Friday 24 September 2010

Hack: prevent screensaver from crashing fullscreen games on Ubuntu (II: xscreensaver)

I realised that this doesn't work if gnome-screensaver is disabled and xscreensaver put in its place.

In that case, preventing the screensaver from starting (and locking the system) during a fullscreen game can be accomplished with the following script:

#!/bin/bash
xscreensaver-command -exit
[COMMAND TO START GAME OR PROGRAM HERE]
xscreensaver -no-splash
[Ubuntu 10.04]

Humour: Dependencies

debian-main
http://xkcd.com/797/

Thursday 16 September 2010

Tip: How to backup blogger/blogspot

From meandthecomputer:
In your blog's control panel, if you look under the Settings tab, you will see Blog Tools section. Beside it you will see an option to Import Blog, Export Blog, and Delete Blog. Export Blog will allow you to save the contents of your blog in your hard disk. Import Blog will allow you to restore a previously saved copy. 

Hack: clearing out old entries from the "open with" window in Ubuntu

From OMGUbuntu:
 To clear out old entries (esp. wine) from your "open with" window, delete everything in ~/.local/share/applications
Cory Sadowski adds:
~/.local/share/applications/mimeapps.list is what stores certain file associations, notably the one that controls what application opens when you click a location in the Places bar. Install LXDE and suddenly find that PCManFM has taken over your Places menu? Look in mimeapps.list and introduce that jerk to your delete key.

Tip: Make sure non-Eastern non-European characters display in Linux

In order that characters used in and for transliterating non-Eastern non-European scripts/languages like Sanskrit, Egyptian, Sumerian, Akkadian, and Hittite be displayed properly in Linux, make sure to install (through the Synaptic Package Manager in Debian/Ubuntu) the ttf-ancient-fonts package.

You can test it by going to the Wikipedia page on Hittite cuneiform (there should be no little boxes in the text, but rather Hittite cuneiform characters).

Wednesday 15 September 2010

Hack: prevent screensaver from crashing fullscreen games on Ubuntu

Playing the Amnesia demo on Ubuntu, but after 5 mins the screensaver turns on and then the whole system locks up.

It seems that with some fullscreen games this happens.

Hack:
Create a shell-script:

#!/bin/bash
gconftool-2 --set /apps/gnome-screensaver/idle_activation_enabled --type bool 0
[COMMAND TO START GAME OR PROGRAM HERE]
gconftool-2 --set /apps/gnome-screensaver/idle_activation_enabled --type bool 1exit 0



And then make the shell-script executable, and link to it instead of to the game binary in the Games menu.

Seems to work so far.

[Ubuntu 10.04]