One thing that was bothering me is that when I was watching a movie and I was away from my computer I had to go near the laptop to do things like pause the video or change the volume level. I could avoid this using a wireless keyboard but I don’t want to buy one. However, I do own a wireless mouse and it would be great to be able to use it to control MPlayer.

The gist below allows you to pause/play the reproduction with a click of the mouse left button, toggle fullscreen with mousewheel click and control the volume with a combination of clicking and holding the right button while scroll up or down.

Add this to a file input.conf placed in the ~/.mplayer/ directory.

If you have a mouse with more buttons you can get a full list of supported button names by running mplayer -input keylist and a full list of available commands by running mplayer -input cmdlist.

W Radio

http://63.243.143.155/WRADIOAAC

Radioacktiva

http://208.80.54.20/RADIO_ACTIVAAAC

Si tienen mplayer instalado en su sistema, podrán reproducir cualquier de las emisoras así:

mplayer -loop 0 <URL>

reemplazando <URL> por la URL correspondiente. La opción -loop 0 sirve para reestablecer la conexión si está se interrumpe de forma inesperada.

No se requiere MPlayer para escuchar las emisoras. En general, cualquier reproductor debería permitir escucharlas solo con abrir alguna de las URL.

The snippet above will check if the current page is a subpage and add a link to the parent page (the one directly above and not the one at the very top of the hierarchy). Then, if the current page has subpages will add links to each one of them.

The purpose of the snippet is to show how to get the links to the parent and children pages. The function may, and probably should, be extended to properly display that information in your themes.

EPEL (Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux) is a volunteer-based community effort from the Fedora project to create a repository of high-quality add-on packages that complement the Fedora-based Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) and its compatible spinoffs, such as CentOS and Scientific Linux.

As part of the Fedora packaging community, EPEL packages are 100% free/libre open source software (FLOSS).

All you need to install R is to add the EPEL repository and then install R the same way you do with any other package:

rpm -Uvh http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/epel/5/i386/epel-release-5-4.noarch.rpm
yum install R

Seen at http://lists.centos.org/pipermail/centos/2009-December/086920.html

I was working on a post and wanted to embed a Fiddle to show an example. I’m currently using GitHub Gist Shortcode plugin to embed gists and tough there maybe something similar for JSFiddle, but after a quick search I couldn’t find anything available in the Plugin Directory. I decided to created it my self and this the result.

The plugin was tested against WordPress 3.2.1 but it’s so simple that it should work with previous versions without problems. If you happen to test it against older versions, please let me know how it goes.

Usage:

[jsfiddle url="http://jsfiddle.net/wvega/UupFu/" height="300px" include="result,html,js,css"]

• The only required attribute is url of the fiddle you want to embed, with or without trailing slash.
• include can be any combination of result, html, js and css, separated by commas; the tabs in the embedded fiddle will follow the order specified with the include attribute.

Result:

<iframe style="width: 100%; height: 300px" src="http://jsfiddle.net/wvega/UupFu/embedded/result,html,js,css"></iframe>

I added only the basic features to the plugin to make it work. If you think there is something I should add, please let me know in the comments section.

The source code is available at GitHub and the plugin can be downloaded from the Plugin Directory.

First, some numbers about the two methods: The minimum amount of money you can withdraw using Local Currency Wire Transfer (COP) is $51 (plus a $3.99 fee). With Payoneer the minimum amount is $20 (plus a $2 fee). You can check Payoneer fees here.

Now, let me tell you a story… or something like that:

Friday, Jul 8, 2:00 PM: I withdrew $55 using Local Currency Wire Transfer to my account in Colombia (Bancolombia) and then transferred the same amount to my Payoneer Debit Card. The fees for each transaction were as described above. oDesk notified me about  both transactions and I’m now waiting for the next step.

Monday, Jul 11, 8:27 AM: oDesk sent me a notification email saying my withdrawal request had been processed, the important part of the email is shown below:

We have processed your withdrawal request submitted on 08-Jul-2011.

• Amount withdrawn: $51.01 USD
• Amount you should receive: 87989.46 COP (*)
• Bank account: <censored>
• Exchange rate on 07-11-2011 13:05 UTC: 1724.9228 COP/USD
• Expected date of delivery:  14-Jul-2011
• oDesk Ref ID: <censored>

(*) This amount does not include any fees your bank may deduct.

