http://promberger.info/linux my outsourced memory for your perusal Fri, 02 Jan 2009 18:42:00 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en I've written a small script that checks whether I have queued mail and that displays a notification icon via "zenity --notification" in case I do. I wanted to run it using ~/.crontab but it wouldn't run. First, I got error messages from the cron daemon that looked like this: (zenity:22981): Gtk-WARNING ... http://promberger.info/linux/2009/01/02/running-x-apps-like-zenity-from-crontab-solving-cannot-open-display-problem/ You know what I mean ... that loud loud beep that almost knocks you out whenever you type a non-available keyboard shortcut in Emacs. For immediate relief (this will not persist through a reboot): sudo modprobe -r pcspkr For permanent relief, edit the file /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist and add the line: blacklist pcspkr http://promberger.info/linux/2008/12/04/ubuntu-linux-how-to-permanently-turn-off-the-annoying-system-bell-beep/ I know hardcore Linuxers use rm for everything and think the trash on a computer is for babies who also like such poo-poo things like the mouse and GUIs. However, I've just deleted one too many files using rm from a shell script, especially since I like doing rm -rf ... http://promberger.info/linux/2008/11/28/trash-cli-lets-you-move-files-to-the-trash-from-the-command-line-and-shell-scripts/ I like the graphical login screen on my laptop to display my e-mail address. In case I lose the laptop and an honest person finds it, they should at least have the possibility to return it. In the latest versions of Ubuntu or Xubuntu, you can change the welcome message via ... http://promberger.info/linux/2008/11/28/how-to-add-a-custom-welcome-message-to-your-xubuntu-or-ubuntu-login-screen/ There's a tricky bit about R's logical operators, and though it's described in the help pages that you get when you type, for example, ?"&" I still fall from it from time to time. (I think it has to do with my rudimentary knowledge and usage of "&&" for if-statements in bash ... http://promberger.info/linux/2008/09/12/r-logical-operators-beware-of-the-difference-between-and/ Whenever I forgot to plug in my keyboard before booting my Dell desktop, it would halt with the amusing error message: Keybard failure. Press F1 to continue, F2 for setup. When I was at home, I could just plug in the keyboard and hit F1, but when I was trying to boot ... http://promberger.info/linux/2008/09/05/disable-boot-process-checking-for-keyboard-on-dell-desktop/ I'm running Xubuntu but I don't see why this wouldn't work for Ubuntu. I really like kpdf, but it cannot rotate pages. It seems that it is no longer actively developed, and that instead okular is kpdf's successor. However, in Gutsy, if you try installing okular via aptitude, you get a ... http://promberger.info/linux/2008/08/20/installing-okular-in-gutsy/ One of the few things I really missed when I switched from Windows to Linux was MikTeX, since it makes installation of LaTeX packages very easy, where Linux makes you jump through hoops. So I'm delighted that MikTeX brings this functionality to Linux, trough MikTeX Tools. Since this is not available ... http://promberger.info/linux/2008/06/15/miktex-package-manager-for-ubuntu-linux/ Great, I just found this here. This is how you can bind a key to the middle mouse button (I use the middle mouse button a lot to (a) paste stuff from the clipboard, (b) open links in background tabs in Firefox). I used the pause/break key, so it's slightly ... http://promberger.info/linux/2008/06/03/binding-a-key-to-the-middle-mouse-button-with-xmodmap-and-xkbset/ DigiKam has a nice feature that lets you e-mail images; it's in the Image menu. You can change the mail agent to use, in the Mail tab of the dialogue that comes up. That's nice as well. However, you can only pick from a dropdown of predefined mail agents, and ... http://promberger.info/linux/2008/05/26/how-to-use-mutt-to-e-mail-images-from-digikam/