David.R.Gilson

[Windows Tip]
Tired of clicking your way through explorer windows to get to your files? Want an easier way to navigate your hard drive? Well read on…

If you follow these steps, you can access anything on your hard drive via a simple system of nested drop down menus (much like the Start -> Programs menu). Accessing files this way involves no clicking, just simply gliding your mouse along.

1. Right click on your taskbar and Un-tick “Lock the taskbar”
2. Right click on your taskbar again
3. Go into the “Toolbars” sub-menu
4. Tick the “Desktop” option
5. Right click on the Desktop toolbar and select “Show Title”
6. Drag the “Desktop” toolbar grip all the way to the left until you have the Desktop toolbar adjacent to the Star button (you will have to move any other toolbars you may be using, such as QuickLaunch)
7. Drag the grip of whichever toolbar is immediately to the right of the Desktop toolbar to the left. Do this until all the Desktop toolbar icons are hidden and you can only see the Desktop toolbar title.
8. Right click on the taskbar and select “Lock the taskbar”

Now you should see a “>>” symbol next to the word “Desktop” on your taskbar. Clicking this will give you a menu of everything in your Desktop. Going into the “My Computer” sub-menu gives you all of your drives, which in turn gives you the content of each drive in successive sub-menus, and so on for sub-directories of each drive.

Yeah, this was a complicated one, but it’s really worth it with the time you can save accessing files this way. Feel free to post questions, if there’s any confusion I might be talked into making a video of this.

David’s links of the week June 18th through July 1st:

• Is Mozilla Firefox Safe? Add-Ons That Improve Privacy and Security – While some of us have been lured over to Google Chrome, Mozilla’s Firefox remains the favorite browser here at MUO, and I’m willing to wager that it does so because of near-limitless customization options. We’re also very security-minded as well, so we’ve compiled a brief list of security-conscious Firefox extensions which are compatible with each other. In fact, I can safely say that these are three of the top four extensions under “Security and Privacy” on Mozilla’s Add-Ons site (number four being Xmarks, for reasons uncertain, since it’s a bookmark manager).
• Gmail Account as Archive/backup – EmailDiscussions.com – A guide how to set up GMail as a back up email storage systme.
• btnx Manual – btnx, a.k.a. Button Extension, is a program that enables you to route mouse button events as keyboard combinations and command executions. btnx-config is a GUI to used to detect your mouse and its buttons, and then edit the btnx configuration file.
• http://www.linux-france.org/prj/imapsync/README – imapsync – IMAP synchronisation, sync, copy or migration tool. Synchronise mailboxes between two imap servers. Good at IMAP migration. More than 32 different IMAP server softwares supported with success.
• MailServer – Community Ubuntu Documentation – Setting up an email server is a difficult process involving a number of different programs, each of which needs to be properly configured. The best approach is to install and configure each individual component one by one, ensuring that each one works, and gradually build your mail server.
• Dovecot – Community Ubuntu Documentation – Dovecot is a Mail Delivery Agent, written with security primarily in mind. It supports the major mailbox formats: mbox or Maildir. It is a simple and easy to install MDA. This guide explains how to set it up as an IMAP or POP3 server. For alternate IMAP/POP3 servers see Courier or Cyrus.
• Postfix – Community Ubuntu Documentation – Postfix is the default Mail Transfer Agent (MTA) for Ubuntu. It is in Ubuntu#039;s main repository, which means that it receives security updates. This guide explains how to install and configure postfix and set it up as an SMTP server using a secure connection.
• How To Make A Budget And Wipe Out Debt With Quicken Online – I admit that I tend to overcomplicate the whole “budget” thing. It drives my wife crazy. My Excel budget spreadsheet includes all sources of income, utilities, expenses, mortgage, credit card debt, as well as an array of sheets and charts that estimates debt payoff out to the next five years. In all honesty, the spreadsheet is probably one of the most confusing documents I’ve ever created, and attempting to keep it updated is a complete nightmare.
• 10 Great Apps to Convert Audio Video Files in Linux – With the different audio and video formats available, there is often the need to inter convert amongst them – sometimes for quality and sometimes for compatibility. Here are some of the better software, that you can use to achieve the inter conversions on your Linux box.
• YouTube – d3o Rocks – Liquid body armour
• A ‘time bomb’ for world wheat crop – Los Angeles Times – The Ug99 fungus, called stem rust, could wipe out more than 80% of the world#039;s wheat as it spreads from Africa, scientists fear. The race is on to breed resistant plants before it reaches the U.S.
• The Sean Kennedy TV Show – The Sean Kennedy TV Show was borne from Sean Kennedy#039;s almost five years of radio DJ experience at the time and various video projects. Every Monday night at 8PM PT/11PM ET Sean Kennedy spoke to a live studio audience and the Internet, broadcasting LIVE on RantTV. The show ran for twenty episodes with the help of a large crew of volunteers, Sean Kennedy and Cimmerian all being run ragged arranging bands and guests every week. The show was aired live from Endoplasmic Studios – Unit A – 6011 196A Street, Langley, BC, Canada

