PawEng

Slashdot asked their readers to write about useful tricks for Unix, Vim, and Emacs. It makes for some interesting reading.

(Useful) Stupid Unix Tricks?
(Useful) Stupid Vim Tricks?
(Stupid) Useful Emacs Tricks?

Update on 11/10/2008: Slashdot posted another one: (Useful) Stupid Regex Tricks?

TrueCrypt is free open-source disk encryption software for Windows Vista/XP, Mac OS X, and Linux. It provides transparent on-the-fly encryption. You can create and mount encrypted drives — either as separate files or entire partitions. TrueCrypt uses AES-256, Serpent, and Twofish encryption.
TrueCrypt has the ability to create encrypted volumes inside one another. Since a TrueCrypt [...]

A digital camera’s sensor has a more limited dynamic range than the human eye. This means that if you expose a photo for the bright areas, the camera may not “see” details in the dark area that your eye can see. Likewise, if you expose a photo for the shadows, the camera may not “see” [...]

Version 3.0 of the free, multi-platform, multi-language office package OpenOffice.org has been released. The release has been long awaited. The OpenOffice.org website is so busy that only a bare minimum download page is available due to overloaded servers. I have been using previous versions of OpenOffice.org for a while, and I look forward to trying [...]

It is often necessary to log on to a remote computer. On Linux/Unix systems, this has been the norm for a long time, but with the advent of always-on home internet connections and internet connections available everywhere, it has become more common to connect remotely to PCs. For example, you may be at away from [...]

Once you start using the command line, it is amazing how many things you can do that were difficult in a GUI system. A common task is to extract data from text files. The text files may be the output of some program, or they may be written documents like saved emails. Here are some [...]

I found a story on CyberNet News about an add-on for Firefox that really got my attention. The add-on is Ubiquity, and it gives you an instant command line interface to the web. I have earlier shared my love for command lines so I was very excited about Ubiquity. After installing it, I was not [...]

EASEUS Disk Copy 2.0 is a freeware program for cloning a hard disk. It makes a sector-by-sector copy of your hard disk ensuring the copy is 100% identical to the original. It is useful for upgrading your hard disk to a new larger drive.
Disk Copy 2.0 comes as a zipped ISO disk image. Burn the [...]

I spend a lot of time on a Linux / Unix command line. Often I need to do a quick calculation. I don’t want to hunt around for a fancy calculator program. I want something that works right from the command line.
The bc program is a command line calculator for Linux / Unix. It is [...]

For a long time I have been looking at using online storage to backup my data. My main concerns were the reliability of the company providing the storage, and the privacy of the data. Enter Jungle Disk. It is a small company with the right philosophy: Encrypt the data locally using state-of-the-art encryption techniques, and [...]