I never really had troubles viewing videos but for those of you who might have been having issues, then this blog entry about How to Fix Full Screen Flash Videos in Linux and Firefox will help you. They’ve written a guide for all of us who are/might be afflicted with this problem.

In summary, they said that you need to get libGL.so.1 and preload it before starting Firefox (or Swiftfox). Basically you will do this by writing a script to do it. You have to make the script executable or it won’t work.

I don’t have much trouble but maybe that’s because I use clive to get videos from YouTube. In any case, check it out if you need to fix watching videos in Flash format.

We know Tomboy is this awesome sticky notes application which basically also acts like a wiki. We also know that we could organize lots of notes through ‘notebooks’ but I just learned recently that you could actually use it as a blogging client. Surprised? Good. Now let me show you how.

Download and installation
Download and install the Tomboy Blogposter plugin written by Robin Sonefors. For those on Ubuntu, you will find it in the repositories. Else, download the tarball or get it from Github.

Image credit: Clair Ching, 2009.

What to do next

1. Activate the plugin. Run Tomboy and from the “Search all notes” dialog, go to the Edit menu and select “Preferences.”
2. In the “Preferences” dialog, select the “Add-ins” tab and you will see “Post note to your blog” listed under “Tools.” Click the “Enable” button while it is highlighted.
3. After enabling the blogging plugin, you have to add the URLs of your blog/s. There are various URLs depending on the blogging platform you are using.
   • WordPress - <blog_url>/wp-app.php/posts ; make sure that the option for Atom Publishing must be enabled.
   • Blogger - View the source of your Blogger blog. Then check the address in the <link> tag that has the rel attribute set to service.post. Therefore, it follows the template http://www.blogger.com/feeds//posts/default.
   • LiveJournal - http://www.livejournal.com/interface/atomapi/<username>/post
4. Start writing a new note. When you’re done, go to the “Tools” menu of that note then select the option to post it on the blog URL you’ve saved.

It’s really awesome when you finally get to try it. The note’s title is automatically the title of your blog entry. From there it will be easy for you to just upload any note you want to share with anyone.

Have fun!

Share and Enjoy:
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For Fedora 10 and Fedora 11 users, there’s an online guide on how to install Chrome on it. You don’t really need Crossover Chromium now because there are packages of Chromium available at: http://spot.fedorapeople.org/chromium/. You could click the RPM to install it or use the command

rpm -ivh <package-name>

You could also install Chromium via Yum and with that method, updates are automatic.

I tried installing the debs of Chromium before and it was really just too slow so I didn’t really use it. Also, I am not a developer so I can’t really push back any improvements to the application even if I wanted to change some things. In any case, it wouldn’t hurt for you to try it. Why not see for yourself what it’s like to have Chromium on Fedora 10 or 11? It would be the best way to find out.

For more details about the guide to installing Chromium on Fedora, head to How to Install Chrome Browser on Fedora Linux that Works!

For more details about Google Chrome, check out Google Chrome’s project page.

Ever wanted to note down some things that happened to you in a day? Diaries are ever useful for logging things that you might need to refer to in the future and to keep them in a calendar form would be easy for some. Others need to be able to refer to the calendar to make sure that the entries are consistent. Almanah seems to be an application made solely for that purpose.

Almanah

Using Almanah is simple. Just run it and note down the things you want by typing them on the big space it shows to you. By default it would save all these things you’ve typed in the current date’s page. If you want to note something in advance, maybe a birthday, then go to the date you wish to specify. Write down the birthday celebrator’s name.

Apparently Almanah is also capable of noting the tasks and events in Evolution. But I don’t use Evolution as a mail client so I can’t really show that to you. In any case, that’s a nifty feature.

Also, if you’ve got important notes, URIs or files you want to associate with the date, it is possible. Just add a link. There’s a sidebar for all of the links and above it is a calendar to help you navigate throughout the diary.

I hope that Almanah would help you remember the important things in your life whether it’s personal or related to work. Even if it looks very simple, what it could do for you could be a lot.

I’ve recently talked about using Newsbeuter and it has been interesting for me because of how focused I am on reading whatever content I get online through it. However, knowing that I need to somehow fix some things so I could work better with it, I decided to make a config file that does that.

