Fird's Domain

Have you ever:

• Wished you could copy someone’s shared folder over to your PC so you can own everything that he shares, and then always copy the latest content that he has?
• Wished that you backup that very important folder into some other PC so that you don’t have to feel very suicidal when your laptop crashes/stolen?
• Wished you could always keep one other copy of some folders in your hard disk in case the hard disk died/you have to reformat your Windows due to some malicious virus?
• Wished that there is an easy way to synchronize your music folder with your housemate’s music folder so whatever you have, he has, and vice versa?

I have at least three of the wishes above. Back then when I was still studying, we live in a hostel with a built-in LAN access. So I occasionally will browse through the resident’s shared folders, and often I would find some nice shows/songs that I would like. However, the task becomes very daunting because I would have to click on every folder they have to see if there is new content.

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Ever wanted to surf images online without the fuss of going through text, or pages and pages until you found what you like? Why not do it with style at that?

Introducing PicLens!

PicLens instantly transforms your browser into a full-screen 3D experience for viewing images across the web. Our new interactive “3D Wall” and built-in search function lets you effortlessly drag, click, zoom, and zip your way around a wall of pictures for an extraordinary viewing experience.

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Have you ever tried to delete some files in your computer, and this annoying error message shows up?

You have double, triple and even quadruple checked that there are no applications that are using this file. In fact, you might have just closed all your applications and Windows still claims that something - devil? - is using that file. Rebooting your PC often helps solve this matter, but hey, what if after the reboot, and you’re trying to delete yet another file, and it also claimed to be ‘in use’? I don’t think rebooting 30 times to delete 30 empty folders will be pleasant!

Introducing - Unlocker! This nifty app is developed by Cedrick “Nitch” Collomb will solve your woes of deleting files. This free, small download (236kB download footprint) have saved me from loads of headaches thanks to some file caching and lots of bad programming. Installation is swift and fool-proof.

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As our hard drive free space becomes lesser and lesser, we tend to wonder what uses them so much (even though sometimes we do forgot about that 50GB complete series TV shows that we’ve downloaded over the past months). One way is to check your folder sizes one by one (which might take ages and potential RSI due to repetitive clicking).

Even then, you’ll probably see boring statistics like this:

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Introduction

Thanks to the technology advancement and the always-going-down price of personal computers, most of us ended up with 2 or more computers at home (like me, for instance, I have a desktop running on Linux - which is pretty much my download slave and a business notebook running Windows which I use in the office and at home).

Sometimes you might need to use these computers simultaneously, and trust me - using more than one set of keyboard and mouse not only troublesome, but at some point you will get frustrated, not to mention that it can get confusing when you’re trying to do too many things at once. Initially, i used VNC to remote into my second PC, but soon I find the speed of which it updates the screen starting to nibble on my short temper. I don’t want to talk about KVM, because firstly, my primary machine is a notebook, and it won’t accept any means of display input - plus always flipping through the switch can be troublesome too.

At last! Found the ultimate solution! - Synergy

After snooping around in various forums and blogs, I found a neat piece of software called “Synergy”. There’s a plenty that I liked about this software:

• It’s FREE (open source, actually)
• It’s lightweight. Only 0.88kB in download footprint
• It’s non-intrusive and not troublesome (can be run as windows/gnome services)
• And the best part - it is cross-platform. So you can technically have a Mac, PC and Linux all together sharing the keyboard and mouse

There are a few more neat things about Synergy:

• Switching between computers is as easy as moving your mouse to the direction of the monitor (Think multiple-display-like experience)
• It doesn’t lag at all
• It also copies your clipboard (yes, copy text from Windows and paste in Ubuntu FTW!

Let’s see how to set it up!

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