Monthly Archive for December, 2006

How to think like a Ruby Computer Scientist

Published on December 28, 2006 in Books. 0 Comments

How to think like a Computer Scientist: Learning with Python is an excellent book for learning Python for the newbies. Here is another book similar to that for those who want to learn Ruby.

How to think like a computer scientist: Learning with Ruby is a book for those newbies who want to learn the basics of Ruby, Objects and how to use them for creating various data structures like linked list, stacks, queues, trees, heaps, maps, etc. It is still under development and will make a good book. Currently there is no downloadable PDF files. But you can wget the html files.

Globulation 2 – Free RTS game for linux

Published on December 26, 2006 in Games. 0 Comments

Globulation 2 is an innovative Real-Time Strategy (RTS) game which reduces micro-management by automatically assigning tasks to units. This means the user just has to assign specific number of units for a task and the units automatically do what is best for that job.

It has nice AIs with varying levels of difficulties
Includes a scripting language for versatile gameplay
Nice set of tutorials which walk through the player with the various tasks
An integrated map editor allowing you to create your own maps
Play in single player, local area network or over the internet with Ysagoon Online Gaming.

One unique thing about this game is that it doesn’t have any humans or other creatures. All the characters in this game are called globs(see pic) and look and move funny. It is a nice game and I am playing it for the past 2 days.

It is available in Synaptic, but it would be better if you could download and install it.

Liferea – News Reader for Linux

Published on December 26, 2006 in Software. 2 Comments

Liferea Today I was analyzing my RSS Feeds and saw that there are about 59 subscribers(thanks to Ubuntu Blog) and saw that there was a Reader called Liferea. I have heard of this before, but didnt give a try. So I thought – why don’t I install it and see how it works out. So I just went to Synaptic and did a quick search for Liferea and installed it.

It is cool and works great. It is actually developed for Linux users who want a good Feed Reader. You have easily customizable panes with 2 or 3 pane mode. Also you can set how many items to save under each feed. Overall: a nice and fast reader to try if you are under linux.

Deb package a day

Published on December 25, 2006 in Software. 0 Comments

Here is a nice site which posts one debian package a day. This has detailed explanation of the package and how it can be used. Visitors can also vote for a particular package and also contribute to the list. This also has a category for Ubuntu, but I guess the debs should work on both without much trouble.

Linux Distro Timeline

Published on December 19, 2006 in Distribution. 0 Comments

Here is a timeline showing all the GNU/Linux distributions.

FrostWire – Free Gnutella client

Published on December 17, 2006 in Software. 0 Comments

FrostWire is a fork of the very popular LimeWire Gnutella client. Gnutella is a popular file sharing network. It is a huge network hosting approximately 2.2 million users. It has numerous files ranging from mp3s, movies, ebooks, applications, etc.

FrostWire is a free and open source software without all the nasty nags. It also has a built-in bittorrent client. Here the steps to install FrostWire on your Ubuntu Edgy.First you have to install J2SE Runtime Environment (JRE).

sudo apt-get install sun-java5-jre sun-java5-plugin

Then download the frostwire deb file and install it using dpkg.

wget -c http://www.users.on.net/~stubby/FrostWire-4.10.9-2.i586.deb
sudo dpkg -i FrostWire-4.10.9-2.i586.deb

That was so simple. You can run FrostWire by running Applications -> Internet -> FrostWire

OpenOffice.org 2.1 released

Published on December 13, 2006 in Software. 0 Comments

OpenOffice.org has released the 2.1 version of the popular open source multiplatform office suite. The new version has support 64-bit linux and a number of improvements – like multiple monitor support for Impress, improved Calc HTML export and automatic notification of updates.

There are also numerous templates and clip-art available that were submitted for the template contest.
.

Gimp Tutorials

Published on December 4, 2006 in Tutorial. 0 Comments

Gimp Logo For all those Photoshoppers who think that there is no other tool that can work for them, please take a look at Gimp. This is the Open Source alternative to the costly image manipulation tools. It has all the features of Photoshop and is being used by many people for their artwork. It is also developed at a very rapid pace. The next stable version is going to be 2.4.
Newbies to Gimp may be at first confused with the interface. It takes some time to get used to it. There are numerous website which carry tutorials for learning Gimp. Here is a collection of all those links. This site contains links to many tutorials for learning Gimp. Take a look at it and try to learn to use the Open Source alternative to Photoshop.

MusikCube: Open Source MP3 Player

Published on December 4, 2006 in Software. 0 Comments

Music Cube Logo MusikCube is an open source MP3 player for the “modern generation”. It helps you just listen to what you want to hear, while offering innovative features not seen elsewhere.

MusikCube is based on an embedded SQL database engine called SQLite. It is a very fast database engine which makes creating Dynamic Playlist easy.

It has an interesting feature where it automatically randomizes the playlist based on your listening habits. The more you listen, the more it becomes smarter.

It also makes transferring audio files to your removable devices. It can automatically detect your MP3 player and can transfer the files to it. Though the interface isn’t like iTunes or Winamp, it looks like a decent player.

But there is only a windows version of it and it can be downloaded from the sourceforge site.

Embed Youtube in WordPress

Published on December 4, 2006 in Tips and Tricks. 0 Comments

When I tried to post the previous post I tried hard at embedding the Youtube code into this. The Visual MCE editor didn’t accept the code and I couldn’t embed the video. So, I changed my settings to use the old plain editor instead of the WYSIWYG editor. It is there is the Users > Your Profile. Under the Personal Options, uncheck the “Use the visual rich editor when writing” option and Update your profile. Now you can easily embed the videos.