Computer Tricks
Category archives for Computer Tricks
Are you a Mac user? You can still use emacs
Posted by Greg Laden on December 11, 2011 Check out this “How I Work” video by Ryan McGeary:
Google Apps Off Line
Posted by Greg Laden on August 31, 2011 I don’t use Google Apps much to process documents or data for two reasons: 1) If it is not a text file on my hard drive, I am suspicious of it and 2) I spend enough time with no internet access (not much, but easily 5% of my on line time) that I don’t want…
How to record Skype Calls
Posted by Greg Laden on August 28, 2011 I haven’t tried this yet, but it looks like it works.
How to tunnel through the Intertubes
Posted by Greg Laden on August 28, 2011 … using ssh …
emacs for writers: browsing the kill ring
Posted by Greg Laden on July 19, 2011 The kill ring is the emacs clip board. I admit that I hardly ever use it in the ways for which it is designed, but I probably should. As you “kill” text (i.e., delete) it gets tacked onto the kill ring, from which you can “yank” it later (yes, this is some sort of religious…
gmail keyboard shortcuts
Posted by Greg Laden on July 18, 2011 Did you know that gmail has keyboard shortcuts? You need to turn them on in the mail configuration section (click a thingie in the upper right corner of your gmail page and look for it). The commands are k,j,n,p,’enter’ or o, u; x followeed by e,m; s, +, -, ! r, a, f, ctrl-s, #,…
emacs for writers: a few tips
Posted by Greg Laden on July 16, 2011 I use word processors like OpenOffice Word as others use page layout software: Only when I want certain control over the final product, want it fast, and don’t demand too much of the product. For regularly produced formatted text I use some version of LaTex, but most of the twentythousandzillion words I write a week…
Letting other people use your computer
Posted by Greg Laden on June 20, 2011 The other day, I sat down at my laptop and, seeing a facebook page open, typed in a status that made total sense for me but little sense for Amanda. Unfortunately, Amanda had just been using my computer, and the facebook page to which the browser pointed was hers, not mine. It’s OK: She was…
How to mine data from the Internet for free
Posted by Greg Laden on February 25, 2011 A few years ago I did something utterly stupid. I listened to someone’s advice. Now, I don’t want to sound too cynical, but really, half or more of what people tell you is, shall we say, unconsidered. They don’t stop and think that they are actually telling you something that will affect what you do…
How to make the most out of Facebook
Posted by Greg Laden on February 24, 2011 Facebook: The Missing Manual in its third edition dated February 2011, so this is the time to get it and use it because it won’t stay up to date long
How to organize your stuff
Posted by Greg Laden on February 14, 2011 The issue has been raised (recently, and many times in the past) of how to organize your stuff. And by stuff, I mean files on your computer which may be documents, photographs, videos, or other files. I want to record a few thoughts on this having just done a bunch of organizing of my stuff,…
Google Calendar Keyboard Shortcuts
Posted by Greg Laden on January 12, 2011 Naturally, I use Google Calendar from the command line or from within emacs, but when I get stuck in a browser, I like the keyboard shortcuts. Maybe you don’t know about them. They are rather amazing, but also a bit quirky.
Why the Linux Market Share is Flat, and other things you will want to see.
Posted by Greg Laden on August 30, 2010 he Linux market share continues to flatline. Here’s a piece on why. My explanation? Same as for a lot of things: People are morons, by and large. The article linked to mentions very good reasons that Linux should indeed not be adopted by others. But most of those reasons actually apply to other OS’s as…
Emacs Sunday Sermon: Use emacs instead of “PowerPoint”
Posted by Greg Laden on August 22, 2010 It IS My Privilege to Use Whatever Processes I Want, Dammit!
Posted by Greg Laden on August 5, 2010 There, I said it.
How to reset all of your Gnome settings in Linux
Posted by Greg Laden on August 1, 2010 And, in theory, this should apply to other software as well, but don’t get mad at me if something goes terribly wrong….
Must we Jiggle? Really?
Posted by Greg Laden on July 7, 2010 I am astonished and depressed that it has come to this
Minimizing Linux Maximally
Posted by Greg Laden on July 6, 2010 I find it interesting that Linux hackers have by and large conflated two or three kinds of “minimal” in their discussion of “minimal installs” and implementations thereof. To me, “minimal” could include any one or more of the following:
Making emacs insert a user provided HTML tag pair
Posted by Greg Laden on June 3, 2010 In HTML mode, and/or in related functions available in the internet, it appears that one can do the following: Insert a pair of HTML codes that one would then fill in with stuff. If point is in (or at the end of) a word, have the word wrapped in a specific HTML code pair. If…
Firefox broke my workflow, but then it got better
Posted by Greg Laden on May 17, 2010 My firefox installation just upgraded to version three-d-somethingoranother which means that right-click-open-in-new-tab no longer opens the link in a new tab at the far right, but rather, next to the tab in which I’m clicking. You have no idea how utterly stupid this change is. I’ll tell you why.
How to make KDE apps work better in your Gnome environment
Posted by Greg Laden on May 9, 2010 I use Gnome, not KDE. (Pause for flame war.) However, there are a handful of apps that are designed for KDE that I prefer over the Gnome apps. But that presents one or two minor problems that can be easily fixed.
Cool and Important Technology Tidbits
Posted by Greg Laden on January 19, 2010 Twitter has an API that allows the development of some cool functionality, and one of those is the ability to travel into the future, tweet, then return to the present and wait for your tweet to happen.
Fixing your Dictionary
Posted by Greg Laden on November 13, 2009 You are typing some text into an editing window in your FIrefox Browser, and you spell something terribly wrong. Like this: I am so glad I upgreaded to Firefox 2.0, because it has a built in spell checker. You see the error where you meant to type “upgraded.” So you right click on it to…
Linux Terminal Fun: Find out about your hardware
Posted by Greg Laden on November 13, 2009 The command dmidecode is ” is a tool for dumping a computer’s DMI (some say SMBIOS) table contents in a human-readable format. This table contains a description of the system’s hardware components, as well as other useful pieces of information such as serial numbers and BIOS revision.” (from the “man”).
Software needed: Nifty bash math tools
Posted by Greg Laden on November 6, 2009 And when I say bash math, I do not mean being mean to math, and I do not mean math as it is done in bash. I mean math as humans do it, but on the bash command line.
How to keep your server’s hard drive from filling up with log files.
Posted by Greg Laden on October 25, 2009 Log files are good because they log stuff, so you can find out what’s been going on and troubleshoot. But they tend to accumulate and can actually fill up your hard drive. Most Linux distros have automatic log file management for common system logs, but if you are running something on your server that keeps…
Fun with the Linux seq command
Posted by Greg Laden on September 19, 2009 Do you know about the obscure Linux command ‘seq’????? It is actually quite cool.
Win friends and fix up your data with regular expressions
Posted by Greg Laden on September 4, 2009 In many instances, a well thought-out regular expression can convince most non-technical people in the room that you’re a computer genius who’s brain possesses more synapses, forming more bridges and firing more rapidly than anyone’s ever should. Oh this is so true….
In the beginning there was cat …
Posted by Greg Laden on August 19, 2009 … and I’m not talking about Ceiling Cat. I’m talking about the Linux command cat.
A One Liner for Stripping Comments
Posted by Greg Laden on August 18, 2009 Getting rid of those pesky comments in your all important configuration files.
, which is now available for the 
