Get Ctrl Back

Cleaning up Firefox's data

2009-10-20T01:34:00.000+08:00

My Firefox's profile data is really huge, I have two profiles, both are over 100MB. If I switch History tab on and try to search for something, it takes quite a time to get results.

Clear Data

Go to Tools/Clear History, I only choose Browser/Download History and Cache. Don't forget to choose time range to everything.

Delete urlclassifier*

Close all Firefox windows first. It's for blocking phishing sites. There are two files, urlclassifier3.sqlite and urlclassifierkey3.txt,
you can read more about it on MozillaZine Knowledge. (I didn't disable the features but deleted directly and didn't see any side effects.)

After you start Firefox, the file will be recreated but much smaller. However, it grows back quite fast.

Vacuum Databases

Close all Firefox windows first. If you use Linux, you can run the following command to do the job:

for fn in ~/.mozilla/firefox/*/*.sqlite ; do sqlite3 $fn vacuum ; done

Mozilla Link had a comparison before/after vacuum.

Adding Retweet button to Twitter webpage

2009-10-14T14:58:00.004+08:00

I have been wanting for a Retweet button for a so long time on official Twitter webpage, but it never happened. Today, I spent an hour or two to make a simple script. One click on bookmarklet can add a button below the Favorite and Reply buttons. Check out the picture below, you should have a better idea.

The red arrow points at this new Retweet button. If you click on this new button, it will bring the retweeting tweet into status input box. This script should work on your Twitter home page, someone's profile page such as mine, @livibetter, tweet status page, or search results.

At home page, if you click on more button at bottom of page, then you only need to click on bookmarklet once more. That will add Retweet button to new tweets.

The following is the bookmarklet, drag and drop it onto your bookmark toolbar.

Retweet

If you are interested in the source code, you can view it at Google Code, the code is licensed under the modified BSD license.

Updated on 2009-10-20: Added button to tweet status page, such as http://twitter.com/twitter/status/1234567890.

Better URI for your Google Profile

2009-04-15T16:59:00.000+08:00

Just knew that Google Profile gives us better URIs [via TechCrunch]. The old (but still work) URI is http://www.google.com/s2/profiles/115422682039760465813, which is awfully long and you can't guess who's that by seeing the URI. The new one is like http://www.google.com/profiles/livibetter, which is the same username of Gmail box. So, you probably want to put a dot in if you use your real name, for example, you can have http://www.google.com/profiles/livi.better as if you can do for your Gmail: livi.better@[gmail]. That also works.

Go to edit profile, scroll down to bottom, you will see the option to have new style of URI. If you click on see more options, you will also have an option like http://www.google.com/profiles/115422682039760465813, but I doubt that anyone would use that.

Life before the computer

2009-04-06T11:13:00.000+08:00

This is possible an old joke at the time when 3 1/2" still be the most awesome portable storage media. Stronger than 5 1/4". I searched for this joke and I found more complete version:

An application was for employment
A program was a TV show
A cursor used profanity
A keyboard was a piano!

Memory was something that you lost with age
A CD was a bank account
And if you had a 3 1/2 inch floppy
You hoped nobody found out!

Compress was something you did to garbage
Not something you did to a file
And if you unzipped anything in public
You'd be in jail for awhile!

Log on was adding wood to a fire
Hard drive was a long trip on the road
A mouse pad was where a mouse lived
And a backup happened to your commode!

Cut - you did with a pocket knife
Paste you did with glue
A web was a spider's home
And a virus was the flu!

I guess I'll stick to my pad and paper
And the memory in my head
I hear nobody's been killed in a computer crash
But when it happens they wish they were dead!

Before I first experience of computer use, I could not speak any English at that moment. I was about 8 years old. Since then, my vocabulary bank started to grow up, but it's in very limited and special way. I only know the meaning of computer field and barely can pronounce them. Until now, many words in my head are still strong bound to computer terms. Sometimes, it's hard for me to think outside of computer.

It's interesting when you look back on this joke. Many things have changed after this joke being written. I think the best time of 3 1/2" has past about a decade. If another decade passes, how many in this joke would remain?

Now livibetter.mp is my new index.html

2009-04-02T19:31:00.000+08:00

Months ago, I decided to use Google Sites as my index.html. Now livibetter.mp is the new one. Chi.mp looks like a profile plus little scale of FriendFeed. You can give visitors your contact information, activity stream and many other things. Chi.mp designs well, though there is still some small things are not perfect.

