I’d looked at Handbrake a while back but the GUI was far too confusing for a simpleton like me. It seems like it’s been cleaned up quite a bit now and looks rather useful! (The little video giving an overview of how to work things helps too!)
Handbrake is one of those applications that we adore here at TUAW HQ. It makes converting DVDs into a variety of digital files a snap (though only use it with DVDs you own. Don’t be pirates, kids). Chris Breen, of Macworld fame (and an amateur astronomer it would seem) shows us how to use HandBrake like a pro. Breen goes a step beyond ‘use the presets’ and delves into what many of the options HandBrake offers up actually do, and how they impact your files.
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Yet more chart drawing goodness. This takes a different approach to the Google model by generating really good looking graphs all on the client-side in javascript - very nice!
Flot is a pure Javascript plotting library for jQuery. It produces graphical plots of arbitrary datasets on-the-fly client-side. The focus is on simple usage (all settings are optional), attractive looks and interactive features like zooming. Although Flot is easy to use, it is also advanced enough to be suitable for Web 2.0 data mining/business intelligence purposes which is its original application. The plugin is targeting all newer browsers.
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The chaps over at Google have come up with a neat webservice - an easy way to get charts onto your webpages, the Google Chart API.
Google has finally released Google Charts API, which returns a PNG-format image in response to a URL. Several types of image can be generated: line, bar, and pie charts for example. For each image type you can specify attributes such as size, colors, and labels.
You can include a Chart API image in a webpage by embedding a URL within an <img> tag. When the webpage is displayed in a browser the Chart API renders the image within the page.
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I’m a fan of the Tails plugin for Firefox… Now Safari (on Leopard) gets its own Microformats Plugin! 
Of course, in order to take advantage of Microformats and perhaps bring the information they offer onto your system, you need a browser that will read them - there’s Firefox plugins, and NetNewsWire 3.0’s built-in browser reads them. But what about Safari? Thanks to SIMBL, there’s a small array of Safari plugins available and from the maker of Safari Tidy comes Safari Microformats. Whenever visiting a site with Microformats, an icon appears in the right of the address bar (not unlike the RSS icon). Clicking it brings up a menu of available hCards and hCalendars you can add to Address Book and iCal.
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At the moment I’m a very happy user of Google calendar and Spanning Sync for all my scheduling needs. But the geek in me fancies playing about with things so I’m thinking about setting up a CalDav server (when time permits) so Cat and I can organise our lives accordingly.
Here’s some pages I’ve been reading whilst doing my research.
Will possibly post more as and when I get a chance to play about with things…
I’ve just managed to get my Gmail service upgraded to the new version with IMAP support,1 and as such i’ve been trawling the net for information on how to get this all set-up nicely. By this I mean moving my mail filtering rules onto Gmail itself and getting IMAP to play a bit more nicely with Apple Mail…
Here’s how to get Apple Mail to work as expected, thanks to 5ThirtyOne:
Similar steps must be taken to ensure that any emails sent, saved as drafts, or deleted are properly identified by Gmail’s servers. After completing the IMAP setup steps for Apple Mail, instructing Mail is a few simple clicks away. Once your Gmail IMAP account is added to Mail, you’ll notice your [Gmail account] in the left sidebar.
- Highlight ‘[Gmail] Sent Mail’ in the sidebar and select ‘Mailbox’ (menu bar) > ‘Use This Mailbox For’ > ‘Sent’.
- Highlight ‘[Gmail] Drafts’ in the sidebar and select ‘Mailbox’ (menu bar) > ‘Use This Mailbox For’ > ‘Drafts’
- Highlight ‘[Gmail] Trash’ in the sidebar and select ‘Mailbox’ (menu bar) > ‘Use This Mailbox For’ > ‘Trash’
- Highlight ‘[Gmail] Spam’ in the sidebar and select ‘Mailbox’ (menu bar) > ‘Use This Mailbox For’ > ‘Junk’
Once properly configured, managing email from Apple Mail or the iPhone will be no different from managing emails within the Gmail web client - sent, drafts, trash, and junk properly sorted between your various email clients and web interface.
Read the full article for even more information (including iPhone set-up).
And the best hints for setting up slightly more complex filters in Gmail came from Lifehacker:
I needed to set up a filter that would apply label ‘work’ to any email that came from ‘xyz@workplace.com’ OR had the word ‘workoholic’ in it. Unfortunately, Gmail’s inbuilt ‘Create a filter’ feature’s dialog boxes are connected with an AND operator. Example: if I wrote ’ xyz@workplace.com’ in the ‘from:’ field of the ‘Create a filter’ page, and ‘workoholic’ in the ‘Has the words:’ field, then only emails that came from ‘xyz@workplace’ AND had the word ‘workoholic’ would be picked up by this filter. So, to get the desired result, I needed TWO filters. Unless…
[…]
Incorporate both the conditions in the ‘Has the words:’ field itself! So my ‘Has the words’ field reads as: (from:(xyz@workplace.com) OR (workoholic)). Voila! c’est fini! But the possibilities are endless!
Read the full article for more information.
Here’s two short bash scripts that allow you to mount and unmount an ISO image easily within the right-click menu in Nautilus (the file manager in Gnome):
$ sudo mkdir /media/ISO
$ cd ~/.gnome2/nautilus-scripts/
$ gedit "Mount ISO Image"
Now paste this code into the file:
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| #!/bin/bash
#
for I in `echo $*`
do
foo=`gksudo -u root -k -m "enter your password for root terminal access" /bin/echo "got r00t?"`
sudo mount -o loop -t iso9660 $I /media/ISO
done
done
exit0 |
Save, and exit gedit.
$ gedit "Unmount ISO Image"
Then paste this code in this file:
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| #!/bin/bash
#
for I in `echo $*`
do
foo=`gksudo -u root -k -m "enter your password for root terminal access" /bin/echo "got r00t?"`
sudo umount $I
done
done
exit0 |
Save, and exit gedit. Now finally…
$ chmod a+x *
Now you can mount and unmount ISO files by using the ‘Scripts’ options in the right-click menu.
Thanks to the Ubuntu Blog for the information.
If you are using the latest version of Ubuntu (8.04 - Hardy Heron), you might find these slightly updated instructions useful.
This quick walk-through are my notes for installing the PostgreSQL database server and the PgAdmin administration application on Ubuntu Linux, and also set up the server so it allows access to other PC’s on your network.
Before we move on, this guide was tested on the current release of Ubuntu Linux, (7.10 - Gutsy Gibbon) and PostgreSQL 8.2, but it should also be applicable to older versions (of Ubuntu and PostgreSQL) and other Debian based distros.
Continue reading ‘Install PostgreSQL on Ubuntu 7.10’
Ohhhh, I always fancied looking at EVE. Now all I need to do is get the PhD thesis out of the way and I might have enough time to look into it.
The official EVE Online site has details of upcoming patch ‘Revelations 2.3’. Along with a number of bug-fixes to the PvP-focused Massively Multiplayer Online Game, this game fix will offer up compatibility with Mac OS X and Linux. Though the Mac client is a native port, Linux will require the used of Cedega. The post suggests that if you’d like a preview of what the game will be like on your rig, you can download the client and tool around the test server. System requirements are also listed, as are the distributions of Linux they are specifically supporting: Ubuntu 7+, Suse 10+, and Linspire 6.
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