Japanese, like many other Asian languages, is written using a variety of symbols which are not found in the standard ASCII table. Fortunately, you can include these symbols in LaTeX documents using the CJK package. In ubuntu this can be installed via the sudo apt-get install latex-cjk-japanese command. I’m not sure about Windows, Mac or [...]
Archive for the ‘Ubuntu’ Category
Japanese characters in LaTeX documents
Posted: 8th January 2012 by Tim in Japanese, LaTeX, UbuntuTags: document, English, hiragana, Japanese, kana, kanji, katakana, language, LaTeX, Ubuntu
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Using Amazon’s Kindle with Ubuntu
Posted: 19th November 2011 by Tim in Debian, UbuntuTags: amazon, book, connect, e-book, ebook, ereader, kindle, mount, mtp, protocol, Ubuntu, usb
The Amazon Kindle is a great little device which stores it’s documents unencrypted and unhidden on it’s hard drive, just like you would on your PC. This means you can add and remove documents as though it was a USB drive. It’s that easy. But on Ubuntu when you plug it in, nothing happens. The [...]
Piping stderr in unix
Posted: 26th May 2011 by Tim in Bash, UbuntuTags: cerr, cout, fd, file descriptor, linux, pipe, redirect, stderr, stdout, unix
In unix, you can pass output from one program to another using the pipe symbol (|). Unfortunately, it only pipes the output from stdout (cout). You can pass the output from both stdout and stderr (cerr) by adding 2>&1 to the end of the command before the pipe, where 1 is the file descriptor for [...]
Ignoring the first line of output in a unix terminal
Posted: 31st January 2011 by Tim in Bash, Software Development, UbuntuTags: first line, ignore, linux, sed, sh, shell, terminal, Ubuntu, unix
Sometimes in a terminal you want to strip out the first line of output from a command. For example, you may want to generate a list of users which have tasks running using the ps command. This command puts a header at the top of the output. You can remove this header by piping the [...]
Using the Tesco VGA Webcam in Skype with Ubuntu 10.04
Posted: 4th October 2010 by Tim in UbuntuTags: Bash, camera, driver, skype, tesco, Ubuntu, vga, webcam
This is a very specific post about using the £8.97 VGA webcam from Tesco with Ubuntu 10.04, namely with Skype. These instructions might work with other webcams and/or other linux distros, but I have not tested this personally. If this does/doesn’t work for your webcam/distro combination then please leave a comment describing your experiences. Okay, [...]
Converting CDs to MP3s in Ubuntu
Posted: 25th July 2010 by Tim in Debian, UbuntuTags: 320kbps, bitrate, CD, linux, mp3, sound juicer, Ubuntu
There are a number of ways to convert CDs into MP3s in Ubuntu. For me, the best choice is Sound Juicer because of it’s filename flexibility and ability to deal with compilations. Setting it all up is also very simple. Only two packages are required from the repository. They can be installed with the following [...]
Checking the Ubuntu version number
Posted: 13th June 2010 by Tim in UbuntuTags: Bash, check, number, release, shell, term, terminal, Ubuntu, version
Ever jumped onto an Ubuntu server somewhere without knowing which operating system version it’s running? You can find this out with one simple command: lsb_release -a This will provide output like: Distributor ID: Ubuntu Description: Ubuntu 9.10 Release: 9.10 Codename: karmic
Pausing processes in ubuntu
Posted: 6th June 2010 by Tim in UbuntuTags: continue, linux, pause, pid, process, stop, Ubuntu
There are times when you want to pause a process and continue it later. For example, when a process is using all the computer’s resources and you need to access something or execute something else. This can all be done via the kill -STOP and kill -CONT commands. First you need to grap the pid [...]
Setting the SMTP port number in Evolution
Posted: 3rd May 2010 by Tim in UbuntuTags: client, email, evolution, form, gnome, linux, mail, port, setting, Ubuntu
Some mail servers require you to connect on a certain port. Evolution (the default mail client for the gnome desktop environment) doesn’t have a setting for the server port number. You can set this by adding :[port_no] to the end of the server address. For example, to use the mail server mail.example.com on port 587, [...]
Mounting ISO files in Linux
Posted: 24th April 2010 by Tim in UbuntuTags: CD, disk, DVD, image, iso, linux, mount, Ubuntu, umount
One of the niceties of linux distros like Ubuntu is that you can ‘mount’ ISO files. An ISO file, or ISO image, is an archive of a CD or DVD. By mounting an ISO file, you can read the data as though you inserted the CD into your computer. Ubuntu will even regard it as [...]