Once you signed up, you can get the dashboard. From there, you can update your status, e.g. Twitter's updates, add photo (to Facebook and/or to Flickr), or write blog post on Chi.mp. Clear view of your contacts and contents. If you switch to Dashboard / Personas & Privacy, you can change theme and switch every single content source on/off.

Composing your Profile, you can put phone numbers, addresses, emails, etc. And give them into to different personas. For example, you can only allow friends accessing your phone number. You can also upload avatars. You can even upload favicons. Both avatars and favicons are able to show differently to different personas.

In Content section, you can import content just as you do in FriendFeed, but you don't have many services to import. As of writing, there are Yahoo, Feed, Flickr, Twitter, Hotmail, Facebook, and Gmail. Here is one drawback, you actually already set some social networking websites and blogs in Profile, however, you need to do again here.

In Setting / Site Settings, this section also amazes me, you can set page Title, HTML Meta Description, Google Analytics ID, Google Webmaster Tools Verify Code, and MicroID.

Chi.mp even gives you one Email Forwarding, what can I say, I love Chi.mp! You should already know Chi.mp supports OpenID, and you wouldn't possible to find an OpenID in so short URL, mine is http://livibetter.mp/.

After I go through all settings, I dumped Google Sites and Google Profile.

Own. Evolve. Enjoy!

Google Earth Sky and Stellarium

2009-04-02T05:52:00.000+08:00

If I need to find any information about stars of universe, the first program which I can think of is Sky mode of Google Earth. I don't know if this Sky mode is for professional use or not, obviously, I am not into it.

Here is another application, it's called Stellarium. It's Free and Open-sourced, and All major systems are supported natively. You can see many screenshots here.

Google Earth's Sky mode has many layers and seems to be a little bit of mess if you turn on too many layers. Stellarium is much more clean. Its UI is simple as well and easy to use. However, if you are not familiar with what you just looking at, it's more easy to access online information with Google Earth.

pastebinit

2009-03-19T01:49:00.000+08:00

pastebinit, a small Python script helper to paste text/code to pastebin.com, which is really handy. You don't need to open editor/select all/paste. You only need to run this script with filename or type in and hit CTRL+D.

Since it's written in Python, I guess it should be having no problems with all systems that Python lives on.

Making ghost avatar

2009-02-16T18:53:00.000+08:00

Earlier today, I changed my avatar on Twitter. It's for fun that make avatar look like blank image. However, you still can see something from the avatar.

So, here comes this post. I use GIMP to make another one from a cat image. The original is

(Kind of cool face, isn't?)

The rough steps

Firstly, open it and duplicate the layer. And don't forget to add alpha channel. Name the duplicated layer as “Edge.”
Apply Filters » Edge-Detect » Sobel... on Edge layer. The result looks like
Remove some unwanted edges, only leave the main part. In this case, the cat's head.
Add Black (full transparency) layer mask to Source layer.
Copy Edge layer onto Source's layer mask.
Reduce Opacity to make the image be barely seen.
Enhance if the ghost image is not evenly seen:
a) Duplicate the Edge as Enhance.
b) Remove the parts that are too strong from Enhance layer.
c) Adjust Opacity of Enhance layer to make ghost image looks balanced.

The final image

Yes, it's right above. (I set the opacity way too low. :p) The final GIMP file is here.

Some websites that support avatar in PNG format

2009-02-16T16:48:00.000+08:00

I just changed my avatar to:

(Yes, it's really here, I guarantee!)

Because it's special, therefore only those websites which support PNG can use it, or it will only be ugly black avatar.

Anyway, here is the list of those websites that support PNG avatar:

Blogger
Get Satisfaction
Google Groups
Google Profile
Jamendo
Last.fm
LiveJournal
Picasa Web Albums
Twitter
Yahoo
Youtube

Here is another list of those websites which don't support PNG avatar:

43Things
Blip.fm
Disqus
Facebook
Flickr
FriendFeed
Gravatar
Technorati
Ustream.tv
Verisign PIP
Vimeo

middlemouse.contentLoadURL

2009-01-31T19:16:00.001+08:00

Since I started to use Firefox, there is one thing that kept bothering me. When you click with mouse's middle button on empty places, Firefox will try to open it as a URL. It seems to be very convienient when you copy a URL somewhere else, then you switch back to Firefox and press middle button. However, that is really rather used. Most of time, just “Address Not Found.”

So, open about:config, type middlemouse.contentLoadURL, then set it false.

