Ever want to schedule a tweet to go out at the same time an article is published or an event is started? Want to do it without signing up to a service or some other complicated task? Well this post is for you. I am going to show you how to schedule a tweet from the command line in one line of code. You can schedule the tweet to take place ten minutes from now, 14 days, or whenever you wish. Read more »

Whenever I download something that is compressed on the Internet in a .zip, .rar or .tar.gz it is always a crapshot whether or not it contains a “container directory”. A “container directory” is a directory that contains all the other files usually with the same name as the compressed file.

For example the Zend Framework when downloaded contains a folder called, ‘ZendFramework-1.7.2‘. All the other files are contained under this folder. This is great but sometimes I want to extract the contents of the folder without the “container folder”.

This is how I used to extract the contents and remove the “container folder”: Read more »

Let’s say you are working on an important email, document, or a critical website bug and your computer suddenly crashes and wont boot up. You have to get this work done right away what do you do? With a live CD you can be up and running in two minutes with the tools you need to finish the job. When you are done with your work you can use the live CD to actually fix your computer. Whether you are a computer techie or an average Joe, I think everyone should have a live CD next to their computer ready to go.

What is a Live CD?

 
A live cd is a temporary operating system that runs from a CD instead of a hard drive. This means that it doesn’t permanently effect your computer. When your computer is rebooted and the CD is ejected everything returns back to the way it was. Unless of course you want to use the Live CD to make changes to your computer, like fixing a computer that wont boot. Maybe you need to reinstall but you don’t want to loose those family pictures you saved. Maybe there is 4 minutes left on an Ebay auction and your computer wont boot. Read more »

Flash doesn’t come with Ubuntu by default so we need to install if for all of our browsers if we want to view any sites that have flash. Adobe provides an easy deb installation file to install it for browsers like Firefox but not Opera. Although the package from Adobe doesn’t automatically install flash for Opera, adding it manually is as simple as copying over a file.

Download the .deb file from Adobe and install it like you normally do. Read more »

When programming in Perl or any language that requires you to run it from shell it is often helpful to have two screens open at once. One screen for your editor and one screen for running the program. This is how most IDEs (Integrated Development Environment) are structured; however, since I love Vim and the Linux command line I use a program called screen to make my own IDE type setup. Read more »

Mutt is my new favorite productivity tool. I have been blazing through my emails and setting up custom macros and commands like crazy. I have have found myself optimizing mutt more than actual reading email since it makes checking email go by so fast. Like Vim I would say mutt has dramatically changed the way I do things. Read more »

Ok today is going to be a quick post on how to change the Message Of The Day or MOTD. This is the message that you will see when you first log into your shell either through ssh or on the machine.

The message of the day is really just a text file. It got its name because it was easier and used less disk space to send a message to all of your users than using email. Read more »

Often times we will use bash to create scripts for backing up or transfering files. A lot of times these files are transfered over a mounted network share or an external usb drive. Since these mount points are not always mounted we need to come up with a script that will detect the mount before we perform our operation. I have come up with a script that I think is simple enough that uses df and grep to detect the mount. Read more »