Some good and nice open source books worth downloading.

There is a nice article <a href="http://www.tectonic.co.za/?p=4491" target="_blank">here b<span class="byline">by Alastair Otter. He has given links to different Books that are worth reading.  These include:

<span class="byline">1)<a href="http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596517984/" target="_blank"> http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596517984/

<span class="byline">2) <a href="http://en.flossmanuals.net/DigitalFoundations" target="_blank">http://en.flossmanuals.net/DigitalFoundations

<span class="byline">3) <a href="http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:Tutorials/Animation/BSoD/Character_Animation" target="_blank">http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:Tutorials/Animation/BSoD/Character_Animation

<span class="byline">4) <a href="ftp://ftp.heanet.ie/pub/debian/pool/non-free/r/rutebook/" target="_blank">ftp://ftp.heanet.ie/pub/debian/pool/non-free/r/rutebook/

<span class="byline">to name a few, along with others. Its worth reading the article. While you are at it don&#8217;t forget the gems known as comments.

5 Sites To Find Free Alternatives To Popular Software

And sometimes there are software you find irksome and think things could have been better. In any case, I always like to try out a few alternative software choices before I settle with any particular application mainly for two reasons: One, you would never know how good or bad the one you are using is until you try some alternatives and two: a bit of choice and competition can only be for the good of us users! Your motivation might be different: perhaps you want to find a free software that does the same task as the paid software you are using or maybe your favorite Windows application is not available on Mac or Linux.

Add current date and time in vim

Last few days I was quite busy. So this time very quick tip 🙂

Add the following to the ~/.vimrc file

imap dt :r! dateA

And now whenever you type dt in the insert mode in vi, date will be inserted.

Multiple search in vim

I was looking at a log file and needed to highlight multiple search items to make the logs more readable. I got into multiple threads suggesting various cryptic vim commands but I was in no mood to remember them. So, I finally hit <a href="http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=479" target="_blank">this.

This is a cool vim script which you can use to highlight multiple search patter. You can simply add a search term by doing

Linux xdg-open — replacement for start in windows

if you want to open any document with the default document handler from the bash prompt or command prompt in linux then the simplest way to do that is use &#8221;xdg-open&#8221;.

This can also be used in bash scripts to allow users to select which document to open without worrying about if a particular application is installed or not. Example could be where you have list of documents in the current directory (same kind or of different format.) and you want the user to select the document. In such a scenario you can take the user input for the filename and user &#8221;xdg-open filename&#8221; to open the file irrespective of the file type or worrying about if xpdf is installed or abiword is installed or not.

Photo Resizing

for i in *
do
mogrify $i -resize 640×480 i
done

Citibank Doesn\’t Want Your Business, Linux Users

This is an article from the Citibank customers in US.

The Consumerist: &#8221;Citibank won&#8217;t let customers using Linux computers log in to their online accounts. Adam argues that in 2009 this doesn&#8217;t make sense, especially when no other major corporate website blocks him like this.&#8221;

URL: <a href="http://linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=2009-10-31-001-39-IN-BZ-SW">http://linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=2009-10-31-001-39-IN-BZ-SW

But in India too we don&#8217;t have much too different environment. Though I do not have any issues with the Citibank site, but I have HDFC Insurance. I always pay the premium online. This time the payment failed couple of times and the amount was deducted from my account. When checked with the Customer Service Desk, the confirmed that the payment option does not work on Firefox with Linux. For this time I have made the payment using Cash, but why should there be OS discrimination.