Linux Hack3r

After realizing the endless possibilities of having a Linux server in my home, I quickly set one up (using Ubuntu Server Edition). Now I have a server with SSH, HTTP, FTP, and NFS setup in my basement. I love using all these features, but I can’t stress enough that typing the internal IP address of the server (192.168.1.250) got old very fast. So I found a quick and easy solution: /etc/hosts

Simply open /etc/hosts in your favorite text editor (you’ll need root priviliges), go to the bottom line, and follow this format:

192.168.1.250 Server

The first option is the IP address of whatever you’d like to add a name to, and the second option is the name. So after saving this file, I can now type Server instead of 192.168.1.250 anytime I’d like to access my server. So now I can SSH into my server by typing “ssh Server”. Have an HTTP server setup? Open Firefox and simply type “Server” in the address bar! How simple is that?

Google’s Picasa, now at version 2.7, has really matured in the past few months. The last time I tried it, it was still in its infancy, very slow, buggy, and was yet to be perfected. I tried it again over the weekend, and was simply stunned. Not only does it display images very smoothly and flawlessly, it is also packed with eye candy and extra features. So here it is, a list of Picasa’s lesser known features.

• Create Video (Create–>Movie)

Simply select the photos you’d like, click (Create–>Movie), and then follow the simple prompts. Before long, you’ll have yourself a nice AVI file like the one below.

• Create Collage (Create–>Picture Collage)

Once again, simply select the desired photos, click (Create–>Picture Collage), and select the desired effect. Within seconds you’ll have a collage simular to the one below.

• Export HTML Gallery (Folder–>Export as HTML Page)

After taking several hundred photos, who really wants to manually create thumbnails of larger images, and then create an HTML page with the thumbnails linking to the larger images? Picasa makes this easy for you. Simply select the folder you want, click (Folder–>Export as HTML Page), then select a template, resolution, title, and destination. Within a few momments, you’ll have a full fledged HTML photo gallery. For an example gallery, click here.

• Create A Gift CD (Folder–>Create a Gift CD)

Remember all those times that after burning a CD full of vacation pictures for family, you have to instruct over the phone how they can view the photos on the CD? With Picasa, simply select the folder you want to share, click(Folder–>Create a Gift CD), and Picasa will burn a CD with an autorunner, that way when your computer naive relatives insert the CD into their computer, the images will automatically pop up with different albums and slideshows. This slideshow also works perfect in Wine in a Linux environent, minus the autorun feature.

• Backup Pictures (Tools–>Backup Pictures)

After taking hundreds if not thousands of photos on vacation, the worst thing that can happen to them is for them to be lost. No matter how many hard drives you keep the pictures mirrored on, you need an off site backup as well. Picasa makes this extremely easy, and only costs the price of a CD. Whatever your usual method of burning photos to CD’s is, Picasa will top it. Not only does it do the basic burning of the CD, it also keeps a record of which images have been backed up. Go on vacation, backup those photos. Christmas (hundreds of photos later) comes and goes, and you click the (Tools–>Backup Pictures) button again, and it knows you’ve already backed up your vacation photos, so it only burns the photos you haven’t backed up. For anyone that takes plenty of photos, this will save you hours every month.

Imagine the next time you are trying reading a great list of Ubuntu programs. One of them catches your eye, and you want to try it. Instead of either using Add/Remove or opening a terminal to install the program, you simply click a link. A message box pops up asking you if you want to install the program, and then you enter your password. Before you could have found the program in Add/Remove, the program is installed! With Apturl, this is now a reality.

You must first install Apturl. To do this, simply run this in terminal:

sudo apt-get install apturl

After Apturl is installed, you’ll need to restart your current web browser. Now if you would like to test Apturl, you’ll need an link won’t you? For details of the program, click “Gnome-Main-Menu”. To actually install the program, click “Install”.

Gnome-Main-Menu:Install

Hopefully that worked! Now before everyone starts complaining of how “insecure” this is, consider this. All that is really being done is apt-get is being told what program to install. So a “malicious” blogger can’t install “harmful” software because it isn’t in your repositories. Apturl only works with programs in your repositories. If apt-get can’t install it, neither can Apturl! You can’t run commands using Apturl, so no worries of automatic disk formatting!

What if you would like to use this on your blog? It is very simple to do. For example, for the above install link, I’ve simply created a hyperlink to:

apt:gnome-main-menu