Something apart from pure linux..
I dont have many posts on linux as such as yet but i thought let me put in a few other things about 2 other great open source softwares that i use...
Firefox:
Undoubtedly it is THE best browser on show...Though i have seen many saying that opera is faster and beats firefox in some ways, i am sure for those of you who have made the switch to firefox, going back to anything else is going to be very very painful. I would suggest you stay put here :D
The beauty of firefox lies in the ability of extensions to add innumerable features to FF and make it as good as you want it to be...I am going to list out all the extensions I use on my firefox and write a line or two about each...
1)Switchproxy:
A very useful extension for those in college/workplace LANs where there is more than one proxy server running.. This extension lets you switch from one to the another with just the click of a mouse.
2)Stumbleupon
One of the best extensions, if not the best, i have ever used. Its orkut+blogger+lots more rolled into one.
3)Ajax Yahoo Mail
Another great extension that adds a + mark next to each of the messages in your yahoo inbox and so you can view the message without having to load a complete page again. Instant reply functionality too is included. Am waiting for instant forwarding capacity and the ability to mark a message as spam...
4)Adblock
A great extension that saves you loads of bandwidth and time by removing stupid advertisements from getting loaded. You can have a look at my adblock filters file here
5)Gmail manager
Checks your gmail accounts (how many ever you want!!) and notifies you when You've got mail!!
6)Yahoo mail notifier
A similar mail checking extension for yahoo. Can check only one account though :(
7)Tab mix plus
Adds loads of options to manage your tabs in firefox.
8)Customize Google
Lets you add many good options to google searching and also helps you stay private from google's preying bots.
9)Sage
A good RSS reader exntension for firefox..only thing missing are autochecking and notify features.
10)Download Statusbar
Converts download progress bars into cute little bars and puts them in your status bar. One window lesser to work with!!
11)Informenter
Can be used to store frequently typed form values that can quickly be selected later.
12)Grease Monkey
Have heard a lot about its potential but got myself to install it only a few days back..
13)Bloglines notifier
Something I discovered only today. Thanks to Hari for telling me about bloglines. This website lets you check your feeds from anywhere in the world. And if you use only a single computer, the extension sits in your status bar and checks for updates to your feeds once in a customizable time interval and notifies you if and when there are changes. Quite neat :)
And the second software is gaim..Undoubtedly again the best multi-protocol instant messenger on show. I have heard about kopete and others but i cant see anything wrong with gaim, rather anything that is critically missing in it, albeit the voice feature needed to talk to people on google talk which too i guess shall soon be incorporated. As in all other open source softwares, gaim has the tabbing feature when you chat with more than one person simultaneously instead of opening separate windows for each..And it works well with all protocols, be it yahoo or msn or irc or jabber. It isnt ugly looking by any standards either and its even got a doodle feature in its latest version now by which two people can write on a common whiteboard to get their thoughts across in a better way than just plain chat. The only qualm i have about this doodle feature is that it doesnt seem to have been integrated with yahoo messenger's own similar feature meaning you cant doodle with someone on yahoo messenger, you can doodle only with someone else using the latest beta(or atleast 2beta1) of gaim. again, plugins add a variety of extra features to gaim like message notification and system tray integration though i personally feel that the latter should be a default option in gaim itself. when one doesnt care for fancy things as audibles and talking cartoon characters, gaim is the way to go..
to end up on a lighter note, i just discovered that i had not been making use of buddy pounces at all in gaim..and so, it so turned out that i needed to know when a person came online when away from my computer (as guifications has not yet released a version compatible with the latest beta). So i set up a buddy pounce and decided to play a sound..searching around in /usr/share/sounds, i came across the die.wav file that comes with the gnbots game (for those who are on windoze or dont have the game installed but want to hear the sound, go here...)..its gonna be real funny when the person next comes online...lets see :)
Firefox:
Undoubtedly it is THE best browser on show...Though i have seen many saying that opera is faster and beats firefox in some ways, i am sure for those of you who have made the switch to firefox, going back to anything else is going to be very very painful. I would suggest you stay put here :D
The beauty of firefox lies in the ability of extensions to add innumerable features to FF and make it as good as you want it to be...I am going to list out all the extensions I use on my firefox and write a line or two about each...
1)Switchproxy:
A very useful extension for those in college/workplace LANs where there is more than one proxy server running.. This extension lets you switch from one to the another with just the click of a mouse.
2)Stumbleupon
One of the best extensions, if not the best, i have ever used. Its orkut+blogger+lots more rolled into one.
3)Ajax Yahoo Mail
Another great extension that adds a + mark next to each of the messages in your yahoo inbox and so you can view the message without having to load a complete page again. Instant reply functionality too is included. Am waiting for instant forwarding capacity and the ability to mark a message as spam...
4)Adblock
A great extension that saves you loads of bandwidth and time by removing stupid advertisements from getting loaded. You can have a look at my adblock filters file here
5)Gmail manager
Checks your gmail accounts (how many ever you want!!) and notifies you when You've got mail!!
6)Yahoo mail notifier
A similar mail checking extension for yahoo. Can check only one account though :(
7)Tab mix plus
Adds loads of options to manage your tabs in firefox.
8)Customize Google
Lets you add many good options to google searching and also helps you stay private from google's preying bots.