Trying out Windows 7 Beta

2009-01-18T11:05:00.001+08:00

I downloaded the Windows 7 Ultimate Beta from Microsoft. The hardwares of the machine I used, you can read it here. It's kind of old. I have an ATI Radeon X700 graphics card, but it seems to be broken, that is bad that I could not see the Aero theme. By the way, I have never used Vista, Windows XP is my last experience of Windows operating systems.

The setup runs in 800×600 resolution, I can now hope Windows supports old GeForce4 MX and gives me 1680×1050 after installation. The setup is weird, it gave Upgrade and Custom installation types, but I didn't have any Windows on this computer. I deleted all Linux partitions and create new one. It automatically created 200MB for System type, the rest for Primary type.

The installation needs to restart twice, which I don't understand why would it needs to. At second time reboot, you can set up a new account and enter the product key. The whole process of installation takes less than 30 minutes, this is quite fast.

I am still stuck in 800×600. I tried to set up Internet connection, but it kept saying it couldn't. So I checked up the Device Manager, and found out Ethernet Controller doesn't have driver. I manually installed NVIDIA nForce Networking Controller. I thought this will be working, but it doesn't. Windows 7 has proved me that it's a Windows descendant by a royal Windows tradition when I tried to configure the NIC, I got a Not responding window. The End Process button doesn't work, the only way seems to restart or shutdown. But it just showed me “Shutting down...” Thankfully, this machine has a Reset button. Good job, Microsoft.

So I downloaded a Windows XP driver for nForce2 from nVidia website (it's categorized as Legacy), it doesn't have Vista version. However, this still doesn't work for NIC (other devices seem to work). I found nf123xp stuff, which has newer drivers than from nVidia's website. The file I downloaded is NF123LR1.0. While installing these newer drivers, boom! BSOD! Another royal tradition. I then tried again, it happened on installing audio driver. I resolved it by manually installing.

Now, finally, I can connect to Internet. I installed Kaspersky software from the three suggestions on Windows 7 website, also updated the system. I tried to install nVidia GeForce4 MX (Integered using 128 MB shared memory) 93.71 driver for XP/2K, which I downloaded from nVidia, but installer said “this is not Windows!” How hilarious! But I can still install it manually.

Oh, yeah! I got 1680×1050 after rebooted. I just downloaded Steam, and Kaspersky warmed me that it detected Worm.P2P.generic. So, I uninstalled Kaspersky. However, the games are not playable, I guess that is driver problem.

I feel Windows 7 is just a pretty Windows XP, nothing more except you have to keep click on Yes and Allow buttons to make sure your system is more “Secure.” I encountered troubles with driver issues, they are not supported officially, even though they are working. If you want to try Windows 7, make sure you have a sticker on your hardware. Buying a pre-installed computer might be a better way.

Following Google's services on Twitter

2009-01-16T05:43:00.004+08:00

Now, even Google starts to use Twitter, though not really the core of Google itself. We now have @Blogger and @googlereader. Maybe there are more out there, if yes, please let us know.

There is a blog posting from Google that makes me thinking, which writes about Jaiku — bought by Google in 2007 — will be open-sourced. It's interesting that Blogger and Google Reader chose Twitter not Jaiku. It's not hard to understand, all because of amount of users.

Updated on 2009-03-26: List of known Google services on Twitter:

The B Thing

2009-01-14T22:48:00.001+08:00

From now on, topics about blogging will be posted on

Oldest file meme

2009-01-03T05:26:00.006+08:00

After drink meme, I got another meme to play with, “New Year's meme: What are the oldest files in your home directory?”, first started by Brandon Rhodes.

Rules

Run the following script in your home directory. (You might want to use less to read the output.)
Ignore files whose date does not reflect your own activity.
List the oldest files in a blog post and discuss!

#!/usr/bin/env python
"""Print last-modified times of files beneath '.', oldest first."""
import os, os.path, time
paths = ( os.path.join(b,f) for (b,ds,fs) in os.walk('.') for f in fs )
for mtime, path in sorted( (os.lstat(p).st_mtime, p) for p in paths ):
     print time.strftime("%Y-%m-%d", time.localtime(mtime)), path

Only include files whose last-modified time is a date on which you really touched the file. The file's time should neither result from an error (a few files beneath my own home directory have an incorrect date of 1970-01-01), nor from unpacking someone else's archive that has old files inside of it.

But there is no requirement that the actual content of each file you list be your own. Whether you wrote the file yourself long ago, or downloaded it from some ancient and forgotten FTP site, you have a story to share!

