Biodegradable Geek

Bash Tips for Power Users

Every Geek site needs an obligatory Bash Tips post Copy Files Securely Between Two Machines I used to always forget the syntax for this, until I realized that the syntax is exactly like the standard cp command. In fact, you can copy files like you normally would using scp, on your local machine. The following are equivalent: $ [...]

How to Block AIM’s Annoying ‘AOL System Msg’ in Pidgin

The following plugin for Pidgin will block the incredibly annoying and useless notifications from AOLSystemMsg on AIM. “AOL System Msg: Your screen name (mrEman) is now signed into AOL(R) Instant Messenger (TM) in 2 locations. Click here for more information.” To use, paste code in file, save file as blockaolsystemmsg.pl in ~/.purple/plugins/ and then open (or re-open) [...]

Gentoo Sucks, Ubuntu Doesn’t.

I used Gentoo for a few years, and at first I loved it. Mainly because of portage, but the only distro I had experience with before Gentoo was Slackware, and I used to install packages and dependencies manually, so you can see why Gentoo would was so appealing to me. When I first began my new [...]

Script to Quickly Setup WebApp Environment and Domain

Just sharing a script I wrote to quickly deploy Wordpress (and eventually a few other webapps) sites, which somebody might find useful. This uses Linode’s API* to add the domain name to the DNS server along with some subdomains. If you’re using another server, (Slicehost, your own, etc), you can alter the dns class to [...]

Top 5 Linux Apps That’ll Boost Your Productivity

These are not in any specific order. Also, some might be available on other operating systems. Tomboy This is the best note taking app I’ve ever used. It sits in your taskbar, doesn’t annoy you and doesn’t hog your cpu cycles or memory. When you wanna jot down something, hit a global shortcut, type away, and [...]

Simple and Effective Productivity Tip When Working on the Computer

This falls under “Why Didn’t I Think of This Before?” Not being able to remain focused and get things done while working on a computer is common. There’s a countless number of things to do even offline. You can, and probably do: Organize folders/desktop/etc Finally get around to actually opening up an ebook you’ve downloaded Customize your desktop (and [...]

How to Speed Up Fullscreen Flash Playback in Linux

Hardware acceleration is not available in fullscreen mode for Linux yet, at least not with Adobe’s Flash 9.x plugin. This isn’t much of a problem with small videos, but it results in choppy, sluggish playback in fullscreen mode. Fortunately, there’s a simple way around this while we wait for Adobe to address the issue. Workaround If [...]

Using Vim as a Complete Ruby on Rails IDE

NOTE: If you are experiencing segmentation faults with vim and rails.vim, see this post. When coding in Ruby on Rails, you’ll usually be switching between files and running scripts a lot. It can be time-consuming and frustrating coding Rails using a traditional text editor designed for working on big files individually. Vim lets you hop around [...]