Using Vim syntax highlighting on custom file types
Posted: 20th April 2010 by Tim in PostgreSQL, Ubuntu, VimTags: config, highlighting, linux, syntax highlighting, vim
Let’s say you have a file type whose contents are in XML format but have a different file extension such as .tim . If you want to edit these files with Vim with syntax highlighting, simply add the following to ~/.vimrc (affects only your Vim environment) or /etc/vim/vimrc (affects everyone’s Vim environment): au BufNewFile,BufRead *.tim [...]
My first LaTeX document
Posted: 28th February 2010 by Tim in LaTeX, UbuntuTags: command, command line, compile, document, LaTeX, linux, mac, PDF, set up, setup, Ubuntu, windows
The learning curve for LaTeX documents can be a steep one. This step-by-step guide covers installing and setting up the LaTeX environment, and creating and compiling your first document so that you can read and distribute it. Setting up the LaTeX environment A few things need to be installed before we can start creating documents. [...]
Playing DVDs in Ubuntu
Posted: 31st December 2009 by Tim in UbuntuTags: medibuntu, movie, MRL, Ubuntu, video, vlc
Unfortunately, you cannot play all DVDs in Ubuntu out of the box. Some packages need to be installed manually due to legal issues in some countries. If you find yourself getting errors like VLC is unable to open the MRL, chances are this is your problem. It’s a simple fix (paste this into a terminal/console): [...]
Highlighting Doxygen tags in Vim
Posted: 30th December 2009 by Tim in Software Development, Ubuntu, VimTags: configuration, doxygen, syntax, syntax highlighting, vim
Doxygen highlighting is set up by default on most Vim installations, but for some reason it’s disabled. There are two options for enabling it. First, it can be enabled globally. This means adding the parameters to the global Vim configuration. Note that you may need to be root for this to work (ie: sudo echo [...]
Getting avr32-linux-gcc compiler on linux
Posted: 14th December 2009 by Tim in Bash, C, UbuntuTags: atmel, avr32, avr32-linux-gcc, buildroot, compile, gcc, platform
If you’re trying to compile C programs for Linux on an AVR32 architecture, you’re going to have to get the avr32-linux-gcc cross compiler. Note that you can’t use the avr32-gcc compiler, as this compiler makes programs which do not run on an operating system (ie: they talk to the system directly), which will not run [...]
SSH Login without a password
Posted: 17th November 2009 by Tim in Bash, UbuntuTags: key, keygen, passphrase, password, public, remote, rsa, secure, ssh
If you access the same computer through SSH on a regular basis, or want to access a machine through SSH in a script, then you don’t want to have to worry about passwords. Luckily, there is a way to grant SSH access without a password while remaining secure. For a quick and easy fix, download [...]
List files which are not up to date in CVS
Posted: 5th October 2009 by Tim in Bash, CVS, UbuntuTags: Bash, cvs, grep, pipe, repository, script, shell, terminal
CVS is annoying in that if you want to find out which files have been modified or need updating, you can’t simply use the cvs status command as there’s too much information displayed. In order to make it useful, you really need to filter the output. Note: the following tutorial only works for linux computers [...]
Connecting to MySQL in C
Posted: 20th August 2009 by Tim in C, MySQL, UbuntuTags: C, coding, compile, connectivity, database, development, gcc, MySQL, sockets, sql, Ubuntu
MySQL comes with a library to make talking to MySQL with C easyish. There are a few things you have to install first, though. I’m using Ubuntu 8.04 for this walkthrough, but things should be similar for other flavours of Linux. Before we start, we have to download the development files required: sudo apt-get install [...]
Adding subdomains in Apache
Posted: 20th August 2009 by Tim in Apache, UbuntuTags: Apache, asp, configuration, HTML, Javascript, PHP, restart, server, web
There are a number of ways to add subdomains in apache, but here is the quickest and most basic way to get it done. This example is for Ubuntu 8.04, but may be used on other flavours of linux if you find the correct paths to the files. Let’s say you have a blog on [...]
Getting MP3s working on Amarok
Posted: 26th July 2009 by Tim in UbuntuTags: amarok, linux, mp3, music, Ubuntu
Amarok, by default, does not come with the MP3 codecs installed. This is for a variety of reasons that I’m not going to go in to here. To get MP3s working in amarok, or to listen to internet radio, you need to install the libxine1-ffmpeg package. In ubuntu, that means doing the following: sudo apt-get [...]
Installing Ubuntu on Asus eee PC 701
Posted: 11th July 2009 by Tim in UbuntuTags: boot, boot from CD, CD, eee, eeebuntu, install, laptop, Ubuntu
Let’s be honest – the operating system provided by Asus on the eee PC 701 is a bit rubbish. Sure, the games are fun, but for people like me who like to do ‘advanced’ stuff like using a terminal it just doesn’t cut it. Solution: eeebuntu. Eeebuntu is basically ubuntu (with gnome) which has been [...]