chewearn's blog

Shrink Vista partition is pulling teeth

chewearn — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 00:08:22 +0000

Confining oneself to a certain way often resulted in narrowing of view points. Whenever I supported an interested Windows refugee running into the Ubuntu camp, I easily gave the instruction that the user should de-fragment and then shrink the Windows partition. This will free up space in the harddisk for new partitions, in which Ubuntu [...]

Slideshow of all photos in subdirectories

chewearn — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 00:08:49 +0000

I have a collection of photos, which is stored under various sub-directories. How do I start a slideshow of the photos, without moving or copying the photos into one directory.

Get rid of OpenOffice Calc Delete Contents dialogbox

chewearn — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 00:08:25 +0000

I have been using OpenOffice Calc a lot and one annoyance I faced is the “Delete Contents” dialogbox. In the beginning, I tolerated this quirk of the program, but after more than a year of clicking “Delete all” checkbox followed by “OK” button, I have had enough. Setting aside the question why this idiotic feature [...]

Create no frills pictures slideshow

chewearn — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 00:08:21 +0000

I have a few hundred pictures of various sizes, which I want to convert into a slideshow movie. What is a fast, no frills way to do this?

Find window ID of a process ID in BASH script

chewearn — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 00:08:27 +0000

Question In a BASH script, I launched an application and use “$!” variable to grab it’s process ID. I would like to perform some action on the application’s main window (e.g. move or resize it). However, this requires knowing the application’s window ID. How do I find the application’s window ID, using only [...]

Pony Express faster than broadband

chewearn — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 00:08:32 +0000

Last Thursday, a news story appeared on BBC titled SA pigeon “faster than broadband”. When I first read it, I thought it’s an interesting story, and oddly funny. Then, I went “meh”, so what? The pigeon has the unfair advantage in the form of (relatively) high tech 4GB memory stick. Instead, [...]

Repairing broken watch strap

chewearn — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 00:08:07 +0000

The strap of my old $10 watch broke. I could spend another $10 to get a new cheap watch, but I figured I should save that for my next two meals. Instead, I took out $1 for a tube of superglue, rolled up my sleeves and start tinkering.

USB hub off the side of my desk

chewearn — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 00:08:23 +0000

For a while now, one of my PC has been throw fits at the most irritating moments. It started mildly a few months ago. Randomly about once every few days, the PC would locked up hard. Only a full main power recycle would revive it. I put off trying to fix [...]

Neighbourhood park

chewearn — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 00:08:09 +0000

While taking a long walk around the neighbourhood, I stumbled on a small park hidden among the apartment buildings. It was late afternoon on a weekday; there were few people around, but plenty of mosquitoes.

Woof

chewearn — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 00:08:03 +0000

Woof! Woof woof woof woof woof woof woof... Woof woof woof woof woof woof woof woof woof... whine...