Nice features on it

Press the command touch (Windows touch on the keyboard) to display Superswitcher.

To switch from a desktop to another press Command + arrow left or right

To switch from available windows in a desktop press Command + arrow up or down

To move a window into another desktop press Command + shift + arrow left or right

To search within all windows name Command + [any text]

Screencast

I’ve just recorded a quick screencast to show all these functionalities

So?

For me it’s now a must have on every computer I use, because it make organizing my desktops really easily.

Why is it use for?

Caffeine stop your computer for going to sleep, or just to switch your back light off.
Really useful when watching a video, or during a meting.

You can also add process, that will automaticaly enable Caffeine. (Like VLC, OpenOffice, what ever ..).

How to get it?

On the Caffeine developer blog, you can find a good introduction to the software.

To install it, just follow the instructions for the Caffeine Wiki.

Shutter is the Skitch Linux alternative:

Then I found Shutter. Shutter is the Skitch Linux alternative.
To install it on Ubuntu, just download the last version or add the Shutter PPA repository to your sources.

Features:

As far as I’ve tested, Shutter is full of goodness. It makes screenshots on Linux easy.

You’ll be able to capture a entire window, or a portion of you desktop. Multiple capture history is supported.
Then you be able to basically edit this image with the built in image editor.
And finally you’ll be able save or upload your screenshot to image sharing website.

I you want to upload your image from Shutter to Flickr, you’ll need to install Postr. Just read Shutter upload to flickr about page to see how easy it is.

I really like when developers come with good solutions for every day problem like this. And definitely Shutter is one of them.

Hardware

As described in a previous post I now use a netbook as main development machine until September this year.

Machine1: Medion E1312,11.6″,Athlon 1.6 Ghz single core, 2 Gig Ram . For all task, it’s really responsive, but when you run tests, the single core is as slow as a dead cow unfortunately. The screen can sometime be a bit small, but it’s ok most of the time.

Machine2: At home, an old P4 is used to backup everything on 1,5 TB hard drive. (Ubuntu server)

Screen: At home I’ve got a second monitor, 19″ from HP.

Headphones: Sennheiser HD215

External mini western digital HD: 360 Gig in a small pocket size.

Software

Ubuntu, because it’s efficient and easy. If you want to learn more about my setup you can see my Rubyists guide to Linux development environment.

Gedit combined with Gmate makes my editor of choice under Linux. One day, I’ll learn to master Vim …

Gnome-do, a Quicksilver like.

Banshee media player, really good at managing music collection and screencast/podcast feeds.

Firefox 3.5, with web developer extension, bugzilla, Yslow, Delicious.

Tweetcetera is now my twitter client of choice. Normal you would as I’m the developer . Should be released in beta soon.

Liferea is my main RSS reader. Needed to do some tricks to make it quick in Ubuntu.

Gnome-evolution for all my different emails accounts.

Gnome terminal.

Gitg, a git desktop app, better than the old gitk.

The Gimp, I’m not a designer, so, that fit my needs.

Inkscape, same as The Gimp. Fits my needs.

Other

Bike: I use an old Raleigh racer bike, transformed into a single speed after an accident.

Bag: Targus messenger bag that can all my life, and carrying it around the city.

I’m now moving into a full time freelancing position, for the first month I’ll start with a contract where I’ll work in the Jiva office. So I’ll need to carry my laptop everyday on my bike. But I also like to have a beer outside in the evening, so I’ll again carry my laptop everywhere with me. When I said carrying I mean on my bike, as it’s now becoming my principal mode of transportation.

I also like to have my 2.5″ external hard drive with me, and sometime an external mouse.

At home and office, I’ll always have a second monitor + keyboard + mouse.

Looking for something to start with, for less than £ 400, I had 2 options :

1. A cheap laptop, with a dual core processor, 15.4″ display (1280×800) and would weight around 3Kg
2. Looking around these crazy netbooks, with a weight less than 1.5 Kg, but will have a cheap ATOM processor

What do I REALLY need

Yes, that would be lovely to have a spaceship controller computer, but if I don’t need the its power, why would I spend a fortune.
So my question was, why do I really need?

