2008-07-05

The Trick To Linux Speakerphone-building

Posted in Geek Stuff at 0:17

Ever wanted to use a VoIP client to answer phone calls over your traditional phone line instead of getting VoIP service? (Surprisingly difficult since everyone seems to want to use their crappy old phones on VoIP instead) Well, here’s the trick: Buy an FXO card like the Voxzone X100P and install the open-source Asterisk PBX software.

Not only do you get to use the VoIP client and high-quality $7 Skype-certified, noise-cancelling microphone of your choice, you can trap telemarketers in a voice-mail maze of your own fiendish design. :)

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2008-07-02

Various Geek Snippets

Posted in Geek Stuff at 0:06

I’ve been busy lately, but I can at least share a few noteworthy things I ran across.

  • A faint background image in your terminal reduces eye-strain. (source)
  • KDE users can use kioexec to pass URLs as command-line arguments to non-KDE apps. (source)
  • set ttymouse=xterm2 will fix mouse support in Vim when you’re running it inside GNU Screen. (source)
Permanent link to this post (59 words, estimated 14 secs reading time)

2008-06-28

How to customize the layout of the “View Modes” sub-toolbar in Konqueror

Posted in Geek Stuff at 1:48

I’m not really in the mood for blogging right now, but this took me a lot of googling, so I should probably share it.

Did you ever wonder what arcane incantations went into customizing that “ActionList: viewmode_toolbar” subsection in your Konqueror toolbar? Wonder no more.

First, anyone who has used both Kubuntu and another distro (eg. Gentoo) will notice that it’s possible to change the number of dropdown buttons. I’m happy with the three I have, so I didn’t really look into this very closely, but apparently this patch file will switch between the two configurations when properly applied:

http://launchpadlibrarian.net/4891395/un84.diff

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2008-06-17

Excellent tip for picking which languages you learn

Posted in Geek Stuff, Otaku Stuff, Web Wandering & Opinion at 14:45

How to Learn (But Not Master) Any Language in 1 Hour (Plus: A Favor)

Just a blog post I ran across with some excellent tips for evaluating how difficult it will be to learn a given language. Not necessarily something I’d use (since I’d pick a language based on what it would get me and then soldier on, rather than learning languages based on how easy it’ll be) but something to keep in mind nonetheless.

Permanent link to this post (76 words, estimated 18 secs reading time)

2008-05-20

Pure-Python RAR and GIF handling

Posted in Geek Stuff, Site Updates at 1:18

Useful Hacks @ ssokolow.com

I just pushed my attempts at RAR and GIF handling in Python to my useful hacks page.

The GIF one functions as a partial validator, but it’s main designed purpose was to tell static from animated GIFs without a ton of dependencies.

The RAR one is only really useful for identifying RAR files by header and listing their contents so far, but I eventually hope to add support for extracting files which were stored without compression. (Usually video files, as the docstring says)

Enjoy.

Permanent link to this post (89 words, estimated 21 secs reading time)

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