I've recently started using Gnome Do in Ubuntu 9.04, and I've not yet explored the extent of its functionality, but I'm continually discovering more uses. It includes plugins for GMail contacts, Firefox bookmarks, a Gnome dictionary and calculator, Pidgin messenger, Imageshack uploader, and more. One useful plugin is the Microblogging (Twitter) plugin; it shows your friends' status updates in the notification tray, and you can post directly from Do. You can even manage your Gnome session and windows, and control your media player. Oh, and all this is just an extension of the main function, which is a search/launcher; however, I have yet to put it to use as effectively as Launchy. Finally, you can use it with a dock skin, wrapping yet another desktop function into one tool.

A few configuration options are available by right-clicking on the Do icon in the dock, but to further customize dock settings, you can use Alt+F2 > gconf-editor > Apps > gnome-do > preferences > Docky > Utilities > DockPreferences. Icons are added or removed by dragging to the dock. Screenshot here.

Now the Twitter plugin would be really handy, except for the fact that it, along with most third-party Twitter apps, was broken to some extent by the Twitpocalypse. Although the crisis was mostly averted, it left in its wake a bunch of mal-tweeting apps. In the case of Do, upon an attempted post to Twitter, you would receive a notification that the post had failed, when it had in fact succeeded. While not exactly an epic fail, it nonetheless was an undesirable state of affairs. Enter open source developers.

The bug was reported and dealt with on Launchpad here. However, finding all the dev language a bit difficult to follow, I headed over to the Ubuntu forums for some clarification, where a user linked to the same fix page, but with a more lucid explanation.

Go to Synaptic, go to Software Sources, pre-released updates, close, look for gnome-do, update gnome-do plugins, go to .local/share/gnome-do and delete (or move) your plugins directory, open gnome-do, enable the microblogging plugin again, and you should be good to go.

So, to further expound ... you open Synaptic package manager, then open Software Sources and enable pre-released updates (instructions). Then go back to Synaptic and search for gnome-do-plugins, and update the package. Next, open a file browser, and show hidden files if they are not already visible (View > Show Hidden Files), then navigate to your home folder, where you should find the above-referenced location; delete or move. Finally, simply open Gnome Do and re-enable your plugins.

Viola! You should now have tweets that flow like clockwork.

For me, that is.

I blogged a while back about Vista/XP Virtual Desktops being virtual desktops in Windows done right-er. Well, I have a new love. VirtuaWin.

I believe that probably over a year earlier than this second time, I have used VirtuaWin (the default taskbar icon looked familiar). I probably didn't like it so well back then, but I think it's pretty rad now.

• under 10 MB memory usage on my system
• low CPU usage on my system
• simple
• fast
• small size of core files
• extendable by modules

Awesome, huh? It doesn't do any fancy Exposé style desktop previews like some other ones, but I don't really think Windows is setup for that (hopefully Microsoft will make some changes in this direction in the future. Native virtual desktops in Windows would be great).

And some nice news for the Ubuntu (and others, I think) users among you: you can set up hotkeys to switch and follow windows to the previous and next desktops.

Sweet, huh?

As a postscript, I like using the XP bars icon set for VirtuaWin because it allows me to keep tabs on which desktop I'm on, Ubuntu/GNOME style (pic). Check that set out or take your pick of the others. You install them by putting them in the icons folder in the VirtuaWin folder. Refer to the help file included for more info (help not working on Vista? Try xchm for Win32 [v. 1.16]).

So it turns out there are a couple ways to do this. It depends on what kind of search you want for your blog. Actually, you can even go as far as setting up a Google Custom Search for your blog, like we used to use, but these are a bit simpler and faster to set up.

First, you've probably seen the search box on the Blogger navbar.

By my guess, this is probably in the source code of all or most Blogger templates, but I know for a fact that some of them hide the bar (it's actually an iframe if you want to know), such as our template, Subtlebeauty. You'll have to remove some code from your template if it's hidden on yours and you want it to show. For example, in Subtlebeauty, I'd probably remove the lines:

#navbar-iframe {
height:0px;
visibility:hidden;
display:none;
}

Check out this page for a full tutorial. If you want to change the color scheme of the bar (there's only 4 available), check out this page.

