require’>function.require</a>]:
	 failed to open stream: No such file or directory in <b>/home/content/j/u/n/jungie/html/feedshakev1/feedop.php5</b> on line <b>18</b><br />
<br />
<b>Fatal error</b>:  require() [<a href=‘function.require’>function.require</a>]: Failed opening required ‘feed_parser.php’
	 (include_path=’.:/usr/local/php5/lib/php’) in <b>/home/content/j/u/n/jungie/html/feedshakev1/feedop.php5</b> on line <b>18</b><br />

So, my next option was feedrinse, which works great. Add feeds (for every feed it’s possible to define some filtering), combine feeds into channels (optionally, up to 5) and then just use them. Simple and beautiful.
But i knew there were more to it. Yahoo pipes. Here the filtering is limitless in complexity. If you are not familiar with pipes, there are tutorials out there, i use pipes in linux command line all the time.

So currently i have two test feeds, one from feedrinse and other from in parallel with the unfiltered feeds, I’ll wait till a match will appear and than delete the unfiltered feeds.

The summary is: use feedrinse for simple filtering and Yahoo pipes for complex ones.

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May 5, 2007

Light Linux applications (3)

Filed under: linux

Once again, it’s time to continue my list of light linux applications (1), (2).
Today the star is light and fast bittorrent client named transmission. (BTW, answer to question WTF is bittorent is here). I tried several other clients, but this one appears to be lightest and fastest while it has almost everything i need. By “almost” i mean the ability to choose files not to download. However, i need it very rarely, so i still use transmission :)

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