At the same time, I checked my Payoneer account and noticed there was a pending transaction with a link that reads “Click to load your card”. When I followed the link I was asked to choose between Standard Load or Immediate Load (with a $2.5 fee); I chose Standard Load and I was told:

Your account will be loaded with $53.00 (Fees will be deducted on card load) by the 7/13/2011 11:00:00 PM EST.

I checked my account on Friday and saw the pending transaction but didn’t knew I had to follow that link for the transaction to be processed, I thought that was necessary only if I wanted to use Immediate Load. That said, I think I could have choose Standard Load on Friday and have the money loaded on Tuesday (2 business day later).

Wednesday, Jul 13: My personal account was loaded with 85041.00 COP (exchange rate was 1765.32 COP). At 8:00 PM, my Payoneer card was also loaded with $53. I’ll withdraw the money from my card tomorrow and then I’ll compare.

Thursday, Jul 14: I withdrew 80000.00 COP from my Payoneer account, the cost of the transaction was $48.84 (including a withdrawal fee: $2.15).

Using Payoneer, I received 1713.43 COP for each dollar and if I would be able to withdraw all the money I received from oDesk that would give me 1713.42 COP/$  * ($53.00 – $2.15) = 87127.91 COP for the $55 I withdrew last week; that’s a bit more than the 85041.00 COP I received using Local Wire Transfer.

When you do the maths, assuming the bank paid me with that day’s exchange rate, you realize that using Local Wire Transfer I received only $48.17 of the $51.01 I was supposed to get. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to clarify whether the bank was using a different exchange rate or they charged a fee for the transaction and without that kind of information is hard to give a conclusion. However, I used Local Wire Transfer before; a that time I transferred  $117 and the bank told they received about $114 so I’m starting to think they charge a fee for the transaction that is somewhere between $2 and $3.

The information I gathered is insufficient to give any general advise but, at least for this time, I can say the following:

• The exchange rate when using Payoneer’s Card to withdraw money is lower greater (Updated Jul 17, 2011) than the exchange rate used by the bank (assuming both transactions occur on the same day).
  
• Payoneer fees are lower (Withdrawal from oDesk: $2, Withdrawal from ATM (Outside USA): $2.15) than Local Wire Transfer fees – with Bancolombia (Withdrawal from oDesk: $3.99, Transaction fee (worst-case, unverified): $3).
• The time between the time I withdrew money from my oDesk account and when I received the money into my bank account or Payoneer card was about the same, although I could have paid an extra $2.5 to have Payoneer’s money last week.
• If you are withdrawing $150 or less, you’re probably going to get a bit more money if you use Payoneer (please note that if you use the ATM several times you’ll have to pay $2.15 each time). For larger movements I believe Local Wire Transfer is a better option (if the bank charges constant fees and they use the standard exchange rate).
• Using Local Wire Transfer you are able to convert every dollar to cash in your local currency, with Payoneer you are restricted by the amounts returned by the ATM which are usually multiple of 10000 COP. That means you’ll have to lave a few dollars in you card and those can be evaporated by the maintenance fees. ATMs also have a maximum amount of money you can withdraw and that means more fees if you can’t withdraw all your money in one transaction.

When I started writing this post I was thinking I would be able to say which one of the methods was better, but the truth is the experiment didn’t gave me all the information I wanted. I still don’t know which one should I use to get more of my earnings. I’ll try to withdraw more money next week and hopefully would be able to provide a better comparison between these two methods. I’ll let you know.

If you happen to work on oDesk and have some information about this methods (or other you use to get your money), please let me know in the comments section.

Update [Jul 17, 2011]: I received a receipt from my Bank saying the total amount I received using Local Wire Transfer was $49.85 (I withdrew $51.01 from oDesk) and that the exchange rate used was 1705.93 COP.

Update [Jul 26, 2011]: Last week I withdrew $300.00 using Local Wire Transfer and received $290.11 in my bank account with an exchange rate of 1702.03 COP. That means there was a cost for the transaction of $5.90 (because oDesk takes another $3.99). Given this information, I would say that my bank is taking about 2% of the money I send through oDesk.

