Neat ad-hoc networking trick

I didn't realise it for a long time, but instead of relying on DNS or directly entering IP addresses, most machines in my home network actually self organise. Many of you will already know this, but for those that dont...

Most devices support a thing called Multicast DNS - apple devices also do this.

Here's the article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.local

This is why things like Transmission, SickBeard, XBMC and SSH keys are useful: you can simply point to xbmc.local:8080 and get to a basic remote control.

This lets you simply refer to whatever the machine is and start talking to it. On a local wifi network, it's great.

Wish:
Ubuntu made this much clearer in some fashion - the first time you join a network, it should flash a welcome message. If it hears about a particular host, it should notify "xbmc.local is available" or similar, indicating a few machines it has detected.

My Kingdom for a Bug Fix

At my new work, the wireless keeps flaking out.

This wouldn't matter much if it wasn't for https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/network-manager-applet/+bug/912702 - every day I'm closing ~50+ network authentication prompts.

Why is Gwibber so slow?

Gwibber seems horribly slow and CPU intensive. From what I've read, there is much finger pointing and little actual solution - just vague hand waving about desktopcouch being a terrible backend.

Development seems dead in the water. How have we ended up at this point? Why don't I have ways to integrate TweetDeck or any other client as well? Why does gwibber-service need to run all of the time?

Rabbit VCS

James points me to Rabbit VCS.

"total clone of tortoise... I'm so happy right now."

Playdeb, and ubuntu wishlist items

I'm a huge fan of playdeb. The fact there is an apt URI handler available in ubuntu makes everything trivial - and I'd encourage lots of existing games to simply link to playdeb for a stable version.

What does annoy me though - because software installation in ubuntu is nearly flawless as it is - is that I can't have two package managers running at the same time.

Why not? Why can't I queue up several things to install? I can do that in windows; why do I have to wait around and install things one at a time?

If another package manager is working; why not prompt me with a question; rather than an error? "Another package manager is working, would you like to queue this installation task until after it has finished?"



There's some inklings about this, but most miss the point - Bug #74134 wants to make the failure more user friendly; but why should it fail at all?

I've opened a blueprint for it; which is probably a dupe; but I couldn't find anything specifically.


I imagine this to roughly look like the below for apt (if apt were magically written in PHP):

$stdin = fopen("php://stdin");
$path = ...; // /path/to/apt/lock/file/majigger
if (!is_writable($path)) {
   print "Another package manager appears to be working; would you like to queue this installation? [Y|n]";
   $ans = fgets($stdin);
   if ($ans === "n") {
       exit(0);
   }

   while (!is_writable($path)) {
       sleep(1);
   }
}
install($package);

Perhaps you'd want to cover a few more edge cases, or make it unit testable, but you get the idea. It doesn't seem to hard either for others, like update-manager or synaptic - probably beyond papercut size though.

Usability niggles, Ubuntu

Ubuntu's next release will have one hundred paper cuts as a focus - fixing usability issues for users.

Here's my best pet peeves.

1. On windows, if I paste in a URL in an "open file" box, windows will fetch it for me, write it somewhere temporary, and give me that temporary path. Gnome is inconsistent - I can put a URL into a the 'Run' dialog, but gedit doesn't let me open it. However, if I start gedit from the command line, it will open it - gedit https://edge.launchpad.net/hundredpapercuts/
2. 'Choose another application' when opening a file from firefox gets me to try and look around for the path of an application. As a newer user to linux, I often have to fall back to the terminal, and use things like 'which gedit' to get the right path. If the run dialog can work out which application I want, why can't firefox.
3. With gedit, if I open a file which does not exist, it does not let me create said file - it just errors at me.

https://bugs.edge.launchpad.net/hundredpapercuts/+bug/18995

Wanted: Ubuntu's update manager, a select all button

I don't know about you, but I'm really keen on doing really short bursts of activity and getting instant feedback.

I'd rather install 15 packages separately if they are substantial downloads than wait for them to all go at once. Infact, I'd often want to only install 3 or 4 and ignore others until later.

Its for that reason that the ubuntu update manager drives me nuts, and to the command line. If it had a 'select all/select none' toggle, I could easily clear the default select all, and life would be better.



So where do I go to whinge about this, and how do I do it?

