Simple Help » Guest Blogger http://www.simplehelp.net Common questions, simple answers Wed, 18 Nov 2009 15:12:32 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.4 en hourly 1 Overivew: Safari 4 beta http://www.simplehelp.net/2009/02/25/overview-safari-4-beta/ http://www.simplehelp.net/2009/02/25/overview-safari-4-beta/#comments Wed, 25 Feb 2009 18:05:17 +0000 Sukrit Dhandhania http://www.simplehelp.net/?p=2308 Mac Windows

Apple recently launched a public beta version of their web browser, Safari 4. Safari runs both on Mac as well as on Windows computers, and the new beta is available for both platforms.

The new version comes with a number of features such as a cover flow view of your browsing history, a pretty neat way to access your favorite websites, and more. So head over to the Safari download page and get yourself the latest version of the web browser. Note that as this is a beta release you could face some issues. So, this might be only for the brave.

Safari 4 beta requires some packages installed. On my Mac it asked me to install all the latest security updates. The download is of under 32 MB, so it might take some time. Once the download is complete double click on the downloaded file to begin the installation. Hit Continue a few times and you’ll be done with the installation.

After the installation completes you will need to restart your computer for the new version of Safari to work. Launch Safari 4 beta after rebooting your computer. Before you get to business with your new web browser, let me quickly run you through some of the new features that have been introduced in this release.

Top Sites

Top Sites is a completely new feature in Safari. When you launch a new blank tab or open a new blank window Safari gives you a preview of some of your most visited websites. This makes visiting those websites very easy, as all you need to do is to click on the image. This is pretty customizable, so you should definitely check it out.

Cover Flow

Cover Flow is a feature used in a number of other Apple applications such as iTunes. You get to flip through the pages you have surfed using the Cover Flow view just like you flip through album covers in iTunes. Click on an image to open the website.

Full History Search

Safari 4 beta brings a visual way to search through your browsing history. It uses the Cover Flow view to help you browse through your history. It changes the way you do this, from a boring list of sites in a menu to a visual search that makes it a lot easier and definitely a lot more fun to take a look at your browsing records.

These are some of the major features that shipped with Safari 4 beta. There are many other features that I have not mentioned here. Apple has made many changes in Safari with the version 4 beta, some good, some not so good, and some that will take time to adjust to. But form the looks of it the new browser is a step in the right direction.

Note: most of the plugins I had installed on Safari 3 are not yet compatible with the new version, so do keep that in mind while upgrading.

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]]> http://www.simplehelp.net/2009/02/25/overview-safari-4-beta/feed/ 7 How to quickly share files with your friends http://www.simplehelp.net/2009/01/30/how-to-quickly-share-files-with-your-friends/ http://www.simplehelp.net/2009/01/30/how-to-quickly-share-files-with-your-friends/#comments Fri, 30 Jan 2009 11:45:44 +0000 Skyler Huse http://www.simplehelp.net/?p=2220

One of the problems I have with file sharing is that more often than not, it’s rather slow. When I say file sharing, I mean between one person and a friend, not bittorrent, eDonkey or Gnutella. For this you usually have to go through an Instant Messenger’s file sharing program or through sites like Rapidshare or Megaupload. The problem with IM file sharing is that it’s usually slow and if it gets interrupted, often you’ll have to start all over. The problem with sites like Rapidshare is that they don’t stream, which can be frustrating. Yes, there are sites like Streamfile that try to fix that last problem, but it can still mess up and you have to start all over!

filephile sending a file

So, here’s where Filephile comes in handy. You add your friends email address to it and you can send them a file or even a whole folder of files. It also lets you add a description to the file(s). Your friend will get an Incoming File Transfer window that shows your email address, the description you added, and an option for them to add you to their buddy list. They also get to choose where to save the file.

filephile receiving a file
click to enlarge

The only real downside to this is that you have to sign up at the site to be able to use Filephile. This isn’t that bad though, because it’s really easy to do, and it will resume file transfers when it can if something messes up on either side. In addition, it’s cross platform, which means you can send files to all your friends. It doesn’t matter if they’re on Windows, OS X, Linux, or even BSD.

filephile transfers in progress
click to enlarge

There aren’t many downsides to this. It gives you free and simple file transfers that are only limited by the down/upload speed of the computers in the transfer.

