Author Archives: Tech163

Installing Recordmydesktop on CentOS and RHEL

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Recordmydesktop is a command line (and GUI) program that can be used to record a video of the CentOS Desktop (among other distros as well). To install it on CentOS, begin by installing the required dependancies:

yum install gcc make libXext-devel libSM-devel libICE-devel zlib-devel libXfixes-devel libXdamage-devel libvorbis-devel libtheora-devel

Because CentOS does not official an RPM for recordmydesktop, we will have to install it from source. We will download a tar of the source code, untar the source, and remove the tar file:

wget http://downloads.sourceforge.net/project/recordmydesktop/recordmydesktop/0.3.8.1/recordmydesktop-0.3.8.1.tar.gz
tar xf recordmydesktop-0.3.8.1.tar.gz
rm -rf recordmydesktop-0.3.8.1.tar.gz

Now, let’s go into the folder and install Recordmydesktop.

cd recordmydesktop-0.3.8.1
./configure
make
make install

If you did not set a custom prefix, running /usr/bin/recordmydesktop should begin recording your desktop! Use the following command (just as with most commands) to view the options available:

recordmydesktop --help

List of Google April Fools Pranks 2012

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Here’s a quick list of Google’s April Fools pranks for this year, 2012!

Google Racing – Google is collaborating with NASCAR, and their self driving car will be taking part of the NASCAR race. They even have a video on the official NASCAR website describing their involvement!

Really Advanced Search – Allows you to be real specific about what you want to search for, right inside of Google.

Gmail Tap – Use just two fingers to discreetly type an entire message in binary. Not only that, the Double Black Diamond mode allows you to type up to EIGHT messages at once!

Jargon-Bot for Google Apps - Jargon-Bot for Google Apps instantly recognizes business terms and provides clear jargon translation. It works on all your devices, no matter where you are. The official page provides a few funny examples of Jargon-Bot twisting what folks are saying to their most probable intention.

Click to Teleport – Click-To-Teleport extensions allow potential customers to instantly teleport to your location through an AdWord ad. This brand new technology puts an end to inaccurate location targeting, and introduces a revolutionized way to bring in clients.

Chrome Multitask Mode – Multitask mode allows you access to two mice instead of one. When a couple only has one mouse instead of two, you can both use it at the same time!

Google Weather Control – Don’t like the weather? Simply change it!

Google RoGo – Many folks using modern browsers have trouble accessing websites. However, Google’s studies have shown that 100% of folks using rotary phones have trouble accessing websites. Google RoGo aims to fix the problem folks using rotary phones experience when browsing the internet.

Google Fiber (nutrition bar) – Google is now getting involved with the distribution of a whole new type of fiber. Their new nutrition bar will give you up to 100 times the energy and productivity than what you have experienced before.

8 bit Google Maps – view the entire world in 8 bit Nintendo Style

Google Voice for Pets – Google Voice for Pets will allow your cats and dog to text. Together. Google’s Special Voice Communication collars will allow dogs to communicate with cats and other dogs via Wifi. Google’s Voice Transcription software also recognizes pet lingo, so can transcribe their nonsense into plain English!

Thunderbird and Firefox 10 in CentOS and RHEL

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CentOS 6′s default repository still only has Firefox/Thunderbird version 3.1, and a lot of newer and greater versions has been released since then.

To begin with, make sure you have the older version of Firefox/Thunderbird installed. This is necessary, as we are going to use their launch scripts as a template to create the launch scripts for the newer version.

To shorten things up, I will refer to Thunderbird as TB, and Firefox as FF. For the most part, I will refer to TB instead of both TB and FF. All you have to do is change where I write ‘thunderbird’ to ‘firefox’ and it will most likely work. To begin with, you want to download the latest version of Thunderbird or Firefox.

  • 32 bit TB: 
    wget 'http://releases.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/thunderbird/releases/10.0-real/linux-i686/en-US/thunderbird-10.0.tar.bz2'
  • 64 bit TB: 
    wget 'http://releases.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/thunderbird/releases/10.0-real/linux-x86_64/en-US/thunderbird-10.0.tar.bz2'
  • 32 bit FF: 
    wget 'http://releases.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/10.0/linux-i686/en-US/firefox-10.0.tar.bz2'
  • 64 bit FF: 
    wget 'http://releases.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/10.0/linux-i686/en-US/firefox-10.0.tar.bz2'

Untar and unzip the file you just downloaded (as said before, name may vary with the product you are installing). Afterwards, delete the tar file, which is no longer necessary.

tar xf thunderbird-10.0.tar.bz2
rm -rf thunderbird-10.0.tar.bz2

The simplest way is to delete the current TB/FF install, and move the newly downloaded files to the old directory. This command will vary for 32 and 64 bit systems. IMPORTANT: For Firefox, change the number 3.1 to 3.6 for both architectures. As for the commands, for 32 bit:

rm -rf /usr/lib/thunderbird-3.1/*
mv thunderbird/* /usr/lib/thunderbird-3.1/

For 64 bit systems:

rm -rf /usr/lib64/thunderbird-3.1/*
mv thunderbird/* /usr/lib64/thunderbird-3.1/

Congratulations! You are more or less done. Now, you may want to get rid of the empty FF/TB folder by running the command:

rm -rf thunderbird

That’s pretty much all. Running command ‘thunderbird’ or going to ‘Applications -> Internet -> Thunderbird Email’ will launch the newly installed version!

Beyond TB/FF 10, the ‘automatic upgrade’ feature should kick in. As you can see in the two screenshots above, TB and FF will automatically look for new versions, and will automatically upgrade when they exist. This way, you can run much newer versions than those found in the CentOS/RHEL repo.