Eclipse is very useful but configuring it can sometimes be a pain. One change I always make is to change the colour used to highlight occurrences. Occurrence highlighting occurs when you put the cursor in a variable – all occurrences of that variable are highlighted. Unfortunately, the default colour can be hard to see on the side bar so I like to change it from very pale yellow to bright green. To do this: Window > Preferences > General > Editors > Text Editors > Annotations (which is pretty easy to forget). Then change the colour for Occurrences (PyDev). Easy when you know where the configuration is hidden :-).
Author Archives: Grant
Firefox old-style refresh-stop and new tab buttons
I like to have separate Refresh/Stop and New Tab buttons in Firefox. I also use Tree-style Tabs. Here’s how to do it:
[Edit – note from May 1 2014 in context of FF29 – how to split refresh as a movable button again – https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/classicthemerestorer/]
1) Open the customise toolbars dialog:
2) Look to the far right of your existing toolbars to see if you can find the two icons to drag over to new positions. The desired end result looks like:
Note – the New Tab button may look different in the customise toolbars dialog e.g. a green plus, but it displays as depicted – at least in current versions of Firefox (25 at present and counting ;-)).
IDLE py File Association Annoyance Fixed
I use eclipse + pydev for my Python development but I still like to use IDLE for simple tests, quickly banging out a simple script etc. So I want to be able to right click on a .py file and simply open it with IDLE. On Ubuntu this has not always been easy to achieve. Here is what worked on Ubuntu 13.10 (Saucy):
gksudo gedit /usr/share/applications/idle.desktop
Add a %f to the end of the line, and then save it. It should look like:
Exec=/usr/bin/idle -n %f
Then do the usual to associate .py files with IDLE so they automatically open when you double click them – namely, right click on any .py file, select Properties, then Open With, select IDLE and click on Set as default. Also see How do I set IDLE as the default editor for Python scripts?
Cleaning up GRUB boot list the easy way
It used to be easy to edit grub to change your boot order, default OS etc. Then it got hard (too hard), and now it is easier than ever:
How do I change the grub boot order?
It is especially nice to be able to hide more comples options under a submenu e.g. Advanced settings. Note – you can’t indent an option but if you shift it up into a submenu it automatically indents.
Lubuntu to Ubuntu
I recently needed to change a machine from Lubuntu to Ubuntu after a test installation. The main thing was:
sudo apt-get install ubuntu-desktop
But that left the log-in looking wrong. I tried:
sudo dpkg-reconfigure lightdm
… but that didn’t work (at least, not on its own). The solution was to change the greeter-session from lightdm-gtk-greeter to unity-greeter. See:
Lightdm autologin problem on Lubuntu 12.10
And being fussy I also wanted to change the default splashscreen to Ubuntu:
Lubuntu Awesome for Older Hardware
Lubuntu is a great way of using older hardware that can’t handle the video requirements of Ubuntu. I’ve just installed Lubuntu 13.04 on two machines – one as an in-place upgrade from Ubuntu 11.04; one as a fresh install over Ubuntu 11.04 on a dual boot (after backing up the home folder of course!).
On the latter, I had to sort out Broadcom wireless again after many years of being able to ignore it. Because I didn’t have a working ethernet connection, I needed to get the deb for linux-firmware-nonfree and install it via the terminal with:
sudo dpkg -e ...deb
Then (leafpad is the Lubuntu default text editor – an alternative to gedit etc):
sudo leafpad /etc/modules
Added a new line on the end
b43
And wireless is a solved problem 🙂
Shifting thunderbird from a backup drive was easy. Copy across the new …..default folder into ~/.thunderbird and change the relevant line in profile.ini to point to it.
To put icons on the desktop, find the program on the menu, right click and make a desktop icon. To change the name of the icon, right click, select Open with … and open the desktop file (like a Windows shortcut) with leafpad. Change the Name= e.g. from
Name=Thunderbird Mail
to:
Name=Thunderbird
To position icons in a tidy manner, select them all and right click then select snap to grid.
Finally, I changed the wallpaper to be the Lubuntu one which looks like Ubuntu phone, changed the icon set to Humanity, shifted the panel to the top, and added a CPU applet to the panel.
I also got shockwave working in Chromium – I think it was by installing the flashplugin-installer. However I did it, I’m grateful to have Youtube working plus some web games for the kids.
Cheaply Digitising Old Records
The problem – a bunch of old records passed on to me by my Mum that used to be mine when I was a kid. An old Vera Lynn 45 record of children’s songs, my Rupert the Bear musical I was given when I was 8, a Looney Tunes collection, and misc others. The answer – a cheap USB turntable and Audacity for the actual recording. Of course, for better quality recording you need better equipment (proper record player + a pre-amp apparently) and you need to spend more time cleaning records, removing imperfections from the recording etc. But that would guarantee this job would never actually get done or be worth the time and money ;-). And for children’s records of the sort I needed to record, sound fidelity was not much of an issue. The USB turntable was a Megabeat MB-USBTR04, the computer was running Ubuntu Linux 13.04, and I used Audacity 2.0.3. One potential gotcha – you need to select the USB line in option as your input from the drop down list (very long in my case for some reason) on the menu. Then save your recordings in the lossless flac format and you’re done.
Good Riddance to NZ Software Patents
Software patents seem like a good way of protecting innovators and their ideas but function in practice as a threat to innovation. Especially harmed are the smaller players in the marketplace, ironically those most likely to generate exciting new developments. It looks like sanity has prevailed in New Zealand (fingers crossed) with software patents being effectively banned. This welcome development is thanks to concerted lobbying by New Zealand software developers. Special thanks go to David Lane (President of the New Zealand Open Source Society), Guy Burgess (lawyer and software developer) and Paul Matthews (IITP). Although vigilance is required as the new laws are implemented, we can all rightly celebrate.
Open Source Web Servers Rule
Last time I checked, Apache was dominant but Microsoft IIS was making some ground. A recent survey has IIS pegged as 2nd equal with NGINX at about 16%. Open Source web servers are dominant and all is well with the world.
Ubuntu Raring Upgrade Boring in a Good Way
I’ve messed with Ubuntu for 7 years now, and upgraded numerous machines for myself and relatives. I’ve played with alpha and beta versions and enjoyed each improvement in functionality and aesthetics. I found it most satisfying when upgrades went well but there were a dozen or so tricky tweaks required to get every last thing working. I’d blog about them. It’s kind of sad but those days seem to be gone – Ubuntu Just Works. And it works well – much better, in my opinion, than the Windows 7 system I use every day at work. It even looks better these days and I expect to be using Ubuntu for a very long time. So a big thanks to Canonical and the community for making it all happen. And just to be really clear, I love the polished Unity interface available in Raring and the direction Canonical is taking Ubuntu.
So I guess I had better switch my focus now to Ubuntu phone and start playing with that side of things. Hopefully, that will provide another 7 interesting years 🙂