KenFallon.com

Start -> settings -> Control Panel

• Switch to classic view
• Sounds and Audio Devices -> Sound Tab -> No Sounds
• System -> Advanced Tab -> Performance -> Settings -> Adjust for best performance
• Taskbar and  Start Menu ->
  UNTICK: Lock the taskbar, Group similar taskbar buttons, Hide inactive icons
  TICK: Show Quick Launch
• Taskbar and  Start Menu ->Start Menu tab -> Classic Start Menu -> Customize ->
  TICK: Display Administrative Tools, Show Small Icons in Start menu, Use Personalized Menus
• Display -> Theme -> Windows Classic
• System -> Remote
  TICK: Allow users to connect remotely to this computer
  UNTICK: Allow Remote Assistance invitations to be sent from this computer

Start -> Programs -> Accessories + Right Click and select Explore

• Press the Folders button
• Copy the links Command Prompt, Notepad, and Windows Explorer to the taskbar.
• View -> Details
• Tools -> Folder Options ->View tab ->
  TICK: Display contents fo system folders, Display the full path in title bar, do not cache thumbnails,  Show hidden files and folders, Launch folder window in separate process
  UNTICK: Hide extensions for known file types, Hide protected operating system files (recommended), Use simple file sharing (Recommended)
• Press Reset all Folders then Apply to all folders.

Start -> settings -> Control Panel -> View -> Icons

Start -> Settings -> Network Connections

• UNTICK: Client for Microsoft Networks, File and Printer Sharing for Microsoft Networks, QoS Packet Scheduler.

Start -> Programs Administrative Tools -> Computer Management -> System Tools -> Local Users and Groups -> Users + Select your login and change your password.

Start -> Windows update + keep updating/rebooting until everything except silverlight is installed.

• Install AGV Anti Virus
• Firefox
• Video Lan Client
• FileZilla
• Pidgin + Spelling
• Install TrueCrypt
• Putty
• Change IE search bar to google
• Install Flash, Java
• libreoffice
• 7-zip
• winMd5Sum
• InfraRecorder
• irfanview
• Thunderbird
• WinSCP
• GNU utilities for Win32

Browser Plugins

Adblock Plus
Paused!
HTTPS Everywhere.
RequestPolicy
FlashBlock
NoScript
QuickProxy
xmarks

I’ve been using faubackup eversince deepgeek recommended it in episode 85 of Hacker Public Radio. Basically there is a directory for every backup that shows all the files for each backup. If a file is the same across the backups then hard linkes are used to save space. Faubackup takes care of the backup and the restore is up to you. As the backup is just a flat directory you can restore how you like.

I chose to restore using secure copy and recursively copy entire directories, scp -r. Fully thing was that my 80G disk filled up with only 12G of data. After some investigation I discovered that the wine application had a symlink pointing C: to the root of the file system. Every time the scp program hit this link it would re-copy the entire drive agan in the directory where the symlink was.

I found the answer here from the O’Relly book SSH, The Secure Shell: The Definitive Guide by by Daniel J. Barrett and Richard E. Silverman ISBN: 0-596-00011-1.

Although scp can copy directories, it isn’t necessarily the best method. If your directory contains hard links or soft links, they won’t be duplicated. Links are copied as plain files (the link targets), and worse, circular directory links cause scp1 to loop indefinitely. (scp2 detects symbolic links and copies their targets instead.) Other types of special files, such as named pipes, also aren’t copied correctly. A better solution is to use tar, which handles special files correctly, and send it to the remote machine to be untarred, via SSH:
$ tar cf – /usr/local/bin | ssh server.example.com tar xf –

Another handy tip when trying to copy directories and you want to preserve permissions is to use:

cd /source && tar cf – * | ( cd /destination; tar xfp -)

I needed an A0 poster of the USA for a family quiz and was a bit worried as to how I was going to go about it.The first problem would be getting an vector image given that a bitmap image would not scale well. Then the problem of how to get it printed on a big A0 sheet. (Approx 16 A4/Letter pages)

Well the first hit for "vector map usa" was http://cardhouse.com/design/free/usa.htm who has a nice map without text. The map data is public domain and was taken from the CIA. So far so good.

Next I wanted a way to print out the map on 16 A4 pages so I could stick them together to make one big A0 poster. Well a few weeks ago I heard on the http://www.validsyntax.com/ podcast about a program called posterazor but when I searched through the kubuntu repositories I found a nice command line program "poster" by Jos van Eijndhoven that did the same thing.

