Split large files easily in Ubuntu with GNOME Split

Ever needed to upload a large file to an online web service but found yourself constrained by maximum file size limits? 

The easy way to get around this is to 'split' your file into smaller chunks for uploading. These are then rejoined by the downloadee.

One such tool that is more than capable of doing this is the ace GNOME Split, whose developer, Guillaume Mazoyer, dropped us a mail to tell us all about it.

What is GNOME Split?
In one sentence: GNOME Split is a file splitter that allows you to split large files and merge them back.

The launchpad page for the project states that the aim is 'to offer a native implementation of similar projects which can handle multiple file formats.'  To my mind its strongest asset is undoubtedly its user-friendly step-by-step assistant which takes the tears out of tearing your files into pieces and just gets on with on with it.

New version
Version 0.9 of GNOME Split was released yesterday and metes out many a new feature, including: -

• Split and merge using the GNOME Split, Xtremsplit, KFKand YoyoCut file formats.
• Split and merge using a generic file format 
• File integrity verification using the MD5 algorithm.
• Notifications to show the end of a split or a merge.
• Asssistant to make split and merge easy for new users.
• Speed indicator to know how fast the action is performed.
• Accelerators to quickly manage a split or a merge

Download/Install
Add the GNOME-Split PPA (Karmic & Lucid) to install and automatically stay up-to-date with future updates.

• sudo add-apt-repository ppa:gnome-split-team/ppa
• sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install gnome-split

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Find stray photos by sketching them, seeing results in real-time

You know what picture you want to find - you can see it in your mind! Now if only you could remember what it was called…

Naming conventions for digital camera images - and worse bizarre naming rituals thought up by ourselves - can often hinder tracking down that sweet photographic snapshot you just know is laying at the bottom of a folder somewhere.

This is where ‘ImgSeek ‘ comes in. Termed ‘Open-source content-based image searching’ the application scans your hard-drive for pictures then allows you to search through those pictures by drawing a sketch of it. During which ImgSeek shows matching results in real-time.

We’ve termed this ‘sketch n’ seek’ here at OMG! Towers and can’t wait until some plucky soul finally ports this over to other areas of life - like finding missing socks...

• Click to install imgseek

Tip | Metal Madness

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Darktable photography app hits 0.6.0, gains many new features

A new release of virtual light-table and darkroom application Darktable is available for download.

The tool, aimed at photographers, allows you to manage "your digital negatives in a database and lets you view them through a zoomable light-table."

It is also to develop and enhance raw images, uses non-destructive editing and only converts the full image during export.

New features present in version 0.6.0 include: -

• tethered shooting mode
• import from camera via gphoto2
• new, improved plugins: vignetting, velvia, grain, denoise (via bilateral filter), color transfer, channel mixer ..
• crop/rotate: straighten tool, perspective correction, guide lines (ported from digikam)
• lots of new input color matrices and base curves
• openexr export
• database format changed, which greatly improves speed (and cuts down used disk memory)
• film strip view in darkroom mode for quick image switching
• cool alternative demosaicing algorithms (ported from rawtherapee): dcb, amaze, vcd, c/a autocorrection
• customizable preset system for all darkroom modules with auto application to matching images, selected by exif
• reworked export system to modularly support export to picasa webalbum, email, or disk in jpg, png, 8/16-tiff, pfm, exr, or 16-ppm.
• lots of performance enhancements (plugins denoise and local contrast are still slow)
• New translations

The application reminds me - although it's not an apples-to-apples comparison - of Commercial (and Linux supported) application LightZone. The UI is neat and orderly, the effects/editing application is logical, fast and fully tweakable and the application as a whole runs fairly light. 

Download
The latest release can be installed on Lucid from the Darktable PPA. Open a terminal and enter the following lines carefully: -

• sudo add-apt-repository ppa:pmjdebruijn/darktable-release
• sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install darktable

Thanks to Rich

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Batch rename files in Ubuntu with 'Renamer '

Having to rename a group of files - whether they're photos or general files - can be a time consuming process unless you make use of a batch-renaming tool.

