Posts in tools Category

Mar 14, 2010

Help Yourself With xdg-open

I am a keyboard junkie, and I encourage others to use it more than the average use and experience the change, whether it is in the console or one of the modern keyboard-driven launchers. One of the complaints I keep hearing is that with the command line, people have to type in name of the executable to open a document. Whereas in the GUI world, you just double-click on a document, or on the application icon. [Continue]

Jan 1, 2010

New Tools I Picked Up In 2009

I have picked up some interesting new tools last year. Some of them have changed the way I work. xmonad: A wonderful tiling window manager that has found a place in all my monitors, with different resolutions dmenu: IMHO the best launcher out there centerim: Console or not, this is the best and least intrusive way of chatting GNU Screen: An immensely useful terminal multiplexer git: A version control system that lets you code first and worry about version control later Chromium: It just sped past all the existing browsers. [Continue]

Nov 8, 2009

A Mouse For OpenOffice

OpenOfficeMouse (via Paul Mison) does appear strange. We are not used to seeing hardware built around specific applications. Nor are we used to seeing 18 buttons on a mouse, it is almost like keyboard on a mouse. [Continue]

Sep 28, 2009

Cursor Shape In XFCE Terminal

I prefer ibeam cursors to the block ones, I find them less obtrusive. However, I could not find an option to modify the cursor shape in the XFCE terminal preferences; until I looked under the hood. In ~/.config/Terminal/terminalrc the value of MiscCursorShape is set to TERMINAL_CURSOR_SHAPE_BLOCK by default. [Continue]

Sep 22, 2009

A Minimalistic Multi-Timezone Clock

I am using xmonad as my primary window manager. A friend asked me how did I replicate functionalities from other desktop environments. One of the things he could not find was to have a multi-timezone clock. [Continue]

Jun 1, 2009

uzbl – The Stripped Down Browser

I am trying out the uzbl browser for last couple of days. It follows the unix philosophy to strip down a browser of everything else other than visiting the web sites. Everything else, even the management of cookies, bookmarks, history and downloads is outsourced to external scripts. [Continue]

Apr 18, 2009

Microsoft Open Sources Common Compiler Infrastructure

Microsoft has open sourced the Common Compiler Infrastructure (CCI) via CCI: Metadata and CCI: Code and AST components. Like other Microsoft’s open source entries, these two are offered under the Microsoft Public License. The metadata and code components together can write CLR assemblies and debug (PDB) files. [Continue]

Apr 10, 2009

Power Tools Are Terrible Clones

I have been saying this for Linux, but I guess it applies for all the power tools. Power tools are terrible clones, they serve you the best when you use them as themselves. I have heard innumerable complaints about tools being difficult because they are different. [Continue]

Apr 9, 2009

TalkPress – Hosted bbPress

bbPress will soon power TalkPress, a hosting service for online forums. It is similar to the WordPress.com service, though it is currently not open to public. I am sure this will also bring in integration between the two hosting services. [Continue]

Apr 6, 2009

Extending Bash Auto-Completion

One of the ways of making command line more usable is by providing auto-completion. It is a non-intrusive way of freeing the user from the burden of remembering options. Bash provides something called programmable completion which can be extended for your own applications. [Continue]