How to speed up OpenOffice

To cut down OpenOffice.org’s startup time:

1. Start OpenOffice (it doesn’t matter which application you load, Calc, Impress, or Writer will all work)
2. Click Tools>Options
3. Select Java menu and uncheck “Use a Java runtime environment”
4. Select the Memory Tab and change the following options:

• Number of steps: 30
• Use for Open Office: 128
• Memory per Object: 20
• Number of Objects: 20

Next time you start an OpenOffice.org application it should open much more quickly. But it will also eat up more memory. If you have an older computer with less than 1GB of RAM, you might want to just live with a slow load time.

GNU/Emacs starts singing

When I was studying second year in college, during FStival one guy showed demo on GNU/Emacs. He played songs, read mails and etc in Emacs. After some days I asked my Emacs to sing. But it refused to sing at that time. Today Senthil came to my home. While chatting about Emacs, we decided to configure EMMS.

I am using Ubuntu Feisty Fawn in my laptop. To listen songs in Emacs, we installed emms, emacs21-el and emacs-extra. After going thro docs and adding the given below lines in .emacs file, I asked my GNU/Emacs to sing. Wow, my GNU/Emacs starts singing now. The first song we listened in my emacs was “Natpukkulae oru …” from Chennai-60028.

.emacs

(require ‘emms-setup)
(emms-standard)
(emms-default-players)

In simple words, emacs rocks

LiveStrong

Some weeks before SAP told about Livestrong wristband. This wristband was developed by Nike and the money that comes by selling this band, is used for cancer research and to raise cancer awareness. Yesterday Prabhu and myself bought this in the Nike showroom near our home. Hope after reading this post, you will also buy one.

Using a variable inside ’sed’

I have declared a variable in a file. I want to set the value of this variable, to a variable in a different file. When I tried to use ’sed’ to accomplish this, I encountered an error. The error was, its not getting the value from the old file and just places the variable name in the new file. By changing the command slightly, It works fine. Given below are the commands I used.

OLD-FILE

a=one

NEW-FILE

b=four

$ source OLD-FILE

$ sed -i ’s/b=.*/b=\${a}/’ NEW-FILE    #Output : b=${a}  #Wrong

$ sed -i ’s/b=.*/b=’$a/ NEW-FILE         #Output : b=one    #Correct One

bar[camp] @ bangalore

barcamp is an event where people with same ideas/thoughts/* meet together and share their experience with others. If you want to share/know about opensource technologies and social protocols, barcamp is the best place. This time barcamp was held in IIM, Bangalore. In this collective editions, I attended Internet and bangpypers collectives. In internet collective, they talked about Flex, Web widgets, AJAX, SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and YUI (Yahoo User Interface) libraries. Bangpypers gave a nice introduction about Python and a session on PyQt4. Barcamp- a rare camp, enjoyed a lot there and waiting for bcb5.

Collectives Collision :-

Even though I was interested in many collectives, I missed many collectives because when I was attending one collective, some other collectives were going on in some other rooms. Hope this won’t happen in bcb5.

இறை

இரை தேடும் பறவை போல்

இறை தேடும் மனிதர்களே!

கறை பல மனதில் கொண்டு

கரை சேர நினைப்பது நியாயமல்ல.

முற்றும் துறந்து முயன்றால்,

உங்கள் எண்ணங்கள் முற்றும்.

Gutsy Gibbon

The third alpha release of Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon) is ready and available for download. The new version includes the super rap Compiz Fusion 3d desktop, which should make the Gutsy Gibbon rather attractive indeed.

You can get it from here (Gutsy Gibbon).

Its an alpha release and going to rock us from 18 October 2007.

Waste is not a Waste

This title might appear insane. Many people can ask how is it possible. But Mr.Srinivasan, Vellore proved this statement “Waste is not a Waste” by his “Zero Waste Management” project. He collected the solid wastes and converted them into money by a recycling process, without creating */* pollutions. And he told about his marriage and it was entirely a different marriage I have ever heard. In his marriage, he didn’t use any polythene bags/papers/cups, didn’t waste anything, gave seeds of trees/plants to those who attended the marriage as Thamboolam and etc. He also showed a video about the population. You can see that here. If you want to know more about him, google for “Vellore Srinivasan”.

பகலவனா? பகைவனா?

அவள் காலையில் கோலம் போடும்,

அழகினைக் கண்டு கதிரவன்

வெட்கத்தால் முகம் சிவப்பது தான்,

சூரிய உதயமோ?

அவள் ஆடவருடன் பேசுவதால்,

அவர்கள் மீது கோபம் கொண்டு

சுட்டெரிப்பது தான் தற்போதைய

உச்சி  வெயிலுக்கு காரணமாய் இருக்குமோ?

அவள் மாலை வீடு திரும்பி விடுவதால்,

உலகில் ஒரு நொடியும் இருக்க மனமின்றி

ஞாயிறு மாயமாக மறைவது தான்,

சூரிய அஸ்தமனமோ?

அவள் கதிரவனுக்கா? இல்லை,

காத்திருக்கும் எனக்கா? – உலகிற்கு

ஆதவன் வேண்டும். எனக்கு

என்னுலகம் அவள் வேண்டும்.

அவள் மவுனம் கலையும் வரை,

உலகில் சூரியன் உதிக்கும். – அவள்

மனதில் நான் இருந்தால்… அன்று

மறையும் பகலவன் என்றும் வராது.

Userdir in apache2

I installed apache2 in Ubuntu Feisty and tried to setup userdir so that every user can store their files under this directory and can view this by http://hostname/~username. But I couldnt find “Userdir” in apache2.conf file. Then I came to know its very simple in Feisty. Issue the given below command:-

sudo a2enmod userdir

and then restart the apache2. And now its working fine. To enable a module in apache2 use the command “a2enmod” and to disable use “a2dismod”.