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My dog disk herniation surgery and recovery

Nov 13th, 2011 by

This book is a real story about a little Shih Tzu that had disk herniation, got the surgery and recovered. Because the online resources for owners that have puppies with the same problems are almost impossible to find and because I wish to offer the little guy a good life with the donations received I wrote this ebook.

You can buy this ebook with 5$.

You will get:

  • An ebook about a dog disk herniation surgery
  • The entire experience presented in a few pages
  • Tips and advice to help you through the experience

Online resources

 

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Posted in Other | 4 Comments »

How to make your Gnome 3 desktop functional

Oct 8th, 2011 by

First Kde 4, then Unity and in the end Gnome 3, all with great intent, all failed miserably when it comes to usability. I think the biggest problem with this new visions is the fact that the developers are trying to build the perfect desktop for the average users.

But we all know, that when it comes to Linux, the average user is not really the target.
This rant could continue for a while, but I will get strength to the point: after a few weeks trying and trying to adapt to Gnome 3, I finally found some small but great solutions to make it functional again.

Gnome Shell

Will bring back some of the classic Gnome 2 functionality .

    
	
  • apt-get install gnome-shell-extensions  #ubuntu
    •
Alternative status menu adds the hibernate and shut-down options back to the status menu, alternate tab will allow switching through windows not applications and places menu will add a new menu with links to home and favorites folders.
    
	
  • yum install gnome-shell-extensions-alternative-status-menu #fedora
    • 
	
  • yum install gnome-shell-extensions-alternate-tab #fedora
    • 
	
  • yum install gnome-shell-extensions-places-menu #fedora
    •
Gnome Tweak Tool
    
	
  • apt-get install gnome-tweak-tool #ubuntu
    • 
	
  • yum install gnome-tweak-tool #fedora
    •

is a nice little tool, that gives the user access to some of the hidden features of Gnome 3. You can for example reactivate the desktop and put icons on it, or display a full date instead of just the hour on your main bar. You can also enable or disable the gnome shell expansion from inside this tool.

Talking about show desktop feature, I have to say I’m trying to forget about this old concept and go with the flow: in Gnome 3 you don’t really need the desktop. However I found it difficult for a simple reason: special shortcuts. If you want to put a special shortcut, like an eclipse shortcut on your favorite bar, you are out of luck. The best way will be an old plain desktop shortcut. Same thing happend to docky. Sometimes it can’t detect the application executable so by doing a desktop shorcut you can manage to add a launch icon in your bar.

Extra tip: to get CTRL+ALT+D back set this custom keyword shortcut to execute the command:

wnckprop --show-desktop
Docky
 sudo apt-get install docky

is the jewelery that makes the desktop work again. What you get is a simple dock bar at the bottom of your screen, that you can customise as you wish. The main advantage is the fact that you will have something similar with the Gnome 3 dock but without moving your mouse to the corner of the screen. When you have a event on one of the open application a small red dot will signle that. Also the icon will jump around every time: fun and useful.

The good tip I have for Docky, is to use the Thunderbird extension Docky Unread Count. If Fedora 15 you might have a very new version of Thunderbird so will have to hack the add-on to make it function again:

- unzip the xpi file
- change the major version to *.*.*
- unpack the zip file and rename it to xpi
- install it in thunderbird from your hard drive

Ssh Menu

I was crushed when SSH menu was not functional any more. You can run it as a standalone app in it’s own window but what’s the use ? To be hones I used this to have different profiles for different ssh hosts. To overcome this, I made a little script that will overwrite the ssh command. Each time ssh is run a new terminal will open with it’s own color. If you need the script let me know and I will post it.

Do you have any more functional tricks for Gnome 3? Please share your knowledge with a comment.

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Posted in Linux OS | 3 Comments »

The most funny train moments around the world

Sep 14th, 2011 by

3.You think you live in a populate area? Think again.

2.How close to a train track can you set up a vegetable market ? The title says it all.

1.Called train surfing this is scary but funny at the same time. Some people are just crazy.

Posted in Funny | No Comments »

How to disable screen look after suspend on Gnome 3

Sep 5th, 2011 by

It took me a while to find this one, because the old gnome 2 screensaver was abolished and there wasn’t to much information online.

  • Search for Screen in the Activities menu
  • Open it
  • Disable Lock

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Posted in Linux OS | No Comments »

10 Reasons a Windows fan CAN convert to Linux (and should)

Aug 11th, 2011 by

This is a self response to a post I wrote a few years ago. The old post it’s a funny read for these times.

 

1.The user interface

After a few years of use I went 100% Gnome. The cool sharp look interface made me forget all about the old WINDOWS desktop. I love it so much I didn’t even try the latest Win OS. They all look alike to me now.

2.Seamlessly integrated drivers / Old title: The lack of drivers

You just install any Ubuntu or Fedora distribution and all it’s there. Even the proprietary drives have a little icon that pops up in a corner and you can install them with a few clicks. ( nvidia driver, you know I’m right )

3.Great applications / Old title: Lack of great applications.

Now most of the linux apps are working both on KDE and GNOME with no problem and every niche has it’s own powerful app. You will find apps for mp3 editing, video editing, vectorial graphic, email, download, you name it. Very easy to find the best one and install it.

4. Social media and the cloud / Old title: Lack of a great Messenger Application.

Most of the people out there use Facebook now. To connect to Yahoo in Linux it’s as easy as opening your email account. It’s all in the cloud baby. If you really need it: Pidgin is here to stay. Great for any messenger service.

