Access Text-Only Google Cache For Any Website Link Directly

i like the plain text version of google cache, it is very bandwidh effective, and positioning of text is pretty good.

here is a method of quickly fetching google cache for any valid link using firefox.

bookmark any of the two links given below.
[for normal cache]
http://74.125.93.132/search?q=cache:%s
[for text-only cache]
http://74.125.93.132/search?q=cache:%s&strip=1

set the keyword of bookmark as cache or something of your choice.

after doing it, open a new tab, and type "cache http://www.yahoo.com", and you would reach google cache directly.
NOTE: you need to type complete url in including http://

what happens here is, %s in your bookmark accepts the weblink provided by you.
addition of parameter strip=1 give you pure text-only version

Pptview Opens Ppt Faster Than Openoffice.org Impress

i was having great trouble opening and viewing ppt files in ooimpress (openoffice.org impress).

first, the file took long time to open, bad but still manageable.
second, slide changing was terribly slow (3-5 seconds lag on my p4 machine) in ooimpress.

so i got fed up and start searching for a smaller application that just views ppt quickly in fullscreen mode.

it was then i came across this package in ubuntu repos, pptview, which is esssentially pptview.exe (windows binary to view ppt), configured to open with wine. this application looked crappy, but it was extremely responsive on my slow pc.

i have seen this many times that viewers perform faster that editors, so there should be seperate viewing binaries to open files like word, spreadsheet, presentations etc. it makes sense as i open such office files mostly for viewing purpose, unless and until i am creating a fresh document.

this link also provides a deb package of pptview, if you do not wish to go to repository.
http://linuxappfinder.com/package/pptview

Detecting Low Monitor Refresh Rate Can Impress Folks..

well this sure sounds funny. let me start from very beginning.

i was talking to a friend, who was sitting at his cubicle, using windows machine. while talking, i noticed that his monitor was flickering. i took controls and changed the refresh rate from 60 hertz to 85 hertz. when my friend could understand what i just did, he was amazed.

his logic was, a normal human eye can detect movements in one-tenth of a second, and i was able to notice flicker at 60 hertz, which means at 60th fraction of a second. i smiled, wanted to tell him that its not a god thing, but left it, and enjoyed my moment of glory.

to detect low refresh rate, all you have to do is not to look directly at the monitor. look slightly away, so that your eyes do not get blinded by that glowing bulb, and then your peripheral vision would tell you the truth.

simple answer to why i could notice flicker could be that i do not use my computer as a toaster, big thanks to gnu/linux operating system. moreover, after using my home computer for over 5 years, i know i cant stand 60 hertz refresh rate ( at the same time i want higher resolution ), which is the sole reason i tried suse linux 9. call it miracle or some nice hack, suse was able to give 67 hertz @ 1024x768 resolution on my samtron 15" monitor. whereas in windows xp, i was offered only two choices,  1024x768@60Hz or 800x600@85Hz using original hardware drivers on 'recommended' operating system.

i know that friend hates linux, would never use it, but i am pretty sure he doesn't think that linux users are crack heads. they prefer foss because they want more out of their computer.

Making Gnome Panel Autohide Faster

i have always been thinking that gnome is slow. latest example i could quote was the miserable speed in which the panel hides and unhides (if autohide is enabled)

however we can tweak the autohide delay and many other gnome related settings in gconf-editor

path to edit settings of top panel:
/apps/panel/toplevels/top_panel_screen0

path to edit settings of bottom panel:
/apps/panel/toplevels/bottom_panel_screen0

here you can change the values of hide_delay and unhide_delay as per your needs.

however, in my case even reducing the delay value to zero didn't speed up the process. that was because my graphics card is slow, and it takes up time in animating the hide and unhide process.

to get rid of panel animation, uncheck enable_animations field.

after doing this, my panels became really snappy.

Increasing monitor resolution to 1024x768 in Zenwalk 6

after installing fresh zenwalk 6, my monitor resolution was set to 800x600.
mine is a samtron 15" (56v) monitor

my monitor supports 800x600 @ 75 hertz and 1024x768 @ 60 hertz

using proper gui method of changing resolution, i didn't have any success, i was choosing the option, but relevant files were not getting changed.

i wasted nearly a week trying to find solution in forums, as many were facing same issue.

it was reported that the problem occurred due to a bug in brand new xfce 4.6
anyways, i just wanted a workaround, which was difficult to find.

a developer on zenwalk irc channel told that a minor update has been pushed by xfce and that might solve my issue. i updated my xfce packages using netpkg (30mb).

luckily my problem got solved after a restart. now the system is capable of holding the monitor resolution changes applied by me.

Getting DSL Broadband to work in Zenwalk 6

after installing a fresh distro, the first thing a person would want is to get the box connected to internet, so that essential packages can be installed.

i am having dsl broadband connection and my login credentials are not stored in router. i prefer the store the credentials in the system itself. getting the internet to work here was tricky as pppoeconf is not present in the system.

pppoe-setup was used to configure the internet connection
pppoe-start used to start the connection
pppoe-stop used to stop the connection

connection was established successfully, output of ifconfig showed that ppp0 interface is up and running. however, dns resolution was not working.

i tried entering exact dns server ip address in pppoe setup, but it didnt work. a posting on linuxforums about slackware pppoe showed that eth0 (lan interface) should be down before starting pppoe connection.

running this as root solved my problem.

ifconfig eth0 down
pppoe-start

this problem doesnt come in ubuntu, probably because pppoeconf is smart enough to handle it.

My First Experience With Zenwalk 6

i wanted to lay my hands on it because my current version was 4.8 and i seldom used it.
that was because of some flaky performance and serious bug with adobe flash 10 with led to abrupt system restart.
i hate it when my system restarts without my performance.

other than this, it had many latest packages like pidgin, transmission were not yet present in ubuntu 8.04 hardy heron repositories.

i keep looking for minimal things so that things are responsive enough on my p4 pc.
i expected xfce not to have lag like gnome has.

i can live without gnome, but as of now openoffice is a must for me.
zenwalk gave me exact thing, a stripped down version of latest openoffice.org 3.0

i ran into 2 major problems:
configuring pppoe broadband (zenwalk doesnt have pppoeconf)
changing monitor resolution to 1024x786

nearly after a week of hunting, i was able to solve both problems in a single day.
apprantly pppoe-setup is not as good as pppoeconf, and pppoe-start can start the internet connection properly only if the network interface card is inactive (ifconfig eth0 down).

logically this means that the dns binding would happen only when the lan card eth0 is able to accept dynamically assigned dns servers.

root cause behind monitor resolution problem was a bug in latest xfce4.6
i desperately tried to look for a workaround, but failed.
a user on zenwalk irc guided me through lot of steps, but in the end updating xfce and a restart did the trick.

long live zenwalk, its fast, rapidly updated, and it doesnt have 6 month release schedule.