You can easily get colored manpages with just one copy&paste into your .bashrc!

Follow this link to Linuxtidbits' post about "Less Colors For Manpages" and you'll know how to make it happen!

© 2010, Arnaud Soyez. Texts and illustrations found in this post are under the preceding copyright, unless specified otherwise.

I wanted to take screenshots of about 15 Websites, but didn't want to install any plugins as I wouldn't use them often. I saw a lot of how-to's using import from Imagemagick but they capture the whole screen, not clearly what I was looking for.

Using chromium, xwininfo (from X) and import, I made this bash script which captures only the webpage. See below for the Source code.

How it works

Upon calling chromium-capture:

• it finds every running chromium browser using xwininfo,
• gets the window's id of each browser's currently opened tab (because hidden tabs cannot be accessed using xwininfo/import)
• takes a screenshot of each webpages using import and the windows' ids.
• saves the screenshot in the current directy as chromium-WINDOWID.png (with WINDOWID = id of the respective window)

You get a screenshot of only the website. All of the arguments and options given to chromium-capture will be used as arguments and options when calling import.

Usage Examples

Every argument or option given to chromium-capture will be given to import when called with every capture.

#do a simple capture
/path/to/chromium-capture
 
#capture and resize to a width of 300px
/path/to/chromium-capture -resize 300
 
#capture and rotate the image 10degres
/path/to/chromium-capture -rotate 10
 
#resize to a maximum width of 550px and reduce the number of colors to 16
/path/to/chromium-capture -resize 550 -colors 16

Source Code

This code is licensed under the GPLv3.

You can download the source code from here (md5) or copy it from below.

chromium-capture

#!/bin/bash
#
#    Version: 201001081150
#
#    Copyright © 2010 Arnaud Soyez (contact me at codealpha.net)
#
#    This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
#    it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
#    the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
#    (at your option) any later version.
#
#    This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
#    but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
#    MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
#    GNU General Public License for more details.
#
#    You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
#    along with this program.  If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
 
echo '`import` will be called with these args: '$@
echo
 
CHROMIDS=$(xwininfo -root -children\
 | grep ' - Chromium": ("chromium-browser" "Chromium-browser")'\
 | awk '{ print $1 }')
 
function getViewableId ()
{
  WINID=$(xwininfo -id $1 -children\
 | egrep -i '^ +0x[0-9A-F]+'\
 | fgrep -v '1x1+'\
 | awk '{ print $1 }'\
 | xargs -n 1 xwininfo -id\
 | egrep '(xwininfo|Map State)'\
 | sed 'N;s/\
  Map//'\
 | grep IsViewable\
 | awk '{ print $4 }')
 
  echo $WINID
}
 
for CHROMID in $CHROMIDS; do
  echo -n 'Capturing window id '$CHROMID' ...'
  FILENAME=chromium-$CHROMID.png
  import -window $( getViewableId $CHROMID ) $@ "$FILENAME"
  echo ' saved as '$FILENAME
done
 
echo 'Done'

© 2010, Arnaud Soyez. Texts and illustrations found in this post are under the preceding copyright, unless specified otherwise.

The installation process is very easy to follow. To collect information, you just need to add your site to your Piwik installation then add the given Javascript code before the </body> of the site and you're all set!

It gives interesting reports on your website visitors, your popular pages, the search engines keywords they used, the language they speak… and so much more.
Because Piwik has been built on the top of APIs, all the data is available through simple to use APIs. All features in Piwik are built inside plugins: you can download new plugins, and easily build your own. The user interface is fully customizable and light speed.

You can try out the Piwik online demo which will show you all the features and see if you like it or not.

I think this is far better than Google Analytics in the sense that:

• You keep your data on your own server.
• You can use the API to show stats on your websites.
• It's FREE both as in free speech and as in free beer.
• If you know PHP, you can tweak it as you wish
• You can host as many websites as you like! You can offer web stats to your friends and families!
• It's been elected SourceForge project of the month!
• ...

© 2009, Arnaud Soyez. Texts and illustrations found in this post are under the preceding copyright, unless specified otherwise.

