FlashGot Addon for Firefox

You’ll want to install a Firefox extension called FlashGot in order to download the YouTube movie onto your computer.

Once you’ve installed FlashGot, go to YouTube and surf to the video that you want to download. In the lower-right corner of your browser, click the FlashGot icon to select where you’d like to download the video (.flv) file. It should automatically begin downloading.

Apt-Get the Stuff You Need

Before you can convert your Flash video (.flv) to an MP3, you need to install a few tools. Open terminal and type the following:

sudo apt-get install lame ffmpeg libavcodec-unstripped-52

Once the installation completes, you’re ready to convert your .flv file to an mp3 file.

From .flv to .mp3 in one line

Open terminal, cd to the directory where you’ve saved your Flash video, and run the following, replacing SOURCE_NAME and DESTINATION_NAME accordingly:

ffmpeg -i SOURCE_NAME.flv -acodec libmp3lame -ar 44100 -ab 160k -ac 2 DESTINATION_NAME.mp3

You should have yourself a nice, compressed .mp3 file.

Convert to other formats: mpeg, avi, wav, etc

With the power of ffmpeg, you can convert audio and video files to almost anything. Learn more about ffmpeg if you want to tweak your output.

Mac OS X may not be as easy as Ubuntu to customize, but thanks to GeekTool, you can make your desktop background a little more useful than just eye-candy. I’ll show you how to easily add a calendar, multiple clocks (display both relative and non-relative time), a live system processes chart, and a system up-time timer (with load averages) to your desktop. Of course you can easily add more items, but this should be enough to get you started.

Sounds completely geeky (and it totally is), but GeekTool makes you and your desktop look awesome – it also increases sexual pleasure and makes you last longer in bed.

Get Your GeekTool Ready

Obviously none of this action would be possible without GeekTool, so go download yourself a copy and install it. The install should take you 30 seconds or less. Skim over the Introduction to give yourself a quick overview of your new best friend.

Add The Goods To GeekTool

Now that you have GeekTool installed, it’s time to add some magic to your desktop. (You can reference my desktop screenshot above as you add your GeekTool components.)

For each component you add, you can drag and resize the window in which they appear – you’ll see what I mean once you begin.

To add a new component, click “New Entry” in GeekTool and under the main configuration frame drop-down menu (#3 in the screenshot), choose “Shell”, then insert the following code into the “Command” textbox. The “Refresh” input box can be changed to rerun the Shell command every number of seconds.

Here we go from bottom to top of my desktop screenshot:

System Uptime Stats

uptime
Set refresh to ten.

System Processes Chart

top -l1 -u -o cpu -S -n 15
Edit the number “15″ at the end of the string to display more or less processes.

Local Time

date +%H:%M
You can change the format in which the date is displayed using these nifty conversion symbols.

Non-Relative Time

TZ=Pacific/Honolulu date +"Honolulu: %H:%M"
To change the timezone, edit the TZ variable above to something like “America/Los_Angeles” – a full list of possible TZ variables can be found here:
http://twiki.org/cgi-bin/xtra/tzdatepick.html

Calendar

cal | sed "s/^/ /;s/$/ /;s/ $(date +%e) / $(date +%e | sed 's/./#/g') /"

My Exact GeekTool Setup

Want to completely copy my style? Be my guest!

Colors and Font

White – Monaco
The font size is variable depending upon the component – it varies from 9, the uptime and system processes, to 71, the local time.

Text

Right-justified

Image Background

I can’t remember where I download the background from, but it’s called “Flow” and it insanely rules. (If you know to whom I should give credit, please let me know.)
Download Flow (~3MB)

Enjoy!

Thankfully a silly puffer fish exists in the form of an awesome Mac OS application. It’s called Fugu, and it’s about to make your life a hell of a lot easier.

Fugu allows you to easily connect to your Ubuntu machine (via SSH) from home (like a home network) or while you’re away.

I’ll show you how to combine the power of open-ssh with Fugu to create an Ubuntu/OS X bond that would make Neo weep with pride.

Gathering The Goods…

Before we dig into any installing, we need to figure out what your external and internal (network) IP address is for your Ubuntu computer.

To get your external IP address, I recommend going to whatismyip.com – your IP address will be sitting in front of your face as soon as the page loads. Done.

To get your computers network IP address (the IP address given to you by your router, assuming you have one) open terminal in Ubuntu and type ifconfig. You should see something similar to the following:

eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:17:31:A6:D2:B9
          UP BROADCAST MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
          RX bytes:0 (0.0 b)  TX bytes:0 (0.0 b)
          Interrupt:17 

eth1      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:17:31:A6:CA:73
          inet addr:10.0.1.2  Bcast:255.255.255.255  Mask:255.255.255.0
          inet6 addr: fe80::217:31ff:fea6:ca73/64 Scope:Link
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:734005 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:634475 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
          RX bytes:626690669 (597.6 MB)  TX bytes:243085749 (231.8 MB)
          Interrupt:21 Base address:0x6000 

lo        Link encap:Local Loopback
          inet addr:127.0.0.1  Mask:255.0.0.0
          inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host
          UP LOOPBACK RUNNING  MTU:16436  Metric:1
          RX packets:80 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:80 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
          RX bytes:6264 (6.1 KB)  TX bytes:6264 (6.1 KB)

The highlighted code above is your computers IP. It’ll probably start with 10.x.x.x, 192.x.x.x or 127.x.x.x – in any case, it’ll should be within the eth0 or eth1 sections.

Installing Open-SSH

Now that you’ve got your external IP and your computers IP, it’s time to install open-ssh on Ubuntu. Open Synaptic Package Manager (System -> Administration) and search for openssh-server. Install it. Done.

Installing Fugu

While on your Mac, go to the Fugu website (http://rsug.itd.umich.edu/software/fugu/) and download the dmg file. Install it. Done.

Rollin’ With Fugu

After installing Fugu, open it. You should see something like this:

• Assuming you’re at home wanting to connect to your Ubuntu machine, in the “Connect to:” field, type your Ubuntu computer (internal) IP address. (Remember, this should something like 10.x.x.x, 192.x.x.x, or 127.x.x.x) If you’re away from home and you want to connect to your Ubuntu machine, type your external IP address in the “Connect to:” field.
• The username should be the same username you use to login to your Ubuntu machine.
• Use port 22. (This is the port used by SSH)
• Hit Connect. (If you see a warning message appear, click continue.)
• Enter your Ubuntu machine’s password associated with the username you used. (You may save the password to OS X’s keychain so you never have to enter it again.)

Fugu should connect you with your Ubuntu machine!

Oh yeah. DONE.