The second way is maybe a little easier. It's pretty much the same search as the navbar provides, just using your own search box, which means you can put it wherever you want on your blog. Head over here and grab the code or press the Add To My Blogger button. You can change the text displayed when the search box is not being used and the text on the search button as described over there. Just take a look at the code and you'll probably get it. Easy as pie. In fact, I put the code in below so you can test it out right here.

And the third way is a piece of cake. It's the new Blogger Search Box. Quote from Blogger Buzz: "To add the gadget, go to your blog's Layout page, then click “Add a Gadget” and click on “Search Box.” Super easy, and it has some cool options. It's a lot more advanced than the previous two (but just as easy to use). It used to only be in Blogger in Draft, but now it's public, so woot woot!

With a lot of Unix and Linux window managers, you can drag a window around by holding the Alt key and using your mouse anywhere on the window. (The GNOME window manager can use some different keys, probably other WMs, too). This is incredibly useful. It allows you to get the window around quickly, and is so much faster than seeking out the title bar and dragging with that.

Anyway, enough with the persuasion; if you're going to like it, you'll be convinced when you try it. To the point, I found three programs to do the job for Windows: the Easy Window Dragging -- KDE style AutoHotkey script, AltDrag, and Win32WM (direct .zip link).

The first of these, Easy Window Dragging, is the most simple. You'll need AutoHotkey to run it. If you want, you can use the AHK2Exe compiler included with AHK; this will make an .exe you can run without needing AutoHotkey. I think performance may be slightly better when it's run uncompiled, but the difference may be negligible. The functions of the script are (quote from script comments):

Hold down
; the ALT key and LEFT-click anywhere inside a window to drag it to a new
; location; 2) Hold down ALT and RIGHT-click-drag anywhere inside a window
; to easily resize it; 3) Press ALT twice, but before releasing it the second
; time, left-click to minimize the window under the mouse cursor, right-click
; to maximize it, or middle-click to close it.

There is a tray icon that allows you to exit the program.

AltDrag has a few more features. Quote from the info file:

Drag windows with the mouse when pressing the alt key.
You can use the middle or right mouse button to resize windows.
If you press the shift key while you drag or resize, the window will stick to other windows.
You can double-click a window to maximize it.
You can double-click with the middle mouse button to roll-up windows.

There is also an experimental feature to make it stick to other windows (what does that mean?) along with another option in the .ini file to make Alt+right-click minimize windows. Tray icon included.

Win32WM does not have a tray icon, so you'll have to end its process with Task Manger in order to stop it. In addition to alt-dragging, it has some keyboard driven window management functions. Quote from the readme:

Maximize vertically        Win+V
Maximize horizontally      Win+H
Maximize window            Win+X
Minimize window            Win+Z
Send window to background  Win+B

It also has some other functions, such as snapping windows to desktop edges when alt-dragging, but they appear to need VirtuaWin (what Win32WM was originally made for) to be enabled.

One other thing to note about Win32WM: it appears to send click and drag mouse events to the window it's moving - repeatedly. Take a look at this blank canvas in GIMP that I dragged around with it:

And another note: while the CPU usage of these applications is mostly not that bad, the CPU usage of programs being dragged around on the screen can spike as well as applications behind those you are dragging. I think this has something to do with the way Windows draws windows and I also think it may be different in Vista and beyond. However, this is mostly with violent thrashing of the window about the screen; gentler window dragging should have quite acceptable CPU usage.

In any case, take your pick, and enjoy.

Update: June 12, 2009: Just a quick note: windows don't seem to drag using this method when they are not responding (hung). I think this is probably also something to do with the way Windows draws windows, and it also may be different in Vista. And as far as I remember, hung windows drag fine in Linux.

