Year: 2007

Tired of spending hours in front of a dull and boring desktop? Then I suggest that you spice up your workspace by installing Hot-Babe.

Hot-Babe is a unique application which displays CPU utilization using images of a hot babe on your desktop, which is a nice addition to your desktop. Ubuntu Linux users can get Hot-babe application from GetDeb.net click and run software portal, however please read the disclaimer below before installing hot-babe.

Disclaimer, Hot-Babe is NSFW !!
For starters, Hot babe is literally a ‘hot’ application. This may not suitable for your daily use if you’re easily offended by the way it displays CPU utilization status.

When the CPU is idle, Hot-Babe will display a fully dresed girl. As the system activity increases girl begins to undress bit by bit (to reflect the system getting hotter) until she become completely naked when your system reaches 100% CPU utilization. Hence the name, hot-babe!

So if you’re still interested to install and use Hot-babe, please make sure that you’re using it responsibly and make sure that there’s no children around especially when the computer is extremely busy!

[tags]hot babe, applications, system, linux, ubuntu, system monitoring, open source, nsfw[/tags]

If you’re using Ubuntu then you must have been familiar with how you can easily install GNU/Linux software from one of its software repositories.
However there are times that the application that you are looking for isn’t available on repositories for various reasons or is outdated for quite some time.
Enter GetDeb, an unofficial software portal that provides additional software packages for Ubuntu Linux distributions. GetDeb compliments Ubuntu repositories by listing various software that is not available in official repo (main,multivers,universe).
What makes GetDeb different ?
For starters, you do not need to put GetDeb servers in your apt-get sources list. All you need to do is surf GetDeb website using the default Mozilla Firefox browser, and it will list software available for your current Ubuntu release.
Installing software from GetDeb is as easy as clicking your mouse button, after that the usual firefox dialog will appear and all you need to do is click ok to install the selected software package using GDebi.
GetDeb requires that you enable Ubuntu Extra Repositories as describe in Ubuntu Wiki.
Although it is not a new approach, GetDeb does provide choice for Ubuntu users to choose which software to install in their pc by merely using a web browser.

debian, ubuntu, click and run, dapper drake, edgy eft, deb, repositories, apt-get

Ever experience application freeze in Linux? You can easily spot them because their windows are not responding and it has blank content. Non-Responding application also eats up your memory and your precious CPU cycle. Some even prevent you from running other critical applications.

But how are you going to close a non-responding application? Clicking the close button surely won’t help because the application does not response to your mouseclicks. For some people, the solution is to quit Xwindows (GNOME) session and start it again, but that would consume too much time by re-initialising the Windows Manager back.

One thing that you can do that actually can help you eliminate non-responding application is by using the ‘xkill’ application. To use it, (either in GNOME or KDE) you need to press Alt-F2, and type xkill to run the app. Your mouse will turn into something that resemble skull bone. Click on the non-responding Windows, and the windows will be forced closed.

There you go, a not so subtle solution to non-responding windows in Linux.

[tags]linux,ubuntu,debian,xwindows,gnome,xkill,desktop[/tags]

I know some people love to store their favorite movies or video clips in their phone (especially nokia phones). Here’s a quick how to, to convert movies and video clips to a format suitable for use in mobile phone.

For this thing to work, we will be using the multipurpose encoder/decoder – ffmpeg.

Convert from MPG to 3GP
ffmpeg -i video_clip.mpg -s qcif -vcodec h263 -acodec mp3 -ac 1 -ar 8000 -ab 32 -y clip.3gp

Convert from AVI to 3GP
ffmpeg -i video_clip.avi-s qcif -vcodec h263 -acodec mp3 -ac 1 -ar 8000 -r 25 -ab 32 -y clip.3gp

Convert from 3GP to AVI
ffmpeg -i clip.3gp -f avi -vcodec xvid -acodec mp3 -ar 22050 file.avi

With these method you wont need to spend a dime on expensive proprietary encoder anymore to transfer your favorite music files into your phone.

It should be noted that, the ffmpeg package from the default installation in Ubuntu are pretty useless for practical purposes. Please read this to enable 3gp encoding in Ubuntu : Enable mp3 and amr support in ffmpeg ( Ubuntu )

[tags]ubuntu, linux, nokia, 3gp, ffmpeg, debian, windows media player, media player, open source, encoding, ripping[/tags]