My bookmarks for 07/31/2010

• Home - SlickGrid - GitHub

  "Quite simply, SlickGrid is a JavaScript grid/spreadsheet component.
  
  Some highlights:
  
  * Adaptive virtual scrolling (handle hundreds of thousands of rows with extreme responsiveness)
  * Extremely fast rendering speed
  * Supports jQuery UI Themes
  * Background post-rendering for richer cells
  * Configurable & customizable
  * Full keyboard navigation
  * Column resize/reorder/show/hide
  * Column autosizing & force-fit
  * Pluggable cell formatters & editors
  * Support for editing and creating new rows.
  * Advanced detached & multi-field editors with undo/redo support.
  * “GlobalEditorLock” to manage concurrent edits in cases where multiple Views on a page can edit the same data."

  tags: jquery javascript grid spreadsheet table slickgrid

• BAR - backup archiver program

  "BAR is backup archiver program. I developed this program after I could not find a simple to use archiver program to create compressed and encrypted archives of my files which can be stored on a cd or dvd. While I devoped the program - development is still not finished - I added some more useful features. Now I use the program to make automated backups from all my files either on dvd or directly via an Internet connection to a file server. "

  tags: backup system administration linux

• WinAPIOverride32 : Free Advanced API Monitor, spy or override API or exe internal functions

  "WinAPIOverride32 is an advanced api monitoring software.
  You can monitor and/or override any function of a process.
  This can be done for API functions or executable internal functions.
  
  It tries to fill the gap between classical API monitoring softwares and debuggers.
  It can break targeted application before or after a function call, allowing memory or registers changes; and it can directly call functions of the targeted application."

  tags: api winapi development win32 windows

• ffwdme's acts_as_api at master - GitHub

  "acts_as_api makes creating XML/JSON responses in Rails 3 easy and fun. "

  tags: acts_as_api ruby ruby on rails rails

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Firefox 4 Beta 2 Update

Update: This article is out of date and will not be updated. I've moved on to Chromium (Beta Channel) mostly for the HTML5 support. You should give it a try.


Took me a bit, but I'm up to date with Firefox 4 beta 2. Greasemonkey still seems a little of as of the latest nightly build for 07/24 from https://arantius.com/misc/gm-nightly/

The only thing that was holding me back from fully switching over was the ability to run my Twitter Greasemonkey scripts, but since my last try at FF4 I've found PBTweet+ which has a wide range of options for installation (Firefox Extension, Greasemonkey, Chrome, Safari and a Bookmarklet). By using the bookmarklet I can enjoy using twitter again and I can actually live without my other scripts or Stylish until they're fixed for FF4.

So what's the big deal about running FF4?

• HTML5 - This is the biggest feature for me
• App Tabs as of beta 4
• Speed - FF4 feels a lot faster than 3.6

What extensions are working? Some of my extensions are running thanks to the compatibility hack.

Compatible with FF4 b2 out of the box:

• AdBlock+
• Add-on Compatibility Reporter
• Firefox Sync
• Flag Fox

Non Compatible, but working:

• Diigo Toolbar
• TinEye Reverse Image Search
• Web Developer Toolbar

Extension not working:

• Aviary
• Fastest Fox
• Firebug
• GreaseFire
• GreaseMonkey
• Stylish

Related articles (External)

• How to use App Tabs in Firefox (video) (download.cnet.com)

My bookmarks for 07/29/2010

• PageLime - Simple CMS for Web Designers

  "No installation, no coding to integrate, and no wasted time. Just add the cms-editable CSS class to any HTML element on your site and Pagelime does the rest."

  tags: cms management website web development

• Quirkey.com

  tags: code quirkey

• Carbon

  "This web service, part of Brighter Planet's carbon middleware suite, enables developers to build flexible, resilient, real-time carbon footprint estimates into business applications."

  tags: carbon green service

• 10 Free Online Books for Web Designers | Freebies

  "There’s a never ending supply of information out there for us web designers. If there’s something we need to learn, we can find it in one form or another. Sometimes it may be on a blog or it could be in a book. While you may have to shell our some money for a good web design book, there are a number of them out that have online versions that are totally free. Here are 10 you should find very useful."

  tags: ebooks books web design development

• ErrorHelp.com - Error Search and Collaboration

  This site helps you search for errors that other people have encountered. Someone's bound to have run into your error before, right?

  tags: search error

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

My bookmarks for 07/28/2010

• Top 17 Websites To Easily Generate CSS Grid Layouts | Free and Useful Online Resources for Designers and Developers

  "Below you will find a list of 17 great online CSS grid builders that will surely help any web developers. See which online tool will suit your needs best."

  tags: css grid web design

• rack-gist

  Asynchronous loading of Github Gists with rack.

  tags: rack gist github ruby

• A few git tips you didn't know about

  tags: git tips SCM versioncontrol

• Git for the lazy - Spheriki

  "Git is a distributed version control system. No, you don't need to know what that means to use this guide. Think of it as a time machine: Subversion or CVS without the cruft.
  
  If you make a lot of changes, but decided you made a mistake, this will save your butt.
  
  This guide is for people who want to jump to any point in time with their project/game/whatever, and want something to use for themselves. "

  tags: git development versioncontrol cheatsheet

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

My bookmarks for 07/27/2010

• Distributed Ruby - Exploiting ‘Enterprise’ Software

  tags: distributed Hazelcast java grid ruby jruby

• In-Memory Data Grid - Hazelcast

  "Hazelcast is an open source clustering and highly scalable data distribution platform for Java, which is:
  
  * Lightning-fast; thousands of operations/sec.
  * Fail-safe; no losing data after crashes.
  * Dynamically scales as new servers added.
  * Super-easy to use; include a single jar.
  
