Turning off the irritating beep

# 1. Console beep:

xset b off
xset -b
xset b 0

# 2. Firefox Beep

Goto ‘about:config’, search for ‘accessibility.typeaheadfind.enablesound’ & set it to ‘false’.

Hand-rolling screenshot taking solution

Here's my handrolled solution for taking screenshot on my arch linux, using imagemagick, feh & xbindkeys for taking & displaying the just-taken screenshot on my arch linux:

# 1. Installing the required packages

pacman -S xbindkeys feh imagemagick

# 2. Scripting ~/bin/take-screenshots

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#!/bin/bash dir=~/pictures/screenshots [ -d $dir ] || mkdir -p $dir file=${dir}/`ls ${dir} | wc -l`.png import -window root ${file} feh $file

#3. Inserting the <PrtSc> key binding in ~/.xbindkeysrc

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"~/bin/take-screenshots" m:0x0 + c:107 Print

Restart ur X server & pressing <PrtSc> should pop up the just-taken screenshot.

Scanning for badblocks in a a harddisk

Just bought a new harddisk, did scanning of badblocks with:

sudo badblocks -svwf /dev/sdc1

Amazingly, for 320GB, it takes 30:33:41.35 hrs to complete.

Renaming a screen window

To rename a screen window, just do:

'Ctrl+a' & 'Shift-a'.


Fixing Gnome Tooltip

I've accidentally screwed up my gnome's config, as a result, all tooltips in my gnome desktop appear as meaningless black blocks. After some playing round & trial & error, i fixed the problem by replacing the following lines in ~/.gconf/desktop/gnome/interface/%gconf.xml:

1 2	tooltip_fg_color:#000000000000 tooltip_bg_color:#000000000000

With the more meaningful:

1 2	tooltip_fg_color:#000000000000 tooltip_bg_color:#ffffffffffff

That's all !!

m1's 3g mobile broadband on ubuntu jaunty

It turns out that getting M1's 3G mobile broadband (with Huawei's E1550) to run on ubuntu jaunty seems easier than expected, here's what u can do to get it running:

1. Since usb-modeswitch is not yet available from the ubuntu repositories, download *.deb from http://www.debian.org/distrib/packages (the 'testing' distro is good enough)

2. Download the latest usb_modeswitch.conf from http://www.draisberghof.de/usb_modeswitch/ and replace the /etc/usb_modeswitch.conf generated by the above *.deb

3. Update /etc/usb_modeswitch.conf to uncomment the section section corresponding to the brand & model for ur usb stick (for my case, it is Huawei E1550)

4. Run "sudo usb_modeswitch", and waited for a few seconds

5. Right click on the desktop's NetworkManager to select "Edit Connections"

6. Select "Mobile Broadband" tab to add a new M1 connection (the rest is pretty intuitive)

And that's all :]