how to open Visual paradigm projects directly from KDE

oddly enough my installation of Visual Paradigm set its type to application/zip.

When i try to open it, it uses the same applications that other .zip files use.

Sure i could right-click + open with + Visual paradigm , but ….

So instead we’re going to create a new file type for that .vpp extension.

Create a new filetype in KDE

1 – Add a “x-vpp” type.

2 – select it (it down the list, inside the application category)

3 – Add a filename Pattern:
*.vpp

4 – Add an Application
* browse to your “Visual Paradigm for UML” binary file ( /path/vp/bin/Visual_Paradigm_for_UML_8.3 )

5 – Select an icon
* check the “resources” directory in your VP installation ( path/vp/resources/vpuml.png )

6 – press OK

Ok, now we need to edit the culprit of this mess:

Change the mimetype for Visual Paradigm for UML

edit the ~/.local/share/applications/Visual_Paradigm_for_UML_8.3.desktop

and change the mimetype to:

MimeType=application/x-vpp;

Restart your file manager

and we’re done! re-open your konqi/dolphin and .vpp files will always open with VP and your .zip will never again
be open with VP!

Patch portage to be more quiet

Gentoo linux is alive and well and just released a new Gentoo Linux Live.  It features Linux Kernel 2.6.37 (with Gentoo patches). It comes will all desktop environments. Especially if you are looking for KDE 4.6 SC here’s the best way to start.
It also includes OpenOffice.org (3.2.1), GIMP (2.6.11), Inkscape (0.48.1), Blender (2.49b), and many more. They are all packed in either the x86/x86_64 or the x86_64. If you like it, you’ll need to install Gentoo with the Instalation CD.

So a few days after the celebrated news of 11th release here’s a patch for portage to make it quiet and nice.

Those extra verbose warnings really annoys me,  because emerging something keeps showing me all the licensed packages that are masked, broken packages or masked.  So i fixed the “!!! existing preserved libs:
” ,  “!!! The following installed packages are masked:” and “!!! There are updates currently masked by LICENSE changes.” messages.

You can revert to the verbose warnings with the new flag “–extra-verbose”.

All it does is remove the list of packages shown after doing a emerge, and improves the speed because it doesn’t calculate any of it (particular when figuring out the preserved libs) and only shows a single line warning about them.

The patch is for portage-2.2.0_alpha26 (which is totally a must so you can play around with @sets)

Where to get the patch

patch-2.2.0_alpha26

How to apply the patch:

on the /usr/lib/portage/pym/ directory

patch -p1 -i patch-2.2.0_alpha26

The handbook is always a good idea to keep around ;)

(the image was taken from the Gentoo Live 10.0)

How to format a usb pen or mp3 player the right way

In a short line:

# mkfs.vfat -vc -F 32 -n “zen stone” -S 2048 /dev/yourdevice

The explanation:

free the gnu - lego mp3 player

-v Verbose execution.

-c Check the device for bad blocks before creating the file system.

-F FAT-size
Specifies the type of file allocation tables used (12, 16 or 32 bit).
If nothing is specified, mkdosfs will automatically select between 12 and 16 bit, whatever fits better for the filesystem size.  32 bit FAT (FAT32 format) must (still) be selected explicitly if you want it.

-n volume-name
Sets  the volume name (label) of the filesystem.  The volume name can be up to 11 characters long.  The default is no label.

-S logical-sector-size
Specify the number of bytes per logical sector.  Must be a power of 2 and  greater  than or equal to 512, i.e. 512, 1024, 2048, 4096, 8192, 16384, or 32768.

change “youdevice” for your own. Find out which is by checking your dmesg after plug-in the usb device for  something like:

• sde: sde1
• sdb
• etc…

You might want to try this flag too:

-I Normally you are not allowed to use any ‘full’  fixed  disk  devices.
mkdosfs  will complain and tell you that it refuses to work.  This is different when usind MO disks.  One doesn’t always need partitions on
MO  disks.   The  filesytem can go directly to the whole disk.  Under other OSes this is known as the ‘superfloppy’ format.

This switch will force mkdosfs to work properly.

how to fix firefox hanging every few seconds

Every x seconds, my firefox (built from sources) hangs for a few seconds (but the other applications keep running smothly).

Seems that my firefox (i didn’t tried using the binary) isn’t very keen on multithreading.
By default it has:

$ taskset -c -p firefoxpid
pid 29964's current affinity list: 0,1

To find firefox’s pid do:

$ ps -eo pid,comm | grep firefox
29964 firefox

So, firefoxpid is 29964, only in this case (pid varies). I needed to do this:

taskset -c -p 0 29964

with -c 0 (<– that’s a zero) the affinity mask is set to 1, so firefox only is allowed to use one cpu.
Take note of the parameters ordering: first the flags ( -c -p ) them the values ( <affinity list> <pid> )

the cpu id:
$ taskset -c -p firefoxpid
pid 29964's current affinity list: 0

the number of cpu’s allowed:
$ taskset -p firefoxpid
pid 29964's current affinity mask: 1

If firefox is to start from the beginning restricted,  it can be launched like:

taskset -c 0 firefox

That should lessen the hangings. In my case, javascript still hanged a bit.

Use custom font on konqueror

There’s this really beautiful font i just love! Its Linux Libertine and has more than thousands of characters!

Since i’m studying japanese i’ve been visiting alot the wikipedia’s hiragana page ! and with their default font, for some particular characters, i was seeing alot of squares!

So after a while i figured out that it was the limitations on the font, and since konqueror really allows to overwrite the pages default font, i created a konqueror.css file with:

* {
font-family:"Linux Libertine"
}
and in konqi’s configuration’s Stylesheet i set it to use this.

restart konqi and all is bliss!

Allow other users to use X

Quick, unsafe but effective way to allow a certain user to use your running xserver (xorg).

xhost +local:username

well.. that’s it really. That user can now open any application that needs a display window.

Translated MojoSetup to portuguese using the fine launchpad

Ryan C. Gordon updated is .plan and called for translations of MojoSetup. MojoSetup is to be the rewriting and replacement of Loki_setup.
Here’s the Announcement of MojoSetup and the future homepage with a link to the zlib alike license.

The announcement is a

How to create and remove a soft link, symlink or symbolic link

A soft link, or more common, a symlink, is link a shortcut to the targeted file or directory. So when is removed the original target stays present. This is the opposite of a hard link which is a reference to the target and so, if the hard link is removed, so is the target.

A symlink can be created like:

How to fix the locale settings

i’ve been strugling with my system to get it utf-8′ed . The solution was easy and in a few minutes i’ve repaired the wrong i made previously.

short string : kernel_panic;

So my kernel, which suposed to be working for several years without a halt, is having daily panics.

I went to find out more, and found that my kernel suffers from Panic disorder.

I call him hysterical. (or as the kernel doctor called: medically unexplained)