Since I began using Ubuntu I have been taking great joy in automating the download of back up copies of the data I have stored on-line, e.g. the database and files for this very website. However, there is one back up job that has refused to be automated – backing up my e-mail. So this post isn’t going to be my usual how to type of post, it’s going to be outlining what I want to do, the problems that have stopped me getting there.

To start with, all of my e-mail is up in the cloud, because I use IMAP. I don’t want to change this, because with POP I would have to have all my e-mail only on my home computer. That’s no good for me trying to find something in my e-mail on my phone or the web when I’m away from home. Although, I trust no server, so I want to know that if my IMAP server goes boom for whatever reason, it’s okay because I have a copy of all my data at home ready to be uploaded to another server.

My favourite IMAP supporting E-Mail client is Thunderbird (because it’s open source and cross platform). Thunderbird has off-line storage for IMAP, which is great. All I have to do to get an up-to-date copy of my e-mail is load up Thunderbird and tell it to go into off-line mode. It will then download any messages it doesn’t have, and also delete any messages I’ve deleted on the server.

This is great, although there’s two problems. Firstly, there’s no way to automate this. Secondly, if for whatever reason you loose all the e-mail on your server, you can’t use your local copies to synchronise back to the server, using Thunderbird. Instead, Thunderbird only synchronises server to client. So if there’s nothing on the server, it’ll wipe your off-line copies.

Thunderbird does support upload of messages to IMAP servers, so I had thought that when needed to do an emergency restore of my e-mail, I could simply use my file manager, navigate to my Thunderbird profile, and copy my IMAP mail files, to Thunderbird’s “local folder” store. Although, for some reason Thunderbird can’t read these properly, and you see that after doing this, the message count is wrong (and some strange malformed messages appear), so this method will cause the loss of some messages.

I had to think of something else.

IMAPSize

If you Google around for “IMAP backup”, you will invariably come across the Windows application “IMAPSize”. This is a great program that I have used before. I even discovered that IMAPSize supports command line options, and if you can run something by command line, you can set up a schedule for automation! I should add here that I’m in Linux so I had to use IMAPSize through WINE, and I found that IMAPSize was very slow to download messages, and this might have been because of using it through WINE, I don’t know.

Performance aside, I hit a short coming of IMAPSize. While it does indeed perform incremental back up of your e-mail, it doesn’t actually remove local messages that have been removed on the server. I verified this by creating test messages, running IMAPSize backup, then going back to the server to delete and expunge them (just to be sure), then re-running the IMAPSize backup. After checking, I could see that the deleted messages were still in my local backup.

So, this is where I am, I am stuck manually backing up my e-mail every few days, by means of having Thunderbird perform the local synchronisation I require (i.e. matching all changes on the server). Then the only progress I made was that I now know that I have IMAPSize to upload/restore the messages that Thunderbird downloads.

Although, this is a two app solution that I have to do through the graphical user interface. If only IMAPSize would remove messages that are not present on server, and if I could get it to play nicely with Linux’s cron scheduler, I would be happy.

