Enabling it is fairly quick, simply click on the “Offline” link and enable access to Google gears.  If you don’t have it installed you can do so here.  That’s it!  Once synchronized clicking on the link icon reveals a small menu:

Failing to find any tool on the web that does what I need I set out to write my own.  Put very simply, at this point it copies all the files from one directory to another while moving and renaming the file based on the EXIF metadata timestamp stored within each digital photo.  From My Documents\My Pictures\DSC_1234.JPG to 2009\02\23\2009-02-23_16.28.45.jpg.  The new name and directory structure makes it easier to find “those Hawaii pics I took last summer.”

I developed the program in Python with the aim of keeping the utility platform-independent and later building a front-end GUI for it.

You can currently find the program and source code on Sourceforge (released under GPL3).  I compiled an .exe binary as well for Window users who do not have Python installed.  It currently is in beta stage and supports basic functionality.  For example: renaming based off custom template, simulating the actions, and controlling the verbosity of output.

Planned features include moving the original file, checking for duplicate pictures, and renaming RAW files as well.

Please post any comments or bugs to the Sourceforge discussion forums or bug tracker!

If you want to remap your mouse buttons from one to another, there’s useful documentation here.

On the other hand imwheel gives you the ability to binds your mouse buttons to other actions (e.g. type text, combination key strokes).  However you can probably find it within your distro’s repository and install it from there.  Once imwheel is set up, you can take a quick glance at the man pages.

If you want to modify system-wide settings edit /etc/X11/imwheelrc, otherwise modify $HOME/.imwheelrc for user specific settings.

One thing to note is that unlike rest of X configuration, tilt wheel is not represented as button 5 and button 6, with thumb buttons represented as button 7 and 8.  Instead tilt left is “Left”, tilt right is “Right”, left thumb is “Thumb1″, right thumb is “Thumb2″.

My .imwheelrc is listed below, but feel free to search for other configurations for more ideas.

".*"
None,Left,Control_L|Page_Up
None,Right,Control_L|Page_Down
None,Thumb1,Control_L|w

To enable this feature first click on the Labs icon and enable Offline mode:

Afterwards, click on the “Offline 0.1″ link in the top right hand corner next to the labs icon and allow Gmail to install the Offline option.

E-mails will begin to be downloaded after the installation.  You can then expand the download box for more information:

If you don’t have this feature yet, please keep in mind that Google typically rolls these features out over the course of several days.

Often times I would run commands that depended on processes to finish on another tab within a screen session.  Unfortunately, bash’s wait command only works within the existing shell, so I came up with a quick script to check versus executable name.

#!/bin/bash

if [ $# -ne 0 ]; then
    while pgrep ^$1 > /dev/null; do sleep 1; done;
else
    echo "Invalid Arguments"
    exit 1
fi

Obviously it’s a pretty simple script, and currently only matches commands at the beginning.  A simple modification to check for pids instead would be fairly simple.

The quickest method of upgrading Ubuntu is as follows:

1. Download the alternate ISO off BitTorrent.
2. Change your package source server from the default to the fastest available:
   a. Within Ubuntu, go to System > Administration > Software Sources
   b. Click on Download From > Other.
   c. Choose “Select Best Server”.  Ubuntu will scan for the fastest server for you.
   d. Click on “Choose Server” and close out all the dialog boxes.
3. Mount the ISO:
   sudo mount -o loop ~/ubuntu-8.10-alternate-i386.iso /media/cdrom0
4. You should get a pop up asking if you want to upgrade and click yes.  If not, run:
   gksudo “sh /cdrom/cdromupgrade”

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5. During the upgrade process you can choose whether or not to download updates off the network.  Choosing no will be the fastest option, but you’re merely postponing downloading the extra packages until later.

Update 11/15/2008:

I wanted to add that using this method will add the CD into your apt sources, prompting you to add your CD in whenever using apt-get to install packages.  Fix this by simply editting /etc/apt/sources.list and comment out all “deb cdrom:” lines at the top as root.

Update 12/17/2008:

This does not work with AMD64b installations as the alternate ISO only supports i386.

Either way, I wanted to continue testing Chrome while maintaining a relatively ad free browsing experience.  I found my answer in the form of Privoxy.

While the website is of standard geek fare and could probably use an uplift, the installation process is fairly straightforward and it’ll have you blocking most ads within minutes.

This short walkthrough is for Windows users.

1. Download the proper .exe file here.
2. Run the setup program and accept the default options.
3. Setup your internet connection to use the newly created proxy.  To do so,
   1. Go to Control Panel.
   2. Go to Internet Options.
   3. Choose the Connections tab.
   4. Click on LAN settings at the bottom.
   5. Check “Use a proxy server …” and “Bypass proxy server …”.
   6. Enter 127.0.0.1 for the address, 8118 for the port.
   7. Click on Advanced.
   8. Clear the address and port field for FTP line.
   9. Click on OK until all the dialog boxes are closed out.

You’re done!  You may need to clear the cache and force a clean refresh (ctrl + click on the refresh key or hit ctrl + F5) in the browser, but you should start seeing less ads when browsing now!

Now someone just needs to figure out how to use the proxy to block contextual text ads similar to the Customize Google extension for Firefox.

Update: I just wanted to add that these are only the Windows instructions.  If you go to Privoxy’s web site they also have downloads for Linux and OS X available.

There was a recent article posted on /. about Experimental Gameplay.  They’re probably most famous for Crayon Physics (arguably better Flash knock-off here).  In short, Experimental Gameplay started out with 4 grad students making 50 games in a single semester as an experiment, aka the shotgun approach.

Doing a little more digging, I’ve found similar programs at CMU (where the Experimental Gameplay group came from), компютри втора употреба??????Stanford, and UCSD.  Sadly, I haven’t found anything similar here at UT Austin with the exception of CS 378, but that class  isn’t offered every semester.  EGaDS is a student org here on campus that tries to fill in that niche, but I really haven’t found time or motivation to go to any of their meetings.

Either way, I’ve really wanted to get into games programming as a hobby but still need to learn all the technical aspects first.