'Renamer' is one such tool. A small nautilus script written in python and gtk+, it is able to batch rename files in nautilus via right click and specifying a naming pattern. A refreshable preview lets you see whether the pattern you've entered is the one you want and an Undo feature lets you rename with peace of mind.

Renamer can be found on Launchpad @ launchpad.net/nautilus-renamer or downloaded at gtk-apps.org

Tip | jancborchardt

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WeatherPaper puts the weather outside on your desktop inside

GNOME users have long been left out in the cold when searching for a good looking & easily-themeable 'Weather Wallpaper' application. Over a year ago I ran down the Gnome-friendly alternatives to KDE's slick weather wallpaper plug-in and found, perhaps unsurprisingly, very slim pickings. A year on, is the forecast looking brighter? (Last weather-related pun, honest!)

WeatherPaper
Weatherpaper is a stylish, ever-changing and informative utility that sets your desktop wallpaper inside to an image conveying the weather outside.

A custom weatherpack I made for my desktop using photos from flickr

WeatherPaper has many plus points: -

• It's fully themeable - create and package your own wallpaper set
• uses data from weather.com
• can display various information on an overlay
• Choose interval for checking forecast
• Set preferred units for temperature

Create a 'weatherpack'
If the default look doesn't do much for you (and admittedly it probably won't) then creating your own custom weather pack requires only two things: patience and plenty of weather-related imagery. There's an excellent guide on getting up & running over on the WeatherPaper wiki: - 

• http://code.google.com/p/weatherpaper/wiki/CreateWallpaperPack

Download & installation
Want it? Follow this quick step through to get weather-based wallpaper draped over your desktop: -

• Download WeatherPaper here
• Extract the folder somewhere accessible
• Open a terminal, navigate to the extracted folder using 'cd 0.2.2-linux/'
• Now enter the following command to install: -
• sudo sh install.sh
• Head up to Applications > Accessories > WP Settings to enter your location & set you preferences before launching the app via  Applications > Accessories > WeatherPaper

Finding your location

Although WeatherPaper refers to using 'yahoo' weather this is, in fact, powered by weather.com. To find your weather.com location code head over to weather.com, search for your location and then paste the corresponding part of the URL into the settings window.

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Indicator-Workspaces does what it says on the tin

As a self-confessed Indicator-fanboy I relish seeing projects like the following pop up that set out to 'upgrade/replace' existing gnome applets into modern, neat and orderly indicator applets.

Indicator-Workspaces by George Dumitrescu (AppImage Thumbnailer) is a simple indicator applet for switching between workspaces. For users who don't tend to flash-compiz switchers or docklets but wanting something a bit sleeker than the default workspace-switcher this is an ideal solution. 

Current Workspace-Switcher applet

It's perfectly usable as it is, doing exactly what it sets out to so feel free to install it and test it out.

• sudo add-apt-repository ppa:geod/ppa-geod
• sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install indicator-workspaces

George told that he intends to add "workspaces preferences, from where you choose how many workspace you want" in the future but for now some general testing and a nice mono-icon would be much appreciated.

"There are some things in life money can't organize. 

For everything else there's an Indicator Applet."

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Rainlendar puts calendar sexy on your desktop

Rainlendar is a self-described 'feature rich' calendar for your desktop that allows for extensive customization, tweaking and personalization.

Events can be set with an alarm for notification and the to-do list makes a handy extra.

Rainlendar is available in a free 'lite' version or as a 'pro' version for €9.95.

Find plenty of weird, wacky and wonderful themes all over the net, but DeviantArt is a particularity good place to look.

Download
The free 'lite' version as well as the pro version are available as .deb installers downloadable at: -

• Rainlendar.net

Tip | Steffen Christensen, Via Lin-App

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Lauf - the lightest launcher ever

Back in early July we featured ‘Alawalk’ - a lightweight launcher for the resource conscious. It was lean, mean and did its job.

If you liked Alawalk but found the 72KiB RAm usage a bit too steep then say hello to the new boy in town: ’Lauf’.

What's the difference?

Lauf is lighter than its rival, is more featured and  by boasting support for many more plugins makes it a much more viable alternative for users.

