How to add an entry for Zend Studio in your Ubuntu programs list

I had been trying to add a shortcut/entry for Zend studio in my Ubuntu 11.10.  Finally I could find a way to make Zend studio entry come up in the Unity Application search or Filter. Actually its a rather straight forward procedure. Create a file zendstudio.desktop in the /usr/share/applications/ as root, add the following contents to it, using your editor of choice(I used vi editor).

[Desktop Entry]
Version=9.0
Name=Zend Studio
GenericName=PHP IDE
Type=Application
Comment=Zend's PHP IDE
Exec=/opt/ZendStudio/ZendStudio
Icon=/opt/ZendStudio/icon.xpm
StartupNotify=false
Terminal=false
Type=Application
Categories=Programming;

Courtesy:

http://thanhquanky.wordpress.com/2011/06/28/create-icon-in-unity-ubuntu-11-04-natty-narwhal/

(You could check out the above link to find way to add antry for any custom software using the same method).

N.B: Its my first blog post after nearly one year. Hope that I can follow it with more such useful posts.
The above method was tested by me in Unity based Ubuntu. But it should work fine in any GNOME based OS.

How to type New Indian Rupee Symbol(the right way)

Pre-Requisite

To display the Indian rupee symbol , you must have a font—such as the Ubuntu Font Family—with support for the character.

Windows users may use the new Rupkara font which has the Unicode postion mapping for the symbol. For  downloading the font, please visit-http://blog.foradian.com/rupakara-first-font-with-indian-rupee-symbol

How-To

For K/Ubuntu 10.10 users, this is automatic.The sign can inserted in your own documents using copy-and-paste from another location, or using the Unicode-entry method, which is the correct way of doing it, and it is as follows-

• Ubuntu 10.10:<Ctrl-Shift-u>20b9<enter>
• MS Windows: <Press-and-hold Alt>20b9<Release Alt>
• Kubuntu 10.10: Copy-and-paste ‘₹’
• HTML: insert “&#x20b9;”

History:

The codepoint at U+20B9 was assigned by the Unicode consortium on 11 August 2010 (2010-08-11).

A fact-

Ubuntu 10.10 is the first operating system to ship with out-of-the-box support for displaying the Indian Rupee Sign, and this happened on 10 October 2010 (2010-10-10).

Courtesy:http://font.ubuntu.com/rupee/

How to clear the MySQL Server Command-Line

Have you ever felt that your MySQL command-line prompt is getting too untidy and you want to clear it.
Here is how you do it-
To clear the terminal when using MySQL, from within the MySQL server prompt.

mysql>\! clear

Note: \! operator is to run any terminal command from within the mysql server prompt.
e.g. mysql>\! ls
Executes ls command and shows it output, i.e, the contents of the current working directory.

Shell commands for Shutdown/Restart/Logout

I would like to share with you, the linux shell commmands for shutdown, restart and logout. You may find these commands handy if your GUI is inaccesible, due to some particular reason, or if you’re a die-hard terminal/TUI fan.
So, the commands are-

• Shutdown

          saji@saji-laptop:~$ sudo shutdown -h now
         

• Restart

          saji@saji-laptop:~$ sudo shutdown -r now
        

• Logout

         saji@saji-laptop:~$ gnome-session-save --gui --logout
        

N.B: The logout command is for Gnome only.

Automatic startup of IBus daemon on ubuntu startup

Hi guys, you might have found it difficult to run I-Bus everytime you want to type in your local language. I for one, use it to type in my mother tongue Malayalam. Also being the admin of the team carrying out Malayalam translations of Ubuntu and related software at Launchpad, I use Malayalam a lot. Also I use Malayalam every now and then, while chatting, simply to surprise my friends, mostly Windows users, and even Ubuntu users who didn’t know that such an option existed. all the more, in Ubuntu 10.04 IBus had the Malayalam input methods in it by default, one just had to enable it by selecting the method of his/her choice. So, it’s very useful for me to get IBus enabled at the start of Ubuntu OS. What triggered the idea for this post was a simple doubt asked by one of my friends, Vijay Narayankutty(who blogs at http://vijaynarayankutty.wordpress.com/), who like many of us is an opensource software lover. Well, he asked me how we can do this automatic startup, then I thought why not post about it, and make it available to everyone who wants to do the same. Ok then, let’s move on to the stuff.

Steps to be taken-

1. Go to System > Preferences > Startup Applications.
2. Click the Add button
3. In the resulting window(Add startup program), enter anything for the name(e.g.IBus Daemon) and comment section(e.g.IBus Daemon for language input methods), its for your understanding.
   In command box, enter the following-
   
/usr/bin/ibus-daemon -d

4. Click Add to confirm.

You’re geared up now, next time Ubuntu starts up, the IBus daemon is automatically started, hence you can now switch to the language of your choice and start typing with no further delay.

