Hacking is always fun. That’s why I always lose focus on everything one interesting hack. That’s why I spent whole last night trying to figure out how to mimic Window focus event in a shell script. Though this is completely new to me, you maybe very much comfortable with implementing it :) . If so please let me know in comments.

Anyway here is my story.

I found this nice command line IM client called centerIM (Thanx @chathuraw for info). Once I got it set up I was just scanning on it’s documentation page & came across this interesting part “External actions & auto-responses“. I wrote a script right away for GUI notifications, inspired by notify.pl script for irssi. Here is the script if you are interested.

Since the load of IM messages was very high at a time & It was useless when the terminal window with centerIM was already focused (which means I’m chatting on centerIM) I was thinking of getting notifications only when centerIM window is not in focus. Few Google searches lead me to very limited resources & I chose xwininfo & xdpyinfo commands for my work.

Workaround: I’m using gnome for now & so gnome-terminal as my terminal emulator. I had to set edit > profilepreferences > Title & command option to keep initial title, in order to have “Terminal” as the terminal window name all the time.

And ran xininfo to get following output.

chanux@nim:~$ xwininfo -name Terminal

xwininfo: Window id: 0x3800003 "Terminal"

 Absolute upper-left X:  0
 Absolute upper-left Y:  52
 Relative upper-left X:  0
 Relative upper-left Y:  27
 Width: 1280
 Height: 691
 Depth: 24
 Visual Class: TrueColor
 Border width: 0
 Class: InputOutput
 Colormap: 0x20 (installed)
 Bit Gravity State: NorthWestGravity
 Window Gravity State: NorthWestGravity
 Backing Store State: NotUseful
 Save Under State: no
 Map State: IsViewable
 Override Redirect State: no
 Corners:  +0+52  -0+52  -0-25  +0-25
 -geometry 156x37+0+25

This can be used to get the window id of the windw which runs the script.

Then I can find the focused window at the moment as following.

chanux@nim:~$ xdpyinfo |grep focus
focus:  window 0x3800004, revert to Parent

I fetched the window IDs with a little bit more work.

Anyway the problem I had is that, I get 0×3800003 (at this example) or likewise for the Terminal window id & even when the Terminal id is focused I get 0×3800004 as the focused window id. Yes I know with some more work I can manage to handle that & come to a point that I can compare those window Ids to check for the focused window. But I reall like to know why that difference come up. Anyone have an explanantion? Or anyone like to mess with this?

Following is the way I fetched window ids from above outputs

chanux@nim:~$ xwininfo -name "Terminal" | grep xwininfo | cut -d " " -f 4
0x3800003
chanux@nim:~$ xdpyinfo | grep focus | cut -d " " -f 4 | sed s/,//
0x3800004

I found This nice howto via @meaningful. Looks like the howto is for older version of Twitterfox. Here goes how to do it on Twitterfox 1.8.1 (The version I use right now)

And I recommend you to update to Twitterfox 1.8.1 coz it’s really improved.

First go here:

<path to your Firefox profile directory>/extensions/twitternotifier@naan.net/chrome

[you'll learn howto find your Firefox profile directory (AKA folder) here. There are too many operating systems. I can't cover them all :P  ]

There is a file called TwitterFox.jar

Open it & go in to directory called content. There you’ll find the file called twitterfox.js, you better open it with a text editor.

In the top region of the file you’ll find TINYURL_CREATE_API variable. it is set to use tinyurl api by default. I edited it to use my favorite URL shortnet tr.im by editing it to look like this.

var TINYURL_CREATE_API = “http://tr.im/api/trim_simple?url=”;

You can repalce http://tr.im/api/trim_simple?url= with the API of your favorite URL shortner.

You need to restart Firefox for the changes to be effective.

Hope it works ;) . Anything not clear? Just ask in comments.

PS: You may not like to try this but I don’t give a shit :P .

I am really good at procrastinating, I forget little things so easily, I have N.A.D.D and I work on specific projects. So in order to make my life a liiitle bit hassle free, I was looking for a ToDo manager tool. First I found Tiddlybackpack which had a dead simple interface but unfortunatley didn’t work with Firefox on Gnu/Linux. Then I found MonkeyGTD which looked too complex for my needs & then I checked tiddlydu2. However what I use now is GTDTiddlyWiki which is even simpler. It’s not as simple as tiddlybackpack but it’s a decent GTD tool which would fit anyones needs. May be you have already realized that these tools are based on tiddlywiki.

Yes you have to learn a bit before you start to actually use any Tiddly based GTD/ToDo tool. I found a good guide here.

You only have to download one single .html file to start working with any of those tiddly GTD tools. Once you save the .html file to somewhere on your computer just open it & start managing your todos. You can put it on a flash drive & take it anywhere with you. Or you can put it in your email account as an attachment. You can put it on your web server too. But hey… what I do is way cooler 8)  . I ‘drop it like it’s hot’ :D .