Download

You can find the latest version of Lauf (0.1.0 as of writing this) available to download @: -

• http://code.google.com/p/lauf/downloads/list

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What are your must have applications?

I have a problem. I'll be the first to confess. It's tearing me apart on the inside. Not a day goes by without me thinking about it, always at the back of my mind, in the confines of my subconscious taunting and laughing at me - daring me to try something new, something different.

My problem is that my computer is too boring.

That's right. 

Before you ask, yes, I'm running Ubuntu Maverick, have been since Alpha 2. It's just too stable, nothing ever breaks so there's nothing to fix. I've already tried out pretty much every single application in the Software Center (well, those that are appealing) and I've nailed my install down to a few vital applications that I can't live without.

• Docky, because I use it for window management and don't have a window list. Looks great.
• Banshee, does the same thing as Rhythmbox but looks better and has some great plugins.
• Chromium daily builds - fastest web browser there is, and it adheres to the window buttons on the left unlike regular Chrome.
• gThumb - great for quickly cropping and resizing images. For viewing images, I use standard Eye of Gnome.
• Totem. It used to be crap, but now it's come a long way and is a suitable replacement for VLC - at least for my needs, anyway. Nice and fast, handles all file formats I've ever chucked at it and it has a simple interface.
• OpenOffice suite - great for taking notes in class, although I customized it a bit so the toolbars aren't so cluttered.
• Bibble 5 Pro. Plays nice with RAW images from my Sony DSLR and is a suitable replacement for Lightroom. Not quite as good though.
• Dropbox - more reliable than Ubuntu One and can sync with Windows and my Android.
• Skype - so I can ring Joey!
• OpenShot and Audacity - for quickly editing videos and audio respectively.
• Cheese - to take photos of myself, of course. (Actually, to do the odd recording of me playing guitar or drums or something).

My current desktop

I want to find out what readers install. The repositories have a tonne of packages, many of which are probably buried gems that haven't been discovered for ages. It would be great to compile a list of these awesome applications that no one knows about, and then I'll write a post featuring them.

So, what are your favourite applications? Found any buried gems hidden in the repositories that you'd like to share?

Cartoon from jeromecitypubliclibrary.blogspot.com

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Google Talk video & voice chat FINALLY comes to Linux

It’s raining where I am but the sun is most certainly shining in my head: Gtalk users on Linux can finally use both voice and video chat. Adding such support has been Google’s top video chat request

Head over to Gmail.com/videochat to download the plugin. It’s even packaged up in a neat .deb!

So, why the wait? Google engineer Justin Uberti talks about the trouble the Linux port posed: "This release required significant engineering to develop an all-new video rendering solution and an all-new PulseAudio-based audio handler, along with work to support 64-bit and countless webcam compatibility tests. We spent a lot of effort to make it fully feature-complete, with all the same goodies as the Windows and Mac versions, and we're happy to now support Google voice and video now on all major desktop platforms."

For SUSE or Fedora users wanting a slice of the action fear not - he also says that “[they’re] planning on adding RPM support soon as well.”

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CLICompanion makes getting comfortable with the command line a cinch

Scared, intimidated or just out-right confused by the command line interface? You neededn't be with CliCompanion.

Whilst the command line is a powerful, and impressive tool most users don't need to go near it thanks to so many wonderful GUI applications that take care of the dirty work via buttons, boxes n' automagic. Nevertheless there are instances where using the terminal will save you plenty of time and plenty of headache tablets so being prepared is never a bad thing.

CLICompanion makes getting comfortable with the command line a cinch. The app, when open, displays 3 columns: -

• The command
• Whether the command needs information/flags/additional user input
• Command description so that you know what it is you're running and why

Below this is a working, usable terminal so be careful! 

CLICompanion is not just for beginners either. Experienced terminal-hounds users can use the 'add command' feature to build a command dictionary of more advanced commands for later use. 