How to post syntax highlighted code or program snippet on your wordpress.com blog

I had been on the lookout for a solution to post highlighted program code on my blog. Finally I found a good solution, which might have been there for a long time, but since I found it only, I have decided to share it with you all.
To post higlighted code in a wordpress.com blog, use the

[sourcecode language=”TYPE”]
  Your code goes here.
[/sourcecode]

The TYPE specifies which language your code is in, the languages now supported by wordpress.com blogs are(just replace the TYPE with the name of the language as shown in the list below)-

• actionscript3
• bash
• coldfusion
• cpp
• csharp
• css
• delphi
• erlang
• fsharp
• diff
• groovy
• javascript
• java
• javafx
• matlab (keywords only)
• objc
• perl
• php
• text
• powershell
• python
• ruby
• scala
• sql
• vb
• xml

For displaying a PHP page, which contains both html and PHP entities, we have to set to the PHP language with “htmlscript” configuration parameter set to “true”.
An Example

What we have to type -

[sourcecode language=”php” htmlscript=”true”]
  Your code goes here.
[/sourcecode]

The Output:
I have put some code in the “Your code goes here” section and tada, you get a cool syntax-highlighted code section.

<html>
<head>
<title>PHP Test</title>
</head>
<body>
 This is an HTML line
<?php
echo “This is a PHP line”;
phpinfo();
?>
</body>
</html>

Many other configuration parameters are also available, please visit the following post to read more about it-

http://en.support.wordpress.com/code/posting-source-code/

Courtesy: The above link ^

Pacman as Google Doodle

Google Doodle turned into Pacman game on its 30th anniversary. Famous video game Pacman turned 30 on Saturday. Pacman’s 30th anniversary has been celebrated by the search engine giant Google.
The Google doodle is the first interactive Pacman game, which users can directly enjoy from Google home page. When you go to Google’s main page you will notice that the logo has been replaced with a game of Pacman. All you do is hit “Insert Coin” and play away. Enjoy yourselves….
What I find interesting is that the game doesn’t seem to be coded using Flash. It definitely seems to be created using HTML5, CSS and Javascript. i hope to see more of such interactive doodles on Google. Maybe its just a start.

PACMAN as Google Doodle

From Google Blog:

PAC-MAN seems like a natural fit for the Google homepage. They’re both deceptively straightforward, carefully hiding their complexity under the hood. There’s a light-hearted, human touch to both of them. And we can only hope you find using Google at least a quarter as enjoyable as eating dots and chasing ghosts. You know, without actually needing any quarters.

Courtesy:

http://www.tonic.com/article/just-for-today-play-pac-man-on-google/

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/05/celebrating-pac-mans-30th-birthday.html

http://www.google.com

Hello WordPress!

This is actually my first post in this blog. I just moved into wordpress from blogger. WordPress seems to be more interesting and flexible than blogger. I have also imported the posts from my previous blog(saji89.blogpsot.com). This’ll now be my official blog. Here you can find my latest discoveries, experimentations, experiences, etc.. mostly relating to Opensource stuff. I’ll soon be into active blogging.

A Fresh New Look for Ubuntu

Ubuntu is making a switchover from its ‘Human‘ theme which defined the looks of Ubuntu for the previous 6 years, starting from the time Ubuntu was born. The new style of Ubuntu will be driven by the theme ‘Light‘.
    A comprehensive set of guidelines has been devised so as to reflect this change at every place related to the Ubuntu project. The new theme takes effect from the Ubuntu 10.04 LTS, which is slated for its release in April 2010. This new theme will define the looks of Ubuntu in all future releases.
    The new style of Ubuntu is inspired by idea of ‘Light’. and Ubuntu aims to be ‘Light’ in all senses. It denotes warmth, clarity, efficiency, lightness on resources, etc..

A display of the changes-
1)New Logo- Aims at reflecting the precision & engineering, that sits at the heart of Ubuntu, but not at the expense of the immediately recognisable circle of friends.

2)Community Logos-New logos have been made for the community sites related to Ubuntu.

3)New GTK Themes- I think this is the most important and a timely change for Ubuntu, that will go a long way in enhancing its popularity among the masses.

The Dark Theme

The Light Theme

4)New Bootspash- The theme change is complete with a new Boot Splash, that is absolutely eye-pleasing.

5)New website design- You can see a major change to the looks of the Ubuntu website-
http://www.ubuntu.com

6)New CD cover- The cd cover of Ubuntu 10.04 (onwards) will sport a new look.

Source:https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Brand and https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Brand2

NB:One thing which I disliked about this new theme is the placement of the Window control(Minimize, Maximize and Close buttons) at the left side of a Window’s title-bar.

How to make Windows the default/first entry in your GRUB2 menu

I hadn’t tried to understand the working of the GRUB2. One, day when my friend asked me how to make Windows the default entry in his GRUB menu, I didn’t have an answer. I went to the Ubuntu wiki page on GRUB2. Its very comprehensive. Most of the general aspects of the working of GRUB2 is explained in it, including the changes, how to configure the grub.cfg file, etc..
Though not explicitly stated in it, the method to make Windows the default entry was pretty clear from it. Here is how you do it-

1.cd /etc/grub.d

2.sudo mv 30_os-prober 10_0s-prober

3.sudo mv 10_linux 20_linux

4.sudo mv 20_memtest86+ 30_memtest86+

5.sudo update-grub