Changing the background for the Lockscreen in Ubuntu 12.10

It seems like every time I want to tweak something in Ubuntu these days, it's a vicious workaround involving multiple hoops.

So here's another, for the default lockscreen on Ubuntu.

According to AskUbuntu and other sources all over the internet, you can't change the background of the lock screen.

This is mostly true; you could recompile gnome-screensaver I suppose (there's links out there to do it) but the simplest way to do it is this:

First get the PNG you want to use. It has to be PNG because this is an awful "hack" to make it work.

From a terminal window:
sudo mv /usr/share/backgrounds/warty-final-ubuntu.png /usr/share/backgrounds/warty-final-ubuntu.orig.png
sudo mv /path/to/your/file.png /usr/share/backgrounds/warty-final-ubuntu.png

And you're done.

VIM as an IDE? Bah.

Linux is the IDE.
Vim's just a ridiculous powertool inside of it.

Today I embarrassed myself by telling a windows guy "this is a powerful example of what linux is", and tried fgrepping into vim, forgetting the -l switch.

So I was running:
Moron> fgrep -r TODO | xargs vi

Which was opening up hundreds of files all at once, named fix, this, by, subclassing etc

Took a while. Guy thinks I'm a moron.

python dictionary interpolation - wow

I never knew this worked:

>>> fruits = { 'apple' : 1, 'orange':3, 'banana':4 }
>>> print 'I have %(apple)s apple, %(orange)s oranges, and %(banana)s bananas' % fruits
I have 1 apple, 3 oranges, and 4 bananas

Python will take your dictionary and allow you to interpolate it in a string formatting. This leads to some really nice readability.

dear AMD, thank you

The AMD auto-detect for their drivers is absolutely wonderful.
Appears to be exploiting bittorrent protocol as well.

We've come a long way from fishing around on a technical support downloads page for the right named driver.

Cheers AMD, great post-sale product support.

a toast to AVG

So, I run Windows in a multi-user household which strongly implies I should run anti-virus of some sort. I'm not allowed to get mad at my wife if she infects everything; I'm supposed to expect this and be able to recover. (by typing that I've guaranteed the next attack vector originates from me, not her)

I run AVG because the price is right. I thought.
Today I received a toast from AVG telling me they have a report for me, showing what they've protected me from.
This report was not on my computer, but on AVG's website.
So the one thing it didn't protect me from is phoning home continuously to AVG about my currently running processes.

And the report is just numbers. For example, it says it protected me from ten file attacks. TEN. I never heard of ONE of these! But there's no link to describe what they were.
Just an ominous 10.

fun little site

http://www.pythonchallenge.com/

Cool brainteasers. I solved #1 in a different manner than the "expected" solution.
The best part about that was it taught me a new python technique; my original method spanned 18 lines of code or so, with loops and if/elses.
When I rewrote it to take advantage of the suggested function(s), it became a 3 liner.

Looking forward to solving more problems! But first, space zombies.

How to crack kindle DRM

I somehow zapped the original post.

Nutshell: I've become uncomfortable with the idea that I have access to my books only at Amazon's ok.
I wanted to take steps to protect my investment, and that involves cleaning the DRM from my purchased books.

The old ways - skindle or unswindle - are obsolete and haven't worked since mid-2011.
The new hotness is below.
The best way to utilize the toolkit is as a calibre plugin.

http://apprenticealf.wordpress.com/2010/02/11/hello-world/

This post will help you as well:
http://stream-recorder.com/forum/simplest-option-removing-drm-calibre-plugins-t8349.html


Update: I've attempted to seek remedy with Amazon and it's been to no avail. What seems to have happened is the case failures (which they've known about) cause a current across the Kindle. This causes resets, hard locks and the like. It's all out there on blogs.

Mine had the same case, but I didn't know of the problem so I kept the case on for months after the problems started, and it caused permanent damage to my year old Kindle.

Amazon is basically washing their hands of it saying that their stuff has a year warranty.
Fair enough; I'm the proud owner of a Nook.