First this is a secret for nobody, I’m a Linux guy, and would not consider having an Apple laptop. So all the Mac range is out.
Secondly, even if I spend all day on my computer, it’s for doing the same thing, web development!
So what to I do everyday, what software I use with my laptop

1. Web development, conding on Gedit or Vim, services open apache/mysql/postgresql/passenger …
2. Email (Gnome Evolution), Internet (Firefox, Opera, Chromium)
3. While I code, I love listening to music in my headphones (using Banshee)
4. Bluetooth / Wifi

I’ll sometime look at some videos, doing a bit of design with the GIMP, using Skype. Rarely play any games.
I never do any videos montage, music montage or anything like that.

So basically, I just need a text editor, 3 terminals, a music player and an internet browser. Playing time to time a Battle for Wesnoth.

I started looking during holidays for laptop/netbook benchmarks, and I already have an ACER ASPIRE ONE, with an ATOM N270 processor and a 8.9″ screen. So I did reinstall it from scratch and installed everything I need for developing. The poor ATOM processor wasn’t able to cope with GEDIT + Banshee + Firefox all in one time, and was really struggling to give a smooth experience. So the ATOM processor was out for me.

The rare pearl

I found it in ALDI (I know it’s strange, but in the UK they are the only MEDION resellers). Medion, is a German brand, quite known in France. They sell cheap electronic stuff, usually good value.

So I found the Medion Akoya E1312 for £339 in ALDI with very good specs :

• AMD Sempron U 210 (1.5 GHz) processor
• 1 Go ram
• 11.6″ screen (1366×768)
• ATI Radeon XPRESS 1250 3D card
• Wifi n
• External HDMI and VGA
• 1.4 Kg with battery
• 3 Years warranty
• 30 Days money back
• Windows licence
• Full size keyboard, with real Home/PgUp/PgDown/End touch (not the FN + combination)

Was really promising, so I decided to give it a try, and using it from a few days, test it during the 48 Hours of the Rails Rumble competition to see how it can cope with an extensive use. If it doesn’t pass the test, I’ll use the 30 days money back to return it.

My Verdict

The pros
This netbook is just awesome. While it was on windows I tried the 3D card with trackmania nation, and the game just run smoothly. 720P HD video are perfect in full screen.
The keyboard is ok for little bit of work on the move, touch are quite big, so that’s good for my fingers, real Home / End and PgUp/PgDn touches are a plus.
The 1368×768 resolution is a really plus on this screen, the colour rendering is very good.

I had some problem for the Ubuntu Linux installation (see bellow) but now it’s all ok. Before the Rails Rumble I upgraded it to 2 Gig ram, and the computer did the 2 days without any restart, even if, in the average I had, 6 used workspaces, 2 Firefox instances, each with more than 10 tabs, 2 Gedit instances, 3 terminals, the GIMP, banshee + streaming radio music, all open at the same time, everything was running smoothly, and the heat generated by the processor was ok.
The suspend and hibernate are working out of the box under Linux.
The power cable has a little on/off button, really smart when you switch off for the night.
No paper inside the machine, so you can open it without breaking the warranty!.

The cons

I had to change the Wifi card for one with better drivers under Linux (but should be fixed soon in future kernel).
The 6 cells battery will give you (Wifi + Internet/Dev) a max of 2H45 under linux. But an optional 9 cells battery cost less than £ 70. The eco and the plane button help you to find the best option to keep the battery running.

So ?

I used this laptop for the Rails Rumble, without external monitor! I wanted to give it a heavy try, and give it back if any problems appears.
Finally the 48 Hours went really good, no headache, no particular problem with the machine.
So, my verdict is, if you are looking a machine to use on the go, or as a cheap development station, go for this machine, at £339, it’s really a bargain.
The screen resolution made it really usable, the Sempron processor is powerful enough when it’s it’s time to multitasking, and the 1,4 Kg (with battery) are wonderful in a laptop bag.

I’ve found a video with a test (under windows XP) with HD videos and 3D games. But it’s in German.