I use this cool tool Dropbox to sync my GTD/ToDo list. I put all my GTD/Todo stuff in to one directory called GTD and just created a symlink from Dropbox directory to GTD. tada. that’s all. [for now I have all the GTD tools I mentioned before]. Heres how to create the symlink.

$ ln -s -T /path/to/GTD/directory ~/Dropbox/GTD  [Read man page of ln or check here.]

(You can still put GTD tools in Dropbox directory itself. But you know I’m mad :) )

Now I can use my todo list when I’m offline, Dropbox will sync it for me with the dropbox on web when I’m online. So that I can use my todo manager from anywhere through Dropbox web interface. (for that you have to untick “Hide editing features when viewed over HTTP” option in advanced options).

Though I haven’t actually tried yet, Dropbox can sync through multiple computers too :) and it means you can have your todo list on Your Desktop computer, laptop or office computer, so easily sinced . And also I can share my files with friends trogh Dropbox, todo list can be shared too ;) .

Hope you make your life more manged with thses tools. Here goes the ‘cherry on top’, “Make your GTDTiddlyWiki your hompage”.

PS: If you wonder what GTD stands for, it’s Get Things Done :) .

New update available HERE

This was a big headache for me. Portable Firefox is a great piece of work but I couldn’t experience it’s ease with my OS love GNU/Linux (there is Gnu/Linux installed in our campus). So the bad old hacker in me wanted some way to make it happen. Even after few Googlings, didn’t find a How-to to do this. So I thought of hacking it for myself. This is what I got ultimately. Once thinngs are ready it takes maximum 4 easy steps(2 steps are optional). So let’s fire it up.

Hope You got Portable Firefox on your USB stick.

What you have to do is adding few lines in to profiles.ini file. To make it bit easy for you I have created fxp.txt file for you.
Download & edit fxp.txt :

[Profile1]
Name=portable
IsRelative=0
Path=/media/disk/FirefoxPortable/App/DefaultData/profile

Critical update: You better use

Path=/media/disk/FirefoxPotable/Data/profile to get the same profile on Window$ and GNU/Linux.

Name=
You can use any string made of letters & numbers for this. Make sure the name you use is unique for your profile.ini file.
IsRelative=0
This is nothing you have to deal with.
Path=
This is the exact path to portable Firefox profile folder [what you see on the address bar when you browse in to profile folder].

And remember to change [Profile1] to the appropriate profile number according to the profile.ini file if necessary. The very first line of fxp.txt is empty. Please remain it unchanged to keep profiles.ini tidy & headacheless.

Now open a terminal & put
cat >> /path/to/profiles.ini /path/to/fxp.txt

ex: cat >> /home/chanux/.mozilla/firefox/profiles.ini /media/flashdrive/fxp.txt

this will append the content of fxp.txt in to profiles.ini. Ofcourse you can do this with GUI lameware with more pain in back. if you like loads of clicks & copy & pastes go that way.

You’ll find profile.ini at
~/.mozilla/firefox

well it’s the home folder :
ex: /home/chanux/.mozilla/firefox/profile.ini

once you update the profile.ini file you are ready to feel the home on the road.

Type firefox -ProfileManager in to the terminal or “run command” box. If you prefer terminal, you have to keep it open as long as you want to use firefox. Once you get profile manager box, choose your portable profile & rejoice.

The four steps in brief:

Check profiles.ini
Edit profiles.ini if needed.
Append fxp.txt to profiles.ini
Start firefox through profile manager.

Update: Make sure Firefox is closed when you try firefox -ProfileManager. I did dumbness & Twittered too. Seejay reminded me to close Fx :D

Update(07.04.09):WordPress now has a Twitter widget.

Updated this post with new images & steps [17 Dec 2008].

We do love WordPress(WP) so much even though we lack Javascript support. If you ever wanted to add your Twitter updates on your wordpress.com blog, here’s a simple way to just get the thing done.

First, Go to your Twitter page & retrieve your Twitter RSS address & copy-paste it on …err..a text file ;) .

In Your Twitter Home page at the bottom left corner there’s a button named RSS.

[If You use Firefox just right click on the RSS button & choose 'copy Link location'.]

I normally Burn my feeds with feedburner. But I had problems burning Twitter feed. There is a validation problem in Twitter RSS. In this case you can use plain Twitter RSS address.

You can have a wide variety of feeds with Friendfeed.com. You can get twitter feed through friendfeed. And also mixup other social networks into one feed easily with Friendfeed. To get a Twitter feed through Friendfeed just replace ‘chanux‘ with your Friendfeed name in following URL. Make sure you’ve added Twitter on friendfeed.

http://friendfeed.com/chanux?service=twitter&format=atom [you can burn this feed]

Then find your Facebook ‘My Status’ RSS feed & copy it down too.

• Make sure you are logged in to Facebook & follow this link to your Facebook Minifeed page.

• And look for following feed link on minifeed page & save the link address.

You can get your Facebook Status FEED address there. Your Feed address would look similar to this. http://www.facebook.com/feeds/status.php?id=#########& viewer=#########&key=##########&format=rss20

Now the WordPress stuff.