  Hazelcast is pure Java. JVMs that are running Hazelcast will dynamically cluster. Although by default Hazelcast will use multicast for discovery, it can also be configured to only use TCP/IP for environments where multicast is not available or preferred."

  tags: grid java distributed Hazelcast

• PenTBox

  "PenTBox is a Security Suite that packs security and stability testing oriented tools for networks and systems.
  Programmed in Ruby and oriented to GNU/Linux systems, but compatible with Windows, MacOS and every systems where Ruby works.
  It is free, licensed under GNU/GPLv3."

  tags: pentbox Penetration Testing networking Security Ruby

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

My bookmarks for 07/25/2010

• Cufon - alternative to sIFR

  "Cufón aims to become a worthy alternative to sIFR, which despite its merits still remains painfully tricky to set up and use. To achieve this ambitious goal the following requirements were set:
  
  1. No plug-ins required – it can only use features natively supported by the client
  2. Compatibility – it has to work on every major browser on the market
  3. Ease of use – no or near-zero configuration needed for standard use cases
  4. Speed – it has to be fast, even for sufficiently large amounts of text
  
  And now, after nearly a year of planning and research we believe that these requirements have been met."

  tags: cufon typography fonts sifr web design

• nanoc: a Ruby site compiler that generates static HTML » home

  "nanoc is a tool that runs on your local computer and compiles documents written in formats such as Markdown, Textile, Haml… into a static web site consisting of simple HTML files, ready for uploading to any web server."

  tags: ruby nanoc static web generator development

• Got Git? HOWTO git and github -- Less Everything Blog

  tags: git github fork

• » CSS display: inline-block: why it rocks, and why it sucksRobert's talk - Web development and Internet trends

  "Usually when you want a horizontal list, you need to use float in the CSS code to make it work, with all its drawbacks. However, there is an alternative with display: inline-block."

  tags: css web design

• LiveReload

  "LiveReload is a Safari/Chrome extension + a command-line tool that:
  
  1. Applies CSS and JavaScript file changes without reloading a page.
  2. Automatically reloads a page when any other file changes (html, image, server-side script, etc)."

  tags: livereload javascript web design development

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

My bookmarks for 07/24/2010

• Spoiled Milk ApS > Blog » HTML5: Changing the browser-URL without refreshing page

  "An often overlooked feature of HTML5 is the new “onpopstate” event.
  
  This new feature offers you a way to change the URL displayed in the browser* through javascript without reloading the page. It will also create a back-button event and you even have a state object you can interact with.
  
  This means you won’t have to use the hash-hack anymore if you want add state to your AJAX-application, and search engines will be able to index your pages too."

  tags: html5 javascript ajax

• Windows Management Infrastructure Blog - Site Home - MSDN Blogs

  tags: windows system administration wmi scripting

• PowerShell Tip: Formatting Output

  "In PowerShell everything is a .NET object, each with a variety of different properties. You'll notice that most of the time the output you see from basic commands only gives you a small subset of what's available. This is because PowerShell has built-in rules for how and what to display for most of the standard objects. Usually this is done so that you normally only see what's most important and aren't overwhelmed with too much data. For example, the dir command returns a set of FileSystemInfo objects but only shows you a few of the 20+ properties that are available."

  tags: powershell windows scripts system administration

• Greenletters - console interaction automation library

  "Greenletters is a console interaction automation library similar to GNU Expect. You can use it to script interactions with command-line programs."

  tags: greenletters ruby expect

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

My bookmarks for 07/23/2010

• Resque - Background Job Scheduler

  "Resque is a Redis-backed library for creating background jobs, placing those jobs on multiple queues, and processing them later."

  tags: ruby redis resque queue jobs

• Clockwork - Cron Replacement

  "Clockwork is a cron replacement. It runs as a lightweight, long-running Ruby process which sits alongside your web processes (Mongrel/Thin) and your worker processes (DJ/Resque/Minion/Stalker) to schedule recurring work at particular times or dates. For example, refreshing feeds on an hourly basis, or send reminder emails on a nightly basis, or generating invoices once a month on the 1st."

  tags: clockwork cron ruby system administration

• Bullet

  "The Bullet plugin/gem is designed to help you increase your application’s performance by reducing the number of queries it makes. It will watch your queries while you develop your application and notify you when you should add eager loading (N+1 queries), when you’re using eager loading that isn’t necessary and when you should use counter cache."

  tags: rails ruby Ruby on Rails performance activerecord

• Redcar

  Redcar is a text editor for programmers written in JRuby. It supports Textmate themes and snippets. Everything is a plugin and you can write new plugins and commands in Ruby.

  tags: ruby editor textmate jruby redcar

• The Great Ruby Shootout (Windows Edition)

  The implementations tested were:
  
  * Ruby 1.8.7
  * Ruby 1.9.1 p378
  * Ruby 1.9.2 dev
  * JRuby 1.5.1
  * IronRuby 1.0 x64 for .NET 4.0
  

  tags: ruby windows benchmark

• Stashboard: The open source status dashboard

  "Stashboard is a status dashboard for APIs and software services. It's similar to the Amazon AWS Status Page or the Google Apps Status Page. Stashboard was originally written by Twilio to provide status information on its Voice and SMS APIs. Stashboard is designed to provide a generic status dashboard for any hosted service or API. The code can be downloaded, customized, and run on any Google App Engine account."

