Richard A. Johnson » Application

Vim Pathogen Taskwarrior Bundle

Richard A. Johnson — Sat, 24 Dec 2011 18:57:29 +0000

Just wanted to drop a quick note for those of you who use vim with pathogen.vim and task (taskwarrior.org). I created a quick github repository that you can add to your bundle list to get syntax highlighting for task data in vim. Add the following repository to your bundle:

https://github.com/nixternal/taskwarrior-vim.git

I want to keep this up to date, so if you catch any changes upstream that I do not catch, let me know in the comments and I will get that fixed. Thanks!

Vim Pathogen Taskwarrior Bundle is a post from Richard A. Johnson's blog.

Download Photos From Picasa

Richard A. Johnson — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 00:21:58 +0000

So, I was tasked to download a bunch of images from another person’s Picasa gallery. At first this looked to be a pain in the rear, but I had noticed that on the right hand side of the person’s gallery there is an RSS feed. I quickly thought of Python with a bit of feedparser thrown in. And in just a few lines I was able to grab all of the photos from someone else’s gallery. The code isn’t clean, isn’t optimal, but it works.

#!/usr/bin/env python
import feedparser, os
items = feedparser.parse("")['items']
for i in range(0, len(items)):
    os.system("wget -q %s" % items[i]['media_content'][0]['url'])

Works good for a quick 4 lines of code.

Download Photos From Picasa is a post from Richard A. Johnson's blog.

Dropbox for KDE

Richard A. Johnson — Tue, 01 Mar 2011 07:08:45 +0000

A question I have been coming across a lot lately has been, “How do I get Dropbox to work with KDE?” Most have probably noticed that when you go to the Dropbox website and go to download it, it is for GNOME and the Nautilus file manager. Unfortunately for us KDE users, we don’t use Nautilus. Or I could say fortunately for us KDE users, but I am sure that will start all kinds of flame wars in the comments. Instead, KDE utilizes Dolphin as its file manager. I will use this post to show you how to quickly get Dropbox installed and up-and-running in KDE, without the use of the terminal or command line.

NOTE: In this tutorial I am using the Rekonq web browser for KDE. At the time of this tutorial, it is the default web browser for Kubuntu.

NOTE: After completing the Download Dropbox selection below, you can scroll down to the bottom of this post to see how to do all of this via the command line. It is actually really simple and much faster. If you are uncomfortable with the command line, then follow this post completely, minus the end where I show you the command line way of course.

Download Dropbox

Here are the links to the latest Dropbox downloads. NOTE: these links will always be the latest version of Dropbox, so if you come here next year, this simple howto will still be valid. If anything changes, I will make sure to update this page:

Clicking on one of the links above will pop up the Save As dialog. Click the Save As button.

In the Save As dialog, click the Home button and select the Downloads folder to save the file in.

Extract the Dropbox archive

The file that is downloaded for Dropbox is known as a tarball. It is similar to a Zip file if you are coming from the Windows world. To extract this file we will use Ark, KDE’s archiving tool. To open Ark, click on the menu button, select the Applications tab, scroll down to the Utilities section and click it, then once that is open you should see Archiving Tool or Ark depending on how your distribution has it in the menu. Once Ark is open, click on the Open button. Here you will be presented with an Open Dialog where you can select the file that you downloaded. Navigate to your Home/Downloads directory and select the Dropbox file.

Once the file has opened in Ark, the next thing to do is extract it. To do this click the Extract button towards the top. The only option you should have is Extract To…

Select it and you will be presented with the Extract dialog where you can select the location you want to extract it to. Select your username in the folder list, as this is where you want to extract it to.