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]]> http://www.simplehelp.net/2009/01/30/how-to-quickly-share-files-with-your-friends/feed/ 7 5 Reasons You Should Be Using Picasa http://www.simplehelp.net/2009/01/19/5-reasons-you-should-be-using-picasa/ http://www.simplehelp.net/2009/01/19/5-reasons-you-should-be-using-picasa/#comments Mon, 19 Jan 2009 11:00:07 +0000 Skyler Huse http://www.simplehelp.net/?p=2166

I love Picasa. Here are five reasons you should use it, along with some tips. They are listed in no particular order.

1. Picasa Photo Viewer is Fast and Beautiful


click to enlarge

Picasa’s photo viewer provides a nice alternative to the default windows photo viewer. It pops up images in a nice smooth animation and gives you some options, which are shown in the image above. It’s a very aesthetically pleasing way to view your images, and doesn’t require you to use any other part of Picasa! After Picasa is installed, just go to your start menu, go to the Picasa 3 entry, and click Configure Picasa Photo Viewer.

2. It Provides Quick and Easy Backup to the Web


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I never got into Flickr or any other image sharing sites, but I find Picasa to be a great (and simple) way for me to keep back ups of my images online. All you have to do is sign into your Google account and click Sync to Web! Before doing this, you may want to go into Picasa, go to Tools and then Options, and go to the File Types tab to make Picasa add more file types, then go to the Web Albums tab and change the default size to Original so it doesn’t resize your images.

3. Easy Image Editing


click to enlarge

While it may not be as powerful as Photoshop, Picasa is still a great program for editing images. It replaces most things with simple sliders and buttons. I actually prefer this to Photoshop for fast edits just because of its simplicity and speed. It also saves the original in case you ever want to revert it back. The above shows a photo before and after some simple slides and button presses.

4. Nice Screen Saver


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Picasa has a really nice looking screen saver with lots of different settings. To get to it in Picasa, go to Tools and Configure. Then click Settings to change some stuff. It offers several different ways to cycle through you images and allows you to choose which folders for it to use. Or you can even use an RSS feed!

5. It’s Made by Google!


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I won’t deny it, I’m a Google fan. I like pretty much everything Google releases. But even if you aren’t a Google fan boy, Picasa being made by Google still benefits you. It integrates well with your gmail and Picasa web albums, and Google loves easter eggs! Like the one above. You press Ctrl+Shift+Y to see it, and you can keep pressing it for more. They can also be dragged around.

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]]> http://www.simplehelp.net/2009/01/19/5-reasons-you-should-be-using-picasa/feed/ 5 How To Connect A Wii Remote To Your PC http://www.simplehelp.net/2009/01/14/how-to-connect-a-wii-remote-to-your-pc/ http://www.simplehelp.net/2009/01/14/how-to-connect-a-wii-remote-to-your-pc/#comments Wed, 14 Jan 2009 09:25:46 +0000 Skyler Huse http://www.simplehelp.net/?p=2121 Windows

Nintendo’s Wii controller is an interesting piece of technology. One of the great things about it is that it connects with Bluetooth. Which, lucky for you, means you can connect it to any computer that has bluetooth! Even if your computer didn’t come with bluetooth connectivity, relatively inexpensive adapters can be purchased online or at your local computer shop.

So, for this post I’m going to show you how to use a Wiimote for playing NES games. There is much more that you can do with the Wiimote, but I just think this is a perfect (and simple) use for it. So lets get started!

First, you need to get your wiimote into discovery mode. You do this by pressing the 1 and 2 buttons. The blue lights at the bottom of the wiimote should be flashing. You may have to keep pressing these buttons until the wiimote connects with your PC. Now, on your PC, right click your bluetooth icon and click Show Bluetooth Devices. If there is no bluetooth icon in your task bar, go to your control panel and double click Bluetooth Devices. Click Add when the window (shown below) pops up.

In the window that comes up, check My device is set up and ready to be found and click Next. While it’s searching, make sure your wiimote’s lights are still blinking! It should find the select the wiimote after it’s found and click Next. Now select Don’t use a passkey and click Next (but make sure the lights are still flashing!) Click Finish when it’s done.


click to enlarge

We’re already almost done! Now all you need is GlovePIE, a program that will let you actually use your wiimote! You can download it here. Just extract the contents of the zip into a new folder and run GlovePIE.