  tags: dashboard python web development services

• Ruby on Rails CMS - Refinery CMS

  "Manage Your Site. Easily.
  Refinery is an easy way to manage your custom website.
  And when we say easy, we mean it."

  tags: rails ruby Ruby on Rails refinery

• An Introduction to Refinery CMS – A Rails Content Management System

  "Refinery CMS is an open source Ruby on Rails CMS for small businesses. The project was originally closed source for 4 years at Resolve Digital until it was finally released to the open source community in mid 2009. Refinery focuses on doing things "the Rails way" where possible. This means you don't have to learn too much to start theming it and building your own custom plugins."

  tags: cms refinery ruby rails Ruby on Rails

• 960 Grid System Photoshop Actions | Johnny Nines

  "Do you use a grid for your web designs? Do you use the 960 Grid System? Well if you do, I have provided a set of Photoshop actions for you to download.
  
  These actions will create a Photoshop document ideal for laying websites out in 12, 10, 8, 6 and 4 columns. "

  tags: photoshop actions 960Grid css web design

• Apt-fast and Axel: Faster apt-get Installations and Upgrades  | Ubuntu Geek

  "Apt-fast script that combines the power of the axel download manager with the stability of apt-get."

  tags: apt ubuntu debian system administation

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

My bookmarks for 07/22/2010

• 10 Reasons You Shouldn’t Be a Designer

  "If you get through reading this article and find a couple reasons why you shouldn’t be a designer, it’s probably no big deal. If, on the other hand, you find that the huge number of these reasons apply to you, you may want to re-think design as a career."

  tags: design

• Ultimate Roundup of Best Photoshop Wallpaper Tutorials

  "The best ways to learn and try new things with Photoshop is to create beautiful wallpapers. The huge size will give you plenty of ideas to try anything you want, and there really is no destination to what you can create. I’ve compiled a list of the best Photoshop tutorials that teach you how to make really great backgrounds. All the tutorials here give a top quality final result and teach you some new and better techniques."

  tags: photoshop tutorial wallpaper

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

PC-BSD 8.1 Released

The PC-BSD Team announced the availability of PC-BSD 8.1 (Hubble Edition), running FreeBSD 8.1-RELEASE, and KDE 4.4.5

Version 8.1 contains a number of enhancements and improvements. For a full list of changes, please refer to the changelog. Some of the notable changes are:

• FreeBSD 8.1-Release
• KDE 4.4.5
• Numerous fixes to the installation backend
• Support for creating dedicated disk GPT partitioning
• Improved ZFS support
• Bugfixes to desktop tools / utilities

Minimum system requirements:

• Pentium II or higher
• 256MB Ram
• 12GB of free Hard Drive space (Either partition, or entire disk)
• Network card
• Sound card

Recommended system requirements:

• Pentium 4 or higher
• 512MB of Ram
• 20GB of free  Hard Drive space (Either partition, or entire disk)
• Network card
• Sound card
• 3D accelerated video card

Bug Fixes

• Change pc-sysinstall to not adjust partition tables
• Add "install desktop icons" checkbox to software manager when you are prompted to install an application

New Features/Tools

• Add option for installer to remove unused i10n support files
• Specify to use password or random keys for encrypted volumes
• Add support to create / delete slices in the installer
• Give option in Software Manager to change update check frequency
• Allow encryption of "/" by creating a /boot partition with keys/kernel
• Change bootloader to allow selecting multiple options, such as disable acpi + vesa mode
• Explore option to prompt user to overwrite kde4 profile
• Provide work-around for XGUI to bring desktop up in default mode/allow user configuration of xorg.conf
• Provide more ZFS install functionality, merge to using only a single zpool for all zfs mounts
• Update Install GUI to allow specifying multiple zfs mounts on a single partition
• Change to using gpart / GPT for dedicated installs in pc-sysinstall
• Improve LifePreserver with directory selection, exclude options and reporting

Version 8.1 of PC-BSD is available for download from our mirrors, as well as via torrent from www.gotbsd.net .

• Download PC-BSD 8.1
• Changelog
• Release Notes

via PC-BSD 8.1 Released.

My bookmarks for 07/21/2010

• 30 free programming eBooks [UPDATED] - citizen428.blog()

  "Learning a new programming language always is fun and there are many great books legally available for free online. Here’s a selection of 30 of them"

  tags: programming ebooks

• NetBeans IDE 6.9: Java with Microsoft SQL 2005 | NetBeans Zone

  "As far as developers can choose (or have it chosen for them) their software, they've had various scenarios to work with. Mostly companies use C# with MSSQL or Java with Oracle. Today I will show a slightly mixed scenario where the developer uses Java as the programming language and Microsoft SQL 2005 as their database engine. I will provide the most popular ways of using MSSQL 2005, such as executing a query from Java code, using Stored Procedures, working with output parameters and so on"

  tags: java netbeans ide sql Microsft SQL Server database

• IDS/IPS/WAF Evasion & Flooding Tool - Inundator | Linux Poison

  "Inundator is a multi-threaded, queue-driven, IDS evasion tool. Its purpose is to anonymously flood intrusion detection systems (specifically Snort) with traffic designed to trigger false positives via a SOCKS proxy in order to obfuscate a real attack.
  
