linsec.ca blog » techmail

Clear some desk space with cross-platform keyboard and mouse sharing app

vdanen — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 21:41:16 +0000

This week’s techmail is Clear some desk space with cross-platform keyboard and mouse sharing app. The tip is about Synergy+ which is awesome cool. With it, I can share the same keyboard and mouse across as many computers as I want (it’s cross-platform, so I use it with my OS X workstation and my Fedora workstation) — all without requiring a KVM switch. Works absolutely fantastic. One of my new “essential” applications.

Mind mapping with MindNode for the Mac

vdanen — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 12:38:38 +0000

Last week’s mac techmail was Mind mapping with MindNode for the Mac. MindNode is a neat program that lets you do mind mapping, or drawing pictures to represent thoughts or plans or ideas. Mind mapping is quite popular, and with good reason as it gives you a visual representation of what you’re planning or thinking. MindNode comes in two flavours, the free and Pro versions. The Pro version has some good features, but the free version has been good enough for me.

Head off problems by monitoring servers with munin

vdanen — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 12:35:43 +0000

Last week’s techmail was Head off problems by monitoring servers with munin which takes a look at the Munin program. Munin is pretty slick in that you can use it to monitor resource usage on the local machine and networked clients as well. Goes nicely with Nagios when you have to babysit and keep an eye on multiple machines.

GUI scripting in bash

vdanen — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 15:00:47 +0000

This week’s techmail is GUI scripting in bash which takes a look at a few options for GUIfying your bash scripts: Zenity (for GNOME) and kdialog for KDE. My favourite is Zenity since I use GNOME, and it doesn’t require all this whacky DBUS stuff (although I suppose maybe using DBUS makes kdialog more powerful, but I’ve never noticed a real lack in Zenity). It’s a nice way to turn a shell script that needs to run in an organization into something a little more user-friendly and with a bit more polish.

Handy screen locking tips for Mac

vdanen — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 03:03:52 +0000

Last week’s mac tip was Handy screen locking tips for Mac. Unlike Windows or Linux, which have keyboard shortcuts to quickly lock the screen when you get up to grab a coffee or go to the bathroom, the Mac doesn’t. It has the same functionality, but you need to mouse over in order to do it (which, for people like myself, is a waste of a good keyboard). This tip tells you how to emulate the same (basic!) functionality in OS X.

My favorite Firefox extensions for Linux

vdanen — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 03:01:10 +0000

Last week’s techmail was My favorite Firefox extensions for Linux which talks about a few of my favourite extensions for Firefox. Read the comments on the tip… I’ve already found another couple that I didn’t know about before that I’m going to have to try out. The one thing that keeps me using Firefox are the extensions for it. I might feel a little slow and clunky sometimes, but some of those extensions sure make up for it.

Take advantage of full-featured Komodo IDE to boost productivity

vdanen — Sun, 04 Jul 2010 16:15:11 +0000

Last week’s techmail was Take advantage of full-featured Komodo IDE to boost productivity which looks at some of the cool features of Komodo that can help you get more out of the IDE. I’ve been using Komodo for years, and even though it is pay-to-play, it’s still my favourite IDE. In particular, I really like the fact that it has support for so many languages… I used to be a pretty big fan of Zend Studio, until they moved it over to Eclipse. Then I went back to Komodo. Of course, now that I’m doing more in python than PHP, I would have been using Komodo more anyways.

The tip looks at things like customizing the toolbox to get more snippets and commands in there (i.e. running pylint on the currently open file), looks at debugging support, changing the keybindings (need my vim keybindings!), and some of the add-ons you can install (since Komodo is based on Mozilla code, it is capable of using addons, just like Firefox or Thunderbird).

Safari 5 underwhelming, iPhoto speed-up tips

vdanen — Sun, 04 Jul 2010 16:10:33 +0000

Falling a little bit behind here… the mac techmail from two weeks ago was Safari 5 boasts speed gains but real improvement is extensions which discusses the new Safari 5. My initial reaction to Safari 5 was “meh…”. Using it now for a few weeks, it’s ok. It’ll be more interesting when there are more extensions to use. Maybe my machine is too powerful to notice the JavaScript improvements. I’m sad there is no sandboxing feature for tabs. Safari 5 has me a bit underwhelmed.

Last week’s mac techmail was Clean up iPhoto to make it faster which looks at a few tips to make iPhoto run a little faster, particularly for people that have a lot of pictures.

Increase download speed with Aria2 utility

vdanen — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 16:36:18 +0000

Last week’s techmail was Increase download speed with Aria2 utility which looks at an incredibly useful and cool file download client. Aria2 is unique because it can grab the same file from multiple sources: http, ftp, bittorrent. It can do it at the same time and then munge the resulting file back together. Makes downloading big files wicked fast. Multi-platform, so not just Linux.

Learn more about how you can use SQLite

vdanen — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 05:49:08 +0000

This week’s techmail is Learn more about how you can use SQLite which is a bit of a primer on how you can use SQLite to create your own little SQL databases, or how you can use it to manipulate the data stored in SQLite databases found in other programs, like Firefox. I pretty much focus on how you can get information out of the Firefox SQL databases, but it comes with plenty of shiny illustrations for how you can do this yourself on any other SQLite database. Because SQLite is so well-used in many applications, being able to get into your data with a wee bit of knowledge can prove to be useful or just plain old fun for people who like to tinker.