Harsh J

If you were trying to boot up and install (netinstall) ArchLinux under VMWare Fusion, you might run into network problems at the installation stage since the base setup doesn’t seem to configure the DHCP right.

The fix is to do the following to setup the DHCP config manually:

1. nano /etc/rc.conf

2. Append these contents at the end: https://gist.github.com/949987

3. /etc/rc.d/network restart

4. Done! You should have proper network connectivity now.

Notes notes notes. Moar Notes!

A simple google for changing the Google Chrome web-browser’s UA (user-agent) string would lead you to a horribly old, yet popular result that would ask you to basically hex-hack the chrome binary [Winks at labnol.org]. Ugh, ugh, ugly for 2010!

For those who don’t know yet, you can start a fresh chrome window with a custom UA using the –user-agent command-line parameter while launching it:

# Using chrome, or chromium -- as you like it.
chrome --user-agent="My User Agent String. Bow to it, statisticians. Kidding."

You can then visit http://whatsmyuseragent.com/ to verify the results of the user-agent property change in Chrome/Chromium.

The command-line parameter, –user-agent, is (not very) surprisingly not documented under the supplied manual page.

Am no follower of the Pomodoro technique nor do I know its specifics but before you go ahead and try out those multiple Adobe AIR applications or use the GNOME-oriented Workrave, please try out this software called RSIBreak which was built for KDE specifically.

RSIBreak - Repetitive Strain Injury prevention software for KDE

It isn’t a full fledged timer feature but I think it will get your needs covered with its offerings easily enough. One of the amazing utilities I’ve used, built with KDE Libraries. It should be available in your Linux distribution’s software repository too.

Turn those blues to violet using Violet

Violet was the UML modelling tool I had to use to save me some fun-later-time and make the whole process quick and painless. It also supports exporting to an image format and all in all it is a lovable, simple and just-works tool. But do note that it uses Java to do all that magic.

The other alternative I had was Umbrello which sadly isn’t in a very usable state yet. Perhaps this summer its GSoC fix may make it better. Wish I knew enough of QGraphicsView stuff to try it myself

Well, since I couldn’t fix a particular bug myself and the other developers think all is working well with Yahoo under KDE’s Kopete software, I had to switch over to the second best way to connect to IM networks – BitlBee via Konversation. This post is merely a note to self for adding Jabber accounts for GMail and Google Apps Mail accounts in BitlBee, once setup.

To add GMail is easy, using the Jabber protocol:

account add jabber username@gmail.com password

To add Google Apps Mail needs one more step:

account add jabber username@domain.tld password
account set 0/server talk.google.com
# You may want to replace '0' with your account number via 'account list'

account on and have fun with your now-more-powerful IRC Client.