• Download latest version @ launchpad.net/clicompanion

Thanks to naesk

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Pongo records screen activity, audio & webcam video in one video: a screecasters dream

Pongo is a small, free screen recording utility that merges video of your desktop, your webcam and sound from your microphone together, out putting it into one single .ogv file ready to edit, adjust or upload to the world wide web.

The app, whilst primarily intended for use in usability testing, doubles up as a great tool for screencasters and developers, allowing them to appear ‘in’ screen to talk through their actions on screen.

Pongo was initially developed by Andreas Nilsson but development has long since stalled. Step up Jan-Christoph Borchardt who is continuing the excellent potential Pongo possesses over on Launchpad.

Current features include:-

• Catch sound and video from your web cam, record your desktop and merge it together into a ogg file
• Move camera video position with parameters
• Shift camera video position next to normal position
• Scale output video to increase performance

Tip: Double it up with Screenkey & display key-presses on screen too!

Download/Install

Although Pongo lacks a GUI of any discernable sorts the Pongo team have made it fully configurable from the terminal. 

• Install Istanbul
• Click here
• Download Pongo (python script): -
• Click here 
• Open a terminal and navigate to where you saved Pongo to
• Run: -
• python pongo.py

Where next?

Borchardt, when mailing us about the continuation of the Pongo project, noted that they are “…currently also searching for developers that are interested in helping out making the app easier to use itself.”

Pongo would definitely benefit from a GUI of sorts. In the ‘planned features’ list on the Pongo page they mention ‘something similar to [Mac OS X app] Silverback’. This would be a smart move and nothing short of what Pongo deserves.

At a loose end or two? Why not muck in - Head over to launchpad.net/pongo

Thanks to Jan-Christoph Borchardt

Screencap | Andreas Nilsson

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Choqok 1.0 Beta2 released - adds nickname auto-completion, new image uploaders and Oauth support

The second beta of KDE twitter application Choqok sees release today.

Along with an improved re-tweet function, nickname auto-completion & support for twitter's OAuth system the application is a worthy upgrade for the brave and bold twitter-addicts out there.

Other notable additions in the beta include a wider range of player support in the 'Now listening' plugin (including Rhythmbox, VLC and Banshee) as well as additional actions in the user menu.

5 new URL shorteners had been added: -

• ur.ly
• u.nu
• urls.io
• goo.gl
• 3.ly

And support for two more image uploaders: -

• TwitPic.com
• YFrog.com

Install Choqok 1.0 Beta 2 in Ubuntu from source
No binary packages are available of the titular app just yet but you can get your hands dirty and build from source. How? Here's how..

• Download: Source
• Open a terminal and enter the following two commands
• sudo apt-get install build-dep
• sudo apt-get build-dep choqok
• Extract the source archive you downloaded earlier and navigate into it using the Terminal
• Type the following commands: -
• mkdir build
• cd build
• cmake -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=`kde4-config --prefix` ..
• make
• sudo make install

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Quickly edit shortcut keys with KeyLaunch

Add or edit your keybindings with KeyLaunch - a lightweight script with a neat GUI.

Select the keybinding you wish to change on the left and then double-click on the in-line entry fields to edit or add a new shortcut/command. 

Frightfully simple stuff.

Download

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wxbanker desktop app makes keeping track of your money simple, pretty

Mike Roony, author of desktop personal finance application 'wxBanker', got in touch with us a few days ago to point out a rather startling fact: we've never featured a finance app here on OMG!

Ever.

Well, consider this misdemeanour corrected as of now as we take a well-deserved gander at the lightweight personal finance app with some seriously neat stuff under the hood.

wxBanker

Spurious sounds aside wxBanker is a neat application for keeping track of your money. You can add, edit, tag and/or remove transactions, transfers and accounts. An integrated calculator and slick graph summary feature makes keeping on top of your moolah what we Brits would call a ‘doddle’.

Even better, wxBanker can ‘even display whether your balances are in sync with a Mint.com account.’

Doesn't sound as dry as you were expecting right? So how did Mike come to write such an app? He explains:

"My motivation for writing it was that I wanted to keep track of all my finances and save up money for purchases, but I needed something just a bit better than a spreadsheet; something lightweight but made for tracking money."

wxBanker really is that - simple enough for you to understand but powerful enough to be all you need.