My files

# The first day I started to use Pidgin on Linux?
2007-08-29 ./.purple/logs/jabber/[my_email]@gmail.com/[a_contact]@gmail.com/2007-08-29.160713+0800CST.html
# The day I started to run my own server at home, shutdown months later due to noise from fans
2008-04-11 ./tmp/thetinybit/etc/ppp/chap-secrets

Nothing really old because of a harddisk failure in 2005. I lost all my data, photos, documents, etc. After that tragedy, I usually don't store anything on my computer except raw images/music files/or files I would use often.

Add a 3-column above footer to Blogger layout

2008-12-26T05:26:00.002+08:00

I want a section which lays three widgets horizontally, Recent Posts, Recent Comments, and Top Posts. If I have them at my sidebar, then the whole page length would be going to long when reading a single post. If I can line them up since they have close widget height, the result should look good. Note that I plan to place this new section just above the original footer section.

Only need to add two parts. One is the CSS, the other is the XML.

Here is the CSS part:

#above-footer-wrapper {
  width:840px;
  clear:both;
}
#above-footer-left {
  width:270px;
  float:left;
  margin-right:15px;
}
#above-footer-middle {
  width:270px;
  float:left;
  margin-right:15px;
}
#above-footer-right {
  width:270px;
  float:left;
}

My page width is 840 pixels, you need to change it to fit yours. I evenly distribute the space to three columns which is 840 = 270 * 3 + 15 * 2. The spacing between columns is 15 pixels.

For XML part, you need to find footer

<div id='footer-wrapper'>

Add new section to be:

    <div id='above-footer-wrapper'>
      <b:section class='footer' id='above-footer-left'>
      </b:section>
      <b:section class='footer' id='above-footer-middle'>
      </b:section>
      <b:section class='footer' id='above-footer-right'>
      </b:section>
    </div>

    <div id='footer-wrapper'>
      <b:section class='footer' id='footer'>
      </b:section>
    </div>

Once you done, save the template and switch to Page Element tab, that should look like:

Here is a screenshot about how it looks like:

Note that the color borders are for easy understanding only.

You can scroll down to see this 3-column section in practical use.

Blogging about Math?

2008-12-24T06:18:00.001+08:00

Few years ago, when I was a student, it's not easy to get math displayed on browser. Now, the MathML works out-of-the-box in Firefox 3 (maybe also in Firefox2?). However, I couldn't directly use MathML in Blogger.com, they gets messed up. Besides, it's not easy to write on you own without an editor. LaTeX is much easier to write.

LaTeX → MathML

LaTeXMathML, which is an JavaScript script, converts LaTeX to MathML on the fly. Isn't that good? Here is an example. if your browser supports:

$x=\frac{-b\pm\sqrt{b^2-4ac}}{2a}$

You may also want to know ASCIIMathML.

LaTeX → Image

This may has the most compitable to old browsers, but no one can guarrentee that provider will last forever.

YouEquations.com provides similar way as LaTeXMathML does, but generates a image object not MathML object. If the JavaScript is turned off, viewer still can have LaTeX to read.

You can also try Texify. You need to enter your LaTeX to get the link to the image. Here is an example:

You may also want to know MathTran.

Keeping in touch with your blog readers

2008-12-23T20:30:00.001+08:00

Have you tried to reach a blogger when you have a question but that's about a blog posting? When I have such need, I will check the “About” page, first. But the fact is not all blogs have that page. Some bloggers forgot to provide contact information, or simply they don't want to be bothered.

What if they want but couldn't have a good way to allow readers to send them messages? I recently added Get Satisfaction to my blogs. I believe it's a good channel but may be more like one for real company. It's not quite fitting as for a blog because of the terms that Get Satisfaction used, “company”, “employee”, “product”, or “service”. But I think I can live with those since I saw no other acceptable options.

There is another service I was thinking to adopt before Get Satisfaction, Skribit. It's only for getting blogging topic suggestions. Not so comprehensive as Get Satisfaction is. As of writing, you can only have one blog for an account. If you have many blogs, you need to create more accounts. Skribit is more friendly to blog reader by my feeling.

Of course, you can still provide very old way, the email. That is also a private way. The instant messaging is another way to do. But both of them may not be good idea because some people like spamming.

However, whatever way you are going to take, providing the information at About/Contact page is a must-do. It's like the index.html, a convention. People used to read that.

I think if you can provide a public channel to allow the communication and other people (not only you and the reader) can read and participate the conversation, that may be good for all.

Do you have any ideas or suggestions in you mind?

Desktop application of Google Analytics

2008-12-21T08:15:00.001+08:00

Today, I installed Adobe AIR 1.5 on Linux and I saw Google Analytics Reporting Suite, not made by Google.