F-Spot

So here's how I did it:

• Close F-spot and open a Terminal.
• Make a backup copy of the F-spot database:
  

  cp -a ~/.config/f-spot/photos.db ~/.config/f-spot/photos.db.backup

• Open the database using the command-line sqlite3 tool:
  

  sqlite3 ~/.config/f-spot/photos.db

• Our old folder is "/some/old/folder" and the new folder will be "/shiny/new/folder" (make sure it doesn't already exist!), so we'll have to do this (replace with the folder names you want, at 6 spots total!):
  

  UPDATE photo_versions SET base_uri=REPLACE(base_uri,'/some/old/folder/','/shiny/new/folder/') WHERE base_uri LIKE 'file:///some/old/folder/%';
  UPDATE photos SET base_uri=REPLACE(base_uri,'/some/old/folder/','/shiny/new/folder/') WHERE base_uri LIKE 'file:///some/old/folder/%';

• Close the database:
  

  .quit

• Now mv your folder "/some/old/folder" to "/shiny/new/folder" (make sure it doesn't already exist!):
  

  mv "/some/old/folder" "/shiny/new/folder"

• Wait til everything is moved, and then open F-spot.

© 2009, Arnaud Soyez. Texts and illustrations found in this post are under the preceding copyright, unless specified otherwise.

Screenshot of a report generated by Visitors

Requirements

Here's what you need to keep going:

• Visitors: homepage
• ip2host: (I couldn't find the homepage) it can be downloaded from here
• cron, apache logs, ... all the obvious!

Instructions

First, we need to create a folder where to store the ip2host DNS cache file.

sudo mkdir /var/cache/ip2host/

Then open a new file /etc/cron.daily/visitors and you can put your own variant of the following code:

#!/bin/bash
 
MYIP="99.99.99.99" # i want to exclude my home ip from the logs
SERVERIP="222.222.222.222" # my server's ip
REPORTDIR="/var/www/webstats" # folder where to store reports, this folder must exist
ALOGDIR="/var/log/apache2" # folder containing the logs
VISITORS="/usr/bin/visitors -A --exclude wp-cron.php --exclude robots.txt" # i exclude some files from the reports
IP2H="ip2host --cache=/var/cache/ip2host/cache.db"
GREPOPTIONS="-hv -e ^$MYIP -e ^$SERVERIP" # exclude my home ip and my server's ip from the logs
 
# we create a tmp file that will hold the logs
TMPFILE=$(mktemp)
if [[ ! -f "$TMPFILE" ]]; then
  echo "tmpfile doesn't exist."
  exit 1
fi
 
# if you only have one site, or you want all the logs in a single report
/bin/grep $GREPOPTIONS $ALOGDIR/access*.log{.1,} 2>/dev/null > $TMPFILE # get all the logs into the tmpfile, notice the GREPOPTIONS variable.
($IP2H < $TMPFILE ) | $VISITORS --trails --prefix http://www.domain.com - > $REPORTDIR/stats.html  # resolve all the ips and generate the reports, note that "--trails --prefix http://www.domain.com" is optional it's only needed for generating trails stats
 
# -OR-
# if you have multiple vhosts/prefixes and want separate reports, you can use this:
# replace all the "www prefix1 prefix2 prefix3" by your own prefixes (as in http://PREFIX.domain.com)
for name in www prefix1 prefix2 prefix3; do
  /bin/grep $GREPOPTIONS $ALOGDIR/access-$name.log{.1,} 2>/dev/null > $TMPFILE
  ($IP2H < $TMPFILE ) | $VISITORS --trails --prefix http://$name.domain.com - > $REPORTDIR/stats-$name.html
done
 
rm -f $TMPFILE

If you use logrotate or other tool to rotate your logfiles, this cron job will use the last two log files (access*.log and access*.log.1). This usually means you get statistics for the current week and the last week altogether. And it gets updated everyday.

The first run might take some time as the ip2host cache needs to be built, but then it's very quick.

By tweaking REPORTDIR, you can put your reports so you can access them from the internet like http://www.domain.com/webstats. Note that you might need to secure this folder, but this is left as an exercise! (hint: htpasswd!)

© 2009, Arnaud Soyez. Texts and illustrations found in this post are under the preceding copyright, unless specified otherwise.

Here's a collection of electro/electronica songs (as mp3) I like and that are free and libre. I'll just call this collection "Electro Collection #1"!

