Random Ramblings of A Geek
Today, I decided to update to the newest WordPress installation. Thank goodness for backups.
Basically, I clicked “Update Now”, and it didn’t work. I had to download the new installation of WordPress, and restore all my changed settings, and do the backup. That’s why my site was down for the most part of an afternoon.
I also was notified about my not having proper instructions on setting up my Linux autotyper. Oops! I will have that fixed fairly soon. Until then, go backup your site! 🙂
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I find more often than not that those who have the chrome (chromium or google chrome) browser have no idea how to even use extensions, much less see what they can do. This is upsetting because i cant stand when people want it to ‘just work’ and are content when its not.
Anyways, I have compiled a list of extensions that every chrome user needs, or should definitely have.
First off, is Chrome Ad Block. Ever been to a site that has great content, but has so many ads that it kills whatever is there? This nifty extension removes those ads, and makes it look the ad was never supposed to be there anyways. This extension, out of all the other extensions is my favorite. It doesnt download the ads, then remove them from the page, it removes them from the page and then downloads the page. for you non-techie people it means faster load times, and better all-around performance upgrade. If you get nothing else, this one is the one to get.
Next, is Vanilla Cookie Manager. I love this one because i love to hate tracking cookies. You know, the things that are used to let others see your browsing history. It works by deleting cookies off ALL the sites you haven’t allowed. This way, you don’t have cookies that are from unknown sites. If you set it to delete unwanted cookies every thirty minutes, and have the chrome ad blocker i mentioned, it keeps the super cookies in check too.
That’s it! With these extensions, you can be assured that you wont be tracked by anyone, and your browser will be all-around faster.
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Awhile back, and it must be around two months, 20x.cc disappeared off of the internet. This meant that my site, (and a host 😀 of others) disappeared also. Well, i just got an email from them saying that i should renew the account, because it has to few visitors.
This email caused me to be really excited because, hey! i might get all my old data back. No such luck, it was the service they used for paid accounts emailing me. This really upsets me, because 20x.cc gave no warning, and its now just opening old wounds. Next time you have a site, back it up regularly, so you don’t lose your data.
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I have good news, and bad news. I’ll start with the bad news. Quite frankly, development of the windows autotyper has stopped for one reason: windows is a pain in the butt. I recently got Windows 7, the latest and greatest. I tried installing VB6 (The language i use for the windows autotyper) and it failed miserably due to issues beyond my abilities to fix. I got the newest Visual Studio (2010) and it ran so slow it wasn’t worth it. It could not import my autotyper’s source, so it wasn’t worth the effort of remaking it.
For now, the windows autotyper development is stopped. I cannot develop it right now. If you want to help out, and start development again, email me at imageek247@gmail.com, and we can work something out. For now, there is only the old version of the windows autotyper.
Alrighty guys! Here’s the good news. I finally got around to finishing the newest version of the Linux autotyper; 1.0. This one has some major updates;
New OSD that shows a preview of the next text
You could already save/open a text file into the autotyper. Now you can choose the method with which it divides the text. Suppose you felt like ‘reading’ a book you got of the internet to RuneScape. You would import the text file, and choose a period “.” as the divider, instead of the default enter “\n” key.
Runescape Effects are now fully supported (that one took awhile)
Finally, You have three different ways of timing the sent text. You can use one speed for all the texts, just like always, or you can have it send the text randomly between two texts. And the newest one, you can have its sending speed go according to the number of characters in the text. For example, by building off of you reading a book to runescape, you could use this speed setting to make it look like you typed it yourself, at an average typing speed.
You can get the newest version of the autotyper, at this link:
//sourceforge.net/projects/rsautosayer/files/Linux/1.0/?
and you can check out its new screenshot on my website at this link:
//dageek247.tk/wordpress/?page_id=32
enjoy!
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I love Linux, and I love fedora and Ubuntu. they are my favorite distros. Lately, however, they haven’t been doing as good as they can. In a previous post i talked about Ubuntu 11.10 and unity. Unity didn’t turn out as well as it could, but after some research, i found i was able to simply impermanently hide the side bar and use docky instead.
This time, my rant is not about fedora itself, but my computer and its limitations along with Fedora’s hardware needs. The default gnome3 fedora spin is not able to install on my computer, and its because i need 256MB more RAM. Normally, linux is supposed to be less resource intensive, but this is not the case with F16. It takes 756MB ram to install the fedora 16 gnome spin, and I only have 512MB. However, I was able to look at the desktop on the livecd, and see, how promising it looks, for computers that could handle it. Maybe when I get more RAM, it will get better.
In any case, I hope everyone who can run fedora 16 enjoys it. Have fun with Linux!
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Ubuntu templates, the one thing they always forget to add in the release. Sure you can add your own, but that’s always a pain to do yourself. But first, an explanation for the newer ubuntu users.
Whenever you right click on a folder or the desktop in ubuntu, you are given the option to to create a file. If its a new install, it will almost certainly tell you how it doesn’t have any templates installed. The simple fix is to go to the ~/randomuser335/Templates folder and make some files, and most of us do.