5. Games? What are you a kid? / Old title: Lack of great Games

Ok, games are still playable just on Windows, but the trend is changing: if you want to play you have: Kinect, Wii, Playstation, Xbox, Angry Birds on Iphone and Chrome browser and so on. You use Linux for internet, multimedia and work, not to play 24 hours.

Humble Indie Bundle actually made a huge step in bringing games to linux. I almost played for a week not the number 3 bundle and hate the fact that I missed the first one ( just visit the page and you will understand what I’m talking about).

6.CODECS

Have you installed the latest UBUNTU version? They will even install the mp3 codec if you select the option on installation screen. Any who :) , very easy to install mp3 support after some googleing.

7.The way fonts are render

Perfect rendering and a great desktop. There are some problem with desktop Java apps but that’s not very common.

8.Terminal

OMG. I love the TERMINAL. You have the power at your finger tips: grep, sed, head, cd , ssh and so on. Just imagine what you want and you can link a bunch of apps together to do your biding.

9.Great free software for all your needs / Old title: To many bad alternatives.

Every app category like I said has it’s own king with a crown. There are so many great, functional and user friendly apps there your only problem is to know it’s name.

10. Old title: Emulation is not perfect yet / New title: And will never be

Wine? Just forget it. You have everything you need. And if you really miss xp or windows 7 just install virtualbox and start your virtual OS of your liking.

Fedora, Ubuntu or Puppy are just some of the Linux Distribution out there. Give them a spin and you will never regret it.

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Posted in Linux OS | No Comments »

The first time I payed for a linux game: Humble Bundle !

Aug 7th, 2011 by

I don’t play games like I used to, but this website really fascinated me: http://www.humblebundle.com.
For the next 2 days you can pay for a pack of games that work on: Linux, Win and Mac as much as you like, EVEN 1$.

The games are great and after I bought them I played for a few hours only to find out they really deserve all the praise and donations. My advice: pay 5.66$ and also get the Humble Bundle 2. Supporting the developers will only make them build more linux games.

Do you know if the Humble Bundle 1 can still be purchased ?

This video will tell the whole story:


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Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

GUI for TV channels in Linux Fedora/Ubuntu ( via sopcast )

May 22nd, 2011 by

Tv-maxe is an interesting application that you can use to see TV on your computer using just the internet. Most of the TV channels are broadcasting for free but they all use the the sop protocol. In Fedora/Ubuntu this is not working out of the box. To install and watch TV you have to follow these steps:

  • make a folder in your home dir called tv-maxe
  • download and extract tv-maxe (http://code.google.com/p/tv-maxe/downloads/list)
  • download sopcast: http://download.sopcast.cn/download/sp-auth.tgz
  • install sopcast: tar xvfz sp-auth.tgz ; cd sp-auth;
  • make a simlink: sudo ln -s ~/tv-maxe/sp-auth/sp-sc-auth /usr/bin/ so that tv-maxe will find the sop driver ( this is a very important step, without it only a few TV channels will work )When all done you can open your tv-maxe app and start watching TV.
    The most impressive thing about this app is the fact that it’s up to date and 99% of the channels are functional.

    • References

  • http://nngocchan.wordpress.com/2010/10/03/vlc-open-a-sopcast-stream-in-fedora/

    • Tags: , ,

    Posted in Linux OS | 1 Comment »

    Eclipse PDT – Helios – Fix slow editor when opening large php files

    Mar 15th, 2011 by

    If you happen to use Eclipse PDT a lot you might notice it has a serious flow when you try to edit a very large PHP file. There seems to be a patch and the problem is discussed here. Continue Reading »

    Tags: , ,

    Posted in Php World | 2 Comments »

    Install Mercurial on a shared account

    Feb 19th, 2011 by 

    1.cd  ~/   
#move to home directory

2.mkdir package 
#create a directory to hold mercurial

3.cd package 
#enter the diectory

4.wget http://mercurial.selenic.com/release/mercurial-1.7.5.tar.gz 
#download mercurial,always get the latest version 

5.tar zxf mercurial-1.7.5.tar.gz 
#extract the files

6.cd mercurial-1.7.5 
#enter mercurial dir

7.make local 
#make

8.~/.hgrc 
#create this main hgrc config file and add an user [ui] ...

9.hg debuginstall 
#install

10.~/.bash_profile 
#edit your profile and setup the $PATH to you hg file so you 
don't have to write the entire path each time

11.edit your local .hgrc file by adding 

[ui] 
remotecmd = path_to_remote_hg_exec 

#you will need to tell your local repository where is 
the external hg located

    Tags: , ,

    Posted in Development | No Comments »

    10 WordPress snippets for developers

    Feb 18th, 2011 by

    1.Create a new post

    $my_post = array();
$my_post['tags_input'] = $arrKeys;
$my_post['filter'] = true;
$my_post['post_title'] = $title;
$my_post['post_content'] = $body;
$my_post['post_excerpt'] = $excerpt;
$my_post['post_status'] = $status; //(pending/publish)
$my_post['post_author'] = 1; // admin

//Before WP 3.0
$my_post['post_category'] = $arrCategs;

$newPostId = wp_insert_post( $my_post );

//After WP 3.0
wp_set_post_terms($newPostId,$arrTagsId,'tags');
wp_set_post_terms($newPostId,$arrCategsId,'categories');

//Update post meta
update_post_meta($newPostId, $meta_key, $meta_value, $prev_value);

    Continue Reading »

    Tags: , ,

    Posted in Php World | No Comments »

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