Ruby on Rails: gem install versus apt-get
UPDATE: Thanks to Ryan, Ant and Fern for the tips. With that in mind I found an online Slicehost tutorial that contained the steps and explained how to install ruby via apt-get, then get the latest rubygems, install that manually, ran gem to update itself, then run gem to install rails – as suggested. The steps I took from that page:
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HOWTO: conky config (conkyrc) for Debian Part 2
I changed around my Conky config, and it’s something you could do forever, but it’s great because it can be as heavy or light as you want it. Recently I dropped Gnome almost all together to run Openbox (full HOWTO on this forthcoming). I found a panel that will house things like nm-applet output, but was missing things like a simple clock, network activity, etc. So now, using most of the same code/look that I used here, I have a small, transparent strip at the bottom of the screen showing me time, date, proc, proc temp, network up, network down, and power status (battery, AC and the level of charge). It looks good, it’s light, it’s all I need. Nice to bring some of the memory requirements down from Gnome as well.
# Create own window instead of using desktop (required in nautilus)
own_window true
own_window_hints undecorated,below,skip_taskbar
background no
# Use double buffering (reduces flicker, may not work for everyone)
double_buffer true
# fiddle with window
use_spacer right
use_xft true
# Update interval in seconds
update_interval 3.0
# Minimum size of text area
minimum_size 10000 5
# Draw shades?
draw_shades yes
# Text stuff
draw_outline no # amplifies text if yes
draw_borders no
uppercase no # set to yes if you want all text to be in uppercase
# Stippled borders?
stippled_borders 8# border margins
border_margin 1
# border width
border_width 1
# Default colors and also border colors, grey90 == #e5e5e5
default_color white
default_shade_color black
default_outline_color white
own_window_colour brown
own_window_transparent yes
# Text alignment, other possible values are commented
#alignment top_left
#alignment top_right
alignment bottom_left
#alignment bottom_right
# Gap between borders of screen and text
gap_x 10
gap_y 5
# stuff after ‘TEXT’ will be formatted on screen
override_utf8_locale no
#xftfont Terminus:size=8
xftfont Terminus:size=10
xftalpha 0.8
#Mail:${color}${execi 300 python ~/scripts/gmail.py}
TEXT${offset 0}${color }${time %H:%M} ${color slate grey}${time %Z }Date: ${color }${time %a, } ${time %e %B %G} ${offset 0} ${offset 0} ${color slate grey}Proc:${color} $cpu%${offset 5}${acpitemp}C${offset 5}${cpugraph 16,100 000000 ffffff} ${offset 0} ${color slate grey}Net:${offset 5}${color}Up:${upspeed wlan0}k/s${offset 5}${upspeedgraph wlan0 16,100 000000 ffffff}${offset 0} ${color}Dn:${downspeed wlan0}k/s${color}${offset 5}${downspeedgraph wlan0 16,100 000000 ffffff} ${color slate grey} Power:${offset 5}${color}${battery}
Try it, you might like it – I’ll keep working on it, I’m sure I’ll find more things to add/improve. Conky rocks.
HOWTO: Speedup Firefox in 5 easy steps
These are some basic tweaks to speed up Firefox that have been tried and true for some time now. I haven’t seen these collected in one place recently, so if you have Firefox and want to improve its performance, try these steps. If you have a broadband connection (who doesn’t?), you can speed up your page loads considerably using these steps. Basically you’re allowing Firefox to load multiple things on a page instead of one at a time. By default, it’s optimized for dialup connections (lowest common denominator) so here’s what you need to do to fix that.
- Type “about:config” into the address bar and hit return. Type “network.http” in the filter field, and change the following settings (double-click on them to change them):
- Set “network.http.pipelining” to “true”
- Set “network.http.proxy.pipelining” to “true”
- Set “network.http.pipelining.maxrequests” to 8 (recommended by Firefox devs)
- Right-click anywhere and select New-> Integer. Name it “nglayout.initialpaint.delay” and set its value to “0″. This value is the amount of time the browser waits before it acts on information it receives. With it set to zero the page just pops up, it’s a dramatic change.
So give those a go, and don’t stop there, there’s plenty of Firefox add-ons to download and explore with; whatever you want to do online, there’s likely an add-on that’ll make it easier/better/faster.
Hi, I'm fak3r and I've been online for over 15 years, blogging for 10. I work with open source software, various hardware and whatever else that I can hack on. I enjoy learning by doing, painting infrequently and listening to more music than the law allows. Feel free to follow me and comment on my thoughts and ideas; we're all in it together kid.