• Now go to widgets page in your wordpress admin pages.

• Add an RSS widget.

• Choose to edit the widget.

• Paste the RSS address & choose a title for the widget. Select number of items to display from drop down box (5 is decent).  click done.

• Do not forget to Save changes :)

You can add Twitter and/or Facebook feed address in your sidebar like this.

Hope This tutorial is helpful. If you like, consider following me on Twitter :) . All Images are uploaded on PhotBucket

Have you ever been wondering how to get more smileys/emoticons to express yourself in IM sessions? I don’t know about you but me. Once I fell in love with Pidgin, a cute FOSS solution for instant messaging, I realized that the answer is just beyond a little hack. So I worked it out.

I mixed up all emoticons available in Pidgin & created a smiley theme named “Soup”. Then gave it to my mad friends who I waste time on IM with. Now we all having the fun & complications of a-hell-lot-of smileys :). I’m sure we’ll go back to the default theme soon but I thought sharing would help 3 more phreaks out there.

So here’s how to get it done.
1. Download soup.zip file HERE & extract it.
2. copy it in to Pidgin Smileys directory

Windows    > C:\Program Files\Pidgin\pixmaps\pidgin\emotes
GNU/Linux  > /home/chanux/.purple/smileys (replace chanux with your user name)
or > /usr/share/pixmaps/pidgin/emotes

3. Select the theme “Soup” from Tools>Preferences>Smiley themes on Pidgin.

The theme is made to work with Yahoo protocol. If you are using AIM,MSN,QQ or ICQ…..
1.Open the file ‘theme’ located in extracted ’soup’ folder with your favorite text editor.
2.Find [Yahoo] & replace it with the name of your IM protocol.
ex- [AIM] , [MSN] , [QQ] , [ICQ]

If you feel you are missing Good old yahoo default smileys Get Y!old theme HERE.

Update : New version of Y!old, which works well with new versions of Pidgin is, Y!Emos is HERE.

PS- After all these things the smiley window takes 2-3 seconds to open.
I think you can understand that your friends must have SOUP installed & selected to have the fun.

Here I am, again with a nice Firefox tweak.

Before you start to try this tut out…

you must know how to

• Install Firefox extensions
• play with userChrome.css

If You dunno how to do these stuff first try my earlier Firefox tut > HERE <

you must have these stuff

• “Personal menu” Firefox extension (Or “Tiny Menu” With “Menu edit”) [Learn more of these,here]
• “Toggle search” extension (If you like)
• “Stop or Reload” Extension (If you like)
• These lines in your userChrome.css file

/* Remove Home button */
#home-button { display: none; }

/*Remove magnifying glass button from search box*/
.search-go-button-stack { display: none !important; }

/* Eliminate the throbber and its annoying movement: */
#throbber-box { display: none !important; }

/* Remove Go button of searchbar */
#go-button-stack, .search-go-button-stack { display: none !important; }

• A working brain inside your head. (I don’t have any links to download this :lol: )

OK, Now you are ready to ‘Firefox: Almost full screen’.

1. First Copy the lines I’ve given in to your userChrome.css file, Install the extensions I’ve mentioned & restart Firefox to see what you have you done. If you don’t see any change just try another restart. (If that also doesn’t help, just
forget this tut ;) )

2. Right-Click on ‘Menus Toolbar’ or ‘Navigation’ Toolbar & choose customize.Now you can drag & drop items in those toolbars. Now you can drag in-out icons between toolbars & ‘customize toolbars’ window & arrange icons as you wish. Find Personal menu Icon inside ‘customize toolbars’ window & drag & drop it on Navigation toolbar.Now Restart ‘fox again.

3. Now tweak “Personal Menu” extension.

You can add Only the menu’s you like;in to your personal menu. If you are not sure what you really need, just add all default stuff in to your personal menu.
[Tools > Addons > Extensions > Personal Menu > Options > Edit menu/Others.]Now you can find all Menus in handy personal menu button.

4. Right-Click on Menus toolbar & uncheck Menus toolbar option.

[!!! Check & recheck for Personal Menu button on Navigation toolbar & make -sure that all Menus you need are inside it, before you do this.]

5. Here’s the last step. Press F11 on Function keys & see what happens. If you do ‘Firefox: Almost full screen’ You are done.

Here’s My Firefox Window After this!

Important!
There’s a little risk doing this, if you are a complete new user for Firefox or new to these little Hacking tricks. So It’s better to use a different Firefox Profile to try Hacks on. Here’s How to deal with Firefox Profiles.
[Creating a shortcut to Profile manager worked well for me]

This tut is for windoze users. Mac & Linux users have the Idea now; so you can find how to do this on your platform, I dunno how to do this on other plats.
[ I still can't configure my modem in Linux & have no enough time to play with. So still no surfing with Linux ] Forgive me for the ignorance, my Linux/Mac friends :) You can link your Mac/Linux tut here.just comment or mail me on chanux at gmail dot com

Feel Free comment you Ideas,Problems.