I've picked these songs because they each contain a unique melody and they are easy to listen even for those who might think they don't like electro music. Really, listen to the first three songs (though you should listen to them all) and see! I'm sure you'll find one that you like!
They almost all have the same genres. Mostly, it is: Electro/Electronica, Dance, Experimental.

If I had to pick favorite ones among these, they would be (as unsorted list):
02 - Jolie Micro Girl
04 - Struttin
05 - dub is dumb
06 - Chips dreams
11 - The sun is coming
13 - Plume
14 - don't be shad
17 - Pour toi

Note that this is not an album. Each song in this collection has its own copyright, copyright holder(s), and license. The songs are in their entirety in unmodified form and are seperate and independent works in themselves. See below for copyrights/licenses.

Download

Tarball containing all the songs: electro-collection-1.tar.gz (~97Mb)
Download each song separately from:
HTTP: Here
FTP: Here or connect using a FTP client to codealpha.net on port 21 as anonymous.

Licenses and Copyrights

Licenses and copyrights are downloadable from here and are also listed below:

01 - Ambient Voyager.mp3 by Zeropage
Copyright (C) 2006 Zeropage. Licensed to the public under CC by verify at www.jamendo.com/album/2843/

02 - Jolie Micro Girl.mp3 by M.E.A
Copyright (C) 2006 M.E.A. Licensed to the public under CC by-nc-sa verify at www.jamendo.com/album/1098/

03 - Wankash.mp3 by W. Elektro Projekt
Copyright (C) 2007 W. Elektro Projekt. Licensed to the public under CC by-nc-sa verify at www.jamendo.com/album/8300/

04 - Struttin'.mp3 by Tryad
Copyright (C) 2006 Tryad. Licensed to the public under CC by-sa verify at www.jamendo.com/album/3661/
'Struttin' Written and Performed by Tryad. Courtesy Tryad.org

05 - dub is dumb.mp3 by Kernem
Copyright (C) 2007 Kernem. Licensed to the public under CC by-nc-nd verify at www.jamendo.com/album/3977/

06 - Chips dreams.mp3 by Florent Lelong
Copyright (C) 2008 Florent Lelong. Licensed to the public under CC by-sa verify at www.jamendo.com/album/19211/

07 - maska & goey.mp3 by CIRC
Copyright (C) 2009 CIRC. Licensed to the public under CC by-nc-sa verify at www.jamendo.com/album/47735/

08 - dry martini.mp3 by LEGO
Copyright (C) 2006 LEGO. Licensed to the public under CC by-nc-sa verify at www.jamendo.com/album/981/

09 - Flocon.mp3 by Silence
Copyright (C) 2005 Silence. Licensed to the public under Licence Art Libre verify at www.jamendo.com/album/395/

10 - Sun System.mp3 by eNoz
Copyright (C) 2007 eNoz. Licensed to the public under CC by-nc-sa verify at www.jamendo.com/album/4489/

11 - The sun is coming.mp3 by Oursvince
Copyright (C) 2007 Oursvince. Licensed to the public under CC by-nc-sa verify at www.jamendo.com/album/8726/

12 - Inside the light.mp3:
Artist(s): Musician Toy
Copyright (C) 2009 Musician Toy. Licensed to the public under CC by-nc-sa verify at www.jamendo.com/album/44123/

13 - Plume.mp3 by Silence
Copyright (C) 2005 Silence. Licensed to the public under Licence Art Libre verify at www.jamendo.com/album/395/

14 - don't be shad.mp3 by CIRC
Copyright (C) 2007 CIRC. Licensed to the public under CC by-nc-sa verify at www.jamendo.com/album/6747/

15 - The Creature.mp3 by Musician Toy
Copyright (C) 2009 Musician Toy. Licensed to the public under CC by-nc-sa verify at www.jamendo.com/album/44123/

16 - Emptiness.mp3: by Alexander Blu
Copyright (C) 2005 Alexander Blu. Licensed to the public under CC by-sa verify at www.jamendo.com/album/149/

17 - Pour Toi.mp3 by Elecmutec
Copyright (C) 2007 Elecmutec. Licensed to the public under CC by-nc-sa verify at www.jamendo.com/album/8607/