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It may look intimidating but it’s actually really simple. Just go to File and Open and navigate to the WiimoteScripts (which was included in the zip), look for NESController.pie. Click Run and your wiimote should be able to control NES Emulators! I tested it with the default settings in VirtuaNES and it worked great!


click to enlarge

GlovePIE comes with may more scripts for you to try out, so have fun with it! It’s only a matter of time before we have some games on the PC to play with the Wiimote, but in the meantime, enjoy all of the things GlovePIE already allows you to do!

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]]> http://www.simplehelp.net/2009/01/14/how-to-connect-a-wii-remote-to-your-pc/feed/ 10 How to monitor your downloads in Firefox with Download Statusbar http://www.simplehelp.net/2009/01/07/how-to-monitor-your-downloads-in-firefox-with-download-statusbar/ http://www.simplehelp.net/2009/01/07/how-to-monitor-your-downloads-in-firefox-with-download-statusbar/#comments Wed, 07 Jan 2009 10:30:17 +0000 Ken Murray http://www.simplehelp.net/?p=2091

This is another one of my essential Firefox extensions. I can’t stand the ugly Firefox download window. I prefer to see the status of my downloads in the Firefox Status Bar at the bottom of the window. Enter Download Statusbar.

  1. Install Download Statusbar and restart Firefox.
  2. Download Statusbar is easier to demonstrate than it is to talk about, so In this example I’m going to download a few Fedora 9 rpm packages from one of the Fedora mirror sites and just show you how it works.


    3. click to enlarge

  3. First, let’s download one file, PyQt4-devel-4.3.3-2.fc9.i386.rpm. Choose Save File, and select the download location as you normally would.


    4. click to enlarge


    click to enlarge

  4. Note that the download shows up in the Firefox Status Bar instead of a separate window.


    5. click to enlarge

  5. If you hover your mouse cursor over the download, you see it’s status in a popup window.


    6. click to enlarge

  6. Once the download is complete, you can Right-Click on it and choose from the listed options. In this example I chose Open Containing Folder. The download now disappears from the Firefox Status Bar.


    7. click to enlarge


    click to enlarge

  7. Now let’s download a few files at once.


    8. click to enlarge

  8. Now that the downloads are complete, let’s clear one from the status bar and leave the other two there.


    9. click to enlarge

  9. Right-Click on one of the files, then choose Clear From Bar.


    10. click to enlarge


    click to enlarge

  10. Now there are only two left. Click on the Clear button at the far right and all downloads are cleared from the Firefox Status Bar.


    11. click to enlarge

  11. I find this method of monitoring and managing my downloads a lot more efficient than using the default Firefox download manager window, and definitely more efficient than the way it’s done in Internet Explorer. As if you really needed another reason to use Firefox over Internet Explorer.

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]]> http://www.simplehelp.net/2009/01/07/how-to-monitor-your-downloads-in-firefox-with-download-statusbar/feed/ 0 How to use any email address with MSN Messenger http://www.simplehelp.net/2009/01/06/how-to-use-any-email-address-with-msn-messenger/ http://www.simplehelp.net/2009/01/06/how-to-use-any-email-address-with-msn-messenger/#comments Tue, 06 Jan 2009 11:29:08 +0000 Skyler Huse http://www.simplehelp.net/?p=2093 Windows

If you’re like me, being able to have everything connected to a single email address makes life easier. Unfortunately, most Instant Messengers require you to set up email addresses with their service to use with their Instant Messenger program. Luckily, you don’t have to worry about this with MSN Messenger. You can go to passport.net to use any email address (for example, a gmail one) to sign into MSN Messenger with! This will also let you use your email address for all things live. Like Mail, Calendar, Skydrive, etc.

msn messenger sign in window using a non-msn email address

The process is dead simple. Go to passport.net, scroll down to Use an e-mail address you already have and click Get started now under it. After that it’s just a matter of filling in the necessary information. When you sign in to MSN Messenger, use your ‘regular’ email address and the password you created to associate with it. It’s really simple and something I wish I could do with other instant messengers.

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]]> http://www.simplehelp.net/2009/01/06/how-to-use-any-email-address-with-msn-messenger/feed/ 12 Three free rhythm based games http://www.simplehelp.net/2009/01/05/three-free-rhythm-based-games/ http://www.simplehelp.net/2009/01/05/three-free-rhythm-based-games/#comments Mon, 05 Jan 2009 11:00:07 +0000 Skyler Huse http://www.simplehelp.net/?p=2082 Linux Mac Windows

I love music, and I love video games. This makes rhythm games perfect for me. And the best part? I don’t have to pay for some of the great ones! This is a list of my three favorite rhythm games, in no particular order.