I Still Hate The GIMP

How do I draw a rectangle in GIMP?

Since Gimp is an image manipulation program and not a painting program it doesn't include tools to draw shapes like squares and circles. However this doesn't mean you can't paint them, in fact there are some interesting options regarding this subject when it comes to the gimp. The solution is to use the selection stroking capabilities of the Gimp.

OK, GIMP, that's fine. You claim to be an image manipulation program, not a drawing tool. Good for you.

Who the hell put you in my distribution of Ubuntu!?

I want:

• Something I can use to quickly do mockups and screenshots
• Something I can use to draw very simple flowcharts

So my requirements boil down to:

• Good cropping features
• Cut, & paste
• Movable selections
• Resizable selections
• Undo
• A box tool
• A line tool
• A text/label tool
• A zoom tool

Since GIMP doesn't really have the line & box tools; I don't really want GIMP. I want paint.NET. I want pbrush. I want anything but GIMP.

I don't care how marvelous an interface you give it, it still isn't doing what I want.

In that case:

And yes, I'm still just as angry as last time.

TortoiseSVN for Ubuntu

Update: Rabbit VCS is the answer!

I discovered Nautilus scripts just today. I was a little exasperated, because I haven't yet found a good enough TortoiseSVN for Ubuntu.

I set off to learn about Zenity, and in the end came up with two alright scripts for svn commit, and svn update.

Unfortunately after fighting awk for too long, I found nautilus-script-collection-svn (apt-get install is your friend).

Now I'm stuck: I like my svn commit script, as it's much closer to TortoiseSVN (Enter message, select files to commit), and all I can do is whinge - I can't provide a more useful thing to the world.

Sigh.

esvn just made my day

esvn just made my ubuntu experience much, much better.

It's no tortoisesvn, but it's a damned sight better than the command line.

I wonder, is it still actively developed? Trunk shows no commits newer than 2 months old.

Howto: import your allconsuming.net content to alexandria

So I have a problem right? Alexandria is a nifty little application for listing the books you have as a digital library. Allconsuming used to fill that niche, and I've invested a lot of time into it.

So, this should be easy, right? Web 2.0 should mean webservices are exploding out of every possible port... right?

Not so! The information that is there isn't very useful - not even the RSS feeds really allow you to get structured data out.

But there is a way, be it quick and dirty.

First, check you've got Alexandria

sudo -s apt-get install alexandria

Next, go to your Allconsuming javascript setup page. Make sure you've logged in.

You see the script tag mentioned there? Grab it, and change it.

My original one was:
http://allconsuming.net/person/CloCkWeRX/js/all/3

and I now change it to:
http://allconsuming.net/person/CloCkWeRX/completed_js/all/300

Next, I visit the url in my browser, firefox.

I choose to save the page somewhere - call it `export`. We don't care about this page, really, but about the images attached. All of these images (in a handy fashion) are stored as an ASIN, and a file extension. An ASIN is an amazon product code, which handily defaults to an ISBN for books.

Firefox will put this saved page somewhere, like ~/, so whip open a terminal.

cd ~/export_files/
ls > export.txt

Open export.txt in gedit or similar, and replace all of the '.jpg' with '', then save.

Finally, open up Alexandria, and choose 'import'. Select a type of 'isbn list', and navigate to ~/export_files/export.txt

Done! You'll get a few importing errors, no doubt, and Alexandria isn't the best to give you informative errors... but you've just got your library into your library manager.

Ubuntu is fighting me.

Rrr.

It's not Ubuntu, per se, but gnome.

Here's what I want to do.

• Add Songbird as a menu item


• Make a new menu, called 'fucking awesome things which are handy I do not wish to place on my toolbar thing'


• Make a shortcut key that doesn't hate me

Is it easy using the gnome menu editor? NO!
Windows: you grab the icon you want, drag it to a toolbar, and drop it. If you want to put it into your start menu, you hover over the button and the menu appears.

Instead I must do battle.

• Applications menu


• Pick up the songbird icon


• OH SHIT, THE MENU HAS GONE. I JUST WANTED TO PUT IT IN "Sound & Video"


• How do I cancel the drag drop action? ESC! ESC!!

Lazyweb, file the bugs in the right places to make this not a pain in the ass.