18 - 短暫.mp3 or 18 - m+.mp3 by eNoz
Copyright (C) 2007 eNoz. Licensed to the public under CC by-nc-nd verify at www.jamendo.com/album/5097/

19 - Le nettoyeur.mp3 by Greg Baumont
Copyright (C) 2005 Greg Baumont. Licensed to the public under CC by-nc-nd verify at www.jamendo.com/album/347/

The speaker picture by swishphotos
Copyright (C) 2006 swishphotos. Licensed to the public under CC by-nc-sa verify at flickr.com/photos/swishphotos/225933635/

© 2009, Arnaud Soyez. Texts and illustrations found in this post are under the preceding copyright, unless specified otherwise.

[local]$ ssh myserver
Last login: Thu Aug 13 11:03:58 2009 from ...
[remote]$ byobu -R

Byobu can be seen as a replacement for the "screen" command, though it is not really a replacement; It should be seen much like an addon or a plugin. It can also be used locally without ssh (I just find it useful with ssh). It shows very useful information (about the computer where screen/byobu is running) and acts just like screen, same commands (though it adds some more keybindings). See screenshot above.

Among all the features it offers (and you can add your own), there is:

• Screen windows list
• Battery status
• CPU count
• CPU frequencies
• Current date/time
• Disk space
• EC2 cost
• Fan speed
• hostname
• IP Address
• Load average
• Mail count
• Memory available/used
• Network transfer speeds
• Temperatures
• Processes running (count)
• Users logged-in (count)
• Wifi quality
• Updates available
• ...

Byobu's description on its launchpad page :

Byobu is a Japanese term for decorative, multi-panel screens that serve as folding room dividers. As an open source project, Byobu is an elegant enhancement of the otherwise functional, plain, practical GNU Screen. Byobu includes an enhanced profile and configuration utilities for the GNU screen window manager, such as toggle-able system status notifications.

It's being developed by Dustin Kirkland (main developer) and by the byobu developers team (Dave Walker, Nick Barcet).

Download

You can install the team's ppa at: https://launchpad.net/~byobu/+archive/ppa by adding this to your /etc/apt/sources.list file:

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/byobu/ppa/ubuntu YOUR_UBUNTU_VERSION_HERE main 
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/byobu/ppa/ubuntu YOUR_UBUNTU_VERSION_HERE main

And replace YOUR_UBUNTU_VERSION_HERE by either hardy, intrepid or jaunty.
Add the PPA key and update your cache:

sudo apt-key adv --recv-keys --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com F430BBA5
sudo apt-get update

And then type:

sudo apt-get install byobu byobu-extras

to install byobu and some extra stuff for byobu.

Type "byobu" to start a new byobu session, and type F9 to get to the menu.

© 2009, Arnaud Soyez. Texts and illustrations found in this post are under the preceding copyright, unless specified otherwise.

It might need a little time before you figure out how this thing works. First you need to understand the Patterns (upper-right part); Smasher divided the file you've given him into slices, and each slice gets a number and that's the numbers you see on the left. From there, you can select in which order to play the slices.
Below the pattern area, there is the effects area, that's where you can apply an effect to each slice (first column for first slice being played). Then it is very easy to understand the rest of how it works.

Important: Smasher doesn't seem to support (or struggles with) files that are relatively big. I suggest you stick with mp3's that are less than 1mb, or Wav files are less than 2 or 3mb. Otherwise you'll see your Ram memory go up and your computer will start freezing.

Here are some of the features it offers (from official website):

• slice loops in seconds
• load MP3, WAV, FLAC and AIFF
• save as WAV
• resonant filters
• effects
• share presets online
• sample packs
• free and open source

Screenshots:

Download

I packaged Smasher version 1.1.1 for Ubuntu Jaunty Jackalope (9.04) and it can be downloaded from the CodeAlpha PPA:

• 64bits processor: smasher_1.1.1-0ubuntu1~ppa1_amd64.deb (4.2 MiB)
• 32bits processor: smasher_1.1.1-0ubuntu1~ppa1_i386.deb (4.2 MiB)
• LPIA processor: smasher_1.1.1-0ubuntu1~ppa1_lpia.deb (4.2 MiB)

© 2009, Arnaud Soyez. Texts and illustrations found in this post are under the preceding copyright, unless specified otherwise.