Get RSS feed of a Twitter account

There’s a very simple trick to get the RSS feed of any Twitter account, check it out:

Twitter account: http://twitter.com/#!/w3c

RSS Feed: http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/w3c.rss

Most of all, it works for any Twitter account !

 

slow internet after kernel upgrade

You recently upgraded your Linux kernel or changed your distro and Internet became suddenly slow ? You tried everything from disabling ipv6 support, MTU improvement to DNS tweaks ?

Generally the connection behaves normally for a few minutes and then speed dramatically decrease

Well if you’re using Wifi (especially an Atheros chipset), it’s probably a stupid module problem try typing:

sudo modprobe -r ath5k
sudo modprobe ath5k nohwcrypt

Now check if the connection is as fast as usual, if it’s OK, you can make this modification permanent using this command (tested with Ubuntu) :

sudo sh -c "echo 'options ath5k nohwcrypt' >/etc/modprobe.d/custom-wireless.conf"

Enjoy fast surfing!

howto: Speed up your Linux up to 10x

You’ve probably heard about the 200 lines kernel patch that makes wonders ? Well there’s an easier way to dramatically increase your Linux Distro reactiveness and obtain a similar result, I tested it and it’s really working , this is for Ubuntu:

“Script To Automatically Apply the “200 Lines Kernel Patch” Alternative In Ubuntu”

For other distros:

Swiftfox no flash sound problem

You’ve installed Swiftfox and you’ve got no sound while playing flash videos ? If you’re an Ubuntu user don’t bother yourself with the myriads of proposed solutions and install the flashplugin-nonfree-extrasound package.

Swiftfox is a closed source app, there’s an excellent open source alternative : Swiftweasel, give it a try it’s as fast and lightweighted. For Mac users try Camino.

Both of this two apps can be translated using the official Mozilla language files, go to this url:

http://releases.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/

Select your version and check /linux-i686/xpi/ click on your xpi language file and it will install automatically.

MySQL Can’t create/write to file MYI Error

If you’re a McAfee Antivirus user and you get this kind of message in phpMyAdmin whenever you perform a query on your DB :

“Can’t create/write to file ‘xxx.MYI’ (Errcode: 13)”

Just exclude the MYI and MYD filetypes from your antivirus detection system (add them to Exceptions).

cannot send mail from localhost using smtp (xampp/wamp)

You’ve activated the email function using stmp (see this post ) in your localhost xampp/wamp and you still can’t send mails ?

This is maybe due to the fact that your ISP requires username/password authentication, this how to proceed:

1. Open your php.ini file (xampp\apache\bin\php.ini for xampp users),  in [mail function] comment out the entire “Win32 only”section and uncomment the “Unix only” (sendmail) section:

[mail function]
; For Win32 only.
;SMTP = localhost
;smtp_port = 25

; For Win32 only.
;sendmail_from = me@example.com

; For Unix only.  You may supply arguments as well (default: “sendmail -t -i”).
sendmail_path = “c:\…\sendmail\sendmail.exe -t”

2. Download this version of sendmail and replace your current sendmail file (\xampp\sendmail\sendmail.exe for xampp users)
3. Open your sendmail.ini file (\xampp\sendmail\sendmail.ini for xampp users) and fill in the appropriate fields:

smtp_server=
smtp_port=
auth_username=
auth_password=

4. Save and restart xampp/wamp

It should work.

Joomla Language Variables Override

I you’re already using Joomla Overrides , you’ve probably wondered how to also override language variables and not only output, here’s the solution:

1. Create a language file for you template, ie:

/language/en-GB/en-GB.tpl_templatename.ini

2. Add the following line to your output overrides:

JPlugin::loadLanguage( ‘tpl_templatename’ )

That’s it !

How to do a Chrome/Opera specific stylesheet

You’ve probably wondered how to load specific CSS stylesheets for Chrome, Safari and Opera, some kind of <!–[if Chrome]> CSS conditional comment. Unfortunately these conditional comments work only with the IE Series.

There’s an easy PHP solution to recreate this behaviour for other browsers, the excellent browser detecting script remade by Chris Schuld, this script will let you use this kind of code in your XHTML views:

<?php $browser = $browser->getBrowser();?>

<?php if($browser == Browser::BROWSER_CHROME || $browser == Browser::BROWSER_SAFARI):?>

<link href=”css/chrome-safari.css” type=”text/css” rel=”stylesheet” />

<?php endif;?>

In this example I deliberately took Chrome/Safari: Using a very similar version of Webkit HTML Engine, both render quite closely web pages, so you can use the same CSS file for both of them.

There’s an exhaustive list of supported browsers, even the iPhone Safari version and Lynx are handled by the script.

OpenVPN connected but No Surf in Ubuntu

If you’re using an OpenVPN Server to surf in Ubuntu, maybe you experienced this strange problem : you can connect but you cannot surf !    This how to fix it...

Ext3 read problems under Windows

Maybe you recently discovered that just after a fresh install of the last version of your favorite Linux Distro, apps like explore2fs, Acronis True Image or the Ext2/3 Driver for Windows couldn’t read no more your Ext3 Filesystem, Acronis True Image even complaining about “Partition Errors”.

This is due to the fact that most of new distros (starting from version 8.10 concerning Ubuntu) are using the inode 256 structure by default for their filesystem. There’s pretty much nothing to do about that, the only way to switch back to the well-supported inode 128 is to reformat your hard drive…

Acronis True Image Home 2009 (build 9709) is the only version that supports inode 256 (Business/Workstation 2009 don’t, nor 2010 versions), you can still switch to CloneZilla or Partimage which are excellent (and free) alternatives to True Image or Ghost.