Frets on Fire


click to enlarge

This is a Guitar Hero like game for Windows, Linux, and OS X. A great thing about Frets on Fire is that it lets you rip songs from your Guitar Hero games! The downside to this is it’s really slow. It’s usually faster to just download all the songs. But that’s probably illegal. It comes with three songs and a tutorial. You can also download songs from the community. If you don’t have a Guitar Hero controller to hook into your PC, you can use your keyboard.

Stepmania


click to enlarge

This is a DDR like game for Windows, Linux, and OS X. It’s been around for a long time, and is still being worked on. It is also the only game on this list with a multiplayer mode. You can use a dance pad or just use you arrow keys. Much simpler than most rhythm games (if you’re using the arrow keys, that is) and is still just as fun. It doesn’t come with any songs, but you can download some here.

Osu!


click to enlarge

This is a game I pretty much just found out about. Gameplay is similar to Elite Beat Agents for the DS. This game is very nice and it makes installing songs easy. You can download songs here. You have to register to download songs, but it’s a good idea to do it anyway. The game keeps track of how good you do and you get levels for it! It’s hard to explain the gameplay if you haven’t played the game it’s based on. Luckily, there is a good tutorial and you can check out a video of me playing a song (very poorly) on Easy.

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]]> http://www.simplehelp.net/2009/01/05/three-free-rhythm-based-games/feed/ 0 How to emulate every Nintendo system in Windows http://www.simplehelp.net/2008/12/26/how-to-emulate-every-nintendo-system-in-windows/ http://www.simplehelp.net/2008/12/26/how-to-emulate-every-nintendo-system-in-windows/#comments Fri, 26 Dec 2008 12:00:26 +0000 Skyler Huse http://www.simplehelp.net/?p=2022 Windows

The following list will guide you through how to play NES, SNES, Nintendo 64, Nintendo GameCube/Wii, Nintendo Gameboy/Color/Advanced, Nintendo DS AND Nintendo Virtual Boy games on your Windows PC.

NES


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There are many NES emulators, but Nestopia is my favorite. It is open source and is still being worked on. It plays all the games I’ve tried, it works with my gamepad, and has some advanced options. It even supports multiplayer over the Internet! Download Nestopia here.

SNES


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ZSNES is a great emulator, the interface is weird, but it works great. A tip I wish I knew a long time ago is that when you have you mouse in the window, you can hold the right mouse button to move the window. You can read a great tutorial about ZSNES here and download the program here.

Nintendo 64


click to enlarge

Project64 has been working on their 64 emulator for a very long time. You can get the beta (1.7) if you donate, but the stable 1.6 is free and great. The only problem I have with Nintendo 64 emulation is that it’s hard to emulate an N64 controller, but that isn’t Project64’s problem. You can download it here.

Nintendo GameCube/Wii


click to enlarge

Dolphin is the only emulator I know of for GameCube or Wii games. I was surprised to find that Super Smash Brothers Melee was going at a playable speed. Dolphin is updated weekly and seems to be progressing well. It comes in both 32 bit and 64 bit applications, which you can download here.

Nintendo Gameboy/Color/Advanced

All of these emulators are rolled into one package with Visual Boy Advance. It has not been updated since 2005, but it works great. One nice feature is that it can play roms that are still in a zip folder. So there is no need to unzip. Something you may want to look out for is Visual Boy Advance-M, which plans to improve upon VBA. For now, you can download VBA from here.

Nintendo DS

I had problems with this. DeSmuME worked the best, but I tried iDeaS and it had some problems too. I only tried this with one game, but I have been told DeSmuME is slightly better.

Nintendo Virtual Boy


click to enlarge

Oh come on. Why would you want to do that to yourself? Red Dragon is probably the best we’re gonna get. There is little to no interest in emulating this failure. Download it here, if you must.