When I printed out the poster the orientation was wrong and I wanted to edit it out so only the states under Canada were visible so I needed to be able to edit the eps files. I could have opened the file directly in Inkscape but I chose to convert the file to svg first following the instructions on Zoltans Blogg . I modified the image in Inkscape and saved it as a new .eps file and then used poster to create a 16 page bigger version. I printed that big file using KGhostView. Here’s the summary:

wget http://cardhouse.com/design/free/usanotext.zip
unzip usanotext.zip
poster -v -iA4 -mA4 -pA0 usanotextfinal2005.eps > usanotextfinal2005A0.eps
pstoedit -dt -f sk usanotextfinal2005.eps usanotextfinal2005.sk
skconvert usanotextfinal2005.sk usanotextfinal2005.svg
inkscape usanotextfinal2005.svg
poster -v -iA4 -mA4 -pA0 usanotextfinal2005-edited-in-inkscape.eps > usanotextfinal2005A0.eps
kghostview usanotextfinal2005A0.eps

Last year I needed to print of some colour booklets and the volume was so small that it worked out only €30 more expensive to buy a printer than get a print shop to print them. I had not a lot of time for research but I made sure to check two thing:

1. That it would work with Linux.
2. That I could refill the toner cartridges.

A quick check on http://www.linuxprinting.org (now http://openprinting.org/show_printer.cgi?recnum=HP-Color_LaserJet_1600) shows that the printer is working mostly supported. The mostly working refers to a problem printing colour from some applications. Fortunately one of these programs is not my pdf viewer so in applications where printing colour is a problem I just print to PDF and then print the pdf from the pdf viewer.

Unfortunately I discovered that just because people sell refill cartridges for the printer doesn’t mean that the will work. Well apparently HP have installed a starter toner cartridges or to be more accurate almost empty cartridges. My local refill shop then informed me that HP designed the printer that refilling it would lead to the toner leaking out. So I had no option but to buy new HP cartridges. Knowing both facts I would probably still have bought the printer anyway.

If you do have this printer and want to get it working with Windows you just load the drivers. Linux and mac have to load drivers into CUPS. On a Debian based system you can install the drivers as follows:

Install cups (common unix printing software)

aptitude install cupsys cupsys-pt foomatic-db cupsys-client foomatic-db-engine foomatic-filters-ppds gtklp foo2zjs gs-gpl cupsys-pt gtklp

Get the driver files from the Internet, move them to the correct directory and restart the cups system

getweb 1600
sudo mv *.icm /usr/share/foo2hp/icm/
/etc/init.d/cupsys restart

Once cups is restarted you can connect to it from your browser by going to http://localhost:631/admin

• You can the select add printer and enter any Name: you want. For example “My_Laserjet_1600” and then click continue.
• What you choose next is dependant on you but in my situation I selected the Device: as IPP and the Device URI: as socket:192.168.x.y:9100.
• Now you select HP as the Make:
• HP Color Laserjet 1600 Foomatic/foo2hp (recommended) (en) as the Model.
• Then press Add Printer to add the printer (you may be asked for a username and password). If all went well you should get a message like Printer My_Laserjet_1600 has been sucessfully added

You might also want to select Set Printer Options and change Page Size: to A4 and Color Mode: to Color but that’s up to you.

The computer sector is one of the few places where you know you’ve done you job well if nobody notices you’ve changed things. Well I’ve just finished updating my Gusty Kubuntu install using the official update graphical method without any problems. This was the first time I’ve not used the aptitude update && aptitude dist-upgrade method and it went flawlessly. Yes I had to install truecrypt but that was an easy three step process.

1. wget http://www.truecrypt.org/downloads/truecrypt-5.1a-ubuntu-x86.tar.gz
2. tar xzvf truecrypt-5.1a-ubuntu-x86.tar.gz
3. sudo dpkg -i truecrypt-5.1a/truecrypt_5.1a-0_i386.deb

Before I did the upgrade I made sure that I had backed up and restored my laptop to another computer. In that case a spare laptop where I had already installed Ubuntu and Kubuntu Hardy as a clean install. Both versions detected and activated my external speakers, a feat which Gusty and Vista failed to do. All in all the upgrade has added even more polish to a great desktop.

Congratulations and thanks to all the Kubuntu, Ubuntu and Debian teams.