Linux tricks for the Medion E1312

1. 3D drivers

My trick would be to WAIT!. ATI dropped support for this range of 3D card, and they stopped working with the current version of Xorg. But they open the specifications so the open source driver developers are working on an open source implementation of it.
I tried multiple thing to install the 3D drivers, one was to downgrade Xorg to a previous version. Was working quite well, and the 3D drivers made every single game I tested working smoothly. But I had multiple problems regarding the downgrade to, my trick, would be waiting for Karmic and the new Radeon HD drivers with full 3D support (Available in the lastet git branch).

2. Wifi

Hum, I had to use Ndiswrapper to have my card working. But was unable to connect to a WPA2 network. I just changed the card for another Half size mini pci one. Works now like a charm.

Loosing data can be quite … annoying. (Photo on Flickr)

The last thing you want is to have a disaster on your server and being unable to recover your data.
I run all my projects and different blogs on one server, hosted by OVH. So I have multiple databases, gems, websites and configurations that I want to backup.
Hopefully, OVH provide with every dedicated server an external FTP server dedicated to backups.
So I’ve installed backup-manager and make it runs twice a day.

Warning

Because backup-manager compress your files into archives, it will cost you some space on the disk, so be sure to change the default value of the target and do your backup on a proper partition.
If you don’t, backup-manager will do the backups in / by default, so when it’ll be full, your sever will not work properly.

Installation

sudo apt-get install backup-manager

Tweacking

Installation create a default config file. You’ll need to edit it to match you configuration.

sudo vi /etc/backup-manager.conf

Before I explain you my config file, here is how I’ve config my server:

1. I have 4 PHP Applications (Blogs/apps) and 3 Ruby on Rails apps running on it.
2. Each application has it own directory in /home/ .
3. REE is installed in /opt, and so are the gems.
4. I keep an automatic backup of my server configurations (DNS/Host/Users/Right…) in /home/config (Only accessible by root).
5. I’ve created an new partitions call “/backups”.

So basically, want I want is:

Save my /home/*, /etc/*, /opt/*, all my databases to an external partition then an external FTP.

In backup-manager.conf, you’ll need to set:

Local Storage

• BM_REPOSITORY_ROOT “/backups” Where to store local backups
• BM_ARCHIVE_TTL “3″ Local archive time to live
• BM_ARCHIVE_METHOD “tarball” Which archive method do you want to use (You can mix and match different types)

Backup directories

• BM_TARBALL_DIRECTORIES “/etc /home /opt” Directories to backup.
• BM_TARBALL_BLACKLIST “/home/nobackup” Exclude some directories

Backup transfer

• BM_UPLOAD_METHOD “ftp” Backups transfer method
• BM_UPLOAD_FTP_USER “myftpusername” FTP login
• BM_UPLOAD_FTP_PASSWORD “myFtpPassw0rd” FTP Password
• BM_UPLOAD_FTP_HOSTS “ftp.backups.com” FTP Server
• BM_UPLOAD_FTP_PURGE “true” Clear the remote directory before to upload
• BM_UPLOAD_FTP_DESTINATION “/” Upload existing directory.

Incremental Archives (set BM_ARCHIVE_METHOD = tarball-incremental)

• BM_TARBALLINC_MASTERDATETYPE “monthly” Complete archive creation frequency (daily or monthly)
• BM_TARBALLINC_MASTERDATEVALUE “23″ Creation day of the complete archive

Mysql databases

• BM_MYSQL_DATABASES “mysql1 db2 db3″”_ALL_” mysql db names separate by space or _ALL_
• BM_MYSQL_ADMINLOGIN “backupuser” Mysql user (DO NOT USE ROOT!, see below)
• BM_MYSQL_ADMINPASS “backuppassword” Mysql user password
• BM_MYSQL_HOST “localhost” Mysql Server
• BM_MYSQL_PORT “3306″ Mysql port
• BM_MYSQL_FILETYPE “bzip2″ Backup compression method

Others

• BM_PRE_BACKUP_COMMAND “” Execute a command before the backup
• BM_POST_BACKUP_COMMAND “” Execute a command after the backup