  The general idea is one would launch inundator prior to starting an attack, allow it to run during the attack, and continue to run it a while longer after you’ve accomplished the attack. The goal, of course, is to generate an overwhelming number of false positives so that your real attack is essentially buried within the other alerts, minimizing the chance of your attack being detected. It could also be used to ruin an IDS analyst’s day, or keep an organization’s infosec department busy for a while."

  tags: ids ips security networking

• Emsisoft Free Emergency Kit

  "The Emsisoft Emergency Kit contains a collection of programs that can be used without a software installation to scan and clean infected computers for malware. "

  tags: emsisoft malware

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

New releases of IronPython and IronRuby

Not a big fan of .Net, but I'm a firm believer of using the right tool for the right job and at times .Net is the best choice. Now, if you're not a fan of VB.net or C# you can always use IronPython or IronRuby which in my case make developing in .Net enjoyable.

On July 16th, IronPython 2.7 Alpha 1 and IronRuby 1.1 were released. IronPython includes includes VisualStudio support which would be nice if IronRuby did the same.

Anyway, here is what is included in each package with the new release.

IronPython 2.7 Alpha 1

• Adds integrated Visual Studio support (IronPython Tools for Visual Studio)
• Extends CPython 2.7’s documentation with useful information pertaining to IronPython
• Adds the mmap and signal modules
• Includes a number of performance updates and bug fixes
• Switches the license to Apache License, Version 2.0
• Requires .NET 4.0 and Silverlight 4.0

IronRuby 1.1

• Requires .NET 3.5
• Support for .NET extension methods
• Switches the license to Apache License, Version 2.0
• Mostly bug fixes from IronRuby 1.0

For more information refer to the release notes

• IronPython
• IronRuby

Linux Mint 9 LXDE released!

Not much of a Ubuntu fan myself, but Linux Mint is in my opinion one of the best derivatives out there. I currently us in on my Laptop in order to have a hassle free experience while being mobile.

So, if you're new to Linux then Mint is a great way to get started.

BTW, LXDE is a great light weight Window Manager that everyone should at least take for a spin.

Make sure to check out the full release notes in order to get the download locations, known issues and hardware requirements.

New features at a glance:

• New LXDM Display Manager
• Improved PCManFM2 file manager
• New Software Manager
  
  • 30,000 packages
  • Review applications straight from the Software Manager
  • APT daemon
  • Visual improvements
  
  
• New Backup Tool
  
  • Incremental backups, compression, integrity checks
  • Backup/Restoration of the software selection
  
  
• Better look & feel
  
  • Backgrounds
  • Welcome screen
  • Update Manager
  
  
• System improvements
  
  • Windows installer
  • Husse quotes
  • Default software selection
  • Local repository and Gnome-PPP
  • Apt hold/unhold/held commands
  
  
• Project changes
  
  • Community Website
  • Community Editions
  
  
• Upstream improvements
  
  • Faster boot
  • Long Term Support
  
  

Release Announcement: Linux Mint 9 LXDE released!.

Sabayon Linux 5.3 "Extra Spins"

New Spins of Sabayon release which include the following three spins: XFCE, LXDE and OpenVZ. I've been in pain most of the day and in a grouchy mood, so I'm just going to post the info from the release announcement. There's a link to the actual release announcement at the end of the post.

Our crew, is happy to announce the immediate availability of XFCE, LXDE and SpinBase/OpenVZ Sabayon 5.3 "Spins" built on top of Sabayon "SpinBase" ISO images.
Under the "Extra Spins" umbrella, the Sabayon developers are going to experiment new Stable Releases with different package compositions.
Consider these "Extra Spins" an appetizer of what you will get in the upcoming months: more "Spins" are planned and more external contributions will be accepted.
Just like the other regular Sabayon releases, these "Extra Spins" are also daily built by our Build Servers and available in our mirrors inside the "iso/daily" directory.

Features of Sabayon 5.3 XFCE Spin:

• Bootable Image suitable for a CD or USB thumb drive (<700Mb)
• Linux 2.6.34 Desktop kernel w/Tuxonice and AUFS support
• XFCE 4.6.2 Desktop Environment
• NetworkManager 0.8 as default networking tool
• Out of the box NTFS support via NTFS-3G
• Mozilla Firefox 3.6.6
• Basic VirtualBox Guest integration
• Very fast installation via our Live Anaconda Installer (which gained stability improvements and several new minor features)
• Very minimal setup to fit into a CD, no fancy features and drivers. Designed for low-end computers.
• Package list: amd64
• Package list: x86

Features of Sabayon 5.3 LXDE Spin:

• Bootable Image suitable for a CD or USB thumb drive (<700Mb)
• Linux 2.6.34 Desktop kernel w/Tuxonice and AUFS support
• LXDE 0.5.0 Desktop Environment
• NetworkManager 0.8 as default networking tool
• Out of the box NTFS support via NTFS-3G
• Mozilla Firefox 3.6.6
• Basic VirtualBox Guest integration
• Very fast installation via our Live Anaconda Installer (which gained stability improvements and several new minor features)
• Very minimal setup to fit into a CD, no fancy features and drivers. Designed for low-end computers (and Windows-addicted users).
• Package list: amd64
• Package list: x86

Features of Sabayon 5.3 SpinBase/OpenVZ templates:

• To be used with OpenVZ servers (or Sabayon OpenVZ installations with sys-kernel/linux-openvz kernel)
• Very small footprint, yet providing a full feature OpenVZ guest Virtual Machine
• OpenVZ template installation howto available at planet.sabayon.org
• Package list: amd64
• Package list: x86

Download sources
Our Mirrors Page:
Just choose a link from the list and get to the "iso" directory
- http://www.sabayon.org/download
Bittorrent:
- http://tracker.sabayon.org

MD5 hashes of released files
71923122a703af647cf9128356edf103 Sabayon_Linux_5.3_amd64_LXDE.iso
dba2212e09764186ab56c74fdeb70922 Sabayon_Linux_5.3_x86_LXDE.iso
66c54177b3c26226689b571bb6eb9aa2 Sabayon_Linux_5.3_amd64_XFCE.iso
ec605701b7cbd24c07c82d956377be3e Sabayon_Linux_5.3_x86_XFCE.iso
ee2b3e08ab98e99713df9fa0c2f0fad3 Sabayon_Linux_SpinBase_5.3_amd64_openvz.tar.gz
aec80516bf2992d70960e337842eb8ec Sabayon_Linux_SpinBase_5.3_x86_openvz.tar.gz

via: Sabayon Forums • View topic - Sabayon Linux 5.3 "Extra Spins" releases.

My bookmarks for 07/17/2010

• CoffeeScript

  "CoffeeScript is a little language that compiles into JavaScript. Think of it as JavaScript's less ostentatious kid brother — the same genes, roughly the same height, but a different sense of style. Apart from a handful of bonus goodies, statements in CoffeeScript correspond one-to-one with their equivalent in JavaScript, it's just another way of saying it. "

  tags: javascript programming coffeescript js script compiler dsl

• Everyday GIT With 20 Commands Or So

  "[Individual Developer (Standalone)] commands are essential for anybody who makes a commit, even for somebody who works alone.
  
  If you work with other people, you will need commands listed in the [Individual Developer (Participant)] section as well.
  
  People who play the [Integrator] role need to learn some more commands in addition to the above.
  
  [Repository Administration] commands are for system administrators who are responsible for the care and feeding of git repositories."

  tags: git versioncontrol SCM programming reference

• Ubuntu 10.04 Samba Standalone Server With tdbsam Backend

  "This tutorial explains the installation of a Samba fileserver on Ubuntu 10.04 and how to configure it to share files over the SMB protocol as well as how to add users. Samba is configured as a standalone server, not as a domain controller. In the resulting setup, every user has his own home directory accessible via the SMB protocol and all users have a shared directory with read-/write access. "

  tags: server ubuntu linux SMB Samba

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Run Linux applications on any distribution from a USB drive

Ever wanted to run your favorite Linux applications from a USB sticks on ANY major Linux distribution with the need to install anything? Then prepare to say hello to Portable Linux Applications.

The Portable Linux Apps project provides self contained application similar to the way OS X application are distributed. To execute just launch the application container from any locations, and when you done with the application (as in I don't need it anymore) just trash it. This is one of the biggest features I love about OS X.

You can now have your portable Windows  and Linux applications on a single USB stick or memory card. Your data and applications always with you. What would be nice is a way to figure out how to make the settings files shared, for example have your Firefox profile accessible by both the windows and Linux versions.

Portable Linux Apps available to download now include:

• WireShark
• Pidgin
• Midori Web Browser
• XChat IRC Client
• Transmission torrent app
• SpiderOak online backup tool
• Blender
• Handbrake

There are plenty more and, and creating your own 'AppImage' is made simple thanks to the ImageAppAssitant.

Resources:

• OMG! Ubuntu!
• Portable Linux Apps
• Portable Linux Apps @ Sourceforge.net
• Elementary Project

Wine 1.2 in now available

The latest release of Wine has taken two years with over 23,000 changes. These changes include over 3,000 bug fixes.

You can get the source from:

• http://ibiblio.org/pub/linux/system/emulators/wine/wine-1.2.tar.bz2
• http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/wine/wine-1.2.tar.bz2
• http://www.winehq.org/git to get it straight from the source repository

Or you can download a binary package from:

• http://www.winehq.org/download

Documentation can be found here:

• http://www.winehq.org/documentation

What's new (highlights):

Core functionality

• Loading and running 64-bit Windows applications is now supported on x86-64 processors
• WoW64 file system redirection is supported now
• WoW64 registry redirection is now supported in 64-bit prefixes.
• The mount manager now reports the actual UUID for disk devices that support it instead of a hard-coded one.
• Symbolic links are now supported in the registry.

User interface

• New icons for built-in applications, and for the standard toolbars and images. These are based on the Tango which should give application better integration with the rest of the Linux UI.
• There is now an application wizard control panel to manage installed applications.
• Many features of the RichEdit control are improved
• Many common controls work better now
• Wine is now fully translated to French, German, Dutch, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian, Polish, Lithuanian, Norwegian, and Korean.

Desktop integration

• File associations created by a Windows applications are now registered with the Unix desktop.
• Application icons support alpha channel transparency under window managers that support it.
• Screen saver is now launched when a Windows application makes a request to start the screen saver.
• Start Menu entries are now properly removed when an application is uninstalled.
• Copying and pasting images between Windows and Unix applications
• Launching an external Unix Web browser from a Windows application
• MSI files are now associated with Wine

Graphics

• Subpixel font rendering is now supported
• Icons with alpha channels are now properly blended in
• Image lists now properly store the alpha channel of images
• The windowscodecs dll has been added, with codecs for the JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP, ICO, and TIFF image formats.
• Many more capabilities are now supported in the SANE scanner backend. This improves scanning support in Acrobat.

Audio

• Digital playback of audio CDs is now supported.

