Here is a list of command line password generators, from:
http://debaday.debian.net/2007/11/14/gpw-generate-pronounceable-passwords/
Password Generators
Media Democracy Day Vancouver
Tomorrow, Friday, October 26, from 4:30 PM till 7:00 PM there is a Media Democracy Fair. The event is at the Concourse in SFU Vancouver (Harbour Centre) 515 West Hastings Street.
If you care about independent media, try to show up.
More information at:
http://thetyee.ca/Mediacheck/2007/10/25/MediaDemocracy/
http://mediademocracyday.org/2007+Events#id416092
RadioShark2 under Ubuntu
I finally got my RadioShark2 device working with Ubuntu, here are the details.
There are two different RadioShark devices, the original one and the newer RadioShar2. Even though they both have the exact same USB device Id, they have different control sequences. So, you cannot use the control program written for the original model if you have the newer one, you need the code specific for RadioShark2.
fsck
Every now and then when you boot up your Ubuntu machine (and this probably applies to most distros) fsck will be run to check your filesystem. Depending how fast you machine is and how large the filesystem is, this may take a while.
A script called AutoFsck allows this test to be done when you shutdown your system, this way you don't have to wait for it looking at a black screen.
Gmail Aliases
While trying to figure if there is a way to create aliases for Gmail email accounts I found two interesting features.
First, Gmail supports email address extensions, you can add any string after your username, connected with a '+' and messages sent to this address will end up in your mailbox. For example, if your address is first.last@gmail.com then this will also work: first.last+chat@gmail.com. Basically the '+' and everything following it gets stripped off in order to figure the real mailbox.
Single-Sign-On into your Linux Desktop
Logging into your Linux desktop may require you to enter several passwords to unlock diverse services. You could be prompted right at the beginning or whenever you happen to use those services for the first time. Here are the components I am aware of that need a password:
- your account
- ssh private keys loaded by the ssh agent
- the Gnome Keyring
- browser master password
- mail program master password
- other password managers (like Revelation)
Wouldn't it be nice if one password unlocked them all?
Running jobs from desktop calendar applications
A follow-up on a previous post regarding the possibility to use ICalendar files as a replacement for crontab.
Google Desktop for Linux
Google recently released a Linux version of Google Desktop. This is really good news, hopefully other companies will follow. What is even better is the fact that there is a Ubuntu repository for all this. Unfortunately no amd64 binaries here.
Quite a few people seem to have privacy concerns. Providing the source code for the application would definitely alleviate most of the concerns, but I am afraid this will not happen to soon. Or maybe it will?
Opening a File in Linux
For a while now I was using a simple command line utility in Gnome called gnome-open. As an argument you can pass a url, a file or a folder. Urls will be opened in your browser, files with the associated applications and folders in Nautilus.
This is great for applications or menu entries as well. If you want to open a PDF document you can use gnome-open in order to make sure that it is opened using the user's preferred viewer.
Installing CheckGmail on Ubuntu
CheckGmail is a nice Gmail system tray notifier. You can find an older version, 1.10.1, in the universe repository, but probably you want to run the latest one (1.12 as of now). Downloading and running the basic notifier is quite simple, just unpack the tar file and run the script.
If you want all the functionality, encryption of locally stored password and hyper links in message bodies, then you need to manually install a few libraries. Here are the steps for Ubuntu Feisty:
