The One with the Thoughts of Frans

Half a decade ago I neglected to jot this down, so I had to figure it out again. Just in case someone landed here searching for the most basic R problem, you start the program using uppercase R, not lowercase r. Anyway, to work with a package in a git repository or some such the easiest method is the devtools package.

install.packages('devtools')
library(devtools)
load_all()

Without any parameters, the load_all() function from devtools loads the current directory without installing. You could effect the same with more keystrokes using load_all('./'), and of course you can pass any path instead of relying on the current working directory. But in combination with git I find it easiest to just stick with that. After you’ve made some changes in the source, just run load_all() again.

Wait, what? You heard me. On Windows you can set sample rates per sound card. It looks like this.

In PulseAudio you’re limited to a primary and secondary sample rate. I’ve actually been using pasuspender more, also because its AC3 passthrough never seemed to work.

I have plenty of RAM and a UHD monitor, but Evince sees it fit to limit zoom to under 200% in many a newspaper-sized document.

# get current cache size (defaults to 50?)
$ gsettings get org.gnome.Evince page-cache-size
uint32 50
# set it to something more reasonable like 500
$ gsettings set org.gnome.Evince page-cache-size 500

In smaller documents this makes pretty much the entire document exist in RAM, which eliminates loading nonsense while going back and forth in a document. Overall, a much smoother experience.

I understand the reason for the hard-coded default limit, but I have to wonder if there isn’t a more dynamic way of handling this. Say, either 50 MB or 2% of total memory.

Thunar is one of the best graphical file managers I’ve used, and I say that even while I own a Directory Opus license for Windows. I have some minor quibbles like very sparsely populated default actions on files and folders, but the biggest flaw is doubtless that the breadcrumb navigation doesn’t feature all of the regular folder interactions. In any case, in this blog post I intend to show how I improve on both Thunar and GNOME Search in one fell swoop.

I’ll start with a screenshot of the desired end result. You right click on a folder, and you’re presented with the option to search for files in it.

In order to add this custom action, you’ll have to configure custom actions.

Then you click + to add a new one, or you can edit an existing action.

You can type the name that will show up in the context menu, a little description for yourself, choose a fancy icon, and under appearance conditions you can choose whether this custom action applies to a specific type of files or folders. Unfortunately this dialog can’t be resized, but since you can copy and paste it’s not too bad.

gnome-search-tool --path=%f --contains=

Finally, here is the result. Note that since I started gnome-search-tool with --contains=, the option to search for files containing specific text will show by default.

You can perform similar tricks with any of these other options.

$ gnome-search-tool --help
Usage:
  gnome-search-tool [OPTION...] - the GNOME Search Tool

Help Options:
  -h, --help                      Show help options
  --help-all                      Show all help options
  --help-gtk                      Show GTK+ Options
  --help-sm-client                Show session management options

Application Options:
  --version                       Show version of the application
  --named=STRING                  Set the text of "Name contains" search option
  --path=PATH                     Set the tet of "Look in folder" search option
  --sortby=VALUE                  Sort files by one of the following: name, folder, size, type, or date
  --descending                    Set sort order to descending, the default is ascending
  --start                         Automatically start a search
  --contains=STRING               Select and set the "Contains the text" search option
  --mtimeless=DAYS                Select and set the "Date modified less than" search option
  --mtimemore=DAYS                Select and set the "Date modified more than" search option
  --sizemore=KILOBYTES            Select and set the "Size at least" search option
  --sizeless=KILOBYTES            Select and set the "Size at most" search option
  --empty                         Select the "File is empty" search option
  --user=USER                     Select and set the "Owned by user" search option
  --group=GROUP                   Select and set the "Owned by group" search option
  --nouser                        Select the "Owner is unrecognized" search option
  --notnamed=STRING               Select and set the "Name does not contain" search option
  --regex=PATTERN                 Select and set the "Name matches regular expression" search option
  --hidden                        Select the "Show hidden and backup files" search option
  --follow                        Select the "Follow symbolic links" search option
  --mounts                        Select the "Exclude other filesystems" search option
  --display=DISPLAY               X display to use

Also see Finding Files on the Ubuntu wiki.

As another addendum to my notes on image optimization, here is how to cut a piece of audio or video as losslessly as possible with just ffmpeg on the commandline.

In this example we want the piece of audio from 1:30 to 2:00.

fmpeg -ss "1:30" -i audio-full.m4a -c copy -t "2:00" audio-cut.m4a

A new Skype update was installed! Now “rebuilt from the ground up […] the best Skype we’ve ever built” (release announcement). Okay, cool. Let’s give it a go.

What’s that, a crash? And it won’t be fixed because I have the wrong kind of CPU? You can tell Google Play not to update the app by unchecking auto-update. Tap the three vertical dots in the top-right corner to bring up the option.

Then download the old Skype Android app from AndroidDrawer.com (“Because Newer is Not Always Better”) or any similar site. Version 7.46.0.596 seems to be the most recent version which still works on x86.

Enjoy your Skyping. Or maybe just switch to Discord. It offers video chat now. Skype and I have had a decent run since ’04, but let’s face it, these past few years nothing good has happened. Take, for instance, the announcement last year that Skype for Linux was being updated again.

For example, you’ll be using the latest, fast and responsive Skype UI, you can share files, photos and videos and send a whole new range of new emoticons.

I have no idea what they intended by talking about “responsive UI”. The supposedly retired version 4.3[1] scales along just fine with DPI thanks to it being Qt-based. I guess they hope that by just tossing out random terms I won’t notice the old version already does all the things they’re boasting about. Well, except for those emoticons. Big whoop.

What’s my ICQ number again?

[1] “Important notice: All Skype for Linux clients version 4.3 and older will be retired on July 1, 2017. To keep chatting, please install the latest version of Skype for Linux.”

I don’t like the default alarm sound on my phone much and apparently changing it to something a little bit gentler can only be done on a per-alarm basis. Luckily I found this:

Today I was looking for a way to change the sound that is applied by default to new alarms you create in the Alarms app. After quite a bit of effort I came upon the following procedure:

1. Install ES File Explorer
2. Open it and select / from the Favorites
3. Browse to /system/media/audio/alarms
4. Click on the file you want and in the "Open with" prompt select "ES Media Player"
5. Click on the bell beside the file name, pick "Set alarm" and click OK

Should you choose to change again the default, you may notice that the defaults you pick will appear in the music library. Also, they will be listed twice in the tone selection list which appears when you manually change the tone of an individual alarm.

You can fix that with the following steps:

1. Open Settings
2. Go to Applications > Manage Applications > All
3. Click on Media Storage and then Clear data
4. Reboot your phone
5. You will now have to set your new default sound

(I've noticed that sometimes, when you view a music album which doesn't have a cover art image and add an album.jpg file to it later, Music Player will not use that file for the cover art. The above steps, as a side effect, will make Music Player look for images for all albums, thus having the cover art of all your albums updated.)

Hope this helps 🙂

To deal with the inferior FAT file system, it would seem that consumer-level Sony video cameras write video files of a maximum of about 2.1 GB. A sensible approach, but annoying to work with. Luckily they can be concatenated without any concerns or side effects for easier viewing and editing.

cat 00006.MTS 00007.MTS 00008.MTS > output.mts

For other video formats, see the ffmpeg FAQ.

Back in November I decided to try Aard 2 on my laptop. I followed the instructions and it worked. Then I created a launcher with the following command and suddenly it did not.

java -Dslobber.browse=true -jar ~/programs/aard2/aard2-web-0.7.jar ~/programs/aard2/slobs/*.slob

A different strategy, passing a command to Bash, did the trick.

bash -c "java -Dslobber.browse=true -jar ~/programs/aard2/aard2-web-0.7.jar ~/programs/aard2/slobs/*.slob"

Enjoy your fully functional launcher! 😉

Over the past few years I acquired a bad habit of using search engines for basic calculations and conversions. I’m not talking about the stuff you should just do in your head — not quite that bad, but about the fact that several Linux distros, including my favorite of Debian Xfce, don’t seem to ship with a calculator by default. So I finally got around to testing some programs and Qalculate! does all I want. You can install it on Debian using sudo apt install qalculate-gtk. There’s a list of features on the website. Enjoy a few screenshots.

I hope you’ll like it too!