BM_MYSQL_DATABASES

Please be careful, as you’ll need to write in this file the login and password of a user to procede to dabases backups.
Don’t use root!, neither an existing user. You’re going to create a new user, with limited right on databases and tables, and you’ll protect the backup manager config file.

mysql -u root -p
GRANT SHOW DATABASES,SELECT,LOCK TABLES ON *.* TO 'backupuser'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'secretpassword';
exit;
sudo chown root:root /etc/backup-manager.conf
sudo chmod 640 /etc/backup-manager.conf

Now you can set the 2 values in the backup-manager config file.

export BM_MYSQL_ADMINLOGIN=”backupuser”
export BM_MYSQL_ADMINPASS=”secretpassword”

BM_MYSQL_FILETYPE

Mysql database compression after dump.

export BM_MYSQL_FILETYPE=”bzip2″

Make sure that bzip2 is intalled

sudo apt-get install bzip2

BM_POST_BACKUP_COMMAND

Execute a command once bakcup done. You can,for example, use this to send an email after the backup.

Automated backups

You can use cron to schedule your backups. Before just create a little script

cat << <acronym title="End of file">EOF</acronym> > /etc/backup-manager.sh && chmod 700 /etc/backup-manager.sh
#!/bin/sh
test -x /usr/sbin/backup-manager || exit 0
/usr/sbin/backup-manager
<acronym title="End of file">EOF</acronym>

And now you can add this script to your contab

crontab -e

And add

1 0 * * * /etc/backup-manager.sh

Here is ubuntu cron doc, easy to understand (https://help.ubuntu.com/community/CronHowto)

Do more

For example, you can call backup-manager with backup-manager -c /path/to/configfile and by this way, having 2 crons. One running every days, executing backups of files and db, and another one, in the middle of the day, only for the db .

You can do much more than these options (cd/dvd burning for example), please be sure you read the complete wiki at http://wiki.backup-manager.org/index.php/Main_Page#Documentation

I’ve wrote a quick and dirty code for that (tmsnippets2gedit on github)

You just need to copy the script to the textmate bumdle root directory, and run it.

You’ll have a new file call result.xml that you need to edit to specify the language format (JS,Ruby,XSL, …).

Then rename it and copy it to your gedit snippets folder.

The code is not pretty, and is certainly perfectible, but for the moment it works. I’ll to combine it to the tm2gtksw2 project (this one convert Texmate styles to Gedit styles)

WiseStamp Firefox Exension is for you.

This little extension will add a new button on the bottom right of your Firefox status bar. You’ll just have to do a right click, edit, and start your new signature creation.

A basic HTML editor (with Bold, Underline, Link, Center, Image … ) and some very useful Instant Messenger and WebServices helpers icons, like Facebook or linkedin, will be at your disposal on the WiseStamp interface.

Once saved, you’re new signature will be automatically sent with your emails.

The only problem is that WiseStamp is only available for Firefox for the moment.

I was looking for a simple solution for a long time now, thanks to Eric from www.presse-citron.net.

Here is my new signature :

What is Bort ?

      Ruby on Rails popularity brings to it a lot of very good plugins. And it’s that, on 98 % case, when you start a new project from scratch, you’re going to do every times the same thing.

      From starting your test with Rspec to install the lastest version of RESTFUL Authentication, we do all the same thing every time.

      So Bort is just an easy to use starting point, like the scaffolds sometimes.

How can I play with it ?

      Open a terminal and clone Bort git repository : clone git://github.com/fudgestudios/bort.git  (or download it directly from the GitHub )

      Then a Rake db:migrate will do the magic.

What’s inside ?

      At this time, a Bort fresh installation come with :

1. RESTful Authentication and params
2. User Roles
3. Open ID Authentication
4. Will Paginate
5. Rspec & Rspec-rails
6. Exception Notifier
7. Asset Packager
8. Capistrano recipes

       A rake:bort:[plugin name] will help you to an easy install of some useful plugins.

How can you help ?

        On his blog, Jim Neath calls for developers ideas, so give a look and report bugs/ideas here