Solution
Here I suppose you have the Greasemonkey add-on installed (Hey, what is GM?). Well, I didn’t find anywhere the option “install from local file“. A GM script is called *.user.js and if you open the URL (http://...) of such a script, GM will recognize it and offer to install it (for this GM must be enabled). However! If you open your script locally (file://...), nothing happens. WTF?

Calm down. You know Python, right? The Swiss army knife of programmers. Just navigate to the directory where the GM script is located and start a web server:

$ python -m SimpleHTTPServer

Now open the URL http://localhost:8000 , click on the user script and GM will offer to install it. Python, what would I do without you?

User scripts are installed in this directory: “~/.mozilla/firefox/xxxxxxxx.default/gm_scripts“. Here you will find a config.xml file too that is created by GM.

Example
I installed this way this script: Greasemonkey: focus first input field. This script puts the focus on the first input field. I use it with Amazon and IMDB and works like a charm.

How to disable this shit?

Solution
Start “ccsm“, find the Desktop section and untick “Widget Layer“. Done.

I’ve already done similar automatizations with autopy, which is not difficult, but life is much easier with AutoKey. AutoKey is a framework for these kinds of scripts and the great news is you can program it with Python!

Links

• AutoKey HQ
• Autokey: Make Your Own Keyboard Shortcuts In Linux
• Using Autokey Scripts to Automate Your Linux Desktop
• AutoKey : Linux Utility for Text Substitution , Hotkeys and Desktop Automation (excellent tutorial)
• AutoKey API reference

Use Case
Now let’s see a concrete use case. Printing at my workplace is a bit painful. If I want to send jobs to a powerful printer here, I need to authenticate myself each time (see the figure; click for a larger image). Or, I can use another (shitty) printer…

I must provide my username / password, then click on the OK button. If I print a large document, it’s OK, but if I want to print several small files, it becomes a pain in the ass.

And here is where AutoKey comes to the rescue. I made a simple script that automates this task (click to enlarge):

There is a hotkey associated to this script: CTRL+F1. There is also a window filter, thus it cannot be activated by accident in a wrong environment.

The script is here:

with open(".../print.txt") as f:
    username = f.readline().rstrip("\n")
    password = f.readline().rstrip("\n")

keyboard.send_keys("<shift>+<tab>")
keyboard.send_keys(username)
keyboard.send_keys("<tab>")
keyboard.send_keys(password)
for _ in range(3):
    keyboard.send_keys("<tab>")
keyboard.send_keys("<enter>")
# END

I figured out that this happens when my machine was not shut down normally. Sometimes my machine doesn’t halt and I need to press the power button manually. At the next boot the timeout is gone in my grub menu.

Solution
When the machine was stopped abnormally, a “recordfail timeout” will be used. So simply add the following line to “/etc/default/grub“:

GRUB_RECORDFAIL_TIMEOUT=7

My “grub” file looks like this:

GRUB_DEFAULT=0
#GRUB_HIDDEN_TIMEOUT=0
GRUB_HIDDEN_TIMEOUT_QUIET=true
GRUB_TIMEOUT=7
GRUB_DISTRIBUTOR=`lsb_release -i -s 2> /dev/null || echo Debian`
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="acpi=noirq splash"
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX=""

GRUB_RECORDFAIL_TIMEOUT=7

After editing don’t forget to run “update-grub“.

Tip from here.

However, I want “sudo” to ask my password every time I call it.

Solution
Execute the command “sudo visudo” and add the following line to the end of the “Defaults” block:

Defaults    timestamp_timeout=0

The value “0” means it won’t cache your password.

Tip from here.

Check out fartscroll.js in action.

Languages covered in the book: Ruby, Io, Prolog, Scala, Erlang, Clojure and Haskell.

Links

• review
• @amazon
• What Programming Language to Learn (Next)

Tip
Install the Reddit Enhancement Suite Firefox add-on. The result will be a Reddit on steroids :)

Links

• RES @firefoxfacts (with a short description)
• RES @mozilla.org (install)
• RES HQ (read more)
• RES @reddit (discussion, feature requests)

Maybe it’s not the best but I like it :) And it has a free version, which is perfect for my needs.

Problem
I prefer to use the official Java version that I download directly from Oracle. However, I noticed that XMind tends to use some older versions of Java (OpenJDK, etc.). How to tell XMind which Java to use?

After starting XMind, you can verify which Java it uses. Go to: Help -> About XMind, and click on the button Installation Details. Finally choose the tab Configuration. Here find the line “-vm” and check its value in the next line. This is the virtual machine XMind has found.

Solution
Edit xmind.ini and add this line to the top:

-vm
/opt/java/bin/java

In my case “/opt/java/bin/java -version” produces the following output:

java version "1.7.0_21"
Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.7.0_21-b11)
Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM (build 23.21-b01, mixed mode)