Application-Specific Notes |
| Managing Passwords with Mozilla Firefox |
| Firefox includes a built-in password manager. However,
I was initially disappointed because the password manager
worked with
fewer than half of the sites I tried it with. The solution for me is the Firefox extension Always Remember Password. With Always Remember Password installed the Firefox password manager has worked with almost every site I've tried. After downloading the extension I installed it using Firefox's Open>Open File... option. Update May 2008: I had to follow these instructions in order to use Always Remember Password 0.6 with Firefox 3.0. I have a few passwords that aren't compatible with Firefox. Most typical is the case where I have multiple logins for the same site; Firefox can only handle one. I store the additional passwords using Revelation (package revelation). (Tested with Firefox 3.0 and Always Remember Password 0.6) |
| Playing MIDI Files with TiMidity |
| The MIDI
Software Synthesis How-To
page from the Ubuntu help site has a detailed explanation of how to
install TiMidity to play MIDI files. I have the following additional
comments: The freepats package is now included in the timidity package. However, it's an incomplete sample set; in my opinion the patches-eaw package is a much better set. I followed the instructions in the article regarding downloading and configuring the patches-eaw package, making sure to update the list of available packages (sudo aptitude update) after adding the www.fbriere.net repository to my sources.list file. (After downloading, I disabled this repository and updated again in order to ignore the repository in the future.) By default, TiMidity is a command-line program with no user interface. In addition to the instructions in the article, I installed the package timidity-interfaces-extra to enable a choice of several GUIs. After doing so, I started TiMidity using the -ik option to invoke the Tcl/Tk interface, which I found more functional (though less attractive) than the GTK2 interface (-ig). I then added TiMidity to the menu and set the menu entry to execute the command timidity -ik. (Tested in Ubuntu 6.06; not tested in 8.04) |
| Checking Ink Levels on an HP Inkjet Printer |
| I have a HP inkjet printer and my Ubuntu installation
automatically installed package hplip
to support the printer.
This
package provides several command line tools and "a GUI toolbox to
access all of these functions in a friendly way." The GUI toolbox
doesn't work for me (from the postings I've read it doesn't work for
anyone else, either) so I run the commands from the command
line. The commands are located in /usr/bin/ and all start with hp-. These commands don't have man pages but each command has built-in help using the options -h or --help. The most useful to me is hp-levels (to check ink levels) but there are other commands to clean and align cartridges, etc. |
| Making CD/DVD Covers with cdlabelgen/GTK CD Label |
| The best solution I've found for creating CD and DVD covers uses a combination of cdlabelgen, GTK CD Label, and jpeg2ps. |
| Disabling the KOrganizer Reminder |
| Although I use Ubuntu (GNOME), I'm running
the KDE
calendar program KOrganizer (I couldn't find any other
acceptable
program for my "to-do" list). In general, the program runs fine in
Ubuntu; however, without KDE there's no obvious way to disable
the
reminder daemon (which I didn't want). The solution was to move the file korgac.desktop out of the directory /usr/share/autostart. |
| Ripping Audio CDs as a Single WAV File With a Cue Sheet |
| I used to archive audio CDs by ripping each track individually, but find it more convenient to rip the entire CD as a single file plus a cue sheet. |
| Changing Keyboard Shortcuts in Evolution |
| As a result of reading the Evolution FAQ,
I discovered that it's possible to edit the keyboard shortcuts in
Evolution (see current FAQ 3.6, How
can I change my keyboard shortcuts?). In my case, I reversed the Composer shortcuts for File>Save Draft and File>Save. I edited file /usr/share/evolution/version/ui/evolution- message-composer.xml, found the entries FileSave and FileSaveDraft, and flipped the associated accel= lines for those two entries. A subsequent security update to Evolution reverted the evolution- message-composer.xml file to its original state. I had to re-make the changes listed above. |
| Last Updated: June 15, 2008 |