It’s amazing to me that there isn’t a command line program that does what I’m looking for. I’ve asked a lot of people, who know far more about such things than I do, but everyone seems to say the same thing to me, “Don’t know of one but it’d sure be useful“.

So, if you know of something that’ll do what I’m looking for, please let me know in the comments.

[Windows & Mousing Tip]

I’m really excited about this one, such much that I made it jump the queue

Do you use Alt-Tab (or Ctrl-Alt-Tab in Vista) to switch applications a lot? Would you like to do be able to do it with your mouse?

Now you can, simply download a tiny executable from:
http://cybernetnews.com/2008/02/24/alttab-mouse-shortcut/

The XP version of this is towards the end of the article.

You simply hold down your left button and repeatedly press your right button to cycle through each running application.

I have a Logitech mouse with an application switching button, although my middle click is broken. This shortcut has allowed me to reassign my “Document Flip” button to be my middle click, while still being able to switch applications on my mouse.

I’d be really interested to hear if there are similar programs out there for Mac and Linux.

[Cool Tip]

What’s that I hear you say?

“Dave, I have this JPEG on my computer that would make an excellent poster, but if I scale it too much it looks like a mess!”

Not to worry, I have the answer for you. You need to Rasterbate, and no you won’t go blind. Just head over to http://homokaasu.org/rasterbator. You can upload your image, and in return you’ll get back a multi-page PDF file which you then print.

Your print outs give you a black & white version of your image, you simply stick each page to your wall to build up the image.

Take a look at their gallery to see what I mean.

Edit: It seems you can have colour blow-ups too!

David’s links of the week May 5th through June 14th:

• Top 10 Most Effective Job Search Websites – With the world economic climate still painfully low, more folks are losing their jobs than ever before. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the U.S. unemployment rate hit over 9 percent in May 2009. France unemployment jumped to 8.2 percent, Germany was at 7.6 percent in January, and the UK was at 6.77 percent in March. It’s imperative that job seekers have all of the tools at their disposal to find new work. High unemployment rates don’t necessarily mean that there’s no work, it often means that the fields where there are available jobs are changing. For this reason, I’d like to offer a list of the top 10 most effective job search websites to help MakeUseOf readers land that new dream job as quickly as possible.
• How to backup your MySQL tables and data every night using a bash script and cron – base64.co.uk

  software development tutorials and code snippets covering : Apache, PHP, Perl, MySQL amp; classic Visual Basic 6.
  How to backup your MySQL tables and data every night using a bash script and cron

  published : 01.Apr.2005

  I now offer an off site MySQL database backup service, if you need a reliable a backup solution for your on-line database, please take a look.

  Summary:
  This tutorial will show you how to write a simple bash shell script which will extract your database schema, compress the data and email you the backup. Utilising cron, this script can be configured to run in the early hours of the morning when your web server is least active.

  After completing your database enabled web site, you need an automated method for backing up all that valuable data. Below is a bash shell script which can be used to backup all your clients databases using a nightly cron job.

• How to Backup And Install Your Linux Applications With AptOnCD – Make Tech Easier – Everytime after you have reformatted the hard disk and reinstalled the Linux distro of your choice, the one troublesome thing that you need to do is to re-download all your applications and restore all the settings. This is made worst when your wireless connection just don’t work with the newly installed distro. How are you going to download all your applications when you can’t even connect to the Internet?
• 10 Windows Command Line Tips You Should Check Out – Linux geeks are proud of their command line prowess and generally have some tricks up their sleeves. While the Windows command line is not considered as powerful as a Linux’s, here are some Windows command line tips and tricks not everyone might know about.
• Save money on your Mobile Phone bill – Save money on your mobile bills when calling 0800 and other non-geographical numbers

  Most mobile phone providers in the UK still charge their customers for calls to 0800, 0808 and 0500 numbers, and normally at higher rates than they charge for calling a land line, but there is a way around this. Mobile Fun recently stumbled upon 0800Buster. They operate a service that lets you call these numbers using your mobiles inclusive minutes, by providing you with a UK land line number to dial instead.

