ConkyPress a WordPress stats visualization tool for your desktop

This post is about a software I have written called ConkyPress. You can use ConkyPress to visualize the statistics of your WordPress blog on your desktop. ConkyPress is just like a widget sitting on your desktop and it updates itself by default every 10 minutes. You can change the update interval and everything else by using the provided and very simple configuration files. If you decide to use ConkyPress I would be very happy about your feedback and especially about screenshots of your desktop.

1. About ConkyPress
2. Dependencies
3. Installation and configuration
4. Starting and Stopping
5. Download
6. Screenshots
7. Troubleshooting and FAQ
8. Changelog
9. Acknowledgment

How to receive files via Bluetooth on Gnome3

In this post I will describe how to receive files via bluetooth on Gnome3. Strangely it is possible to send files from your PC to any other device, but it is not possible to receive files from other devices via bluetooth. Maybe that’s just the case for people with a minimal installation of Gnome3 like my self, however the solution for this problem is very simple.

How to migrate from initscripts to systemd on Archlinux

In this how to I will describe how to migrate from initscripts to the “new” systemd init system on Archlinux. Initscripts will still work, but it is recommended to switch completely to systemd.

1. Update and installation
2. Migration and configuration
3. Optional improvements
4. Useful commands
5. Troubleshooting

How to mount LUKS encrypted partitions manually

In the last days I played a bit with Slackware Linux on my netbook. But I play a bit too much and I had to recover some important files from my home folder but it is encrypted. The system wasn’t able to boot successfully. I had to boot from an usb-stick. But the problem was to decrypt the partition with my home folder.

How to mount a LUKS encrypted partition on boot

In order to automatically mount a LUKS encrypted partition on boot you have to find out its universally unique identifier (UUID) first. Open a root shell and enter
$ blkid
The program lists all mounted volumes and their UUIDs.

How to set up TOR from source

In this post I’ll show you how to set up TOR (The Onion Router). You can use TOR to surf anonymously but I recommend NOT to use services with logins which can be connected to your real identity, e.g. email, instant-messanger, etc. You don’t know how the TOR-exit node is configured.

How to disable the monitor sleep mode

A week ago I changed the linux distribution from Ubuntu to Slackware. I also changed my windowmanager from Gnome 3 to XFCE. But whatever I set in the power manager XFCE puts the monitor to sleep every 10 minutes. Here is a fix that worked for me.

How to transcode a directory of audio files to AAC with FFmpeg

I recently started to backup my CDs as lossless flac files on my home server. The problem is, my mobile phone cannot play back flac files, so I wrote a little bash script that transcodes a directory of audio files to high quality variable bitrate AAC files that I can play back on my mobile phone.

How to fix the MIME-Type of PDF attachments in Thunderbird E-Mails

Recent versions of Mozilla Thunderbird set a wrong MIME-Type for PDF-files that are attached to an E-Mail. Thunderbird sets the MIME-Type to text/html instead of pdf/application. As a result the mail client of the receiver tries to display the PDF-file as plaintext and this leads most of the times to a system lock or crash of the mail client. I really don’t know why Mozilla did this, but I’m sure that they had their reasons, because the problem is very obvious and also easy to fix:

How to split and demux a file with FFmpeg

If you have a large video or audio file and want to split it into several smaller files, you can use ffmpeg to obtain that goal. What you need are the start timecodes and the length of the segments you want to cut. You can tell ffmpeg the start position of a segment with the -ss option and the length of a segment with the -t option.