Aqeel Zafar

After searching for a long time for a good, beautiful, easy to configure dock for Linux that can also work without compositing effects, I had finally given up, when I found out that Gnome-Do, my favorite application launcher, is going to feature a dock in it’s next release. Today, I downloaded and installed PPA packages for Ubuntu and gave Gnome Do’s docky a try.

Docky is basically a special theme of Gnome-do, to access it, you have to go in Gnome-Do Preferences -> Appearance and change it’s Theme to docky. As soon as you select docky, you will notice a huge dock bar appear at the bottom of your screen. By default it shows your most used applications. If you don’t like it’s size, just take your mouse pointer to it’s vertical border and it will change into resize pointer, you can then drag it away from screen border to increase the size, and towards the screen border to decrease the size.

Adding and removing icons from dock is as easy as dragging an item on the dock or dragging it away, depending on you are adding or removing. Another way to add applications to dock is search for them using Gnome-Do and press the small plus sign below it. You can also right click and remove applications from it.

Docky also replaces usual task bar, though it is bit lacking in this front for now, but it is to be expected, as it’s still alpha quality. Currently, docky doesn’t provide a way to access different windows of same application, that is, even if you have 6 firefox windows open, it will show them as one.

Docky can use all plugins for Gnome-do, though there aren’t any docky specific plugins available yet (like start menu, time, systray etc.), but I am sure community will start contributing soon enough. If you are looking for a nice dock yourself, give it a try, though beware it’s still in it’s alpha quality so you might experience some crashes or unexpected behaviour, if that’s the case you should wait for it’s final release.

Read more about docky at it’s gnome do wiki.

Aqeel Linux dock, docky, gnome-do

Few months ago, I wrote about different keyboard layouts and planned to switch to Colemak. I wasn’t able to completely switch, mainly because I am a programmer, and wasn’t able to give Colemak enough time. I tried it couple of times but postponed complete switching.

Couple of weeks ago I tried Colemak again, but this time I went cold turkey. The best way to start Colemak is to download typing lessons from it’s site and try first few lessons (they recommend going through first three lessons in one sitting). It helps get the hang of new layout.

Learning a new layout when you are already used to one is not very easy. Just as everyone had told me, first few days felt like walking thorough mud, my fingers were not able to type at the speed my mind and body was used to, it had that dream like effect where you are moving in slow-motion and can’t move fast no matter how hard you try. Don’t let me discourage you though, as that’s just for first few days, after that your fingers and mind start getting used to new layout and it becomes easier. My typing speed with Colemak is now almost equal to what it was QWERTY (though I make lots of typos at that speed, so, I go bit slower) and my speed and efficiency is still increasing.

It could be just a psychological effect but it feels my hands are less strained than how they were with QWERTY. Even though it’s a great layout and I will highly recommend it to everyone,  but switching layout is just not for everyone. There are many people who type by looking at the keys, it won’t help them much, similarly, those people who don’t type much, the incentive of learning new layout is very low for them. But anyone who is using QWERTY, types a lot, or have ever complained about RSI, should definitely give it a try.

Aqeel General colemak, keyboard layouts, qwerty

Today I am releasing version 0.2 of Aqwaal.

At user’s end it looks pretty much same as 0.1 version, only big difference in this version is that now you can edit / delete author name, quote source and tags.

Though, now that basic structure is there, plan is to make version 0.3 actually usable for anyone who might want to install it. Which means creating a nice looking layout / theme, making infrastructure more secure and stable, adding basic search etc.

Visit Aqwaal project page to download the latest version (or click here for direct download). Any comments or feedback will be most welcome.

Aqeel General aqwaal, projects

Got this email today, with cartoons from Brazillian cartoonist condemning Israel’s attacks on Gaza. They aren’t recent but what they show is still happening.

Disclaimer: If you believe these images violate copyrights, please let me know.