• How to Get a Quake-style Drop-down Terminal in Linux – Make Tech Easier – A lot of games out there have some form of command prompt, often just for entering cheat codes. You know the type – you hit some function key and a bar drops down from the top of the screen letting you enter commands or codes or whatever else. Well some clever folks have taken that design and applied it to the command prompt in your Linux desktop. You can get a fully featured, skinnable terminal with split-screen views and all at the touch of a button. Yakuake is just such a program. It’s been around for a few years but has remained below the radar for most Linux users.
• Web life: Phun – physicsworld.com – Phun is a free, downloadable physics-simulation programme that bills itself as a “2D physics sandbox”. The programme’s limitless virtual space allows users to construct simple (and not-so-simple) machines out of levers, gears, motors and as many different shapes as they care to draw, then set them in motion. The results can be educational, bizarre or downright hilarious, depending on what you choose to do, but thanks to a sophisticated simulation engine, they will always be physically realistic — unless you decide to turn off friction and gravity.
• The unique universe – physicsworld.com – Many cosmological theories not only see our universe as one of many but also claim that time does not exist. Lee Smolin argues against the timeless multiverse
• Make Tech Easier – How To Compress A Video File with Virtualdub – Anyone who has played around with any kind of video knows how huge uncompressed video files can be. The huge size of video files is what has led to the proliferation of video compression algorithms like DivX, Xvid, MP4 etc, but how exactly do you compress an uncompressed video to one of these formats, to save space and maintain your sanity ?
• Make Tech Easier – Ubuntu: How to Mount iso, Bin And Cue Files Directly From Nautilus – We have covered the easy way to mount iso images in Windows. This time round, we are going to cover the easy way to mount an iso, bin or cue file in Ubuntu without having to hit the terminal every time.

  With the use of fuesiso and nautilus-actions, we can easily create an option in Nautilus to mount the CD images right from the context menu (mouse right click).

• Make Tech Easier – Mastering the Bash History – The Bourne Again Shell, better known as bash, is the default for most Linux distributions. It’s extremely powerful as far as command shells go, and holds all kinds of nifty tricks for those willing to learn. One of the best features is, in my opinion, the command history system.

  There are many options to use with the bash history, some of them I use nearly every time I open a command shell. Today I’ll be covering some of the most useful aspects of the history, but I certainly won’t be able to cover them all.

• Make Tech Easier – Gaming In Linux (Ubuntu) – Gaming in Linux is always a big issue. Many gamers are not willing to migrate to Linux (though they are not happy with Windows) because they are worried about the lack of support for gaming. This is really a big myth, since there are really plenty of great games in Linux.

  In case you are wondering what choices of game you have in Linux (Ubuntu), here are my top 10 list.

• Make Tech Easier – Things You Need To Know To Become An Apt Guru – Quite possibly the most distinguishing feature of Debian-based Linux distributions (such as Ubuntu, Mepis, Knoppix, etc) is their package system – APT. Also known as the Advanced Package Tool, APT was first introduced in Debian 2.1 in 1999. APT is not so much a specific program as it is a collection of separate, related packages.

  With APT, Linux gained the ability to install and manage software packages in a much simpler and more efficient way than was previously possible. Before its introduction, most software had to be installed either by manually compiling the source code, or using individual packages with no automatic dependency handling (such as RPM files). This could mean hours of “dependency hell” even to install a fairly trivial program.

• Make Tech Easier – The Ultimate Guide To Manage Your Audio/Video Files In Linux – Have you ever come across a situation where you wanted to convert a video from one format to another in your Linux machine and you have absolutely no idea how to do it? What about playing DVD on Ubuntu or rip your favorite VCD to mpeg file?

  Below, I have come up with a great list of software that you can use to handle your video/audio files in Linux. All the software listed are compatible with any of the Linux distros out there. The installation instructions and screenshots are based on Ubuntu, so if you are on a different distro, you will have to change the command accordingly.

• Make Tech Easier – How To Control Your CPU Frequency In Ubuntu – Needless to say, conserving your battery power is the most important task when you are on the move with your laptop. Other than disabling all unused programs by shutting down them during the startup, one of the great way to save battery power is to reduce the running frequency of your CPU. The slower frequency the CPU runs, the less power it consumes.

