OpenCards with Impress Faster in VNC

If you ever wanted OpenCards to be a bit more snappy when showing the cards, for some reason runnig it inside a VNC server does help!

GAP bzw. DECT-Telefone mit der Fritz Box nutzen

Es gibt eine sehr praktische Liste der kompatiblen Telefone, die hilft das richtige zu kaufen. Sonst hat man oft z.B. keine Tonwahl oder keine Anzeige der anrufenden Rufnummer. Grundsätzlich lässt sich sagen, dass Siemens tragbare ISDN-Telefone recht gut funktionieren und Gigaset 1000, 2000, 3000.

How to Pin a Package in Debian or Ubuntu -- to stop automatic upgrades of the package

If you always wanted to know how to pin that one package so it won't get upgraded, here's how.

Android Emulator Quick Boot

The first time I tried starting the android emulator, I quit it and never used it again. Starting up took about 5 minutes already and it wasn't too responsive afterwards. Now Matthew Casperson posted a nice howto for using the snapshot feature of the android emulator to start it up quickly. Now all I need is a trick to have it running faster as well... But that's not going to happen as long as it relies on qemu to first translate everything from x86 to arm code.  ;)

Being based on Java, you'd think it would be possible to create a much faster emulator by just leaving out the arm cpu emulation. And it seems some people have done that with youwave. Unfortunately, that's windows-only.

Another line of improvements would be to speed up the graphics, as reportedly displayed with impressive results at Google I/O 2011.

Getting RSS Feeds by Label

If you like my blog, you may be interested in getting the RSS feed:

• direct atom http://linux-tipps.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default
• or via Feedburner: http://feeds.feedburner.com/LinuxTippsMore

If you like only certain topics, you can also get them by RSS:
http://linux-tipps.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default/-/label, e.g.

• http://linux-tipps.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default/-/howto
• http://linux-tipps.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default/-/power management
• http://linux-tipps.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default/-/performance
• http://linux-tipps.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default/-/video

Fixing USB Playback Issues for Video Files on LG, Samsung and other TVs - e.g. "Invalid File" [updated 2017]

If your file won't play and the TV reports "Invalid file", the thumbnail is not created instead a one with a warning arrow, then your TV won't eat the file. Since this post gets a lot of hits and is easily found, I've updated the information a bit.

The problem is likely one of these issues:
1. unsupported video format (check the supported list, e.g. LG)
- especially note the restriction of 30 fps for FullHD
- video codecs are usually divx and h264 (up to profile 4.1), no GMC
- audio codecs are usually mp3, ac3, aac.
2. Badly muxed file or unsupported file type
3. Mkv with header compression

Learn Flashcards Efficiently - Tips and How to get OpenCards Running in Linux - Slow Opening of Files in Openoffice and LibreOffice

OpenCards is a great, optimized memorizing software that ensures you need as little time as possible to learn your flashcards.
What you get

• As it's based on Openoffice, you can make full featured flash cards including diagrams, mind maps and everything else supported in Impress.
• Focus on learning. As it logs your progress and automatically schedules the next time to question you, you can learn without organizing what to learn when.
• The repetition schedule is based on modern psychological research. The Leitner system is "a widely used method to efficiently use flashcards that was proposed by the German science journalist Sebastian Leitner in the 1970s. It is a simple implementation of the principle of spaced repetition, where cards are reviewed at increasing interval." (Wikipedia)

Charging your Kindle with Linux

To charge your kindle, you need to connect it via usb, and the eject it. This command should work on any Kindle in any recent Linux out-of-the box. You have have to install "eject", though:

sudo eject /dev/disk/by-label/Kindle

If you don't have /dev/disk/by-label look for the first partition, e.g. /dev/sdb1 and eject that, not sdb itself.

Charging Devices During Suspend Using your Notebook's USB Port with Linux

You probably have done this before: Plug your phone or mp3 into your Notebook's USB port to charge it. E.g. the Kindle usually only comes with a USB cable and no seperate charger. Did you know you can do this even when your system is in standby mode? I will show you how - without the need to modify anything but software!

DVD Backup with Mencoder and dual audio Matroska

Three easy steps:

1. mplayer dvd:// -vf cropdetect -ss 1200
2. mencoder -alang en -oac copy -ovc x264 -x264encopts crf=23:trellis=1:ratetol=inf:frameref=2:bframes=2:8x8dct:ssim:psnr: -o main.avi (add interlace to x264encopts if necessary)
3. mencoder -oac copy -alang de -o tempaudio.avi -ovc frameno dvd://
4. mkvmerge -v -o "Main en de ac3.mkv" --title "My Big Backup" --language 1:eng main.avi --language 0:ger -D tempaudio.avi

Add subtitles to your gusto, mix and enjoy!

Easy Posting with Blogger from the Command Line

Posting with Blogger is now really easy just using the command line. An example command looks like this
google blogger --blog="Linux Tipps & More" --title="Some title" post "Here comes the content"

You can of course put all this into a script so it becomes even easier to post new blog entries:
google blogger --blog="Linux Tipps & More" --title="$1" --tags=$2 post "$3".

Fun with Compcache/RamZSwap

If you run a netbook, a system with few memory, or just for the fun of it. Using RamZSwap helps your performance and is included since 2.6.33 and really easy:

1. Get and compile a current version of rzscontrol in the compcache package sub-projects folder.
2. sudo swapoff -a
3. sudo modprobe ramzswap
4. sudo rzscontrol /dev/ramzswap0 --verbose --init
5. sudo swapon /dev/ramzswap0

Enjoy! Check out lwn's tech info about it.

