All you need to do is install this package called “BlueProximity” from the Add/Remove programs in Software manager, or you can simply enter this command in termianl:

tekrajesh@tekrajesh-laptop:~$ sudo apt-get install blueproximity

Once BlueProximity is installed, run it from Applications>Accessories>BlueProximtiy. Then “Scan for devices” in the Bluetooth device tab. Once you see your cellphone, choose “Use selected device” and enter the distance details in “Proximity Details” tab. Once you are done, just take away your cellphone for certain seconds and then you will witness the maGic !!!

P.S. Make sure both your laptop’s and  cellphone’s bluetooth is swtiched on.

For doing this, programs such as GIMP and other image editing tools may not be the best method due to their high memory consumption. So I have come across a very handy command-line tool available for performing this task, and it is called “imagemagick”. In order to install this, type the following code in the terminal:

sudo apt-get install imagemagick

Once installed, you can now resize any image just by writing a line in the terminal. Let us suppose you want to resize an image named “image_large.jpg” to 50% of its original size and name the resized image to “image_resized.jpg”. For doing this, in the terminal, type the following code:

convert -resize 50% image_large.jpg image_resized.jpg

If the image you want to resize is located in the desktop, you should give the path accordingly. The following command does the job for this:

convert -resize 50% /home/user/Desktop/image_large.jpg /home/user/Desktop/image_resized.jpg

Note that the file named “image_resized.jpg” is the new resized file and can be given any name according to your choice.

You can even resize the image to the size greater than the original by giving attributes such as 120% or anything like that, but doing so may reduce the quality of the resized image.

This is how I normally resize my images as it not only saves time but also becomes helpful when you have a low configuration desktop which finds programs such as GIMP to run very hard. If you have any better way of resizing images, please share them in the comments section below.

So here’s a good news for all Linux fans. Here later in this post I have provided link to the best Linux/FOSS stickers you could possibly imagine of. There are two whole books of these stickers and trust me, I can’t wait to get them printed ASAP. There is atleast a sticker for every person here, be it a GIMP user, a firefox die hard, a Python addicted, Gentoo users, Ubuntu users, Open Suse users, stickers showing penguin, stickers with Torvalds and Stallman, stickers with 4 freedom laws and the list never seems to come to an end. So explore all of them, and Print It Yourself (PIY)…

L I N U X / F O S S   S T I C K E R S  B O O K  –1

L I N U X / F O S S   S T I C K E R S  B O O K  –2

P.S  Each sticker book is a 10 MB file in ‘odg’ format which needs OpenOffice.org to open.

So, enjoy downloading !!

AptOnCD, a deb package which can be downloaded HERE backups all your installed packages (deb files) and their dependencies into a CD, DVD or an ISO image such that if you happen to crash your OS or meanwhile do a fresh install of your distro, you can restore all those packages without the need of an internet connection. Moreover, you do not need to remember what all packages you had installed in your system to replicate it to new system ( I remember myself noting down all the important packages’ name prior to performing a fresh install Ubuntu ). The only thing you need to install in your new system before restoring the iso image is AptOnCD application itself and from there, you can restore all your packages by pointing to the iso image where you had earlier stored (removable storage would be the best option to store) and clicking restore.

P.S.After installing the AptOnCD, you can run the application either from System>Adminstration>AptOnCD or in the terminal, type “aptoncd” (without quotes). It is a good idea to backup the aptoncd.deb package which you downloaded from above link in order to avoid the hassle of downloading it again from the new system.

So, do you have any better way of backing up your installed applications in Linux, if yes, please share in the comments below !!!

Install a package called Curl (for Debian/Ubuntu) with the command

sudo apt-get install curl

Then, create a file named ‘twitter’ in /usr/bin using the command.

gedit /usr/bin/twitter

Now in the file ‘twitter’, paste the below code by replacing yourusername and yourpassword with your actual twitter username and password respectively.

curl –basic –user “yourusername:yourpasswd” –data-ascii “status=`echo $@|tr ‘ ‘ ‘+’`” “http://twitter.com/statuses/update.json” -o /dev/null; echo Message Sent!

Now give the file executable permission by using the command:

sudo chmod +x /usr/bin/twitter

Thats it. You’re done. Just start tweeting now in the command line by typing twitter{space}{your message}

My first command like tweet reads like:

techrajesh@techrajesh-laptop:~$ twitter my first command line tweet! For command line tweeting, vist www.techrajesh.wordpress.com

What did your first command line tweet read like?

First of all, you need to be a Firefox user to do this. Under firefox, install an add-on called GreaseMonkey. Once installed a small icon will appear on the status bar of your browser. Next, you need to install the Facebook Purity Script for the GreaseMonkey. Then make sure that both the GreaseMonkey and Facebook Purity Script is enabled by right clicking the icon in the status bar and checking the “manage user scripts” option. Once done, open your Facebook page and see the results. The greasemonkey script “Facebook Purity Script” removes all the third pary application’s notifications  such as quizzes and games created by external developers leaving behind your original notifications about status, messages, comments and so on. Now the facebook becomes pure as it should be.

P.S. Facebook Account Settings always do not have the option to strongly disable these third party notifications, so this script for GreaseMonkey really gets the job done. If you have any better ways to do so, please respond in comments below.

$ df -h   #Displays the hard disk space usage

$ killall [app_name] #Kills a running application by its name

$ whereis [app_name] #Displays the installation directory of any application

$ sudo !! #Runs the last entered command as root

$ ping -i 60 -a [ip address] #Makes an alarm when an ip address goes online

$ mount /path/to/file.iso /mnt/cdrom -o loop #Mounts an iso file into cdrom

$ free -m #Displays free and used RAM

$ whoami #Displays current user

$ uname -a #Displays computer name and OS information including the kernel version

$ ffmpeg -f x11grab -s wxga -r 25 -i :0.0 -sameq /tmp/out.mpg #Records your desktop

$ ls /dev/disk/by-uuid/ -alh #Finds Universal Unique Identifier (UUID) of your partitions

$ history #Displays a list of previously typed commands

$ sudo apt-get install chntpw

The windows partition should be already mounted into /media and in terminal, change your path to ‘WINDOWS/system32/config’. Once you are in the config directory in terminal, use the command:

$ sudo chntpw SAM

After you do so, there will be some description text which should not bother you at all. At the end in order to reset the password to blank, press * and click enter. Thats it, you’re done. Now just restart your computer and reboot from Windows.

In case you have no Ubuntu installed in your machine, that’s not a problem. Even an Ubuntu Live CD can work in this case. Just boot from Ubuntu Live CD and follow the above process.