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]]> http://www.simplehelp.net/2008/12/26/how-to-emulate-every-nintendo-system-in-windows/feed/ 0 Defrag your PC with a Screen Saver http://www.simplehelp.net/2008/12/19/defrag-your-pc-with-a-screen-saver/ http://www.simplehelp.net/2008/12/19/defrag-your-pc-with-a-screen-saver/#comments Fri, 19 Dec 2008 11:15:00 +0000 Skyler Huse http://www.simplehelp.net/?p=1976 Windows

Defragging is essential in keeping your Windows machine fast. Don’t you wish it was a more automatic process? Well, it can be! JkDefrag, a great defragging program, comes with a way to use it as a screen saver, and it’s a very easy thing to do.

First, go to the site here. Now, download the JkDefrag zip, open it, and select the two JkDefragScreenSaver files. Now you just need to put them in your Windows folder on you main hard drive. This is usually C:\Windows. Now check your screen savers and it should be there.


click to enlarge

This may not be the greatest looking screen saver (shown below), but it’s perfect for people who just turn their monitors off and always forget to defrag. This is the only screen saver I know of that can actually speed up your computer! So enjoy it and don’t worry about defragging anymore.


click to enlarge

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]]> http://www.simplehelp.net/2008/12/19/defrag-your-pc-with-a-screen-saver/feed/ 0 The Linux 'date' command http://www.simplehelp.net/2008/12/18/the-linux-date-command/ http://www.simplehelp.net/2008/12/18/the-linux-date-command/#comments Thu, 18 Dec 2008 22:01:04 +0000 Sukrit Dhandhania http://www.simplehelp.net/?p=1954 Linux

A command line tool that I find use for very frequently on Linux is the “date” command. It’s a pretty simple command that returns you the date and time when you call it without any options. But when you begin to use some of the options it provides you with this tool can make your life much easier and fun. Let’s take a closer look at the command itself and some of its options and the cool tricks that we can make it do.

The first thing to do is to get the current date and time:

# date
Sun Dec 14 11:33:55 IST 2008

This is the simplest use of this command. Now suppose you wanted to just get the date and nothing more:

# date +”%d”
14

If you want the date, complete with date, month, and year:

# date +”%d%m%y”
141208

To get the day of the week along with the rest of the date:

# date +”%a%d%m%y”
Sun141208

These are a few of the many possibilities that the “date” command offers you. Check out “date –help for options”. Some interesting ones are:

%D   date (mm/dd/yy)
%d   day of month (01..31)
%m   month (01..12)
%y   last two digits of year (00..99)
%a   locale’s abbreviated weekday name (Sun..Sat)
%A   locale’s full weekday name, variable length (Sunday..Saturday)
%b   locale’s abbreviated month name (Jan..Dec)
%B   locale’s full month name, variable length (January..December)
%H   hour (00..23)
%I   hour (01..12)
%Y   year (1970…)

You can also do some fancy formatting. If you want to add a hyphen or a back-slash in between the different parts of the date:

# date +”%d-%m-%Y”
14-12-2008

# date +”%d/%m/%Y”
14/12/2008

You can also use spaces and commas. Here’s a pretty fancy example:

# date +”%A,%B %d %Y”
Sunday,December 14 2008

Say you’re writing a shell script to back up the logs form you server. You want the backup script to get the logs for the day before and back them up. Here’s how you can get the previous day’s date:

# date –date=”yesterday”
Sat Dec 13 12:04:03 IST 2008

Similarly, you can also get tomorrow’s date:

# date –date=”tomorrow”
Mon Dec 15 12:04:39 IST 2008

You can get last or next month’s date:

# date –date=”last month”
Fri Nov 14 12:06:23 IST 2008

# date –date=”next month”
Wed Jan 14 12:06:25 IST 2009

Pretty cool stuff, eh! You’re just getting started. You can customize the date you want more precisely than by day and week, and get the date five days ago or seven days from now:

# date –date=”5 days ago”
Tue Dec  9 12:08:26 IST 2008

# date –date=”7 days”
Fri Dec 21 12:09:23 IST 2008

You can even ask it more difficult questions such as:

# date –date=’next Saturday’
Sat Dec 20 00:00:00 IST 2008

Or something totally in the future:

# date –date=’2 years 3 months 4 day’
Fri Mar 18 12:12:16 IST 2011

It’s almost as if “date” speaks English. I keep discovering new tricks. So play around with it and let me know if you find some new cool possibilities that I might not have discovered yet.

