Hastebin: An Open Source Alternative to Pastebin

Nov 27, 2014 GMT

A web-based service for storing and sharing text and code snippets can come in handy in many situations. And if you prefer to use an open source solution for that, Hastebin got you covered. Hastebin's web interface is simplicity itself, and it gives you commands to create a new text snippet, save the current snippet, and open existing snippets for editing. By default, Hastebin treats snippets as Markdown-formatted text, but you can use the Just Text command to edit the snippet as plain text. When you save the snippet you can share it by giving other users its URL, and you can post the URL via Twitter.The Hastebin server software is based on Node.js, and you can easily deploy a self-hosted...

Two Handy Shaarli Helpers

Nov 26, 2014 GMT

If you happen to use Shaarli, you'll appreciate two utilities that make it easier to add bookmarks to it. The first one is the Shiny Shaarli extension for Google Chrome and Chromium. Once installed, this extension adds a dedicated button which lets you bookmark the currently viewed page on Shaarli. When adding a bookmark, you can specify a description, tags, and mark the bookmark as private. Android-toting users may also find the Shaarli app rather handy. This simple helper tool integrates with Android's sharing functionality, allowing you to add bookmarks from other apps like the Chrome browser.

Create Animated GIFs with ImageMagick

Nov 20, 2014 GMT

Animated GIFs are not only good for posting funny cat videos. They are also suitable for creating short sequences demonstrating a specific feature of an application or explaining how to use a certain tool. And using the mighty ImageMagick software, you can create animated GIFs with consummate ease. First of all, make sure that ImageMagick is installed on your system. The software is available in the repositories of all mainstream Linux distributions, so you can install it using your distro's package manager.Next, take a series of screenshots and name them in the desired sequence (e.g., 001.png, 002.png, 003.png, etc.). Using the convert -resize 800x *.png command, you can resize all...

Generate Slick Galleries in Seconds with 1Page Gallery

Nov 11, 2014 GMT

At first glance, 1Page Gallery looks like yet another single-page PHP script for publishing photos. But if you look closer, you'll notice that unlike its counterparts, the tiny application generates galleries from a zip archive containing photos. This unusual approach makes 1Page Gallery an ideal tool for publishing a set of photos with a minimum of effort. And thanks to clever use of modern technologies like jQuery, HTML5, and CSS3, the generated galleries are both elegant and responsive. Unlike Mejiro and other similar apps that generate thumbnails on-the-fly, 1Page Gallery comes with the build Bash shell script for creating the required directories, extracting photos from a zip file,...

Generate EPUB Ebooks from Markdown Files with Bash PubKit

Nov 10, 2014 GMT

Markdown has become a popular choice for authoring ebooks, and there are several tools that can help you to turn Markdown-formatted files into an EPUB file. Among them is Bash PubKit maintained by yours truly. This toolset comes with everything you need to get started, including an ebook template and a Bash script for compiling EPUB files.Bash PubKit is based on BASC-eBookGenerator, but it does feature several significant modifications. For example, unlike BASC-eBookGenerator, which uses the non-free KindleGen utility to produce a MOBI file, Bash PubKit relies on Calibre's ebook-convert tool for generating ebooks in the MOBI and PDF formats. Bash PubKit comes with an installer script...

Extend Bash and Zsh Prompt with Liquid Prompt

Oct 28, 2014 GMT

The default Bash or Zsh prompt isn't exactly a hub of useful information, but you can change that by deploying Liquid prompt. Once enabled, Liquid prompt turns the humble prompt into a dashboard capable of displaying all sorts of data: from processor load and battery status to current time and the key info of the current Git repo. Better still, Liquid prompt is easy to install and requires no tweaking or complicated configuration. Provided Git is installed on your system, clone the project's GitHub repository to your home directory using the git clone https://github.com/nojhan/liquidprompt.git command, then add the source ~/liquidprompt/liquidprompt line to the ~/.bashrc file. Use then...

Run Live Presentations in Terminal with doitlive

Oct 17, 2014 GMT

The ability to script a command-line tool can come in handy in many situations. It can be useful when you give a live presentation, and you don't want your audience to fall asleep while you are pecking commands in the terminal, or when you need to create a smooth screencast demonstrating the capabilities of a command-line utility.Enter doitlive, a tool that makes it possible to create a script containing a list of commands, and then run them in a fake terminal session by typing random text. This creates a perfect illusion of a real command-line activity. Installing and using doitlive is as easy as it gets. First of all, make sure that you have Python 2.7 or 3.3 (or higher) and pip...