9)Sage
A good RSS reader exntension for firefox..only thing missing are autochecking and notify features.
10)Download Statusbar
Converts download progress bars into cute little bars and puts them in your status bar. One window lesser to work with!!
11)Informenter
Can be used to store frequently typed form values that can quickly be selected later.
12)Grease Monkey
Have heard a lot about its potential but got myself to install it only a few days back..
13)Bloglines notifier
Something I discovered only today. Thanks to Hari for telling me about bloglines. This website lets you check your feeds from anywhere in the world. And if you use only a single computer, the extension sits in your status bar and checks for updates to your feeds once in a customizable time interval and notifies you if and when there are changes. Quite neat :)
And the second software is gaim..Undoubtedly again the best multi-protocol instant messenger on show. I have heard about kopete and others but i cant see anything wrong with gaim, rather anything that is critically missing in it, albeit the voice feature needed to talk to people on google talk which too i guess shall soon be incorporated. As in all other open source softwares, gaim has the tabbing feature when you chat with more than one person simultaneously instead of opening separate windows for each..And it works well with all protocols, be it yahoo or msn or irc or jabber. It isnt ugly looking by any standards either and its even got a doodle feature in its latest version now by which two people can write on a common whiteboard to get their thoughts across in a better way than just plain chat. The only qualm i have about this doodle feature is that it doesnt seem to have been integrated with yahoo messenger's own similar feature meaning you cant doodle with someone on yahoo messenger, you can doodle only with someone else using the latest beta(or atleast 2beta1) of gaim. again, plugins add a variety of extra features to gaim like message notification and system tray integration though i personally feel that the latter should be a default option in gaim itself. when one doesnt care for fancy things as audibles and talking cartoon characters, gaim is the way to go..
to end up on a lighter note, i just discovered that i had not been making use of buddy pounces at all in gaim..and so, it so turned out that i needed to know when a person came online when away from my computer (as guifications has not yet released a version compatible with the latest beta). So i set up a buddy pounce and decided to play a sound..searching around in /usr/share/sounds, i came across the die.wav file that comes with the gnbots game (for those who are on windoze or dont have the game installed but want to hear the sound, go here...)..its gonna be real funny when the person next comes online...lets see :)
posted by Ganesh at 9:19 PM
9 Comments:
Glad to know about the notifier. I hadnt noticed it myself.
So, who was the guy who came "online next"? Did the buddy pounce work well?
And, you have a wrong link to my page. It is http://diary.harisund.com
oops..thanks for pointing it out..have changed it :)
and ya, the person (did i say guy? ;) ) did come online..and the sound dint quite surprise me..but one thing i noticed was that the cvs version of gaim that i am using doesnt seem to be able to save the buddy pounces i set...keeps forgetting them everytime i restart. :(
btw, my comp is running for the 7th day in a row now :D...i have this strange obsession with seeing how long my comp runs continuously without suffering considerable performance drop..though there is some time lag in certain things, still the overall performance is quite good.
Hmmm....that is something you can afford doing with a desktop, especially a powerful one like yours.
I have to rest my laptops periodically, or as expected it would start heating up badly. But yes, the desktop that I am running my servers on is switched on all the time, but performance wise I can't really test it since I don't use it for regular purposes.
Also, have you tried anything with GreaseMonkey?
And I notice that you use Switchproxy. How handy does it come in for you? (Here of course, we have no proxy worries.)
Do me a favor... sometime write a post on your opinion of IITs proxys, or rather the need for proxys, and what purpose they solve, how you people come up with work arounds and stuff like that. I really do not know anything about proxies since I have had not the opportunity to work with them.
thats a nice idea...thanks for the idea..of late(as has been the case for many days), i have been falling short of ideas to write about here (as well as in my other blog)..will surely write a post sometime this weekend/week..
Wow.. that was a near instantaneous reply.. do you constantly monitor your email or what? I thought I was the only nut who checked his email like crazy, and you seem to have beaten me ...
haha!! as i have said in the post, gmail notifier helps me out with things like this..i have enabled the notify me when someone comments option and gmail is as fast a mail service as you can get ;)
and that reminds me of something..the lack of a rss feed for comments in blogger unlike in wordpress..something where wordpress really scores over blogger..apart from many other features like tagging posts and better skins.
Tagging posts, yes. Wordpress is better that way.
RSS feeds for comments. Seriously. I really want that. Desperately. If it is your own blog, you will know when somebody has posted by getting an email.
(Hint: An avid net surfer and technology lover like yourself would have surely heard about commentosphere. Look it up sometime when you are free. It is still not well implemented though. )
In fact, WordPress recentlys started hosting blogs on their own servers lately, so like whatever.blogspot.com you can now have whatever.wordpress.com too.
Personally, the only reason I chose Blogger was because I could templatize it to match the rest of my web sites. I know it is possible with WordPress hosted on my own machines, but I when I wrote the code for the blogger page, I had more time on my hands, and didn't have a server. Things are changed now ....
:-(
just realised how flawed my thought about gaim not saving my buddy pounces was.. i hadnt ticked the recurring option for the pounce and so, it played only once and then disappeared..i had thought that recurring meant that the pounce will keep coming till i message the person or take some action (which with this sound would be real aweful)..just tested my assumption and found it to be false..by recurring, it meant doing the pounce everytime the person comes online..
sorry for being mean to you gaim :D
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