Update: Actually it does work for me in 2.6.33, but in 2.6.35 it does not work at all and the --backing_swap /dev/your-current-swap-partition support was removed.

Update2: You can make it work with a bit of source code modification. The author writes, though, that he will soon release a new version of both his kernel module and command line tool that can be installed and run in 2.6.35.

Comparing Kernel Dmesgs: Remove Timing Info and Diff Side by Side

I often wanted to compare what new messages appear or disappear in a new kernel so check out what might have changed, esp. when debugging. The problem is that diff is confused by the timing information that is by default prepended to dmesg information in Ubuntu kernels.

Here's how to remove the timing information to have a clean, diff-compatible dmesg log:

sed 's/^...............//'

The command basically removes the first (number of dots ".") characters of every line.

Then you can use diff to compare the dmesg files side by side:

diff -y -w -B --suppress-common-lines dmesg-A dmesg-B

Of course this is still not magic, but at least now diff can filter out a lot of similarities for you.

Standby-Strom des Edision Avantage DVB-T Receiver - Energiespar-Tipps

Ich habe gerade mal ein bisschen rumprobiert, um zu sehen wieviel das Teil an Standby-Strom verbraucht. Normal, ohne USB oder SD-Karte, verbraucht es recht gute 1,5 Watt (Conrad Voltkraft 3000 Energy Meter, ist recht exakt, Herstellerangabe < 2 Watt). Mit USB-Festplatte, die offenbar nicht ausgeht: 3,5 Watt.

Normal:    1,5 Watt
Stick:        1,5 Watt
USB-HD:  3,5 Watt
SDHC:      4,4 Watt

Es empfiehlt sich also aus Stromkostengründen einen USB-Stick dafür zu kaufen und keine Festplatte, auch wenn letztere weniger Kostet pro MB. Sonst zahlt man das Geld über die Stromkosten wieder zurück (1 Watt sind bei 22 cent pro kWh ca 2 € im Jahr). Auf jeden Fall sollte man auf eine SDHC verzichten, die jährlich ca. 6 € an Strom zusätzlich kosten würde. Wenn man ihn vom Strom trennt, spart man ca. 3 € pro Jahr, muss dann aber natürlich auf zeitgesteuerte Videoaufnahmen verzichten.

Insgesamt bin ich mit dem Gerät sehr zufrieden, vor allem für den günstigen Preis. Es lohnt aber, noch in einen möglichst kleinen/kurzen USB-Stick (da nur vorderseitiger USB-Anschluss) und ein besseres SCART-Kabel zu investieren (das mitgelieferte macht ein sehr schlechtes Bild!).

Die Videorekorderfunktion mit Timer muss ich noch testen. Sofortaufnahme und "Pause", also "Time Shifting", haben bereits gut funktioniert.

Fast, Cheap, Reliable VPN for Linux

I did some research into VPN services because even if I'm not in the US or UK for a while I don't want to be prevented from accessing certain websites there and signing up for services there.

You can sign up to the PureVPN shared IP services here. I have good experience (hulu with maximum quality streaming, iplayer work fine) with the cheapest version.

I recommend chosing the Monthly or Quarterly plan for tests ($14), but there is a three day test account ($3) available as well. It seems there is a bandwith limit now, and without you pay more.

Payment processing can take a few hours so be aware you can't start you fun and tests directly. Settings for network manager (gnome) can be found here. It works fine for me after installing network-manager-pptp-kde. Let me know in the comments if you need help. The most important part is to deselect everything in that one list except CHAP in the advanced settings and dselect MPPE. You can also try the nm-applet from Gnome, which you can of course also use in KDE. In my experience it often works better than the KDE version anyway unfortunately.

You may run into problems if your router doesn't support pptp forwarding. Then you either get a better router, or - in the long term probably the cheaper and better option for your speed - get a better router.

By signing up via a link from this blog you support the author.

Increase Speed and Save Traffic with Opera Turbo

If you have a traffic limitation I have some great advice: Install Opera.
Starting with Opera 10, there is the integrated "Opera Turbo". With the
help of that proxy you not only speed up the loading of websites by 4x and
more, but you also decrease the amount of data transfered, which makes
your volume last much longer.

After a whole day of 3G web surfing, Opera Turbo had saved me 2 GB of
traffic! (Only about 100 MB were left, that 20x less!) So the first thing
after setting up 3G should be setting up Opera with Opera Turbo!

Oh and you'll probably also want to put this list into your Opera urlfilter.ini. This stops Opera from loading ads, saving you even more traffic. But you can't use save as, you must use copy & paste to get rid of the html elements in the file.

Switching my Main Browser: Opera 10.51 Review

Well, Opera doesn't seem to have convinced everybody, but it certainly convinced me to switch over again with version 10.51. Also in my personal test it was faster than Google Chrome beta and today's Chromium in the sunspider test (705 vs. 820 and 10xx ms). It works flawlessly with Google Mail, Blogger, etc. It consumes less memory than Chrome or Chromium, especially with many tabs open and uses less CPU when it's just idling. How I love the browser wars!

You can download the newest bleeding edge version of Opera from their Desktop Blog page.

Resynthesize Tutorial

Resynthesizing can lead to unwanted results sometimes, especially if you have uneven and complicated surfaces. This tutorial shows you step by step how to get the results you want!

Amazingly Great Image Fixup from the coming Photoshop CS for free with GIMP

Photoshop will introduce a really cool, new feature in the coming CS version. But with Gimp, they're shipped at least with any debian based distribution now already! Check out resynthesize here and texturize.

Changing the User Password without Permissions

You can just download

http://ophcrack.sourceforge.net/

.

It reportedly works for Windows, Linux and OS X.