It doesn't have full functionality and the latest dashboard as seen on website. To me, the latest dashboard is very useful, I only need to know few simple statistics over all my blogs at a glance.

Here is some screenshot of this AIR application:

Add a Profile

Dashboard of a Profile

Map view

Few embedded music player options

2008-12-20T07:12:00.001+08:00

I got few suggestions from one of my blog posts. I wasn't really testing them but only some of them.

Grooveshark: I think this one is the best. You can edit your playlist, though that isn't easy to build a playlist with Grooveshark's Flash interface in my opinion. The embedded code has only one Flashobject.
Blip.fm: You can only embed one song only at a time.
My Flash Fetish: This seems to have lots of users. It has many different skins. You can decided if you want it autoplay or shuffle the songs. You need to sign up in order to get the code.
The Music Hutch
Gcast: This one seems to serve podcast shows, but I did see someone use this to play music.

Do you have any more suggestions? leave a comment!

Flattening Labels at footer on Blogspot

2008-12-11T19:48:00.002+08:00

Had you ever wanted to add a Labels at footer, but it's too ugly to accept?

It's easy to fix with small piece of CSS:

/* BEGIN: Flattening Labels */
div.footer div.Label {
  text-transform:none;
  }
div.footer div.Label li {
  display: inline;
  }
/* END: Flattening Labels */

After inserting to your template, that would look like:

Nameservers of Hinet

2008-12-11T16:16:00.000+08:00

It's been for days that I couldn't connect to Google's services smoothly. I can't find any news reports talked about it, that seems to be my own problem.

My ISP is Hinet, the biggest ISP in Taiwan. This situation happened two or three times in the last few years, but all got resolved in hours except that an earthquake broke sea cables.

I didn't use proxy before, so I use Hinet's proxy server and didn't help. Then I tried to access an image from free image hosting service (xs.to), the proxy responded "host can't be resolved." That explains why I saw the error so many times in the last few days. At first, I thought those were remote servers' problems. Now, it's obvious that the problem is the nameservers.

I am using OpenDNS and all problems are gone.

I want Blavatar on Blogspot

2008-12-08T14:55:00.001+08:00

I just logged in WordPress.com to check up for falling snow. I saw Blavatar:

It's an avatar for your blog. That can be shown up as favicon.

Dear Blogger.com, I want that, too! (No, manual setting is different. Automation, FTW!)

Penguins Have Migrated

2008-12-06T10:28:00.001+08:00

The new born penguins will have migrated to a new and bigger continent, Tux Wears Fedora, and would never come back.

(This is also the post #50 on this blog.)

Howto: Add a Blogspot HTML/JavaScript Gadget

2008-12-06T06:53:00.001+08:00

Adding an HTML/JavaScript gadget can make your blog rich. Here is the steps:

Step 1: Go to Layout/Page Element

Here is a choice to make. You have to decide to input the code at sidebar or footer. If the code won't show any stuff to blog readers, then putting it at footer is right choice; if it do like a RSS gadget, then putting it at sidebar is correct.

If you change you mind after you creating one, you can still drag a gadget and drop onto the other section. Actually, in standard template, you can drop a gadget onto sidebar, footer, before Blog Posts, or after Blog Posts.

Step 2: Choose Gadget Type

Scroll down to the half way.

Step 3: Put the Code in

Here is another note: If this code will be running at footer, then don't use Title.

Done!

I have tried to write this post as clear as possible, but if you still can't get it, please leave a comment.

Installing Google Earth to track Santa on Fedora 10 x86_64

2008-12-02T08:20:00.002+08:00

I got NORAD TRACKS SANTA 2008 [via Official Google Blog ] and wanted to see how we can track. :) So I installed Google Earth. The installation still isn't smooth.

Download Google Earth, and grant the execution permission, then run it! I got the error because of my x86_64:

./googleearth-bin: error while loading shared libraries: libGL.so.1: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

You need to install the right libGL library, in my case, for radeon open source driver:

yum install mesa-libGL.i386

Then I got another error:

./googleearth-bin: error while loading shared libraries: ./libminizip.so: cannot restore segment prot after reloc: Permission denied

By advise from setroubleshoot:

chcon -t textrel_shlib_t ~/google-earth/libminizip.so

But you better to do with:

chcon -t textrel_shlib_t ~/google-earth/*.so

Here is a note: if you see the main window and tip dialog after launching Google Earth, but screen freezes and mouse cursor still moves. You probably turn off KMS, which you have nomodeset in your kernel booting parameter. Remove that, Google Earth will run.

REMEMBER: Check that website on Christmas Eve!