Configure Dropbox to run at start-up

You will definitely want Dropbox to start every time you log into your computer. To do this is really easy. Open System Settings by going to the KDE menu once again. Most distributions stick the System Settings icon in your Favorites tab, so when you click the menu button, you should see it right away. Click it if you do. If you do not see it, don’t worry. You will need to go to the Applications tab, scroll down to the Settings section, and in there you should see System Settings. Click it to open it. Once it is open at the bottom, in the System Administration section, there should be an icon labeled, Startup and Shutdown. Click it. Once that is open, in the right pane you should see 5 buttons. You want to select the button labeled Add Script…. This will pop up a small dialog for you to select the Dropbox script we want to run at startup.

Click the small folder to the right of the text input box. You should be presented with a System Settings open dialog. In order to see the folder and script that was extracted from the Dropbox download, we need to make sure that Show Hidden Files is selected.

Once all files are showing, click the .dropbox-dist folder and scroll until you see the file named dropboxd.

NOTE: Select dropboxd, not dropbox, as shown in the above image.

Once you have selected it click OK if needed, now you should be back at the small popup dialog. Go ahead and click the OK button. You should be back to the main System Settings window now.

You can close out of System Settings now.

Running Dropbox for the first time

Open Dolphin, the file manager, by going to the KDE menu button and under Applications, System, there should be a menu item labeled either File Manager or Dolphin. Click it. Once Dolphin is open and in your Home folder, we will need to view all hidden files again. To do this, click the View menu item and about half way down is the Show Hidden Files item. Click it. Now you should see all hidden files and folders. You will want to find the folder named .dropbox-dist and click it.

Scroll down until you see the file named dropboxd. Note once again that it is dropboxd that you want.

You will now be presented with the Dropbox application setup dialog. Go through and answer the questions.

That’s it, Dropbox is up and running and will start every time you log into your desktop. If all went well you should see the Dropbox icon in your System Tray.

Install the quick way with the command line

Now that you have the Dropbox file downloaded to your computer, open up your terminal (Konsole is the default in KDE) and type the following commands, or copy & paste the following (you should see 4 lines total):

cd
tar -xf Downloads/dropbox*.gz
ln -s .dropbox-dist/dropboxd .kde/Autostart/dropboxd
.dropbox-dist/dropboxd &

That’s all folks, enjoy, and thanks for stopping by!

Dropbox for KDE is a post from Richard A. Johnson's blog.

Linux and GMail Part III – Thunderbird

Richard A. Johnson — Fri, 18 Feb 2011 03:20:43 +0000

OK, as you can probably tell now, I have been wasting a lot of time playing with GUI email clients. Why you ask? Simple, I am nuts, like that wasn’t obvious! Like I did in Part I and Part II, I am going to do the same this go round, but with Mozilla Thunderbird instead.

First off, I am using version 3.1.9~hg20110206r5951 from the Ubuntu Mozilla Team Daily Builds PPA. Forgot I added that PPA to check out Firefox, so because of that, I have the version of Thunderbird that I do.

First things first, I like Thunderbird. I will even go as far as saying it is by far the best GUI-based email client available for Linux, and Windows for that matter. It integrates as better as the others, if not better actually, when it comes to tying it in to GMail. My complaints at this time are small, damn small. They are:

Unsubscribing from an IMAP folder does not hide that folder, you can still see it in the list, annoying
I don’t use local folders, so I had to download Mail Tweak just to hide it. Mail Tweak has about 50 or so other tweaks built into it, but I am only using one of the tweaks
You have to try a few shitty extensions until you find the right one

I have 2 GMail accounts set up, and there are different folder views you can use. I was using the Unified Folders view, which is a really great idea, one I haven’t seen on any other client out there. So I have 2 accounts, and they both have an Inbox, this will show only 1 inbox with both of them combined, and when you expand that inbox, you can then access each inbox individually. This saves space when you have a ton of folders in view. Another thing I like is the support of IMAP IDLE which allows damn near real-time communications between GMail and Thunderbird. You can kind of think of it as the PUSH Technology deployed in mobile devices these days. It is funny. An email will show up both on my Android and Thunderbird before it does in the GMail web client. When I get a new email in my inbox, a message pops up, and at the same time my phone makes a noise, and about 15 to 30 seconds later, the message shows up in my GMail web client. Also, it uses its own message indicator and not the Ubuntu or Kubuntu indicator. I kind of prefer the Thunderbird one because it is more out of the way for me. To be honest, I absolutely hate the indicators in Ubuntu and Kubuntu, but that is my personal preference, I just have a different work flow than those who like them.

