2009-11-29 Ubuntu Notes To My Future Self

The problem with Twitter is that when a nugget fits in 140 characters, I have the tendency to post it on Twitter instead of blogging about it. It’s doesn’t seem worth the blog post. The danger is that I use my blog to remember stuff. It’s my externalized memory, my swapped out brain. Some things need to be on the blog.

I noticed some nice maximization tricks on Ubuntu and now I have mapped Alt-Cmd-Enter to maximize the Emacs frame. And I found that other programs offer a way to toggle the menu bar itself. Here’s how I did in Emacs:

(global-set-key (kbd "<f10>")
		(lambda ()
		  (interactive)
		  (if (window-system)
		      (menu-bar-mode (if menu-bar-mode -1 1))
		    (menu-bar-open))))

I had the feeling that the gnome terminal kept crashing when waking up from suspend state and other such stuff. So I switched back to xterm (→ System → Preferences → Preferred Applications → System → Terminal Emulator: Standard XTerminal). But it looks ugly! Create `~/.Xresources` file (a skill I had nearly forgotten ­– also note to self: `~/.Xdefaults` did not work) and add:

XTerm*faceName: dejavu
XTerm*faceSize: 10

​#Emacs ​#Ubuntu ​#Debian

Comments

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What is your Ubuntu maximization trick?

– Kevin 2009-11-29 18:11 UTC

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Try xfce4-terminal with Terminus as the font – it’s the best combo for me 😄

– RadomirDopieralski 2009-11-29 18:14 UTC

RadomirDopieralski

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Kevin, I assigned a binding to → System → Preferences → Keyboard Shortcuts → Window Management → Toggle fullscreen mode. That maximizes the window, removes the titlebar, and the system menu.

Radomir, I installed Terminus many years ago because so many people on ​#emacs claimed it was so awesome. But I was not conviced... Have you switched your entire system to xfce? Otherwise, why use just the xfce terminal?

xfce

– Alex Schroeder 2009-11-29 18:29 UTC

Alex Schroeder

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I had a similar problem as the one you describe having with Twitter. Previously I used my own wiki at home (OddMuse as you probably remember) for small notes I wanted to tell the world about. Until I discovered Twitter and Facebook and their nice tools to quickly jot down small “updates”. So those who read the wiki almost thought I had died 😄 The solution? A small Clojure-based web app that let me write something and double/tripple post it to different places (Twitter, Facebook, my wiki). Maybe you need something similar?

OddMuse

– MathiasDahl 2009-12-01 22:57 UTC

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I’ve always wanted to write a backup tool for my Flickr account as well. A backup tool for my Twitter conversations would make sense. I wonder what the backup, though. Just the stuff I write? The stuff I write plus the messages in threaded conversations?

– Alex Schroeder 2009-12-02 08:27 UTC

Alex Schroeder

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Well, I use xfce4-terminal because it’s much lighter than the gnome one (starts up faster), behaves the way I expect (including highlighting links and differentiating between no background and black background) and lets me set the default terminal size to something different than 80x25. Antialiased and hinted true-type fonts with full unicode support are a nice bonus.

– RadomirDopieralski 2009-12-04 18:18 UTC

RadomirDopieralski