Phrank's Ubuntu Blog

I've been working on a web-based homework assignment scheduler/planning system.
Fun stuff - What little time I have to program!

It allows you to enter your syllabus information for each class, and then you can see what assignments you have due each day in at one glance:

It's my first program in php from scratch - try it out @ http://hp.online02.com

I'm going to rewrite it in php/mysql (currently cgi and text files) and hopefully release it soon

So my Dad's computer had a few Trojans on it - Such a pain, so much so, that he install Ubuntu!

But He still needs XP, so here's how to remove those nasty viruses with ClamAV

This would work from a Ubuntu liveCD as well, so you could just boot to a CD, and run these commands

Install ClamAV

Update Virus definitions

Find Windows Partition - You want the partition that is NTFS - That's the root windows partition - /dev/sda2 in this case

A quick walkthrough on setting up scripts in the Nautilus right-click menu

I updated the webpage that displays our home automation status. It shows the last 3 things that have happened, but now the time and temp as well.

I switched out the new P4 system and put up a couple of old PII's to run firefox in fullscreen.
I also switched from windows XP to a small linux distro called DSL - I remastered the ISO so that it would all boot from a CD, so there's no need for a hard drive.

A few things I used:
DSL Linux

R-Kiosk Extension for FF 2.0 to start the browser in fullscreen mode
Ratpoison window manager, via MyDSL - Allows you to position the mouse pointer in the lower right-hand corner of the screen, so you don't see it! - just put 'addhook switchwin banish' in the ~/.ratpoisonrc file
Edited .xinitrc to to turn off the screensaver (xset s off &) and start firefox with the URL to my Home auto server web app
Edited .destop to use ratpoison instead of jwm

It work quite well on the old PII systems - When the power goes out, it won't ruin anything, and it'll start right back up later!

Here's a how-to on remastering the DSL cd:

Just got a couple of old ZipIt wireless messengers off of e-bay.

Hoping to put a basic install of linux on them and use them for home automation.

fun, fun!

SH scripting is so much fun! And useful. I've written a simple script that downloads various comics from different websites for the current day. Fairly simple:

Just wrote a little script that rotates my background ever once in a while - as to not get bored!

Save as rotate.sh and make executable

I have my front yard light connected to a outletbox controlled via a LPT port. And it's hooked up the the rest of the home automation system.

I was just having cron turn on and off the light a specified times. But a little script and a bit of help from a government website, the light turns off at sunrise and back on at sunset.

It's here! A Gnome Desktop theme save / restore solution.

Phrank's Theme Saver lets you save the following to a tar.bz2 archive, and restore it all with a simple script!
Saves: Icon, Mouse, GTK, Metacity, Sound themes - Splash and Background images - Panel Settings - Font Settings (But not font files)

You can send the archive to a friend, and they can theme their desktop with a few clicks! Works great for switching between themes as well.