smart stuff

Vimperator - gain back your time

Thanks to Brenden for passing me this link.

vimperator.mozdev.org/

First there was a Navigator, then there was an Explorer. Later it was time for a Konqueror. Now it’s time for an Imperator, the VIMperator :)

Vimperator is a free browser add-on for Firefox, which makes it look and behave like the Vim text editor. It has similar key bindings, and you could call it a modal web browser, as key bindings differ according to which mode you are in.

Now I need vim bindings for openoffice, so that I stop typing :w.

Oh yeah :-).

.. on the crazyness of the Microsoft WGA anti-piracy scheme.

ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=20070901

Blackbox: your datacenter in a container

For a project we are currently looking at datacenters and we all agree that the idea of getting all the equipement stuffed into a container is a useful one:-).

www.sun.com/emrkt/blackbox/index.jsp

www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2007/Jun/23/stanford_center_is_first_blackbox_recipient.html

www.youtube.com/watch?v=svLdboZdfQ0

htop - interactive process-viewer for linux

Are you also sick of good old top? Especially if your tasks run for 20 days and more? You might want to have a look at htop.

SSH login without password

Nice solution.

pdftk - the pdf toolkit

If PDF is electronic paper, then pdftk is an electronic staple-remover, hole-punch, binder, secret-decoder-ring, and X-Ray-glasses. Pdftk is a simple tool for doing everyday things with PDF documents. Keep one in the top drawer of your desktop and use it to:

Merge PDF Documents
Split PDF Pages into a New Document
Rotate PDF Pages or Documents
Decrypt Input as Necessary (Password Required)
Encrypt Output as Desired
Fill PDF Forms with FDF Data or XFDF Data and/or Flatten Forms
Burst a PDF Document into Single Pages
..

The nice thing is that one can use it all from the commandline :-).

Examples Merge Two or More PDFs into a New Document

 pdftk 1.pdf 2.pdf 3.pdf cat output 123.pdf

Split Select Pages from Multiple PDFs into a New Document

 pdftk A=one.pdf B=two.pdf cat A1-7 B1-5 A8 output combined.pdf

Burst a Single PDF Document into Single Pages and Report its Data to doc_data.txt pdftk mydoc.pdf burst.

puf - Parallel URL fetcher

puf is a download tool for UNIX-like systems. You may use it to download single files or to mirror entire servers. It is similar to GNU wget (and has a partly compatible command line), but has the ability to do many downloads in parallel. This is very interesting, if you have a high-bandwidth internet connection.

On debian:

  apt-get install puf

puf is one of these great commandline tools that one simply loves!

See openfiles

Sometimes it is really useful to find out which files are open, as well as by what process/user. lsof and fuser are your friends.

Which files are opened by vim?

 lsof -c vim

.. and which processes use the file tara.c?

 fuser tara.c

GoboLinux

GoboLinux is an alternative Linux distribution which redefines the entire filesystem hierarchy.

GoboLinux is a Linux distribution that breaks with the historical Unix directory hierarchy. Basically, this means that there are no directories such as /usr and /etc. The main idea of the alternative hierarchy is to store all files belonging to an application in its own separate subtree; therefore we have directories such as /Programs/GCC/2.95.3/lib.

To allow the system to find these files, they are logically grouped in directories such as /System/Links/Executables, which, you guessed it, contains symbolic links to all executable files inside the Programs hierarchy.

To maintain backwards compatibility with traditional Unix/Linux apps, there are symbolic links that mimic the Unix tree, such as "/usr/bin -> /System/Links/Executables", and "/sbin -> /System/Links/Executables" (this example shows that arbitrary differentiations between files of the same category were also removed).

vncserver .. for crontab jobs that need a X-Display

This old vncserver hack, can make life easy. I remember the old problem .. how can you generate graphs in R in cronjobs without going via the postscript format?

 1. vncserver
 2. enter password
 3. remove all in  ~/.vnc/xstartup that is not needed
 4. work:
    DISPLAY=:1 R
 5. vncserver -kill :DISPLAYNUMBER_FROM_STEP_1

Thanks to Stefan!

Making videos to show off your latest software

xvidcap is a great tool to to capture things going on on an X-Windows display to either individual frames or an MPEG video.

A big thanks to Michael Neumann who pointed out this too to me. He made his great wee-videos with xvidcap.

Packet sniffing and replay

I just came across this most useful ksnuffle. It will help us to automate some more work.

Linux Virtual Server (LVS)

(mon+heartbeat+fake+coda solution) Virtual server is a highly scalable and highly available server built on a cluster of real servers. The architecture of cluster is transparent to end users, and the users interact with the system as if it were only a single high-performance virtual server.

The Linux Virtual Server as an advanced load balancing solution can be used to build highly scalable and highly available network services, such as scalable web, cache, mail, ftp, media and VoIP services. link

Recording streaming sound with vsound

Vsound - a Virtual Audio Loopback Cable

This program allows you to record the output of any standard OSS program (one that uses /dev/dsp for sound) without having to modify or recompile the program. It uses the same idea as the esddsp wrapper from the Enlightened Sound Daemon (in fact, vsound is based on esddsp). That is, it preloads a library that intercepts calls to open /dev/dsp, and instead returns a handle to a normal file. It also intercepts ioctl’s on that file handle and logs them, to help convert the audio data from its raw form. Vsound then uses sox to convert the raw data to the desired file format.

The upshoot of this is that instead of playing sound to the sound card in your computer, the data is recorded to a file. This is similar to if you connected a loopback cable to the line in and line out jacks on your sound card, but no DA or AD conversions take place, so quality is not lost.

One use of vsound is to help convert real audio files to some other format. Since the real audio format is proprietary, and all we have is a player, we can use the vsound to create a wave file like so:

 vsound -t -f /data/dvdburn/LL2/s2.wav  realplay rtsp://18.39.0.30/ailab/mit-ll2-s2-09nov02-80k.rm

GNU/Linux Desktop Survival Guide

Good free book.

Webcam to watch penguins :-)

Enjoy!

Ubuntu - nice Linux distro based on debian

Their solgan: "Ubuntu" is an ancient African word, meaning "humanity to others". Ubuntu also means "I am what I am because of who we all are". The Ubuntu Linux distribution brings the spirit of Ubuntu to the software world.

Logo:

It comes with Gnome 2.8 and a 2.6 Kernel. The overall install was amazingly simple. Download it.

Mozex + Firefox = vim + mutt

A big thanks to Mark for the link and comment.

I consider the mozex extention for Firefox a "must have." With mozex, I can edit textareas with vim and handle mailto links with mutt!

Mozex will also enable you to view html source in vim. link

You can edit your mozex prefs by typing about:config in Firefox.

Great Firefox Webdeveloper extension

Among many other goodies it includes a call to the W3 validator. link

Do you also type :w in your favourite texteditor?

For all these great folks out there that hate Word and openoffice for not understanding :w :-).

Vim-like bindings for firefox.