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]]> http://www.simplehelp.net/2008/12/18/the-linux-date-command/feed/ 0 How to easily tweak Windows Vista http://www.simplehelp.net/2008/12/18/how-to-easily-tweak-windows-vista/ http://www.simplehelp.net/2008/12/18/how-to-easily-tweak-windows-vista/#comments Thu, 18 Dec 2008 12:40:51 +0000 Skyler Huse http://www.simplehelp.net/?p=1972 Windows

I love tweaking. The only problem is, I haven’t really been able to find a one stop program for all my tweaking needs on Vista. That’s where Ultimate Windows Tweaker comes in. It claims to be the Tweak UI for Windows Vista, and I feel that it lives up to that. It works on both 32 and 64 bit Vista systems and is portable, which means there’s no need to install anything. You can download it here.

vista ultimate tweaker
click to enlarge

After you have it downloaded, extract the file from the .zip file and run it. You should see a Window like the one above. If you want to play it safe, click Create System Restore Point to make it easy to go back if anything messes up. The program has over 130 tweaks, most of which are self explanatory. The only problem I had with this was on my 64 bit system. The shortcut icons would not disappear. Luckily, there are other ways to do this. Overall I find it to be a very handy (and small) application.

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]]> http://www.simplehelp.net/2008/12/18/how-to-easily-tweak-windows-vista/feed/ 0 How to watermark an image using GIMP http://www.simplehelp.net/2008/12/12/how-to-watermark-an-image-using-gimp/ http://www.simplehelp.net/2008/12/12/how-to-watermark-an-image-using-gimp/#comments Fri, 12 Dec 2008 09:00:45 +0000 Ken Murray http://www.simplehelp.net/?p=1864 Web Design & Dev

You’ve taken a bunch of pictures with your digital camera and you want to post them on the web. Of course, you don’t want other people stealing your work so you decide to add a watermark to your images. In this tutorial I will show you how to add a watermark to an image using GIMP, and open source image editing package.

The screenshots in this tutorial show GIMP running on Ubuntu Linux, however the steps are exactly the same if you’re running GIMP on Windows. Windows users can download the Windows version for free here.

Here are the before and after images:


Before


After

  1. First, open your image in GIMP.


    2. click to enlarge

  2. Now click on the Text Tool. It’s the button with the letter A.


    3. click to enlarge

  3. Click on the little arrow to the top right of the foreground/background colours tool to make white the foreground colour. I also chose to increase the font size to 22px.


    4. click to enlarge

  4. Now click within your image, somewhere near where you want your text to end up and you are presented with the GIMP Text Editor.


    5. click to enlarge

  5. Type the text you want to appear as your watermark.


    6. click to enlarge

  6. Click Close.


    7. click to enlarge

  7. I wasn’t happy with the positioning of the text so I clicked the Move Tool. It’s the button that looks like a plus sign (+) with arrows on the ends.


    8. click to enlarge

  8. Use the mouse to grab your text and drag it to the desired location. You must click directly on one of the letters, not the background behind the text.


    9. click to enlarge

  9. Now open the Layers Dialogue. Click File -> Dialogues -> Layers.


    10. click to enlarge

  10. You will notice that your image now has two layers. The top layer contains the text you just entered.


    11. click to enlarge

  11. Make sure your text layer is highlighted, then move the Opacity slider to the left as far as you need to in order to achieve the desired opacity of your text.


    12. click to enlarge

  12. Click File -> Save As.


    13. click to enlarge

  13. Give your newly edited image a different name than your original image and click Save.


    14. click to enlarge

  14. GIMP will now prompt you to export your image before saving it as a JPEG. Click Export.


    15. click to enlarge

  15. Now you choose the quality of your new image. I chose the default of 85 and clicked Save.


    16. click to enlarge

  16. Now you have a watermarked image that you can post on the web.

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]]> http://www.simplehelp.net/2008/12/12/how-to-watermark-an-image-using-gimp/feed/ 0 How to download files from the Linux command line http://www.simplehelp.net/2008/12/11/how-to-download-files-from-the-linux-command-line/ http://www.simplehelp.net/2008/12/11/how-to-download-files-from-the-linux-command-line/#comments Thu, 11 Dec 2008 12:33:37 +0000 Sukrit Dhandhania http://www.simplehelp.net/?p=1846 Linux Windows

Wget is a very cool command-line downloader for Linux and UNIX environments. Don’t be fooled by the fact that it is a command line tool. It is very powerful and versatile and can match some of the best graphical downloaders around today. It has features such as resuming of downloads, bandwidth control, it can handle authentication, and much more. I’ll get you started with the basics of using wget and then I’ll show you how you can automate a complete backup of your website using wget and cron.

