I have been searching for a lightweight list solution since I started trying out the Getting Things Done (GTD) approach a few days ago. Unlike calendar events, list items (projects and actions) do not associate with a particular time and date, therefore, using a calender for them is not appropriate …

Nowadays we do a lot of text input on the Web, like posting on forums, filling out a support request form, commenting on someone's blog, etc. Although Web forms often offer a variety of so-called rich text editing capabilities, nothing beats the good old desktop editors. For a vim person …

Although Firefox is considered very safe and stable, it sometimes hangs. In the past, when it hung, my solution was to remove the whole ~/.mozilla/firefox directory. It worked every time (reinstalling Firefox doesn't help). Of course, I would always backup my bookmarks.html and other files under the chrome …

Although I have never laid my hands on an Apple computer, I have seen people going crazy about them. I remember seeing some kids shouting hysterically in front of Apple store on the release day of Tiger a few years ago. The user interface of Apple's OS is said to …

In this post, I set up vim as a manual page viewer, using ManPageView plugin. It turned out that the same plugin can be used to view info pages as well. All one needs to to is to add ".i" suffix to the command that you are seeking help on …

When editing a long Latex document, it is beneficial to be able to point from current location in DVI back to Tex, and vice visa. This is what called reverse/forward search between DVI and Latex. With Latex-Suite in Vim, this functionality is already implemented, and there's no need to …

My /etc/network/interfaces got deleted when I removed mepis-network package. Everything was fine, except that kmail would hang since IP address 127.0.0.1 doesn't exist. It took me half an hour to figure it out. Had to create the file with these lines in it:

auto lo …

You may have seen that I sometimes post code here. Wouldn't it be nice if all the code are syntax highlighted, like what we see in a text editor? Well, with the help of Vim, it's easy. Vim is bundled with a "2html" script, that can turn whatever shown in …

In order to click "mailto:" links on Web pages to launch an email program, Firefox (or Iceweasel on Debian) needs to be told which email program to use.

To do this, type "about:config" in Firefox's address bar, type in "mailto" in filter, look if "network.protocol-handler.external.mailto" preference …

In this post, I discussed "clone" mode of dual head with xrandr 1.2. Now I got an extra monitor, and would like to use "xinerama" mode, wherein the built-in laptop LCD and the external monitor share a single virtual screen.

To set this up, I changed my /etc/X11 …

This site is primarily powered by Drupal, i.e. it is a PHP site. However, we have a few Web directories that serves regular HTML pages. Since I installed Drupal in document root, access to these directories becomes an issue.

The main problem is that directory index file resolution is …

My work requires me to connect to many different SSH servers, and I have different passwords for each server. It's a pain in the neck trying to type in many different passwords everyday. The obvious solution is to use OpenSSH's public key login solution, so passwords are no longer needed …

Most of Linux laptop users have done some customizations on the system so it works the way we wanted. Now we want to save the fruit of our hard labor in case bad things happen. We want to backup not just the /home directory, but the whole / directory, minus some …

Command line manual page is an indispensable tool for working with Linux system.If you forget how to use a command, just type man followed by the name of the command. One thing I don't like about the manual system on my Debian sid is that it uses most to …

These day I write Java programs on my local machine and then move them to a Linux server to run experiments. This routine works fine so far. However, when I ran one of the progams, which involves coping one file from one directory to another, I kept on the following …

All of my laptops are now running Debian based Linux. It works great. Linux handles all my daily works well. However, there are occasions where I need a Windows machine. For example, I recently need to deliver a lecture on a system that runs only on Windows. Also, in the …

Introduction
Nowadays, it is not uncommon to see people multi-tasking with a dozen of windows open. With an 12 inch small screen, Thinkpad X61 really needs an efficient window manager for me to get serious work done. I have been struggling to find a good choice. Of course, 3D desktop …

On my old Thinkpad X31, there is a nice little program called tpb that makes all Thinkpad hotkeys work on Linux. However, that project hasn't been updated for two years, and tpb does not work with the newer Thinkpad models. On my new X61, notably, the sound volume controls are …

Thinkpad X61 has an VGA output port, so it supports dual-head display. However, with the Intel GMA965 graphics chipset in X61, the thinkpad_acpi (used to be called ibm_acpi) kernel module does not seem to support switching on or off this VGA port any more. The traditionally used commands, such as …

I got a brand new Thinkpad X61 laptop last Saturday. Unfortunately, the factory loaded Vista Home Basic was too bloated and ate up 700MB memory from a fresh boot without launching any application! If you know me, you know what I will do - remove Windows and load up Linux!

The …