Internet and networking

• The Gecko HTML engine has been updated
• There is now an essentially complete implementation of the JavaScript language.
• The IRDA network protocol is now supported by the socket layer.

There are also improvements to Direc3D, built-in applications and performance.

For a complete list of changes and additions please read the release announcement.

My bookmarks for 07/16/2010

• TranscoderRedux

  "The aim of this project is to produce various top quality transcoders for OSX. Currently all access is via the SVN at https://transcoderredux.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/transcoderredux"

  tags: transcoderredux video converter osx transcode

• Subler - Mac OS X app created to mux mp4 files.

  "Subler is an Mac OS X app created to mux mp4 files. The main features are:
  * Creation of tx3g subtitles tracks, compatible with all Apple's devices (iPod, AppleTV, iPhone, QuickTime).
  * Mux video, audio, chapters, subtitles and closed captions tracks from mov, mp4 and mkv.
  * Raw formats: H.264 Elementary streams (.h264, .264), AAC (.aac), AC3 (.ac3), Scenarist (.scc)
  * iTunes metadata editing and tagChimp support. "

  tags: subler video muxing osx subtitles audio

• Writing data to Excel from Java - the simple way

  "On the web you can find some blogs about how to use Apache POI to create an Excel spreadsheet. They typically contain reams of code just to add a simple table and some rows of data. It's always amazing the amount of suffering people put themselves through to perform simple tasks. An example is this blog (there are others) which demonstrates some typical calls you will make using Apache POI to create a simple spreadsheet. Whilst that may represent what Apache POI requires, a user choosing to follow this way is inflicting unnecessary suffering on themselves, really. Read on ...
  
  Here's how we would achieve the same thing as the referenced blog using JDO and DataNucleus. Firstly lets create a class that equates to a row of data in the table."

  tags: excel java development

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Distribution Release: openSUSE 11.3

The openSUSE Project has released openSUSE 11.3 with support for 32-bit and 64-bit systems (Release Announcement).

New features and updates:

• SpiderOak to sync your files across the Internet for free
• Rosegarden for free editing of your audio files
• Support for netbooks
• Btrfs file system support
• Linux kernel 2.6.34

Available Desktop Envrionments:

• KDE, 4.4.4
• GNOME 2.30.1
• GNOME 3.0 Preview
• Xfce 4.6.1
• LXDE 0.5.5

Screen-casts:

DVD Installation



GNOME Live CD Installation



KDE Live CD Installation



Get openSUSE 11.3

Life-Size Evangelion Bust's

Japan's Fuji-Q HighLand amusement park has unveiled a life-size bust of Neon Genesis Evangelion (新世紀エヴァンゲリオン, Shin Seiki Evangerion) EVA-01. The bust is 30' tall and 52' wide (9x16 meters). It will also sport a life-size Entry Plug cockpit and a life-size firgure of Kaworu Nagisa. The whole thing is costing 150 million yen.

Behind the scenes look:


Read Article: Anime News Network.

My bookmarks for 07/15/2010

• How to Create a Web Service in a Matter of Minutes

  "Yahoo offers a system for people to access their APIs called the Yahoo Query Language, or YQL. YQL is a SQL-style language that turns information on the web into virtual databases that can be queried by end users. So if you want to, for example, search the web for the term “elephant,” all you need to do is to use the following statement:"

  tags: web service yql yahoo development

• How to Test Drive Google Android on Your PC Without Buying a Phone - How-To Geek

  "Would you like to test drive the latest version of Google’s Android OS without buying a new mobile device? Here’s how you can run Android on your PC for free with the Android SDK Emulator.
  
  Android is the latest mobile OS to take the world by storm, but everyone doesn’t have access to the latest mobile devices. Thankfully, there’s an easy way to run Android on your Windows, Mac, or Linux computer. Google provides an Android emulator with their SDK, which is designed to let developers test their apps on Android before running them on handsets. We can use this to test drive Android on our computer, here’s how to do it."

  tags: android google development

• Usenet Resource Downloader (URD)

  "URD is a program to download binaries from usenet (newsgroups) through a web interface.
  
  While some other programs offer similar services (e.g. Ninan, Sabnzbd), URD doesn’t need external NZB files to function. URD lets you subscribe to newsgroups, and will then automatically analyse those articles to form downloadable ‘sets’, consisting of all the files belonging to a specific upload. These sets are displayed, and through point and click you can be downloading a binary in no time."

  tags: downloader usenet

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

My bookmarks for 07/14/2010

• How To Uninstall/Remove Antivir Solution Pro Virus (Removal Guide)

  "Antivir Solution Pro is a fake antispyware program that wants to scan your computer for viruses. It’s tricky, it’s annoying, but it’s definitely not the first of its kind and we will see many others in the future. Unexperienced users might download it because of fear… fear of having an infected computer and wanting to get the malware out of their machines ASAP. Fortunately, most rogue security programs cannot irreparably damage your computer, albeit they can still important personal data from your system."

  tags: uninstall spyware antivirus

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Funimation's Anime Online Streams

While looking for some new Anime to watch I came across Funimation site which I hadn't visited in quite some time and was pleased to find out that they have several outlets for streaming Anime (sub-titled and dubbed).

