I finally got my acceptance letter for a seat in BSc. (Hons) Computer Science and Engineering (3 years) at University of Mauritius! I hope the course will go on smoothly. Heard it's quite complex and involves quite a lot of programming. I better manage this time! :S

However, things are not going smooth at UOM lately. Student Union and teaching staff are not agreeing with the administration about newly implemented measures about shared courses and shared-dissertations for 3rd years. Quite a lot of stuff going on, and quite a lot of revolt coming.

Hope everything goes on smoothly for us newb freshers... For now, Reconnaissance of UOM grounds! :D

More later.. :P

Some random tricks about Firefox...

1. If you want to load Google, Yahoo and Youtube at the same time and at every start of Firefox, is it possible??

Yes it is! And it's simple to do at that. Here are the steps and taking Google, Yahoo and Youtube as example. Substitute with what you want.

1) Open Firefox. Then go to Tools - Options - Main Tab

2) In Startup frame, select Show my Home Page3) Now in home page field, type (without quotes, italic text only) "http://www.google.com | http://www.yahoo.com | http://www.youtube.com"

3) To open the same pages, but a 4th blank tab, use "http://www.google.com | http://www.yahoo.com | http://www.youtube.com | about:blank" without quotes. Note that about:blank opens a blank tab / window.

Now, when you load Firefox next time, the addresses you type, separated by the | symbol will simultaneously open in new tabs.

2. Scrolling with your keyboard

You can use these shortcuts to browse up and down in a page, in addition to the arrow keys:

Space Bar: Scrolls down
Shift + Space Bar: Scrolls up

An essential trick for people who want keyboard-only browsing.

3. Custom Search Keywords aka. Quick Search

There is a very good function in Firefox that allows you to define custom keywords to search directly from your address bar. Take for example, you want to search for something on Youtube or Ebay. Ok, you can use the search bar, but you'll have to add custom searches first.

A simpler method is:

1) Go to your site. Eg. Youtube. It should have a search engine.

2) Right-click the "Search" field and select "Add a Keyword for this Search"

3) In "Name", add something meaningful, eg. Youtube Search.

4)The next field, "Keyword" is important. Here, you should type your keyword. For Youtube, it might be "tube" or "yt" or something short and nice to type. For Ebay, it might be "eb" or "bay". It depends on what you like. Type your keyword and proceed.

5) Select Quick Searches in the "Create in" dropdown menu. It makes sorting Quick Search bookmarks easier to sort and find.

6) Now, when you need to search for something on your site, you type the keyword in the address bar (delete its contents first), followed by your search term. Eg. assuming keyword for youtube is "yt", you'd type "yt test" in the address bar to search for "test" on Youtube. No http or www in the address bar when you are Quick Searching...

That'd be all for now...

I have a WG111T WiFi USB dongle from Netgear. I really wanted to use it in Kubuntu. Unfortunately, I couldn't get it to work out-of-the-box in Kubuntu. I googled a bit around and find a nice guide on Ubuntu Forums to install the driver and use the WG111T in Ubuntu. The process required Ndiswrapper. I couldn't wait to try it out. Here's my own little guide. And yeah, in case you are wondering, I was able to get it to work in the end! :P

Check Ubuntu Forums for more details. Save the page if you need it as reference.

First, get the WG111T drivers zip file from here or here You can also get them from the CD but I didn't have the CD with me at the time. So better get the files downloaded directly. Next, get Ndiswrapper (latest version) from here. Download the latest Stable tar.

Now we are ready to get started:

Boot into Kubuntu. Paste the driver zip file in your home folder, and extract it using Ark or any other tool. Same for the Ndiswrapper tar.

Open Konsole, and Change Directory into your Home and into Ndiswrapper. This is usually done via "cd ndiswrapper" or whatever your folder is called. You might also try "ls" and check what is the folder name, then "cd (foldername here)" then press Tab to auto-complete if needed.

After you are inside Ndiswrapper's extracted folder, run "make install". It might prompt you to install required packages. These are not detailed here. Essentially, you will need the Build-Essential package and the compiler ones, all available through Adept. Refer to another guide for these packages install. Since I had all the required packages, let's proceed.

Now, Ndiswrapper should be installed. Still in Konsole, check with "ndiswrapper --h". If the help displays, Ndiswrapper is installed. You might want to clear your screen with the "clear" command to make things neater.

