Linux operating systems are generally not as energy efficient out of the box compared to Windows and Mac OS X. Many people notice this when trying out Linux on their laptops for the first time. They come from Windows usually, and notice around a 20% decrease in battery life. However, there are a few ways […]
Monthly Archives: October 2012
A very simple Pomodoro timer for a terminal
If you work on a computer all day, like I do, you probably are sitting for unhealthily long periods of time. I realized this and started using the Pomodoro technique to remind myself to stand up. Although it’s billed as a productivity strategy, I usually just use it for this simple reminder. I was searching around for […]
Get CPU info from the Linux terminal
You can easily learn a lot of information about your computer’s processor from the Linux terminal. To do so, just open a terminal and enter this command: cat /proc/cpuinfo This will show you all kinds of stuff, like in the image above, for each core of your processor. To get a quick count of how […]
Chrome OS on the Acer Aspire One
I recently decided to try out Chrome OS again, since Google and Samsung have released the $249 Chromebook. I wanted to see how far along the operating system had come since I last tested it (around Dec 2010). After playing with Chromium OS (I grabbed the open source version from Hexxeh here: Chromium OS download) for a […]
blogpy – a simple static blog generator in python
After getting annoyed by the subtle handcuffs of the various CMS and blog platforms out there, I decided I would build something myself. Since a blog is generally text and images, I figured a static site would be great. I wanted something that I could dynamically rebuild and modify on a whim. I ended up […]
Using Hotkeys with Openbox
Openbox is a pretty minimalist window manager, so it’s not always easy to configure. If you want to add a hot key preference to openbox (for opening a program with combination of keyboard keys), you will need to edit openbox’s rc.xml file. This file is usually located in ~/.config/openbox/rc.xml. Open rc.xml: or Find a line that says <keyboard>. This […]
Git, the animal – “error src refspec master does not match any.”
Lovely! When this git error came up, I knew exactly what it meant. I mean src refspec is perfectly clear! And everyone knows what any git is talking about. /rant /sarcasm Seriously, though, did Yoda write this? I was going about my merry way, trying to push some existing code (not currently a git repo) to Bitbucket and bam! […]
FTP backup with Deja Dup
Ubuntu 12.04 comes with a handy program called Deja Dup. It’s an automated, snapshot-style backup system that allows you to back up your computer or a folder on it at certain intervals. One of the coolest things I found about Deja Dup was the ability to target an FTP server as the location for the […]
Eclipse says adb does not exist
I often switch up my development machine and try different GNU/Linux distros, and I recently ran into a problem with Eclipse and 64-bit Ubuntu 12.04. After installing eclipse and the Android SDK, I could not get my Android project to run. Eclipse was claiming that /home/myuser/android-sdks/platform-tools/adb did not exist, even though it obviously did upon […]
Create an ISO image from a CD on Ubuntu
There a few good reasons to convert a CD ROM to an ISO image. With an ISO disc image, you can have an exact backup of important software, or use it to quickly install an operating system using virtualization software like VirtualBox. To create an image, simply enter this command in a terminal window: This […]