This bugs me to death since I'm on dial-up. Just last night, I pulled a process out from under the nose of my firewall while it was asking about it and it locked up my (Windows) system pretty nasty. I should file a bug report with PC Tools about that…

Anyway, thanks to burning desire and this and this thread on mozillaZine Forums, I found Cache Fixer. Quote: "Cache Fixer extension drops the "dirty" flag on every startup and if Mozilla crashes, you still loose cached data, but only the current (crashed) session. I think it’s better, than loosing all cached data."

That's awesome, but it only works up to Firefox 3.0pre. So I used the maxVersion trick so it will work with up to Firefox 4.0. Here it is on Box.net. Hopefully the developer will put an official updated version up soon. Please note: I have nothing to do with development, I just changed a text string and then zipped the files back up.

Also, as I posted back here, the dumped cache is intentional behavior. We're just choosing to change that behavior (woot!).

Thanks much, Mr. Ivanov.

Having finally read Claus' post about Kon-Boot from the 25th, I thought it pretty cool and felt like posting about it over here.

He goes into some detail about the tool, so you can check it out if it interests you. But here are the juicy and important points.

What it does is modify the operating system kernel in memory (grabbing control at the BIOS to bootloader handoff), changing the necessary parts to disable the need to use a password to log in. It runs off of a CD (or a floppy… maybe you could get it to work off a USB stick, too). Hot stuff.

From what I read at GSD, such techniques aren't new, but this is a pretty sweet implementation. It doesn't work with computers on a domain setup, but that makes sense; you would have to inject code into the server, too, to make it work, because the computer needs to authenticate with the server, and unless the server is compromised, too, it's not gonna let you login with out proper credentials (password, keycard, whatever). And even if you could get through to a local account on the computer, you might not be able to nab anything important since user data might be stored on the server. I'm not sure about the caching methods used, though (I'm talking about Windows here; I don't even know if Linux has domains). Maybe some user data would still be cached on the hard disk, I don't know.

In any case, it's a pretty cool technique, even if I'm not so geek about it as Claus.

It seems to me there was a point when blogging was 'in'. At least with the younger population. It was, well, a fad, and like all of them, it passed (or should I say will pass? passes?).

But why did the young'ns not stick around? I believe the answer to be simple: writing about what you did today gets boring after a while -- for reader and likely enough the blogger, too. And if you're not celebrity, what stranger in the world is going to read your boring personal weblog?

Now that you've figured it out, consider the hundreds of non-celebrity blogs that get a nice chunk of readership. Why do they get readership? Content, content, content. Plus presentation, of course. Your average personal blog might have a terrible template (or just a popular and familiar one), but I think people appreciate good design, whether consciously or subconsciously. It also seems to me that blogs with high readership have a topic, or a category to their posts -- thus a reason for people to come back: more content in that category. Example: Download Squad. Though it covers tech news, they are always talking about software, new and updated. So people have a reason to come back. Unless you are some hot celebrity, your personal life probably is not enough to draw someone back to your blog.

And one note: it seems to me that a lot of popular blogs (at least that I run into) are run by a team. Keeping quality content coming is important, too. Who would get used to watching TV if programs came on randomly, sporadically, and far between?

Enter microblogging, and by the numbers, Twitter. And Facebook*. Why do daily details of your personal life suddenly become hot fodder for the internet masses (OK, maybe just your friends, but I do have random people follow me on Twitter -- it's been spammers recently, though)? Manageability. Or should we put it, digestibility. And the social ties. One can eat spoonfuls, in fact, one wants to eat multiple spoonfuls in a day, but not six whole pizzas.

Check out this article, In defense of Twitter. After you read this quote from it, that is:

Of course you'd like to think that most of your daily conversation is weighty and witty but instead everyone chats about pedestrian nonsense with their pals. In fact, that ephemeral chit-chat is the stuff that holds human social groups together.

So while we post some more personal stuff to the blog (and it can't help bleeding through), I like to think of it as a sort of formal publishing platform. It's information, subjective and objective, and it's there for your taking. And if you feel like coming back because it interests you, do. If not, don't. If you're my friend, you might find such disconnected and random thoughts as Twitter produces to be noteworthy.

Anyway, some interesting thoughts…

*Facebook status updates