Author Archives: thameera

Syncing files with Unison in Ubuntu

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I have this music collection in my local hard drive which I wanted to sync with a folder in my portable HDD. What I wanted was to sync any changes done in any of them to the other with just one click. And came across Unison.

It’s available in the repositories and once installed all you have to do is to give the two folders for it to start syncing. However it seemed that most of my folders won’t sync. An error appears saying “Failed to set permissions blah blah”

Then came up with a simple solution in the Ubuntu forums. All you have to do is to add an entry called ‘perms=0’ in the Unison’s profile preferences file. It’ll bypass the frustrating permissions. This file can be found under ~/.unison directory. For my case it was ~/.unison/default. prf

Simply open up that file, enter a new line saying “perms=0” (w/o quotes) and save the file.  Works like magic 🙂

Cool improvement for Nautilus thumbnails

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Saw this trick in OMG! Ubuntu today. You can check out the original article here.

All you have to do is enter the following three commands in a terminal.

  • wget http://a.imageshack.us/img135/8666/thumbnailframe.png
  • sudo mv thumbnailframe.png /usr/share/pixmaps/nautilus/thumbnail_frame.png
  • killall nautilus

And check out the improved look in nautilus thumbnails. What this actually does is changing the default border in the thumbnails to a more 3D looking one.

Good Noows is Goood!

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I confess I’ve never been in good terms with Google Reader. The thing, you know, is that it isn’t made for me. Perhaps it suits for you saner souls.

Then I come across Good Noows.

It does the pretty same thing as Google Reader, but in a more clean and… and a better way. The site is real eye candy. Can be customized in several cool layouts. You don’t need to sign up, too! You can sign in with your twitter, facebook, google, yahoo or linkedin account. And the site is kinda minimal, which suits for noobs like me. A bit slow than GReader, but who cares!

Sooo, the news is Good Noows is for you if you’re obsessed with Google Reader like me.

JDownloader: Awesome download manager for linux

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I’ve always suffered from the lack of a good download manager for linux until I stumbled upon JDownloader. I swear it is something better than you could expect.

Just copy a link from Rapidshare, Mediafire, Hotfile, or any such file hosting service available and it’ll do the download for you. Yes, you don’t need to have premium accounts for any of these services. No more count downs. If the site requests filling out Captchas JDownloader will just show you the captcha and all you have to do it type it in and press Enter. Furthermore, once a compressed file is downloaded it is automatically uncompressed.

As the name suggests it is written in Java. Does some updating thing once installed so you’ll have to wait for a few minutes. Another con is the not so eye catching interface. But pros overrule over them.

JDownloader has recently obtained its own PPA so nothing to worry about installing.

Refer this post to get instructions on adding the PPA and installing.

Dictionary for mobile phone

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I needed a dictionary (an offline one, of course) for my mobile phone (Nokia E63). First I tried several Java dictionaries but they were quite basic ones. Then found this cool dictionary viewer called MS Dict Viewer. Can’t remember from where exactly I installed it, but it can be downloaded from its official site, I think.

After installing the MSDict Viewer you can download many dictionaries with it. There is great selection, including Oxford, Collins and Cambridge dictionaries. Dictionaries thus downloaded are valid only for a 7 day period. You need to enter a serial key to register them from. This rar file has 5 keygens bundled for various dictionaries. They’re EXE files, and I executed them in a Windows XP virtual box. Once you select the dictionary and enter phone’s IMEI number, it shows the serial key. Works like magic!

However it’s possible that the keygen include malware so better to run them in a virtual machine even if your OS is Windows.

P.S. Uploaded the keygens to mediafire, just in case: http://www.mediafire.com/?z0mz16689grh5gh

Babiloo: Offline dictionary for linux

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UPDATE: I ditched Babiloo for Artha Dictionary. It has a lot more cool features and is perhaps the best available offline dictionary currently. It’s available in the Ubuntu software centre as well.

Lately I was using the Dictionary that comes as an accessory bundled with Ubuntu. It was good, but I thought it’d be wonderful to have an offline one.

After a lot of trials and errors, I settled with Babiloo. It’s a simple app which is available in the Ubuntu Software Centre as well. Several free dictionaries can be downloaded from here and installed in Babiloo. So far so good.

P.S. And I’m beginning to love the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English (which can be downloaded from the above link).

EDIT: The above link to download dictionaries doesn’t seem to work anymore. You can download free dictionaries from this link.

Adding PPAs

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Until now I was too afraid at the notion of adding a new PPA to the system. Some sites give you the direct commands to add the PPA but when you have to do it manually, I start to sweat.

Today, I wanted to install HandBrake in my Ubuntu system, and was directed to this page. And after installing the key somehow, I got to know how easy a task it was. All you have to do is type sudo add-apt-repository <ppa-name> and sudo apt-get update after the key is installed. For example, the commands I entered in this case were:

   sudo add-apt-repository ppa:stebbins/handbrake-snapshots
   sudo apt-get update

Wrong train

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I got into the train to go gampaha from the Kelaniya station. During the whole journey I was on a call with my sis, suddenly when the train stopped in Peralanda station.

Wait!! Peralanda?

Why hadn’t I passed that station before? It was only after some calculations involving advanced calculus that I finally understood I was in the wrong train.

It was a long walk from Peralanda to Ragama =/

Removing Dropbox from the machine

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Last day at the office. I was busy cleaning my personal stuff from the office computer: saved passwords, active logins, browser history, what not.
Then came the problem, how do I remove Dropbox? I googled ‘how to clean up Dropbox from a computer’ but didn’t come up with any results. It took about an hour to until it dawned on me that simply uninstalling Dropbox would solve the issue.

Btw, I’m posting this especially to test posting via email. 😉

IMPORTANT: You have to remove the already synced files in your Dropbox folder, as I found out from the comments.