Read more…

Aqeel General cartoons, gaza, israel, palestine

Few days back, I uploaded a web based (PHP / MySQL) quotations database manager, Aqwaal. It was originally inspired by Quotations Page, I wanted to have a self-hosted version of similar software to keep track of my growing list of quotations, I found some software like Chirpy, but they were more suited to manage quotes from IRC. As these were my early days of programming, so, I decided to write my own, with the thought that it will also hone my skills, but soon got busy with other things and forgot about it. That is, until now.

Currently, it’s a very basic version, and is only released as a proof of concept (which means you are not supposed to use it for anything other than development or just to check it out). For now, at admin level, it only supports:

• Add quote (including author name, tags and source of the quote – all optional)
• Delete any quote
• Change Admin user password

At end user-level:

• Browse all quotes
• Browse quotes using tags
• Browse quotes using author name
• Browse quotes using source
• Very basic paging support

Interface is not very pretty right now, but it is easily usable. If you are a programmer and want to look at the source, let me warn you, as the code was written quite some time ago it too isn’t very pretty either. There are lot of things to be done, but I would prefer to make it stable with only basic features first and then go for all the fancy stuff.

My current aim is to add:

• All basic functionality (edit quote, edit / delete author name, tags, sources etc.)
• Search
• Basic theme support (CSS at least)
• User management (thinking about it, not sure yet)
• And of course, remove all bugs

After that, it depends on whether anyone (other than me) is actually interested in it or not

Aqwaal Project Page: http://code.google.com/p/aqwaal
Discussion Group : http://groups.google.com/group/aqwaal

Aqeel General aqwaal, projects, quotations

One of the great thing about Office software is, no matter how much you know about it, you can almost always find a feature you never knew existed. I am using OpenOffice.org for a very long time now (more than couple of years), though as my usage for office applications is quite low, I can be considered an average user for these applications.

Yesterday, while preparing for my exam, I was reading my handouts in OpenOffice Writer, when I noticed an “Edit File” button in toolbar, which I had never noticed before (though according to the screenshots I can see on web, it has been present since always). The button is used to switch between Edit and Read-only mode. If you are only reading a document and don’t want to edit it, switching to Read-only mode makes the experience more pleasent by removing formatting toolbars and improving overall page view.

Read-only Mode

Edit Mode

Edit file button can also be used to open a copy for editing, if you don’t have permissions to edit the file you are currently reading.

It’s not some huge feature, but if you read many documents / ebooks in OpenOffice.org, or want to edit a read-only file, it can be quite useful, and the fact that I (and few other people I know) didn’t know about such a simple feature made me write about it. It’s interesting how many people don’t know about most of the features present in such huge software. If you know any such feature which no one else seems to know, do share it with us!

Aqeel General, Linux openoffice

Yesterday I went to Lahore Bloggers Meetup, organized by Badar Khushnood, Google’s country consultant, IEEE Student branch of LUMS and CIO Pakistan.

Event started (I was 10 mins late, not sure if I missed something) with Badar Khushnood’s introduction to blogging and how to earn money from it. Main points of his presentation were:

• Follow your passion
• Find your audience
• And earn money from it.

It was followed by success stories of 17 year old student Haris from Sizzledcore.com – told by Badar as Haris’ mother didn’t allow him to attend the meetup due to his exam next day – and Saad Hamid from Sizlopedia.com. Then came Maryam Nasim, a housewife earning from freelancing using her site PinkWool. Last hour was dedicated to Question and Answer session, which was pretty interesting as well as informative.

End results were, earning money from blogging takes lots of patience and hard work. Write original content, and follow your passion. If you work hard you will eventually start getting some results, but there is no shortcut. Most importantly, don’t write because you want to earn money, write because you love to.

In the end, I finally got to meet many people I already knew on web, some more thoroughly than others. It was great to finally meet them all.

This meetup is also covered (in more detail) by Sohaib Athar, UzEE, Imran Jafri and TechMynd (the most detailed roundup yet).