Firefox is the best browser I know…. but is not perfect. One of the major problems I experience with Firefox is that when you start installing some extensions and combine that with a lot of tabs opened at the same time, things stop being nice and you start feeling like you’re running the browser in your grandma’s computer.

Most of the extensions I use are for development purposes only, so one way to have a better browsing experience is to have separated profiles. A profile for normal browsing (email and blog reading, facebook, twitter, …) and another for development with all the nice extensions I use when working. Now you can get rid of your  development stuff by closing the browser instance that is using that profile and keep surfing the web with the lighter profile, or viceversa.

To create a new profile, close all running instances of firefox and start it again from the terminal with the following command:

firefox -ProfileManager

A wizard will let you give a name to your profile and (optional) change its location. Then you can choose a profile and start Firefox. Everytime you start Firefox, it will use the last selected profile, if you want to change that uncheck the “Don’t ask at startup” option in the wizard, now you will be asked to pick a profile before the browser starts.

Alternatively, you can create additional shortcuts to start different profiles. Here is how to do it in Fedora using a .desktop file:

The above code copies the system’s desktop file for Firefox, change the name of the application and the command to execute, and then saves the copy to .local/share/applications where will be read for your Desktop Environment (I tested it in GNOME Shell) and properly displayed.

For a Windows version of this process see http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/internet/firefox/use-multiple-firefox-profiles-at-the-same-time/

1. Download Apatana Studio 3 from http://www.aptana.com/products/studio3/download and extract the content of the downloaded zip file.
2. Move Aptana Studio 3 to a standard location

   mv Aptana\ Studio\ 3 /usr/local/aptana-studio-3

3. Create a file /usr/share/applications/aptana.desktop with the following content:
   

Although Aptana can be easily run just after you download the application, I like to have menu entries for most of the software I use, hopefully I’m not the only one who thinks like that and the above can help them.

The script is available as Gist in Github and I invite you to fork it if you find any problem or have something to improve it.

UPDATE (2011/06/13): The script was modified to work on i386, i686, i586 and x86_64 machines. Not tested for other machines. Please let me know if you have any problem.

The Desktop version offers automatic extraction of document details, management of your papers with full text search, sharing and synchronization, among other features. The website provides an online backup of your library, a variety of statistics about your research behavior, a research network and a recommendation engine for papers that might interest you.

When I discover this application I thought it was awesome and wanted to use it for my own research needs. However, every time I tried to install it on my fedora (first fedora 13 and now fedora 14) I was presented with some problem: sometimes I couldn’t even start the application because Mendeley was unable to load libssl, although the library was packed with Mendeley Desktop for Generic Linux. When I was finally able to fix the problem linking the version of  libssl installed in the system, the application wouldn’t start due to a compatibility problem between the system’s libssl and the Qt libraries packed with Mendeley so I had to download the latest Qt for my system and remove the packed libraries in order to finally run application. However, there was another problem, I could explore my local library and add new papers but couldn’t synch that information with my account on the website… and it was like that for a long time, until today, when I decided to look for a solution again and this time I found it.

All the problems mentioned before can be avoided using the Qt libraries packed with the application and replacing libssl with an older version from Fedora 11. Klaas, the author of this solution, gives a set of steps to download the right libssl and replace the files in Mendeley Desktop directory:

# Download openssl-0.9.8 and extract the files from the RPM
mkdir -p /tmp/openssl
cd /tmp/openssl
wget http://archives.fedoraproject.org/pub/archive/fedora/linux/releases/11/Fedora/x86_64/os/Packages/openssl-0.9.8k-1.fc11.x86_64.rpm
rpm2cpio openssl-0.9.8k-1.fc11.x86_64.rpm | cpio -idmv

# cd to Mendeley Desktop directory. The one you extracted the files to...
cd mendeleydesktopdir/lib

# Fix symbolic links
rm -rf libssl.so.0
mv /tmp/openssl/usr/lib64/* .
ln -s libssl.so.8 libssl.so.0
rm -rf /tmp/openssl

After applying the previous snippet Mendeley Desktop can be started executing ./bin/mendeleydesktop.

I will try to write a post with steps to properly install the application with menu entries and desktop shortcuts.

The original thread where this solution was published can be seen at Mendeley’s UserVoice page.