Let’s get started by installing wget. Most Linux distributions come with wget pre-installed. If you manage to land yourself a Linux machine without a copy of wget try the following. On a Red Hat Linux based system such a Fedora you can use:

# yum install wget

or if you use a Debian based system like Ubuntu:

# sudo apt-get install wget

One of the above should do the trick for you. Otherwise, check with your Linux distribution’s manual to see how to get and install packages. wget has also been ported to Windows. Users on Windows can access this website. Download the following packages: ssllibs and wget. Extract and copy the files to a directory such as C:\Program Files\wget and add that directory to you system’s path so you can access it with ease. Now you should be able to access wget from your Windows command line.

The most basic operation a download manager needs to perform is to download a file from a URL. Here’s how you would use wget to download a file:

# wget http://www.sevenacross.com/photos.zip

Yes, it’s that simple. Now let’s do something more fun. Let’s download an entire website. Here’s a taste of the power of wget. If you want to download a website you can specify the depth that wget must fetch files from. Say you want to download the first level links of Yahoo!’s home page. Here’s how would do that:

# wget -r -l 1 http://www.yahoo.com/

Here’s what each options does. The -r activates the recursive retrieval of files. The -l stands for level, and the number 1 next to it tells wget how many levels deep to go while fetching the files. Try increasing the number of levels to two and see how much longer wget takes.

Now if you want to download all the “jpeg” images from a website, a user familiar with the Linux command line might guess that a command like “wget http://www.sevenacross.com*.jpeg” would work. Well, unfortunately, it won’t. What you need to do is something like this:

# wget -r -l1 –no-parent -A.jpeg http://www.sevenacross.com

Another very useful option in wget is the resumption of a download. Say you started downloading a large file and you lost your Internet connection before the download could complete. You can use the -c option to continue your download from where you left it.

# wget -c http://www.sevenacross.com/ubuntu-live.iso

Now let’s move on to setting up a daily backup of a website. The following command will create a mirror of a site in your local disk. For this purpose wget has a specific option, –mirror. Try the following command, replacing http://sevenacross.com with your website’s address.

# wget –mirror http://www.sevenacross.com/

When the command is done running you should have a local mirror of your website. This make for a pretty handy tool for backups. Let’s turn this command into a cool shell script and schedule it to run at midnight every night. Open your favorite text editor and type the following. Remember to adapt the path of the backup and the website URL to your requirements.

#!/bin/bash

YEAR=`date +”%Y”`
MONTH=`date +”%m”`
DAY=`date +”%d”`

BACKUP_PATH=`/home/backup/` # replace path with your backup directory
WEBSITE_URL=`http://www.sevenacross.net` # replace url with the address of the website you want to backup

# Create and move to backup directory
cd $BACKUP_PARENT_DIR/$YEAR/$MONTH
mkdir $DAY
cd $DAY

wget –mirror ${WEBSITE_URL}

Now save this file as something like website_backup.sh and grant it executable permissions:

# chmod +x website_backup.sh

Open your cron configuration with the crontab command and add the following line at the end:

0 0 * * * /path/to/website_backup.sh

You should have a copy of your website in /home/backup/YEAR/MONTH/DAY every day. For more help using cron and crontab, see this tutorial.

There’s a lot more to learn about wget than I’ve mentioned here. Read up wget’s man page.

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]]> http://www.simplehelp.net/2008/12/11/how-to-download-files-from-the-linux-command-line/feed/ 10 How to get system and app notifications (like Growl) in Windows http://www.simplehelp.net/2008/12/10/how-to-get-system-and-app-notifications-like-growl-in-windows/ http://www.simplehelp.net/2008/12/10/how-to-get-system-and-app-notifications-like-growl-in-windows/#comments Wed, 10 Dec 2008 10:45:44 +0000 Skyler Huse http://www.simplehelp.net/?p=1855 Windows

For quite a while, Windows users have had to just sit back and envy OS X users because they get to use the terrific notification app growl. Well, envy no longer, just install Snarl. It is in fact “inspired by, and based on” OS X’s growl, but is still in its early stages. You can download Snarl here and check out the growing list of extensions for it here. Keep reading for a brief overview and some screenshots.

