Find API keys on GitHub

Problem
You need an API key for a service (like Google or Imgur) and you want to use someone else’s key. Naturally, this is just a theoretical problem.

Solution
This blog post shows how to harvest API keys. In short:

• visit GitHub’s advanced search page
• type in a keyword (for instance “AIza” for Google API keys)
• hit the Search button and choose Code on the left side

Stack Overlow-like sites

We all know Stack Overflow, right? And there are some similar sites, specialized for Ubuntu, LaTeX, etc. But is there a list that groups these sites?

Well, today I went down to the bottom of a SO page and guess what I found:

I’ve been using SO for years but I never noticed this list…

Send fax for free

http://www.labnol.org/internet/send-free-fax-worldwide/27105/

I didn’t try it. When I need to send a fax, I will :)

Open a blank tab in Firefox

Problem
When you open a new tab in Firefox, it shows the thumbnails of the most visited sites. This is OK if you are alone, but what if a colleague sits next to you and asks you to check something together? It can easily become embarrassing…

Solution
Use the add-on Tab Mix Plus:

Firefox: open quick search result in a new tab

Problem
You want to use Google Search so you do this: open new tab, open Google Search, type search term and hit Enter. Could it be simplified?

Solution
The preferred way is this: jump to the quick search box with CTRL+K, type in your search term and hit Enter. The search result should be opened in a new tab.

Well, by default the result opens in the current window. Here is how to get it opened in a new tab:

“Type about:config into the address bar, and then put the following into the filter box: browser.search.openintab. Double-click the value to change it to true.“

This tip is from here.

mc problem: cannot chmod target file, operation not permitted

Problem
With mc, you want to copy lots of small files to an NTFS partition. However, for every file it drops a warning: “cannot chmod target file”. Either you switch to root or you sit next to the keyboard and press Skip for every single file. WTF?

Solution
When you press F5, untick the option “Preserve attributes“. Done.

Ubuntu 11.10 — Oneiric Ocelot

The upgrade went well. Here I collect some notes.

If you right click on the Desktop, you’ll notice that the “Create Launcher” option is gone :( Here is how to get the dialog:

gnome-desktop-item-edit ~/Desktop/ --create-new

For this you need the “gnome-panel” package installed. Tip from here.

I still find it very frustrating that there is no bottom panel. When I launched “gnome-panel”, it also added a top panel which hid the Unity panel :( But I found a working solution: add “gnome-panel” to the list of startup applications and log out. When you log back in, you will have a basic bottom panel with the Unity top panel. Now it’s usable for me.

Ubuntu 11.10 switched from gdm to lightdm. So if you want to stop the X, use “sudo service lightdm stop“.

I had some problems with the terminals: sometimes they were not refreshed correctly, so the text became unreadable. Here I found a fix: open CompizConfig-Settings-Manager (ccsm), go to Workarounds, and turn on “Force synchronization between X and GLX”. (edit: it didn’t help… If you have a solution, tell me.)

The global menu is still annoying, here is how to get rid of it (tip from here):

sudo apt-get remove appmenu-gtk3 appmenu-gtk appmenu-qt

If you want to enable the screen saver, check out this article.

To enable/disable autologin, go to Settings -> System Settings… -> User Accounts, Unlock it (top right corner) and perform your modification.

Install Microsoft core fonts:

sudo apt-get install ttf-mscorefonts-installer

Shorten the URL of your wordpress posts

If the URL of your wordpress post is too long, then you can use this trick.

Screenshot (inserted from here):

Of course, there are tons of URL shortener services, but who knows how long they keep your URLs…

Learn Vim in 30 minutes

Vim is one of the best text editors (if not THE best…). You can learn the basics in 30 minutes. All you have to do is launch the following command:

vimtutor

Then follow the instructions.

Vim has a learning curve, I admit, but it’s logical and not complicated. You don’t have to learn all its tricks at once. Learn the basics with vimtutor, read it over again if you need, then start using it. If you need some intermediate stuff that is not explained in the tutorial, look after it on the web.

Warning! Vim is highly addictive! Once you get used to it, you don’t want to use any other text editors. You’ve been warned! :)

Links

You can find my .vimrc settings here.

Copy the URL and the title of the current web page to the clipboard

The following tips are from the post “My vimperator settings“, but they are somewhat hidden in the text :)

So, when browsing, a common task is to get the address or the title of the current web page. Getting the address is easy, but for the title we need to consult the page source. How to get these data painlessly and copy them to the clipboard?

Steps:

• Visit the post “My vimperator settings” and install vimperator + my config file.
• For copying the URL address, use the command “y”.
• For copying the title of the page, use the command “ALT + y”.