Next, change directory into your Netgear extracted drivers folder. In that folder, there is another folder named ndis5 or something like that.

Now execute these commands ignoring the ones marked with ---. These are my comments! If you don't like sudo'ing like that, try "sudo su" to become root. Enter your password to proceed.

--- Driver installation:
sudo ndiswrapper -i netwg111.inf
sudo ndiswrapper -i athfmwdl.inf

--- Checking if they are installed:
sudo ndiswrapper -l

--- Take out the dongle and re-plug it in
sudo ndiswrapper -l

--- The netwg111 should report "Hardware detected" now
sudo modprobe ndiswrapper
--- The light should start flashing

--- To boot it as module:
sudo ndiswrapper -m

--- Checking if dongle works. You should see some info about your dongle
sudo iwconfig wlan0

--- Checking for Wireless Access Point. You should see some info about your AP
sudo iwlist wlan0 scan

Now, if everything has worked as it should, you should be able to see wlan0 in your System Settings or KControl. From there, you can configure your ESSID and WEP key, as well as set DHCP or other things. You should be pretty ready now.

Enjoy your new wireless on Kubuntu. That is all from me folks. If you need more help, Google's here! Remember, I'm still a Linux noob trying to find his way out and trying to help... :P

Note: This guide is intended for Netgear WG111T v.2 USB Dongle. I haven't experimented with v.1 but I believe it's just a matter of swapping drivers and doing the same thing as above, but replacing netwg111.inf with your required .inf file. Also, note that you need both netwg111 and athfmwld to make this dongle work.

I've always been looking for a way to hold the command prompt open when running commands from Start - Run in WinXP. I found it at last and thought I might share...

Try running "ping google.com" from Start -> Run. The command executes and the window closes immediately after, barely giving you a glance at the results. What to do?

Simply run "cmd /k ping google.com". Other things to try are "cmd /k ipconfig" or even "cmd /k netstat". Try other commands. From what I saw, every command I tried kept the window open. Nice feature!

After much temptation resisting, I finally succumbed. I got Beryl installed on my Kubuntu box. I must say I am impressed and obtained more than I expected, considering the specs of the box:

- Pentium 4 3.0 GHz
- 256 MB RAM
- 32 MB of VRAM (!) on an ATI card.
- 80 GB of HD

I expected all the coolness of Beryl to at least require 512 MB of RAM and 64 MB of Gfx and 50 MB of download. I was totally wrong! Beryl ran smooth on my specs, sometimes causing my processor fan to scream, I must say when I'm tweaking it. Apart from that, it flows quite smoothly with some noticeable lag. Considering the specs, it's expected. But it ran more smoothly than I thought. And yeah, it requires 7 MB of download! :P

The steps to install Beryl are quite short and simple to follow for ATI cards. For NVidia, it seems to be even easier. You just need to have the right drivers, which I had on Feisty Kubuntu.

Check out the steps here:
Beryl's Wiki - http://wiki.beryl-project.org/wiki/Install/Ubuntu

Here's my own small guide for ATI-cards:

Basically, it involves checking whether you have the right drivers using Konsole and "glxinfo | grep direct". If you see "Direct Redering = Yes" proceed. Now, run "glxinfo | grep vendor". If you see server, client vendor = SGI, proceed. Else install the required drivers. Refer to Beryl's Wiki for more info. I didn't need drivers, so I don't have instructions here...

After that, open Adept and install: beryl, beryl-manager, emerald-themes. It should take 7MB approx.

After the install, access K-menu and under System, there is Beryl Manager. Open it. A small ruby or gemstone or whatever appears in your taskbar. Congratulations! You now have Beryl. You can proceed and customize the various options. And yeah, to test. Try dragging a window around. If it's wobbly, it's working! :P

If you want to see what's Beryl's capable, check out the videos I posted earlier.

Now, to make Beryl auto-start under KDE (these instructions are not in the Beryl Wiki. Had to look around), run this in Konsole:

"ln -s /usr/bin/beryl-manager /home/youruser/.kde/Autostart/beryl-manager"

You now have Beryl and it auto-starts. Enjoy your new set of desktop effects and your cool desktop cube! Try Alt+CTRL+Click and drag. :P

I also found this nice link for a Wiki on Beryl by Arch Linux. Check it out if you want:
Arch Linux - Beryl

That's all for now... Feel free to comment!