The download should give you a .zip file. Open it and you’ll find the installer and a readme file. One important thing to note is that the readme file says that NOD32 sometimes mistakes the zip for a virus. They have acknowledged it is an issue with NOD32 but are unable to fix it. Anyway, just run the setup and then run Snarl. It will go through a graphics test which happens really really fast and won’t bother you at all. After that’s done, you get a nice looking notification.

snarl notification

Snarl comes with three extensions that can be disabled if you don’t like them. There’s SnarlClock, which tells you the time every hour. There is also SnarlInfo, which informs you about battery life and disk space. Finally, there is SnarlWare, which informs you when things are inserted or removed from your computer, such as flash drives.

snarl time notification

Double clicking the Snarl icon in your taskbar will bring up some settings. One of the things you might want to do is go to the Display tab and lower the duration of the notifications. By default it is set to 12 seconds. Here you can also choose where you want the notifications to show and some more stuff. Click on the Styles tab to choose one of the many styles. You can also go to the Apps tab to set different styles for different extensions.

snarl theme change notification

And speaking of extensions – there are quite a few already. Programs that are supported by these extensions include: Firefox, Foobar2000, iTunes, Miranda, Songbird, Pidgin, mIRC and Thunderbird. I think Snarl has a lot of potential. It is still a fairly new application, but the developers are planning a lot. I hope more people will show interest in this program, and I can’t wait for some more extensions.

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]]> http://www.simplehelp.net/2008/12/10/how-to-get-system-and-app-notifications-like-growl-in-windows/feed/ 0 Review & Setup: OpenArena http://www.simplehelp.net/2008/12/09/review-setup-openarena/ http://www.simplehelp.net/2008/12/09/review-setup-openarena/#comments Tue, 09 Dec 2008 09:45:17 +0000 Skyler Huse http://www.simplehelp.net/?p=1839 Linux Mac Windows

OpenArena is an open source First Person Shooter based around a Quake engine. It’s fast, violent, and very entertaining. And best of all, it runs on Windows, Linux, and OS X! It also has very low system requirements and can is portable, making it perfect for passing around the office and playing a few games while the boss isn’t looking. Not that I encourage that type of thing.

The games website gives a warning that the game may not be suitable to children under 17 due to violence and some women with very little clothing (which you usually don’t notice during all the action). If you’re alright with that, you can find some download links here. You should get a .zip file containing a folder with the game in it. Extract the folder where ever you like and (assuming you’re on Windows) just double click openarena.exe in the folder.


click to enlarge

The first thing you might want to do is go into Setup. Under Player you can put in the name you want to use. After that, you can click on Model in the lower left hand corner to choose your character. There are many to choose from but they are all the same except for how they look and the sounds they make. Penguin is my personal favorite.


click to enlarge

Under Controls go to Shoot and I recommend turning Auto switch Weapons to Off. The rest is pretty self explanatory, so lets move onto System. Here you can change a lot of things. Like resolution, whether it is running full screen or windowed, if you want bloom, and all kinds of other things. Now, back out into the regular setup and go to Game Options. Here you can change your cross hair and I also recommend that you turn Automatic Downloading to On, so you can download custom maps other people are playing.


click to enlarge

Now to the fun part! You may want to try out Single Player before diving into Multiplayer. It is basically the same, only you play against bots. Click on a stage and you can choose your difficulty. One thing I found interesting about the bots is that they taunt you! Every now and then their character’s name will show up having typed something. I find this pretty entertaining sometimes.


click to enlarge

Anyway, onto the game play. It’s your typical run and gun shooter. With a heavy emphasis on ‘run’. This is a pretty face paced game compared to most of the stuff out today. There’s a wide arrangement of weapons, too. From the close quarter combat saw (which you can switch to at any time by pressing 1) to the long range sniper (or rail gun) with some shot guns, rockets, and more in between. When I checked, there were 83 servers up for OpenArea. This isn’t too much, but it’s very easy to find a server to play in. And you can always create your own. There is also a wide range of maps, for good old death matches and for the slightly more tactical CTF mode.


click to enlarge

I enjoy playing this game from time to time. It is updated fairly regularly, and I can’t wait to see what all they do with it. There are other free (and better looking) shooters out there, but I love OpenArena’s retro feel and simplicity.

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