  In your Ubuntu, you can easily switch your CPU frequency via the CPU Frequency Scaling Monitor Gnome-applets.

• Using Spotify Links In Linux – The Atheist Blogger – I’ve yet to officially start my tutorials on Linux, but I’ve been playing around with Spotify recently and I’ve been annoyed by the problem of getting Spotify playlists to load from my web browser directly into Spotify. For those who don’t know about Spotify, I suggest you read my previous post, and if you still want invites, I am getting them on a daily basis, so please apply. Spotify playlists can be shared easily in the form of a link, and there have been several websites set up to publish these links. The problem of using these links in Linux consists of two issues:
• [Jaunty] synaptics driver needs to be updated to work with devices known as "ETPS/2 Elantech Touchpad" and "SynPS/2 Synaptics TouchPad" starting with 2.6.28 series kernels – solved my non working touchpad by doing in terminal:

  modprobe -r psmouse
  modprobe psmouse proto=imps

  at this time the touchpad should be working

  and add: options psmouse proto=imps
  to: gedit /etc/modprobe.d/options

  best of luck.

• Quick and dirty guide to rsync | The Sillican Files – rsync is a software application for Unix systems which synchronizes files and directories from one location to another while minimizing data transfer using delta encoding when appropriate. (Thanks, Wikipedia.) Since this is supposed to be a quick tutorial, we’ll skip the formal lecture and get on with some usage examples.
• How To Build a Social Networking Site using Wordpress | MakeUseOf.com – To create a social networking site, you can either register a free account with a ahird party social networks provider or install open source software on your server and be your own administrator. There are pros and cons in these two methods. The first method allows you to handle your social networks without any technical knowledge, but you risk losing all your data when the third party site close down. The latter requires you to have certain technical knowledge, but you get full control over every single detail in your site.
• Make Tech Easier – Useful Firefox Shortcut Keys (and Cheatsheet Download) – I like using the keyboard as much as possible because it makes me feel more productive. In my opinion, moving your hand over to the mouse is unnecessary the majority of the time because most applications provide very convenient keyboard shortcuts. Today we will discuss the most useful Firefox keyboard shortcuts that will allow you to navigate the Internet faster, thus getting more work (or play) done.

Okay so what the heck happened to the site on Thursday night?

It all boiled down to running out of storage quota on my server. My server account had crept over its quota limit without me knowing. Things were still working like this, but since Wordpress 2.8 (the software that runs this website) came out on Thursday I ran the upgrade, and then we hit problems.

Anyway, lots of technical details later storage quota was extended and the site was put back as it was, and subsequently upgrade to WP 2.8.

Why am I telling you all this? Well the moral of the story is that no matter what you’re doing – keep backups of everything you do! Had I not had backups of this site, it would be trashed now. Moreover, had my backups been better organised, the site would have been up several hours sooner.

I’ve now improved my file backup procedures to be automatic so they’re always up to date. Fortunately, I was already using a Wordpress plugin which e-mailed me a daily backup of my database.

Make sure you keep your stuff backed up too.

[Security Tip]

If you want to test how good your hardware or software firewall is, then there is a SAFE website you can visit which will probe your defences !

It’s called “Sheilds Up” and you can see it at:
https://www.grc.com/x/ne.dll?bh0bkyd2

Unfortunately, I haven’t been posting so much lately as my life has taken a less technology orientated direction, thus less to write about. However, there is one significant tech related thing I’ve been doing which is worth writing about now – that being I finally switched from Windows to a Linux based operating system, “Ubuntu 9.04“! This isn’t going to be a technical or in-depth review. This is a very brief user experience report of Ubuntu 9.04 aimed at non-technical users – because it’s all you non-geeky people who I want to start using this operating system!!! The geeks are already there.

My reason for using Linux is that it is “open source” software. What does this mean? Well, it basically means anyone, subject to a peer review type system, is free to contribute and to distribute this software. Unlike proprietary software like Windows or OSX, where if you try to modify that software, the company that makes it could take you to court!

