Productivity Sauce

Dmitri Popov
Correct Lens Distortion in GIMP with GimpLensfun

Jan 29, 2013 GMT

While GIMP offers a wide range of tools for working with photos, it lacks one feature that is essential for serious photographers: the ability to automatically fix lens distortion. Fortunately, the GimpLensfun plugin fills the void quite nicely. As the name suggests, the plugin uses the excellent LensFun library as its back end. One way to install the plugin is to compile it from source. Start with installing the required packages. On Ubuntu, this can be done using the following command: sudo apt-get install build-essential libgimp2.0-dev libexiv2-dev liblensfun-dev gitGrab then the latest source code from the project's GitHub repository: git clone...
Extension Watch: Fix TiddlyWiki on Firefox with TiddlyFox

Jan 25, 2013 GMT

TiddlyWiki probably needs no introduction. This nifty little personal non-linear notebook has been around for quite a while, and it has a large base of devoted users. Until recently, TiddlyWiki worked fine with practically any browser, including Mozilla Firefox. But under-the-hood tweaks in the latest release of the popular web browser brought some bad news for TiddlyWiki users: starting with Firefox 15, TiddlyWiki could no longer save changes. To rectify this unfortunate situation, Jeremy Ruston (the original developer of TiddlyWiki) released the TiddlyFox add-on. Install the add-on, and you'll be prompted to enable the saving functionality when you restart the browser. No muss, no...
Sketching and Note-Taking on Android with Quill

Jan 24, 2013 GMT

Want to use your Android tablet as a sketchbook and a tool for taking handwritten notes? Then you need Quill. This open source app (source code is available on the project's Google Code page) offers several essential tools for drawing and scribbling notes, including a pencil and a fountain pen. The latter tool is pressure sensitive (i.e., more pressure results in a thicker line), but this feature works only on tablets with an active pen such as HTC Flyer and Lenovo ThinkPad Tablet. You can specify thickness and color for both pen and pencil. In addition to the Undo and Redo commands, Quill features the Erase tool for more precise erasing operations. In the Menu | Page section,...
Use Colored Folders in KDE

Jan 23, 2013 GMT

Here is a simple trick that makes it significantly easier to locate often-used folders on KDE. Right-click on the desired folder and choose Properties. Under the General tab click on the default blue folder icon and pick a color folder icon you like (e.g., folder-brown or folder-green). Press OK twice to apply the selected icon to the folder. That's all there is to it. Now you can easily spot the folder you need by its color.
Rotating Backup with rsync

Jan 18, 2013 GMT

rsync is arguably the best command-line tool for performing local and remote backups, and you can set up a perfectly workable backup solution using a one-line shell script like this: #!/bin/bash rsync -avh sourcedir/ tartgetdirThis solution has one major drawback, though. It simply mirrors the contents of the source directory, so if some files and documents in it get corrupted, the script will duly back up the broken data. One way to solve this problem is to use a rotating backup which takes a full backup archive and then backs up all changed files in separate archives. This means that if anything goes wrong, you can restore data from previous backup archives.There are several...
Instant File Hosting with a Simple PHP script

Jan 14, 2013 GMT

Not comfortable with hosting images and files using third-party services? If you already have a Linux server, then you can easily turn it into a no-frills file hosting solution using a PHP script from sebsauvage.net. Download the script and change the default password in it. Rename then the script to index.php, create a separate directory for it on your server (e.g., uploads), and upload the script into it. Use then the chown -R www-data uploads command to make the uploads writable by the server, and you are done. Point your browser to http://127.0.0.1/uploads (replace 127.0.0.1 with the actual IP address or domain name of the server), and you should see a simple upload form. Use it...
Manage Debian and Ubuntu Systems with Wajig

Jan 11, 2013 GMT

Debian and Ubuntu-based Linux distributions offer a wide range of tools for administering the system. For example, you can install packages using the apt-get and dpkg tools, while the apt-cache tool can come in handy for finding specific packages. Then there is the wget utility that can be used to fetch files and archives from remote servers. But to get the most out of these and other tools, you have to learn each and every one of them. wajig offers a solution to the problem. This Python-based tool provides a simplified interface to many system administration tools, making it easier to handle daily computing chores. wajig is available in the official Debian and Ubuntu software...
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