However, doing that with every new release is a pain, so i spent about thirty minutes setting up a whole bunch of files and adding them to a file to share with everyone else. Now, you just need to come here and get my file, and copy its contents to your own templates folder.
Last thing, and i’ll give you the templates link. Every folder in the templates folder is a new sub-menu in the ‘create file’ menu. every file you put in the templates folder is just copied when you use the create new file menu. So here is an exemple of the sub-menus;
Finally, here is the link to my templates. Just extract the files to the ~/username/Templates/ folder and you can use them instantly. //dageek247.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/Templates.tar.gz
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And I had, to my absolute delight, the chance to install it on an asus netbook, and try it out. I also had, to my tentative enjoyment, to test it out on my desktop.
Let me explain, the new ubuntu 11.10 now uses unity as its default interface. why is that bad and good? It was originally made for netbooks, and as such it looked great on the netbook. But, its new sidebar was terrible on the desktop. Worse, the sidebar can’t be moved according to this, and my messing around with it failed to change that. Other than that, the new default unity interface is great, and ubuntu 11.10 is great also.
When i installed it on the netbook and looked around, i was thrilled everywhere i went. The new interface, (i always used the main ubuntu for the netbook, even though there is a netbook version) has me feeling right at home. If you have a 16:3 desktop screen, 11.10 will only make you happy. If you have a 4:3 desktop screen (like me) Unity will annoy, but it won’t hurt you, and its always fun to mess with a new OS.
So, I recommend everyone to go check it out. (Try to use the torrent if you can to alleviate some of the load on the servers)
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Quite frankly, this happens to many times to ignore. You are messing around with ubuntu and oops! you deleted, or misplaced something on the panels. Maybe you booted up your computer and something on the panels somehow is ruined, through no fault of your own. this often happens to me, so it seemed necessary to put it here, even though there are plenty of other sites saying the same thing. Here is a probable messed up panel screenshot:
First, you need to open the terminal. The easiest way to do this, is to go to Applications>Accessories>Terminal, but not everyone has the luxury of working panels. You can also open the terminal by pressing ALT+F2 and then typing ‘gnome-terminal’ in the resulting dialog box. This is what it looks like:
next, you need to type a few commands into the terminal. First, copy/paste this in:
gconftool – -recursive-unset /apps/panel
the above command prepares the computer for the next commands and allows you to delete the settings files.. now type in the below command:
rm -rf ~/.gconf/apps/panel
The above command deletes all the settings for the gnome panels and allows them to be automatically reset by the system to their defaults.. finally, copy/paste this in:
pkill gnome-panel
The previous command stops the system app running the gnome panels, allows the system to restore the settings to their defaults, and starts the panel back up. if you did not delete the settings with the rm -rf command, this would have just restarted the gnome panels. And for those of us who don’t care and just want their panels reset quickly, you can copy/paste the below command into the terminal, and it will have the same effect.
gconftool – -recursive-unset /apps/panel; rm -rf ~/.gconf/apps/panel; pkill gnome-panel
That’s it! the gnome panels had all their settings reset to factory default, and you can now look at your proper panels and use them like they are supposed to be, here is even a screenshot of mine after they were fixed:
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Many of you should know about it, its the thing that lets you choose which operating system to run, and then starts it for you. Its also what can almost stop a computers usability with a few clicks of a button. You have probably also had problems with it in the past, maybe a dead os listing, maybe not all the oses are there, or something more serious.
I know people who think the solution to whatever bug or problem in grub is to reinstall the machine. If you are thinking of doing this, don’t. The easiest thing to do is get a live cd and fix the grub issues there. Here is even a good tutorial on how to do so:
If grub was overridden by a new install of windows or if grub has an incorrect/missing boot item:
//www.robertbeal.com/562/rebuilding-grub2-grub-cfg-from-ubuntu-live-cd
You can fix the random errors that you have no idea how they got there by reinstalling grub, and if that fails, you need a new pc, because reinstalling grub is the same as reinstalling everything on your pc to fix grub.
So please, for the love of grub users everywhere, don’t format everything to fix grub, use a liveCD to fix it instead.
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Hey guys, its been awhile but I didn’t find much worth mentioning, and I wanted to surprise you with the unfinished stuff. So here it is; i finally found a windows pc, and I am now back on developing the windows autotyper. the next version’s features will include opening/saving text files for ease of use, a complete GUI revamp, and all the dead links, and bad references will also be fixed. I kinda went slack on that a while back and now im fixing it. When I release the next version of the windows autotyper, I will probably get around to fixing its page on my site as well.
The new linux autotyper is out here also! It now looks the same as it did when you closed it, (linux simply did a settings() thing, but for windows this took forever. hmmm….) It also can open text files into the listbox for ease of use. a line in the text file equates an item in the listbox. The new release also features a few bug fixes and other small stuff. It also can check for updates if you tell it to. Here is the link to the linux autotyper download;
//sourceforge.net/projects/rsautosayer/files/Linux/Beta/?
here is the link to the autotyper page on my site (with screenshots, and more info)
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