One of the comments that I received from my last post (15 Twitterers Every Linux User Should Follow) was that Twitter is pretty closed and not really in line with the whole Linux way of doing things. Well, that is true, though probably not an issue for the less fanatical amongst us, so I have decided to also look at identi.ca, an open Twitter alternative.

Identi.ca certainly doesn’t have as many users as Twitter, but does have a growing following in the open source community, as such I’ve been able to find a few users I’d recommend to anyone starting out or making the switch from Twitter.

If you have any other suggestions for linux related identi.ca users please let me know in the comments and I’ll update the list with the best ones.

Read more…

Possibly useful to anyone testing a site in Firefox, I just found out you can view the error console in a tab by going to the URL:
chrome://browser/content/places/places.xul

Also of interest:

Library (bookmarks):
chrome://browser/content/places/places.xul

Downloads:
chrome://mozapps/content/downloads/downloads.xul

Add-ons:
chrome://mozapps/content/extensions/extensions.xul

You’ll need to copy and paste these into your address bar as links don’t work, also they only work in Firefox (and possibly other Mozilla browsers).

[From: MozillaZine KB]

IsMyLcdOK is a small program to easily check for dead/paralysed/stuck pixels on LCD monitors. There’s not much to it: Just run and then walk through the battery of onscreen tests designed to isolate any problem pixels. The only trouble is it’s Windows only.

There are some alternatives for other platforms, but I decided to make a cross platform solution, and what could be more cross platform than HTML (admittedly with some javascript). Feel free to try it out here: Check my LCD - Just click anywhere on the screen that loads to rotate through the tests, you’ll also get better results using your browser’s full-screen mode.

A quick question:

How many people know your mothers maiden name/first pet’s name/frequent flyer number etc?

More than you’d think.

Every time you sign up for the latest website, service or  account you’re asked for details like this as a security procedure in case you forget your password. Often this information is all that stands between someone and complete access to all of your accounts.

Let’s look at an example:

1: You decide to try out the latest Twitter clone/social networking site/stupid Facebook application.

2: As part of the sign up process you are asked to provide your email (they promise they won’t share it with spammers) and the name of your first teacher (the ’security’ question).

3: You fill in the details and enjoy your new toy.

All seems fine so far right? Wrong! You may just have given away access your email account and probably a lot more besides. Say you’ve entered your email address as ‘jimbowejs@gmail.com’, and supplied your first teachers name as ‘Bob’, all an unscrupulous site owner needs to do is head over to gmail, claim to have lost the password for their account and fill in the details you’ve just given them. They now have access to your mail, and let’s not forget to any other sites that you’ve registered for with that email address.

What can be done to stop this?

Be careful with your security questions! When you can choose your own question it’s a good idea to do so. If you do use your own questions, consider not giving a question at all, but a clue to the password that only you would know (you can then give a random answer).

Try to know at least a little bit about who your giving details to before signing up for ANYTHING.

And, of course, use different passwords for different sites. You’re only making an attackers job easier if they can just use the exact same password you just signed up for their ’service’ with to login to your mail/banking/PayPal…

Simple one-purpose site Ding It’s Up sends you an email (or text/twitter message) when a site you specify comes back online.

Pretty useful stuff, but not content to let something remain simple I decided to make a bookmarklet so that when I’m on a site that’s down, I can just hit the link in my bookmarks bar and get an email when it comes back.

To use this, either drag the link below, or right click and select “Bookmark this link”. You’ll then need to change the bookmark properties to replace ‘YOUREMAILADDRESS’ with your email address.

Let me know when it’s back

If you find this useful, you may also like the ‘Get archived version’ bookmark which checks for archived copies of the current page from archive.org:

Get archived version

Both of these have been tested to some extent in Firefox. Please leave a comment if you have any problems.

Quite a few of the tips that get submitted on shell-fu.org aren’t that useful if you need to remember them, but are just the thing to put in your bashrc as aliases or functions. With that in mind I decided to put together a full .bashrc using the best submissions:

Feel free to use this however you like, though I’d recommend reading through it to get some idea of what each alias/function does before you use it.

I’ve tested this on my Debian system and all worked well but if you have issues on another platform, please let me know.

Shell-fu:

Shell-fu is a place for all those
little command line goodies that you come across and then can never find again when you need them. Hopefully we’ll end up with a comprehensive and easily usable resource for anyone working with the shell.

http://www.shell-fu.org/

Having had a few false starts getting Mutt working with the new Gmail IMAP I thought I’d share my setup incase it is of any help.

Firstly to use Mutt in OSX you’ll need to install MacPorts if you don’t have it. Once that’s setup you can proceed to install Mutt:

$ sudo port install mutt-devel +headercache +imap +ssl

mutt-devel gives the latest version, +imap and +ssl are needed to use the IMAP service and +headercache stops Mutt needing to download the headers from the server every time it is run.

Having installed Mutt you’ll need to configure for using Gmail IMAP, this is done by adding the following to your ~/.muttrc

set imap_user = 'yourmail@gmail.com'
set imap_pass = 'yourpass'
set spoolfile = imaps://imap.gmail.com:993/INBOX
set folder = imaps://imap.gmail.com:993
set record="imaps://imap.gmail.com/[Google Mail]/Sent Mail"
set postponed="imaps://imap.gmail.com/[Google Mail]/Drafts"
set header_cache="~/.mutt/cache/headers"
set message_cachedir="~/.mutt/cache/bodies"
set certificate_file=~/.mutt/certificates 

Of course you’ll need to change the values in the top two lines. I’ve also used [Google Mail] here as I’m in the UK, but in most other places you’ll need to replace that with [Gmail]. If you’re not sure, don’t worry you can use either to start with and you’ll be able to see the correct value in the Mutt folder list.

You should now be able to run Mutt and see all your mail and folders.

While I was sorting some of my email at work today I came up with quite a useful idea for an Outlook based to-do list based on a search folder.

The setup:

1. Create a new search folder (File > New > Search Folder)
2. Scroll down to “Create a Custom Search folder”
3. Give it a name, and click “Criteria”
4. Got to the advanced tab, select Field > Frequently Used Fields > Follow up flag and set this to match “is not empty”
5. (Optional) You can also set other options here to narrow the list
6. With your search folder created open it and right click on the headings at the top of the message list, select “Field Chooser”
7. Select “All Mail Fields” > “Due By”
8. Click the due by heading to sort into date due

There you have it, a quick to-do list. To extend this a bit you could send yourself emails for other tasks and set the follow up date to when they need to be done by.

(I’ve only had chance to test this in Outlook 2003 (I think) as I use Thunderbird at home, but the same principal may hold for other versions).