I’ve been using it for a whole month now and I haven’t looked back, yet. Due to having a custom Windows rescue partition boot loader I didn’t dare risk it getting over written with Ubuntu’s boot loader (“GRUB”), I decided to install Ubuntu via “Wubi”. This was a straight forward and painless process. The difference with Wubi, is that instead of partitioning your drive, a large file is created in your Windows drive that the computer sees as a drive in its own right. When you boot up your computer you get an option of booting Windows or Ubuntu.

The environment you get in Ubuntu is called “GNOME”. If you’re used to Windows, it won’t be too confusing to you. Instead of one bar at the bottom, by default you get two, one at the top and one at the bottom. You get menu’s and equivalents of “quick launch” icons and the system tray at the top, and then application tabs on the bottom bar. The good thing about open source based software is freedom, and it’s the same here. The desktop environment I’ve outlined here is totally customisable, you could move things around so that it’s more Windows like, or something completely different.

Unlike Windows, Ubuntu comes pre-installed with applications that you are actually going to be familiar with and will want to use on a daily basis. Although adding and removing software I personally find a lot easier in Ubuntu than in Windows. In Ubuntu there is an applications called the “Synaptic Package Manager” where you can simply point and click at software in an on-line catalogue. There’s no more of this Windows style searching the web for an installation .exe file and running the install. Everything is automated for you in Ubuntu. If you’re a little more adventurous you can use this same automated system via the “Terminal” which is a way of controlling your system by typing in text commands (not everyone’s cup of tea).

I’ve tried Ubuntu several times in the past, but not all of the hardware in my laptop was supported, most notably my webcam. This time my webcam works! Getting to grips with Ubuntu 9.04 wasn’t without little hitches. I found that their default media player somehow broke the function of the volume keys on my laptop, the only fix I had was to change file associations so that application doesn’t get used. Also, the touchpad didn’t work, until I Googled around and found a single text command to type into the terminal that fixed it.

There’s a whole lot of other features new to Ubuntu 9.04 which are well covered elsewhere. I haven’t mentioned them here because I simply haven’t had to use them yet.

If you’re in the Windows or Mac world and like the 3D desktop effects that Vista, Windows 7 and OSX have, then you won’t be disappointed with Ubuntu. When you initially turn on desktop effects you are asked to give your permission for Ubuntu to install drivers for your video card, once this is done it sets up your desktop effects. The desktop effects software is called “Compiz” and you can optionally install the Compiz Settings Manager to get greater control of how your effects work. I’m still fine tuning my settings to get more productivity, but less pointless distraction (and you can easily go from one extreme to the other!). Once you do have your desktop effects set up, I promise you, what you get is far more impressive than anything Microsoft or Apple can give you, and remember, this doesn’t cost you a penny.

I’ve even got a few indispensable Windows applications running in Linux thanks to the WINE application (think of it as an adapter for running Windows software in Linux). One exception is my current favourite computer game, Team Fortress 2. I can play it, but it’s not completely stable and performance isn’t really satisfactory, even with all settings turned down. I’m working on this, but gaming isn’t my top priority.

If you’re not a techie, but you’re still reading this, then well done, and I’d like to encourage you further to try out Ubuntu by pointing out that I’ve had my mother using this too, and she didn’t even notice the difference from Windows XP – she’s just doing her web browsing and e-mail as normal. So if that’s all you do on your computer – take the plunge, go open source and enjoy the freedom.

[Security Tips]

If you were using one of the passwords from the website yesterday, you have a better memory than mine if you can memorize them! This probably means that you’re going to need to store those passwords in a file.

The people who make Truecrypt are aware of this, and when you are setting up an encrypted volume (see last Thursday’s tip), you can choose to use a keyfile if you wish.

So here’s an idea, go back a few tips about encrypting your documents folder. You could keep all your keyfiles on a USB flash drive, such that your documents folder would only be “unlocked” when you had that flash drive plugged in. Such that you kind of have a security key to unlock your flies.

Just make sure you take very good care of your key drive!