It doesn’t look to bad in KDE. Of course it doesn’t fit in look wise, but that is easily overlooked when it comes to functionality, speed, and usability. I have installed the Zindus extension which syncs my calendar and contacts with Google’s calendar and contacts. It does this better than any other extension out there, so don’t waste your time trying this or that, just get Zindus, enter your username and password, and in seconds you are up and running. Thanks to Timothy Richardson for leaving a comment telling me about Zindus. As it stands, I don’t think I am missing anything from any of the other clients that I wish was here. Well maybe a social tab with sex built in like Zimbra Desktop had, out of the box I might add.

So, are you a Thunderbird user? Am I missing anything? Any extension that is a must have? Any tips or tricks I need to know? Speak up in the comments and let me know.

NOTE: Inbox zero!!!

Linux and GMail Part III – Thunderbird is a post from Richard A. Johnson's blog.

Linux and Gmail II – Zimbra Desktop

Richard A. Johnson — Thu, 17 Feb 2011 01:35:22 +0000

Just the other day I posted about Linux and Gmail in reference to clients other than a web browser. I had noted trying out Evolution, KMail, Thunderbird, and of course Mutt which I use daily already. Well, one of the comments, by David Fraser, was about the Zimbra Desktop. I don’t think I have ever used a Zimbra client but I am fairly certain I have used their backend products in the past. Anyways, I went ahead and downloaded Zimbra Desktop, and after a fairly simple installation, have it up and running.

The installation was fairly simple. You extract the tarball, then sudo ./install.pl, answer the questions, and boom it is installed. Fairly quick, less than a minute I would say. After it finished installing I went ahead and run it. I was presented a dialog asking me to create an account, in which I did. I selected GMail, entered a name for that account, my username and password, and my name. I clicked save, said OK, and it was up and running and synchronizing my folders faster than any client out there. Sparrow and Mailplane, which I like for GMail clients, can’t even compare in speed. Thunderbird? Evolution? Not even close. KMail? Don’t even ask! OfflineIMAP can’t even compare to the speed in which I was up and running with all email downloaded.

Usability? I would say it is pretty much the same as every other GUI client in terms of usability. It may seem a little snappier to me compared to the other GUI clients, but time will only tell. The first thing I did was click on a message, I thought, “OK, lets reply.” I am used to the Reply button being over the message I am reading, however Zimbra has it to the left of the message in the top toolbar. I had to actually search for a second to find it. Before I found it, I decided to just do the tried-and-true pressing of the r key, and wouldn’t you know, my reply was ready to be created.

So I haven’t really dug into it deep yet, but first thoughts are not bad, but not great. So, I know my stuff is synchronizing because I can see the little spinner that is up by my account name. What it is synchronizing though I have no clue. Would be nice if it told me. Also, if you look at the image I have included, you will notice a Social tab. This does not belong in an Email client at all. I don’t need Twitter, Facebook, or Digg in my email client. Also, one of the columns that were displayed to me under the Social tab was a Twitter trending topic, #verysexy. Nice, just what I need in my email client, sex. Nothing like reading about a nipple in this shape or size, or a girl or guys ass, in your email client. Classy! As of right now Zimbra folks, get rid of that shit, otherwise I will end up chalking your entire client up as nothing more than a joke.

Oh, and one more thing, it is actually a web client, and uses Prism, which Mozilla is discontinuing and rolling the good stuff into Chromeless. So, keep an eye out, and if I think it is worthy of more discussion, I will add more to the comments, update this post, or create a new post in the future.

Linux and Gmail II – Zimbra Desktop is a post from Richard A. Johnson's blog.