Their list includes some really good Anime and the quality also great. Here's a few out a really great collection they have:

• Desert Punk
• Birdy the Mighty: Decode
• Black Blood Brother
• Air Gear
• Darker Than Black
• Full Metal Panic!
• Fullmetal Alchemist
• Pumpkin Scissors
• Soul Eater
• Witchblade
• Air Master

On hulu they actually have Shiki and The Legend of Legendary Heroes. Anyway, without further delay here are the links:

• http://www.funimation.com/
• http://www4.funimation.com/video/
• http://www.hulu.com/network/FUNimation
• http://www.youtube.com/FUNimation#g/shows

Back to Firefox 3.6

Update: This article is out of date and will not be updated. I've moved on to Chromium (Beta Channel) mostly for the HTML5 support. You should give it a try.


Used Firefox 4 Beta 1 for a few day and having HTML5 support is great, but not having a fully working version of greasemonkey+greasefire and especially not having Stylish was driving me crazy.

So, I'm back on Firefox 3.6 as my primary browser and will continue testing on Firefox 4

Here's a quick sample of why I love Stylish





Style used http://userstyles.org/styles/23461

Wine development release 1.2-rc7

The Wine development release 1.2-rc7 is now available.

This should be the last release candidate before the final 1.2.

What's new:

• Translation updates


• bug fixes.

Download Source:

• http://ibiblio.org/pub/linux/system/emulators/wine/wine-1.2-rc7.tar.bz2


• http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/wine/wine-1.2-rc7.tar.bz2

Download Binary:

• http://www.winehq.org/site/download

Documentation:

• http://www.winehq.org/site/documentation

Git repository:

• http://www.winehq.org/site/git

Read announcement which includes bug fixes and changes since 1.2-rc6

Greasemonkey and Firefox 4 Beta 1

Update: This article is out of date and will not be updated. I've moved on to Chromium (Beta Channel) mostly for the HTML5 support. You should give it a try.


Disclaimer: Using a developer or nightly build of any application can cause problems with your application or system. This is how I get Greasemonkey to work on my setup and I'm not responsible for any issues you may have.

Finally able to run Greasemonkey on Firefox 4 Beta 1, but there are still some problems. In order to get it running you'll need to download the latest nightly build which currently is greasemonkey-2010.07.08.beta.xpi from https://arantius.com/misc/gm-nightly

The current issue I'm having is that whenever I click on "Manage User Scripts" it locks up my Firefox interface and I need to End Task Firefox in order to bring it back. After I click on "End Task" in Taskmanager Firefox will prompt for Save and Quit, if I click cancel I get response back. Annoying and for now need to remove scripts manually.

I'll post updates as whenever the above issue is resolved.

Greasefire 1.0.4 is not compatible with Firefox 4 Beta 1 and does not work with Greasmonkey Nightly Build 2010.07.08

User Scripts Tested so far:

• Disable Google Fade-in
• Greased Lightbox (v0.18)
• OneManga Easy Viewing
• Mangafox Chapter Loader ** Not Working **

Update: Tested Nightly build 2010.07.14 and still no luck on getting the Script Manager up and running.

PCLinuxOS 2010.07

PCLinuxOS is available featuring various desktop interfaces depending on your needs.

• KDE Desktop
  
  • Full KDE 4.4.5 Desktop.
  • Parental Controls
  
  
• Gnome Desktop
  
  • Full Gnome 2.30.2 Desktop
  
  
• Gnome ZenMini Desktop
  
  • Minimal Gnome 2.30.2 Desktop.
  
  
• LXDE Desktop
  
  • Full LXDE Desktop.
  • Parental Controls
  
  
• XFCE Desktop
  
  • Full Xfce 4.6. Desktop.
  
  
• Enlightenment Desktop
  
  • Full Enlightenment  Desktop.
  • Parental Controls
  
  

Latest Release Includes:

Kernel 2.6.33.5, Nvidia and ATI fglrx driver support, MyLiveCD allows you to take a snapshot of your installation and burn it to a LiveCD/DVD.

PCLinuxOS includes all of the latest popular applications such as Firefox 3.6.6, Thunderbird 3.0.5, Dropbox , Pidgin 2.7.1,  Ktorrent 4.0.1, Gimp 2.6.9, Digikam 1.3.0 , Amarok 2.3.1 and much much more.

PCLinuxOS includes all of the latest popular applications such as Firefox 3.6.6, Thunderbird 3.0.5, Dropbox for online backup storage, Pidgin 2.7.1,  Ktorrent 4.0.1, Gimp 2.6.9, Digikam 1.3.0 , Amarok 2.3.1 , Smplayer and much much more. In addition there are over 12,000+ additional packages available from our software repository.  Please note PCLinuxOS does not ship Win32codecs or libdvdcss2 software.

PCinuxOS Quarterly ISO updates

Mandriva Linux 2010 Spring

Mandriva announced today the launch of Mandriva Linux 2010 Spring.

This version of Mandriva offers:

• a complete, quick-to-install system, comprising all the necessary drivers
• "Smart Desktop" which offers dynamic access to all files by labelling them and grading photos, documents, emails and videos. Ginkgo, a GUI for managing data semantics, can explore personal data such as mails, documents, files, Web pages
• Mandriva Directory Server (MDS), for easy-to-use LDAP management
• tools to lock down the system, parental control for web sites and applications
• compatibility for current and legacy hardware, including netbooks
• Office, Educational, Multimedia and Scientific Applications
• KDE 4.4.3, GNOME 2.30.1, Firefox 3.6.6, and Xorg Server 1.7.7
• Powerpack (the commercial version of Mandriva) includes non-free applications and drivers for audio and video codecs

Mandriva Linux 2010 Spring is available in three editions:

1. Powerpack (the commercial edition, including exclusive commercial software, support, and services)
2. One (a live CD which can also be installed to the system permanently)
3. Free (an edition which contains only free / open source software).

