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Category Archives: *NIX

Linux Banging

This is a great list of bang command usage.

Bash Shortcuts

A nice list of bash shortcuts

Quick command line spell check of a single word or sentence

Here’s a short bash script, using aspell, to spell check a word or several words from the command line. It’s simple but effective. If anyone else knows a cleaner or even simpler way, please let us know.

#!/bin/bash
WORD=$1
TEMPFILE=temp.spell
echo $WORD > $TEMPFILE
aspell -c $TEMPFILE
cat $TEMPFILE
rm -f $TEMPFILE
rm -f $TEMPFILE.bak

I named this script “spell”. Simply [...]

Revert to Console for IM – Gtalk Example using Mcabber

I can finally sleep at night now that I have a command-line solution for Google Talk.
What’s needed (for a poor windows user):

Mcabber, a jabber client from http://mcabber.com
Cygwin, http://cygwin.com
Ssh package for cygwin, if you need to install mcabber elsewhere and then connect to it remotely.

If cygwin and ssh are new to you, read this to get [...]

Basic Pine Gmail Config

I always forget this, and periodically find myself setting up a new pine client. So rather than digging around on the web each time, I’m adding my notes here:
Create a .pinerc file, maybe a custom one for gmail like .gmailpinerc
POP3
smtp-server=smtp.gmail.com/user=user@gmail.com/ssl

inbox-path={pop.gmail.com/pop3/ssl/user=user@gmail.com}inbox
IMAP
smtp-server=smtp.gmail.com:587/tls/user= user@gmail.com
inbox-path={imap.gmail.com:993/ssl/novalidate-cert/user= user@gmail.com}inbox
There are a host of other options that can be configured, but this is a good [...]

“Revert to Console” for Language Translation

So you might be sitting around asking yourself,
“Do I really need a web browser or collection of clunky travel dictionaries to translate to and from different languages of the world? Isn’t there a command line tool that can do the same thing and make my life easier, while making me even more awesome at [...]

My Screen

Screen is a great tool for command-line usage, and is also available for cygwin. If you enjoy using the command line, and haven’t checked out screen, I highly recommend it. I found some of the commands and configuration changes a little difficult to remember, so I’m adding them here.
First of all, the main screen escape [...]

Emacs Macros 101

Macros are really useful for programming, but since adopting Eclipse I haven’t been using them as much, much to the detriment of my fingers.
For a while I used Notepad++ for macros. Macros are easy to use with Notepad++, but unfortunately you’re limited to trivially simple macros- for example, you can’t “search” your way through a [...]

Moving On From Windows

I can’t stand the thought of using Vista. I am an XP user; by which I mean to say I get by using cygwin and some of the Windows apps. But I’ve used Vista enough for me to know that I must draw the proverbial line in the sand there.
XP will be the last Windows [...]

Django on Dreamhost

It doesn’t take much searching to suspect that Django on Dreamhost maby not be an ideal environment, but it does work. Running Django on Dreamhost involves using Fastcgi, which is officially supported by Django, but not a recommended configuration.
I found following the official tutorial sufficient in setting up Django on Dreamhost.
A couple of notes from [...]