Aqeel General, Personal bloggers, google, lbm08, lums, meetup

Wordpress is a great blogging platform, in my opinion, the best. And if there is some feature not present in it, you can always install a plugin to get that functionality. There are few plugins which I believe to be must have for any wordpress user. (though I know some people who may not agree with it )

Subscribe to Comments: Unless you have comments disabled on your blog, this is the most important plugin to have (and the reason why I am even writing this post). Nothing is more frustrating for a commenter than to keep visiting the site to check new comments. Subscribe to Comments, as the name implies, allows commenter to subscribe (or unsubscribe) to the comments on post, every new comment posted after that will be emailed to all subscribed commenter.

Unfortunately, many bloggers don’t add such functionality to their blog, if that’s the case, you should poke them to install the plugin, if they still don’t install it, you can always use some comment tracking service like coComment, which enables you to track your conversations on different blogs on a single page.

All in One SEO: I don’t like to spend my time optimizing sites for search engines, but the sad truth is if you site doesn’t appear (and rank well) in search engines, people won’t be able to find it easily. And no matter how good your content is, if people can’t find it, it’s useless. That is why I like All in One SEO. Even though it is not needed to appear in search engines, it is useful to increase search ranking by removing duplicates, adding meta tags etc. If you like you can use additional SEO plugins too, but if not you should have atleast something basic like this.

Wordpress Database Backup: Those who have never lost their data, usually does not feel the need to backup their data, that is, until they actually lose it. Even if you are sure nothing will go wrong, it’s better to be safe than sorry. Wordpress Database Backup allows you to backup your database without any hassle. Just select any additional table present in your database that you may wanto to backup (additional to core wordpress database) and press the button to back it up on server, download it or email it to yourself. You can also schedule regular backups emailed to you.

Wordpress Related Posts: Okay, this is not a must-have plugin, but I have still included it in this list as it’s one of those nice-to-have one. Wordpress Related Posts simply add links to automatically generated related posts, found using post tags, at the bottom of the post. This makes it easier for the user, who has come to a specific post from searchengine to find more posts according to his interest.

Let me know if there is any other plugin you consider to be must-have.

Aqeel General wordpress

My favourite web analytics software Piwik just got desktop integration.

For those who haven’t heard of Piwik before, it’s open source web analytics software which you can host on your own server. It is still in beta, but I am using it for few months now and haven’t faced any problem. You can try it out using the online demo on their site.

According to Piwik blog, two desktop applications for Piwik are now available, made by piwik users. One of them, Piwik Connector is a simple app that shows hourly visits on all your Piwik websites, it would be useful for people who track many sites and don’t want too much stats.

For power users, Desktop Web Analytics provides much more advanced view, it brings all piwik stats to your desktop. Both these software are still early in development, so, you might face couple of problems, for instance, I wasn’t even able to save my profile in Desktop Web Analytics, but the good thing is work is being done on it.

P.S: Forgot to mention, both these apps are developed in Adobe AIR, which means they are available on Linux, Mac & Windows.

Aqeel General, Linux piwik, software, web analytics

I have (once again) updated / changed couple of things on this blog. Most importantly, I have created a simple Yahoo! pipe to filter my feed, now you can subscribe to upto five different tags / categories, instead of subscribing to whole blog. As basically it’s my personal blog and I post anything I want to, many people are put off by it, now they can just get the updates they want. All you have to do is:

1. Open http://pipes.yahoo.com/aqeeliz/blogfeed
2. Enter any tag or category name in text boxes (one in a box, leave remaining empty)
3. Run Pipe
4. Click on “More Options” and Choose “Run as RSS”
5. Subscribe to the feed.

Secondly, blog theme is updated. Now I have switched to very minimalistic design, which emphasis on content rather than other stuff. Let me know what you think about it, and if you face any problems.

Aqeel General Website