command line interface
gregladen | January 18, 2011The Linux command 'units' may or may not be installed on your system. If not, if you use synaptic or apt, type (at the prompt)
sudo apt-get install units
or equiviliant for other distributions. Then type in the word "units" and play around. Here are a few sample outputs:
The program is a little clunky. You have to know the specific codes for each type of measurement, though 'units' will figure out what you mean sometimes. To exit, type ctrl-D. There is a way to use this utility in a script. That and other details are found in the manual.
gregladen | October 19, 2010I wrote earlier of the very useful command line utility called gcalcli (short for GoogleCALendarCommandLineInterface). Click here to read that post. One of the options is called "agenda" which spits out, by default, the next five days of calendar entries. If you would prefer a different range of time than five days, then you can specify two dates and the utility will give you that set of entries.
But I find that to be a bit of a pain, typing in the dates to start and end the list, when I generally want a quick and dirty "next several days." That, I suppose, is why there is a default of…
gregladen | October 8, 2010Computer-based calendars are very useful, and the Google Calendar is probably one of the more widely used personal calendars other than scheduling programs such as MS Outlook and Groupwise (both of which are broken). But, webby gooey applications can be rather bothersome because they tend to take up a lot of screen real estate and other resources, and on smaller screens such as a laptop can be rendered virtually useless by all that added functionality built into the web browser itself as well as the calendar page. It is quite possible that on your laptop, your Google Calendar may look…
gregladen | October 7, 2010The command line is a great place to get weather information. Here, I discuss one cli-app for current conditions and forecasts, in the larger context of why you would ever want to use the command line anyway.
There are several ways to use your computer to check the weather. One is to use the Nakob Weather Rock method. Suspend the computer using a rope from a tripod of sticks. If the computer is swaying, that means it is windy. If the computer is wet, that means it is raining. And so on. Like this:
That is a very amusing way to tell the weather, but it is not convenient because your…
gregladen | October 5, 2010This is the first in a series about using the "command line" in Linux. It is also about knowing when to use a gui instead. But before going into any of that we need to understand what is meant by a "command line" application. You'll find that as we explore that idea, a lot of things that are not really true 'cli' (command line interface) apps arguably count as cli, including menu driven console based apps and even gui apps. This will be controversial.
Let's start with some basic definitions. If anyone has any problems with any of the following just let me know. Consider this a first…
gregladen | October 22, 2009By now I assume you've experimented with Alpine, as a character-based email client. Well, I have another tip for you.
I have been using alpine almost exclusively for a few weeks now. I switch to Evolution now and then because it is easier to gather groups of emails and move them to storage folders, etc. in a fully GUI program, but for the most part, if you have been communicating with me via email at all over the last few weeks, you have to imagine me on this end looking at a terminal window, using a character based program, mouse-free, typing rather than clicking.
I've provided a few…
gregladen | October 8, 2009By default, the text-based email client 'alpine' requests a password the first time, per session, that it is requested a password from any email services it checks. For the duration of that session, it remembers the password, but forgets it if you quit alpine so you have to enter it again later. From a security point of view, that is probably a good thing, but most people do like to have their email client remember the password between sessions.
The way this works in alpine seems a little obscure at first, but actually makes a lot of sense. Alpine checks for a file in which passwords should…
gregladen | October 5, 2009For today's Linux Hint: How to pick which browser will open when you pick a link while using apine in Ubuntu.
Sometimes there is a URL in an email that you want to visit. In a GUI email brower, you click on it with the mouse. In apine you navigate to the link with the usual navigation keys (but the first link will already be selected for you) and hit enter to open the link.
The default that alpine comes with, at least on my machine, seems to be the Epiphany browser I have no idea why. And when it goes there, it opens the browser and freezes the alpine screen, so I have to close the…
gregladen | October 3, 2009If you are using alpine as your email client, you may find that hitting ctrl-T to invoke a spell checker does not work, in alpine 1.0 as installed in Ubuntu. It is easy to fix.
I looked around for the answer to this question, but it is a bit esoteric so there is very little, and what there is stands mainly as examples of the down side of community support. People state that the spell checker is not working, and others answer with various bits of advice that do not work at all because they are nothing other than vague guesses that do not address the problem.
It is possible, even probable,…