sudo aptitude install xkbset
xmodmap -e 'keysym Pause Break = Pointer_Button2'
xkbset m
xkbset exp =m

I don’t know yet whether this will persist after a reboot.

One thing that’s always annoyed me in both XEmacs and Emacs was the buffer switching using C-x b. In theory, this has a nice history you can cycle through using the up arrow, but this history never contained all of my open buffers. About fifty percent of the time, for reasons only known to the Lisp gurus, it did not offer the one buffer I wanted to switch to, even if I only had three different buffers open. OTOH, it did always contain all kinds of buffers I never in my life want to even see, such as *scratch*, *Messages*, *ESS*. Yikes.

This is what does away with all of this (in ~/.emacs):

; Better buffer switching
(iswitchb-mode 1)
; Ignore all kinds of special Emacs buffers that start with a *,
; but don't ignore the R process buffer (*R*)
(add-to-list 'iswitchb-buffer-ignore "*[^R]")

Not only does this have a sensible history to cycle through, C-x b shows the names of all open buffers in the minibuffer, and you can “find as you type”, even for parts of the buffer name that are not at the beginning. So you can immediately type the letters that are unique to that buffer name, handy when you’re working on a project where the .tex and several .R files all start with the same project prefix.

Hold down the Program key and tap F12, then release both keys. The keyboard’s lights will begin flashing rapidly. To copy a key, first tap the “source” key whose action you want to copy somewhere else. The lights will begin flashing slowly. Now tap the key where you want the new action to appear. The lights will resume rapid flashing. To swap two keys, you can repeat this sequence for each key without exiting from remapping mode. When you are done making changes, exit with Program plus F12. The lights should immediately stop flashing.

It works without problems on the Dell Inspiron desktop (nVidia Corporation GeForce 8300 GS graphics card). I cannot get it to work on the Thinkpad X41 (Intel 915 graphics card; possibly a bug).

It is much more useful than I thought it would be. I always thought the rotating desktop cube was just a cool gadget – it turns out that it is very handy for orienting myself in my four-desktop space. It’s really impressive how much easier it is to remember where a program is with an extra dimension (“It’s at the back of the cube”) than without (“It’s two workspaces to the right” or “It’s on workspace 3″).

Note that you set these preferences in Administer → Content type, not in the Category/ Vocabulary settings.

1. Use Firefox shortcuts (just google for a list).
2. I’ve installed the mouseless browsing (MLB) Firefox extension. Every link in a page gets tagged with an ID. Type that ID, then hit ENTER. (For me, this works using “Find as you type” in the Firefox preferences).
3. I’ve set up some Firefox smart keywords for quick searching from the location bar.
4. I’ve installed the CustomizeGoogle extension to Firefox. Amongst other things, you can set it to “Give the searchbar focus”. This means that if you can immediately modify you search.
5. I already have Greasemonkey installed. This lets you modify websites using browser-based JavaScript. From userscripts.org, an online repository of user scripts, I’ve downloaded Google Search Box AccessKey. Now, on any Google search page, hitting the access key and the letter “s” puts the cursor in the search box.
6. The “access key” differs by browser. Generally, for Firefox under Linux, it is the ALT key. For me, it is apparently ALT+Shift, which is just as well, since I’m using ALT already for loads of XFCE shortcuts. It’s generally a great idea, and some websites have set it server-side for quick navigation to important links. I’ve now implemented it for this blog. Hitting your access key and “s” will put the cursor in the search box. From there, you can either search, or tab-navigate directly down the list of links along the right hand sidebar.
7. Generally, I try to navigate using the tab key. A big problem is that it is often hard to see which link has focus, or even whether the location bar or the main window have focus. In about:config, filter for “focus”, and set browser.display.focus_background_color and browser.display.focus_text_color. I’ve set the background color to #a2e88b and the foreground color to black. That’s helpful, but doesn’t show up on some elements, such as images. In Greasemonkey, I’ve set up Bright Focus (for buttons, links and textboxes). This gives a border, which also shows up around images and the like. I don’t like the default color, so I set it to be 2px #66CC00. This is also available as a script for the Firefox Stylish extension.
8. In the same spirit, I’ve added this to my userChrome.js:

   /* give urlbar background color when it has focus */
   #urlbar[focused="true"] { background-color:#A2E88B !important; }
   
   /* change focus rings around acitve tabs  */
   .tabbrowser-tabs > tab:focus .tab-middle {
     -moz-outline: solid 2px #66CC00 !important;
   }

9. Finally, I’ve set up my home page to be a local page containing a handful of frequently visited sites, so I can just load my home page and then quickly navigate to them.