My needs are mainly for saving articles in one spot, indicating which browser to use and indicating where podcasts must be saved. I am still happy with the keyboard shortcuts that are available by default and the colors look good in my eyes. But it’s faster if I could configure the other settings

one could enqueue a podcast so it could be downloaded

We could take a look at the sample config file on the Newsbeuter help:

# a comment
max-items 100 # such comments are possible, too
browser links
show-read-feeds no
unbind-key R
bind-key ^R reload-all


The ones on the left side are the things to be customized and the ones on the right, or after a tab, are the settings of your choice. For my needs, it’s actually simple:


browser firefox
download-path ~/Podcasts
player mplayer
save-path ~/Documents/FeedArticles


You need to look at the table of configuration commands that you could tweak.

One more thing I like about Newsbeuter is that it does have a counterpart for managing your podcasts. For example, I have a list of podcast feeds in Newsbeuter and I have selected to ‘enqueue’ some of the episodes (done by pressing ‘e’) then I could run “podbeuter” on another terminal and view the list of enqueued files. I could toggle the download of all these files on Podbeuter. Podbeuter is included when you install Newsbeuter and it really is meant for managing your podcasts. It will also use the same config file as Newsbeuter’s so there’s no need to worry about that.

I’ve been looking for an email client to use but I’ve often been hesitant about it because more often than not, I still end up checking the web user interface. However, I’ve been using Emacs more often again and I’d rather be using that to compose my email and if ever I do have notes saved written in Planner mode, then it’s way easier to just do it within Emacs.

Mew's logo/splash screen

Mew is an email client you could use with Emacs. Emacs is a text editor with a lot of potential for extensibility. You could add a planner to it, an outliner and so much more. There is actually a number of email clients for Emacs but I chose Mew because it looks straightforward compared to Gnus.

Mew can be configured to download your mail via IMAP or POP. The manual shows you how to do things and if ever you’re doing this for the first time, it might be weird. Why? Because this is Emacs and there’s a way of doing things.

For starters, you need to Emacs 21.4 and later versions. It doesn’t make sense to use Mew without Emacs. Also, you need to download and install Mew. It’s in the Ubuntu repositories as well as in Fedora, apparently. So you could just probably use the application installer tool in these distros.

How to install it from scratch:

1. Download Mew’s source.
2. Extract the source.
3. In the directory of your soure, type ‘./configure’.
4. Type ‘make’.
5. Type ‘make install’.

Now it’s time to tell Emacs that you’re going to use Mew. If you already have a .emacs file, just add this line:
(mew)

That would automatically load Mew for you.

But before you even use Mew, you need to set up Mew first. You need a config file for it. Let’s call it .mew.el. Create a text file with that name. I will just share with you my .mew.el file in case you have a similar set up. I am using Google Apps, so basically this is a Gmail Account using a different domain name.


(setq mew-name "my name") ;; (user-full-name)
(setq mew-user "username") ;; (user-login-name)
(setq mew-mail-domain "domain.com")

;; Set using IMAP
(setq mew-proto “%”)
;; (setq mew-imap-user “your IMAP account”) ;; (user-login-name) ;; this has been commented out
(setq mew-imap-server “imap.gmail.com”) ;; if not localhost
(setq mew-imap-ssl t)
(setq mew-imap-ssl-port “993″)
(setq mew-imap-user “username@domain.com”)

;; send email via SMTP
(setq mew-smtp-server “smtp.gmail.com”) ;; if not localhost
(setq mew-smtp-ssl t)
(setq mew-smtp-ssl-port “587″)
(setq mew-smtp-port “587″)
(setq mew-smtp-user “username@domain.com”)
(setq mew-ssl-verify-level 0)
(setq mew-tls-smtp “smtp”)
(setq mew-smtp-auth-list ‘(”PLAIN” “LOGIN” “CRAM-MD5″))

;; cache the password
(setq mew-use-cached-passwd t) ;; so I won’t have to type the password all the time.

For the address book part, it’s easy. Just create a text file. called Addrbook in your Mew’s Mail directory. In my case it’s in ~/Mail. The text file is more or less like this per line:

eclair eclair@domain1.org, eclair@domain2.org eclair “Clair Ching”

This is how I set up my Mew account. At least it’s easier for me to send emails from Emacs. I am still looking at other things like searching email, etc.

I’ve been trying out various microblogging services in the past how many years. I was mainly using twitter a lot but I shifted to plurk some time last year. Considering the number of contacts I still have on twitter, I decided to give it another try but this time, I wanted to follow tweets without having to log in to the website. I remember not being able to follow tweets on IM for the longest time and that was a major annoyance for me. Apparently I could follow them again, this time using Twitgin.

What’s Twitgin?

