Alarm Clock

Just like GBirthday, reminder and scheduler applications are useful tools to have on your computer. If you've got lots of work to do as well as other activities it's easy to spend too much time one one thing and not have enough time for anything else. Alarm Clock helps with this by letting you schedule reminders, sounds or even programs to happen at a certain time.

 Start your favourite game when you want to give yourself a break.

Alarm Clock has loads of options you can use for each event. Fire it off on certain days and months. Play a sound, run a program, show a popup or even lock the screen. Create templates for common tasks.

 

Need more time? Use the snooze button to get the alert again a few minutes later

Be sure to spend time looking at all the options because there are a number of menus that each have useful settings for customizing how you use the program.

Finally, there is also an applet version that works in a similar way but is more concise. It's up to you which one you use, though I prefer the main version.

Using Lego Mindstorms NXT with Ubuntu Linux

The Lego Mindstorms NXT brick is an incredibly versatile programmable brick consisting of a microcontroller inside a plastic casing with an LCD display, four buttons, a speaker and eight external connections. Unfortunately, though, it only ships with compilers for Lego's "NXT-G" graphical language that run on Microsoft Windows and Apple Macintosh platforms. There is, however, a multitude of text-based languages available for the main platforms (Linux/Unix included). The variety of languages available is beyond the scope of this article, but there is an excellent page here that should provide enough information to get started.

In this article I will be setting up the NBC/NXC compiler for use on Ubuntu Maverick (it should work on most current *nix releases, too - if not, please comment and we'll look into it).

The first thing to do is make sure the NXT brick is recognised by the system. To do this we run:

david@pinatubo:~$ lsusb|grep Lego
Bus 002 Device 002: ID 0694:0002 Lego Group Mindstorms NXT
david@pinatubo:~$

If you get similar output, you are ready to go onto the next stage. If not, then there is probably a misconfiguration or fault somewhere in the USB communications, or the brick isn't turned on.
To be able to compile and download NXC or NBC programs, all you need is the nbc executable. Download the latest release from here and untar. Make sure the binary is executable by cd'ing to where you untarred it and run chmod +x nbc. You can now run it by typing ./nbc at the terminal. This isn't very convenient unless you happen to be in the directory whenever you need it. I prefer to move the compiler to /usr/local/bin/ so it is on the system include path and the './' can be omitted.
david@pinatubo:~/nbc$ ls
nbc
david@pinatubo:~/nbc$ sudo mv nbc /usr/local/bin
[sudo] password for david:
david@pinatubo:~/nbc$ which nbc
/usr/local/bin/nbc
david@pinatubo:~/nbc$
You can now compile and download NXC and NBC programs by running:
david@pinatubo:~/nbc$ sudo nbc -d -EF test.nxc
[sudo] password for david:
david@pinatubo:~/nbc$
Flags used are -d to make it download the compiled binary and -EF to tell it to compile it for the enhanced firmware (see nbc download link). For a full overview of available options, run nbc -help.
You may have noticed that the compiler needed to be run as superuser in order to work. This is due to the way Linux handles device files and a udev rule will need to be made to let it run at normal permissions. udev is the utility in charge of dynamic devices (e.g. USB devices which must allow hotplugging) on Linux systems. When a new device is connected, it looks through a set of predefined rules to tell it what to do with the device and who is allowed to access it. The details of how to set up the necessary udev rule are a tad too long to include here, but there are excellent instructions here on the NBC website.

That should be enough to get the NXT brick talking to your Linux box. If there are any errors or omissions, or you have problems following these instructions or configuring your system, please comment below and we will try to help.

Not got one? Buy LEGO Mindstorms NXT 2.0 (8547)

The Firefox Add-ons Almanac: Part 2

To conclude the almanac:

Productivity:

• Adblock plus
• Tab scope 

Destroy the Web

Adblock Plus
Nearly every site you go on has adverts, even this one (though I try to use few). Adblock Plus completely changes this; you will never see an advert again. Even YouTube video ads are removed, which I really hated.

Tab Scope
If you use lots of tabs it's easy to lose track of what you have open, especially if they have misleading titles. Of course, you could change browser.tabs.tabMinWidth in about:config and restart Firefox, but theres nothing fun about that! Tab Scope adds a real-time image under the tab when you mouse over it, so you can easily see whats in it.

And just for fun: Destroy the web
Take your anger out on a website with Destroy the Web. Earn points by clicking elements in the page and try to beat the high scores! (Scores for this blog are at http://www.destroytheweb.net/page.php?gid=058bbbb87-a659-2b6c-716e-bc3b709cccb).

Recognize this page?

Even though this add-on wont get your work done any faster, it's definitely fun to have when theres nothing to do on the internet (is that even possible?)

GBirthday birthday reminder

As it was my birthday yesterday, I chose to highlight a birthday related application today. GBirthday is a panel applet that shows you which of your Evolution contacts have a birthday in next next few days.

There's no excuse for forgetting a birthday with GBirthday

This applet is customizable; you can show birthdays up-to the past 30 days and 90 days in the future. It even changes colour and flashes to alert you, so there's no chance of not seeing.

If you only have a few contacts you might not find this particularly useful, but people who have hundreds will benefit from having this reminder.

Game Review: Oil Rush

Oil Rush is a water based Real Time Strategy game, where your mission is to take over the ocean in a world where oil is running out. The game is still in a pre-release version, and should be finally released in June, but until then you can pre-order for around £12/$19.95. Pre-ordering also gives you every build so you can start playing right away.

Defend your base in an all-new RTS game

Graphics:

Oil Rush has stunning graphics. Put that with the £12 price tag and it makes them even better. Most Linux games have pretty simple graphics: they're not bad but don't match up to mainstream Windows games. Oil Rush goes just as far as them, if not further, and the more you play the game, the more detail you notice. 10/10

Gameplay:

There is something about this game that makes you want to go back and play. You know you've got a good game when you can do this because you can keep playing it for as long as you like. There isn't much in the way of campaigns (it is only pre-release) but you can play over a LAN or internet (I assume there will be a main server later on) with your friends. 8/10

Sounds:

I'm not too fussed about the sounds in games. I generally have the effects turned up and the music turned down. Oil Rush however is different and I keep the background music on when I'm playing because it's composed well and fits in with the game. 8/10

Overall:

As Oil Rush nears it's final release I can only see a great game becoming an awesome one, and I definitely recommend it to anyone considering it. 9/10

The Firefox Add-ons Almanac: Part 1

To make up for yesterdays short post, todays will be a very long one. You probably won't want to read it all, so here are the contents if you want to scroll down to the important bits:

 1. Downloads:

• Schedule
• YouTube
• Management

 2. Utilities

• Weather
• Language

As you might have guessed, this post is about Firefox Add-ons. There are loads of them available but which should you choose? To save time searching, here are the reviews:

OpenOffice extensions

Only a short post today, as I got home late and I haven't much time. I will make up for it tomorrow with an extra long post!

OpenOffice has the functionality to use extensions: snippets of code that add extra features to the program. One useful extension is the Oracle PDF Import Extension. This lets you open a PDF like any other document in Draw and make changes to it. You can then save in the range of standard formats, including PDF.

The second extension is Writer's Tools:http://code.google.com/p/writertools/downloads/list. Writer's Tools gives you a new menu in OpenOffice that let you do a range of things, like backup or translate.

Writer's Tools is a very useful addition to OpenOffice

The backup supports FTP, email and Amazon, you can bookmark documents and lookup words. Beware that this extension needs some setting up however, though it is easy to follow the instructions.

Please comment if you know about any other good extensions as I haven't written much here.