Archive for August, 2008

28
Aug

Another Useful Nautilus Script

By Michael 0 Comments
Categories: linux reference

I blogged earlier here about Nautilus scripts to mount and unmount iso files.

Here’s anothery that’s real useful, to give you open the terminal in the current directory shown in the nautilus window.

From the previous post, go to your nautilus scripts folder. Make a new file or just make a copy then edit one that’s there (saves setting permissions!).
Call it term_here or terminal or whatever.

Keep the

#!/bin/bash

at the start, and have just

gnome-terminal

after it.

I assume this will work with your favourite terminal program as well.
Now you can just right-click and pop open a terminal wherever you are in nautilus.

19
Aug

Disney’s Sin City

By Michael 0 Comments
Categories: General

Snow White is a naughty girl

Snow White is a naughty girl


More here…

17
Aug

links for 2008-08-16

By Michael 0 Comments
Categories: General
16
Aug

links for 2008-08-15

By Michael 0 Comments
Categories: General
12
Aug

Hundred Pushups Update

By Michael 2 Comments
Categories: General

So week 2 is finished, and being the start of week 3 you do another test to see what your limit is.
Tonight I did 25.
Now this was after kung fu training, I might add. An tonight we did much arm work – not so much straight punching, but a lot of blocking. Blocking work means you alternate causing and receiving deep bruising to the forearms and shoulders.
Anyway, that’s what I managed to do.
Speaking of kung fu, I haven’t trained for 2 weeks, which is the same 2 weeks of pushups. I noticed more explosive punches, stronger. It’s hard to describe if you haven’t tried to strengthen punches before, but I noticed a difference.
Once I’ve completed the oushups program, I was thinking I’d start again, but with my hands in different positions to work on other muscles.
I remember when I was a lad, young and fit and I could do pushups no trouble, normal, hands together, hands apart, one handed even. Ah those were the days…

12
Aug

AdobeAIR Alpha on Ubuntu 64 Bit

By Michael 6 Comments
Categories: Software and linux reference

So I tried installing the regular AIR .bin from Adobe. No go. Should have guessed cos I’m running 64bit Ubuntu. A little google later, and I found this, which I did.

1. Download and extract the AdobeAIR SDK. Put it somewhere nice. I put it in /home/michael/AdobeAIR.

2. Pick an AIR app and download it. I used TweetDeck cos it’s what I wanted.

3. A .air file is just a zip file, so with your favourite unzipper, unzip it somewhere nice. I used /home/michael/AdobeAIR/apps/tweetdeck

4. Make a script file, in this case called tweetdeck.sh

5. Put the following into this file:

/home/michael/AdobeAIR/bin/adl -nodebug /home/michael/AdobeAIR/apps/tweetdeck/META-INF/AIR/application.xml /home/michael/AdobeAIR/apps/tweetdeck

In short, PATH TO ADOBEAIR, with -nodebug switch, PATH TO AIR APP (/META-INF/AIR/application.xml is the same for every app), PATH TO AIR APP BASE DIRECTORY (very important). This should all be on one line!!

6. Save the file and make it executable, either in console with chmod +x ./tweetdeck.sh or by right clicking and following the tabs.

7. Run the file and enjoy the AIR. You can add this file to your favourite panel or launcher.

I’ll say that it doesn’t save login details for me, and some of the features are broken, like expanding to multicolumns (they are present, the window just won’t expand). But this is an Alpha release, and the apps are beta at best.

Your results may vary with other apps, and this is the only one I’ve tried.

An alternative to steps 4-7 is to make a bash alias for each app.

10
Aug

ABC iView

By Michael 0 Comments
Categories: General

I found a nifty thing on the ABC website, iView. It’s a service like the BBC has that allows us, the taxpaying people, to view government-sponsored television we may have missed. It’s quite a nice little app. I guess it adjusts quality by connection speed, and while it was a little stuttery, it did buffer when paused, which is good.
Full screen was jerky, but that is a limitation of flash on linux, so, nothing can be done about that right now.
Still, it’s a fantastic concept, and as I said the software looks nice as well. I’ll be using it, I’m sure.

08
Aug

Me and Fitness

By Michael 0 Comments
Categories: General

OK, so mostly, I’m lazy. I get ideas to do stuff, and the universe sorts it so that something or other happens, and I miss some time I need to do a thing, and I give up.
I’ve managed to continue with Kung Fu, although the last couple months it’s been tough to get to every class cos of family stuff.

I’m sort of on a diet again – I say sort of because I’ve barely done what I’m supposed to in the last fortnight, and my weight has not really changed.
I am crap at getting exercise, see above. I do it for a little while, then it seems my available time just shrinks down to nothing. Motivation is a big part of that I guess.
So I started looking for stuff that was quick and easy and works.
The first thing I looked at, which I checked out a little while ago and yeah, motivation issues came up, was one hundred pushups. It’s a program to get you from 0 to 100 in 6 weeks. There are 3 levels, the one you follow is based on an initial test of how many you can do at the start, and based on age.
I managed to get 14 out for my test, which means I take the hardest level. Last night was week 2, day 2, 66 pushups total broken into 5 sets – 15/13/11/11/15 (last set is as many as possible, at least a particular number. This was 15.). I am coping with the program, including passing the minimum on the last set each day, which is going a long way to encouraging me to continue. If I was struggling each day, I’d pack it in I think, although the smart thing would be to drop a level, repeat the week, then bring it up again.

The next step I want to take is a Nintendo Wii and Wii Fit. I calculate about $650 worth of hardware with extra controller and nunchuck bits and stuff to get the most out of it. I’ve read a few reviews and some personal success story stuff on the Wii Fit, but also some negatives. I know it’s not meant to be a home gym or anything like that, but the exercises it has seem to be better than nothing. And aside from noticing when you lose weight, one of my big demotivators is not being able to see change or benefit. The Wii tracks and graphs everything you do on the Fit, so you can set goals and watch them get reached. Most programs seem to be about 30-45 minutes, and I spend more than that eithr online after work or watching tv or playing XBox anyway, so I figure if I treat it like gaming, I’m more likely to go for it.

Now that I’ve actually blogged about doing stuff, the likelihood of me finishing it approaches zero, so we’ll see what happens.

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