Microblog-purple/Twitgin is a Pidgin plugin which allows you to post your tweets on twitter without having to log on the website. You just need to have Pidgin up and running and the plugin activated so that you could do that. You could also get updates on Pidgin. This basically works when you install a library for microblogging. I learned about the plugin from ainotenshi’s blog entry about turning Pidgin into an awesome microblogging client. I followed the instructions on how to install microblog-purple on another blog entry, though, because I am on Ubuntu. However, the main microblog-purple page different packages, depending on whether you’re using Adium, Pidgin or Pidgin on Windows.
For now, this works well for me. I might blog about Gwibber another day but for now, this would be my tool for following tweets so I don’t feel too overwhelmed by too many applications on my desktop.

I was never a hardcore user of OpenOffice.org but I do need it from time to time because of the documents I need to write.

OpenOffice.org

There are a lot of people in my office who prefer to use it for everything. Although one thing I’ve noticed is that they just open it as if it’s any other text editor. But I don’t think they’ve seen it as an outliner before.

Dmitri Popov of Linux Magazine has shared tips for us on how to use OpenOffice.org as an outliner:

The easiest one is to press the Numbering On/Off button in the main toolbar or the F12 key. This turns the current line in the documents into a numbered entry and displays the Bullets and Numbering context toolbar which offers basic outlining tools.
….
Another approach requires a bit more work, but it allows you to use OpenOffice.org Writer as a two-pane outliner. This solution is based on the Outline Numbering feature which lets you specify a hierarchy of heading styles and then manage them using the Navigator. By default, OpenOffice.org Writer uses the built-in heading styles (i.e., Heading 1, Heading 2, Heading 3, etc.) for each level, but you can easily change that using the Tools -> Outline Numbering dialog window.

Two options to help us use OpenOffice.org in a different way. I personally like outliners like emacs-org mode because it helps me organize my thoughts better. I also help write training materials so this is a great help to me.

For those of you who like making lists, check this out. These awesome tips might help you work better with an existing application instead of downloading a separate outliner.

Again, thanks to Dmitri Popov for the tips!

Folks, this is a cautionary tale of why we must always always be careful about upgrading software. I was too much in a hurry to upgrade to OpenOffice.org 3 already so I didn’t have wifi this morning. I followed the instructions to upgrade to OpenOffice.org 3 for Ubuntu 8.10 on softpedia.com yesterday. I forgot that I installed madwifi for Ubuntu UMPC (based on Ubuntu 8.10).

My lessons:

• Think about anything you’ve installed that came from sources outside the Ubuntu repositories. Is there anything critical like the wifi driver?
• Don’t just follow instructions without checking for any sentences that tell you the caveat/s of what you’re going to do.
• As a follow up to the previous item, if you don’t see any caveat/s, look for them first elsewhere. You don’t have to follow the first or second article you come across.
• Read as much as you can even when you are desperate or want something done quickly. It won’t be as painful to undo later on.
• Ask for help if you’re very unsure about what to do about it. Sometimes you can’t do everything by yourself. I had to go somewhere this morning so I asked the sys ad to help me out.

I’ve been thinking about editing some of my pictures in GIMP and I’ve seen the brushes in Photoshop which could be used for cute effects. Photoshop brush envy?

using brushes on GIMP

Yes, I have it. And I am glad that it’s possible to use them in GIMP. (Cheers for GIMP!) This is possible with GIMP from version 2.4 onwards. eHow.com’s guide to using Photoshop brushes in GIMP is pretty straightforward. It teaches you to look for the version of GIMP you’re using then installing the brushes you’ve downloaded. For my trial, I got some brushes from DeviantArt — thanks to the links from this page on 24 awesome brushes for GIMP and Photoshop.

My tip is to basically look for all the brushes you’d like to use. Maybe even just one will do. Make sure it’s an ABR file. If you downloaded a zip file, extract it first and then you’d most likely see an ABR file.
Then check out the Preferences part of GIMP. You will see that there is a section on brushes. Select that so you could see the location of brushes for GIMP.
Afterwards, move all the brushes you’ve downloaded to that directory you see in GIMP’s Preferences dialog box. Chances are it will be in a hidden directory in your home. Mine was in /home/clair/.gimp-2.6 so I put my downloaded files there.
Select the brush icon and you should be able to find the brushes you have just copied to the brushes folder. Now be happy and use them to your heart’s content!

The screenshot was done with these brushes: Edge Brushes by axeraider70 and Grass Blades by iceytina.