Mandriva presents Mandriva Linux 2010 Spring Press Release.

Video: Booting Mandriva 2010



Video: Gnome Desktop



Video: KDE Desktop



Video: Mandriva Control Center

Firefox 4 Beta 1: Installing Non Compatible Extensions

If you need to install extensions which are not compatible with Firefox 4 Beta 1 you need to make the following changes:

• open page about:config
• right-click anywhere on page and select New -> Boolean
• Enter preference name as extensions.checkCompatibility.4.0b
• click OK
• enter value as False
• click OK

You should now be able to install extension compatible with older version of Firefox, even though many will not work.

WARNING: Adding extension which are not compatible with Firefox 4 Beta 1 could break you Firefox Install and you will probably not get any support from the developers.

Strike Witches 2 on Crunchyroll

Strike Witches 2 (ストライクウィッチーズ2)

Crunchyroll announced today that they will simulcast Strike Witches 2. Strike Witches is also streamed on Crunchyroll. More information can be found at http://www.crunchyroll.com/strikewitches

Strike Witches

The year is 1944 and the world lives in fear of unidentified flying objects called Neuroi. With the old-boy old guard unable to thwart this deadly menace, humanity turns its desperate eyes to an aerial attack force with much nicer legs. Meet the girls of the 501st Joint Fighter Wing, better known as the Strike Witches. These darlings of the great blue yonder may not have standard issue uniforms, but they do have all the right stuff. Where the average flyboy falters, these dolls blast aliens to bits in the bat of an eyelash. With a little magic and a whole lot of leg, the girls of the 501st are winning the war on pants, and aliens!

The Facebook Economy

There are 550,000+ apps that are used on Facebook. Seventy percent of users engage with apps each month. There are one million app developers. Zynga, the top app developer, made $250 million in 2009. Of that amount, $80-$150 million is estimated to be profit, more net profit than Facebook itself made.

Facts about the Internet

Via: Medical Coding Certification

My bookmarks for 07/07/2010

• Ruby tracker

  "Ruby Tracker alerts you whenever your project dependencies change. It works with public or private repositories and is setup is seconds."

  tags: ruby tracker rails dependencies

• Design Comics :: Characters and Scenes for Storyboarding & Design

  "Free comic characters and scenes you can use to develop great product designs."

  tags: comics design storyboard communication elearning

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

My bookmarks for 07/04/2010

• ttyrec: a tty recorder

  "ttyrec is a tty recorder. Recorded data can be played back with the included ttyplay command. ttyrec is just a derivative of script command for recording timing information with microsecond accuracy as well. It can record emacs -nw, vi, lynx, or any programs running on tty"

  tags: ttyrec tty screencast Screen Recorder

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

My bookmarks for 07/03/2010

• Alchemy | An open drawing project

  "Alchemy is an open drawing project aimed at exploring how we can sketch, draw, and create on computers in new ways. Alchemy isn’t software for creating finished artwork, but rather a sketching environment that focuses on the absolute initial stage of the creation process. Experimental in nature, Alchemy lets you brainstorm visually to explore an expanded range of ideas and possibilities in a serendipitous way. "

  tags: Open Source software graphics painting

• OpenShot – An Easy-to-use Video Editor For the Average Linux User - Make Tech Easier

  "OpenShot is a non-linear video editor for Linux. It can easily combine multiple video clips, audio clips, and images into a single project, and then export the video into many common video formats. Things that you can do with OpenShot include creating photo slide shows, edit home videos, create television commercials and on-line films, or anything else you can dream up."

  tags: linux video editor

• Build Your Own Ubuntu-based Distro With Novo Builder

  "Novo Builder is a Debian GNU/Linux tool for creating your own up to date Ubuntu variants (only Ubuntu variant for the time being) customised to include the programs, themes and customised settings that you want. You don’t have to learn all the codes or any of the technical process. With a few mouse clicks and a long waiting time, you can quickly create your very own OS (and probably boost it to your friend)."

  tags: ubuntu linux diy distribution

• 18 Free Screencasting tools to Create Video Tutorials

  "Videos are simply great to deliver a message in a very short time and for most people bandwidth is not a problem any more.The following screencasting tools are all free to record screen but of course their features are not as much as paid ones.You can easily record your screen and add audio or edit your recorded screen videos with these tools."

  tags: screencasting

• How to Authenticate Users With Facebook Connect | Nettuts+

  "Lately, there’s been quite a fuzz about lazy registration. It turns out that the less the user has to think, the higher the conversion rates are! What a thought! If everybody seems to have a Facebook profile, why not add a one-click user registration? I’ll show you how to do that today."

  tags: facebook php authentication development

• HTML5 Apps: Positioning with Geolocation

  "At the heart of every location-based application is positioning and geolocation. In this tutorial you will learn the geolocation capabilities of HTML5 and the basic principles needed to take advantage of them in your next HTML5 app!"

  tags: html5 geolocation development

• Introduction to Android Development

  "Today we’ll be taking a look at Android development: explaining why people have choosen to work with Android and providing an overview of the Eclipse IDE and its Java, DDMS and debugging perspectives. Finally, you’ll learn how to get started making your first Android app!"

  tags: android development

• Introduction to iPhone SDK Development

  "This tutorial looks at development with the iPhone SDK. You will learn information about the iPhone platform, how to setup and configure your development environment, and the steps necessary to create a simple fortune cookie application! "

  tags: iphone development sdk

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.