Download

wxBanker can be installed for the Ubuntu Software Centre or, for the latest version with Mint.com awesomeness, via the wxBanker PPA: -

• sudo add-apt-repository ppa:wxbanker-users/ppa
• sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install wxbanker

The testers amongst you who love finding things that don’t work and reporting it may wish to try the wxBanker Testing PPA: -

• sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mrooney/wxbanker-testing
• sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install wxbanker

Screenshots | wiki.ubuntu.com/wxBanker

Special thanks to Mike Roony

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Chipmunk - Sweet little GTK Last.FM Player

Last.fm lovers addicted to music streaming service should cancel their therapy and check out the following shiny new application named 'Chipmunk'.

Created by Arch Linux user Andy Kluger, who has a self-confessed dependency on Last.fm, the tiny application provides everything a last.fm user could need - it can stream music based on your own scrobbles, that of tags, artist or recommendations, love tracks, ban tracks and scrobble tracks. 

You can even 'stalk' the tastes of people near by using the 'neighbourhood' feature.

On development Andy told us: -

"It takes the highly functional and lightweight Shell.FM client and the library pyLast and wraps them up in a gtk suit I find useful."

Performance & issues
It's not a lie in saying that Chipmunk is as light. On my set-up it never used above 15MiB of RAM and didn't so much as tickle the CPU.

The ability to hide the menu bar is welcome as are the contextual info 'tabs' providing data from Last.FM - very useful when in 'Discovery mode' and listening to something you want to learn more on.

Other than that my only concerns were in the lack of a volume button (not a major issue per se) and no application icon (at least in Ubuntu). Logging in to my Last.FM account ofter resulted in the application 'greying out' for a few seconds.

Installation
Somewhere in the over-worded paragraphs above I mentioned that Andy is an Arch Linux user. For this reason Chipmunk is sat in the Arch user repository but there is no .deb for it - but installation on Ubuntu is pretty painless.

"To automate installation for my friends on Linux Mint/Ubuntu I've created a python script that installs everything" Andy said in his e-mail to us. "I realize that's a large barrier to usage on Debian systems, but it's not that complex to run the script in a terminal, and it gets around the problems of missing and broken official packages." 


Automated installer for Ubuntu

• Download this script, saving to your home folder: 
• Download script
• Give permissions to execute:
• Right click > permissions > Execute
• Open a terminal and run:
• ./chipmunk_installer.py

Finally...
Last.fm users - and those who just like to whinge - leave your comments below or check out the discussion thread over on the Arch forums.

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P-Launcher - handy little package utility

P-Launcher is a simple utility providing simple package-overview, saving and 'mini' management.

Whilst not intended as a replacement for Synaptic it is portable, requires no dependencies & allows a user to: -

• Save packages - creates a list of your installed packages
• View a list of all installed packages and access man-pages, view the package content and also package details (author,license,depends,etc)
• Upgrade all your packages
• Can run from a hot-key

Download @ gnome-look

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DreamScene for Ubuntu? Ta very much.

Ever wanted to set video as your desktop wallpaper a la the quickly-ditched Windows DreamScene? With 'Video Wallpaper' it's easy.

It actually moves. Honest.

By using Video Wallpaper you will be forfeiting the ability to use the 'desktop' as normal - no icons, files etc will show. Any drop shadows present on panels will also disappear. If you're tuff enuff to cope, here's how...

You will need: -

• shantz-xwinwrap (download here)
• zenity (already installed)
• mplayer (click here to install)
• the script (here)

And, not forgetting, a video to set as your wallpaper. I suggest browsing around on deviant.art using the term 'dreamscene' to get relevant results. 

Once the above have been installed and you've moved the script to someone accessible (preferably into your Nautilus Scripts folder (Home folder > .gnome2 > nautilus-scripts) you're ready to set a video as your wallpaper. Right click/run the script and, in the dialogue that appears, select the video you wish to use. Click 'Ok' and it will be set.

To kill a video just select the script again but when the selection dialogue appears click 'cancel'. 

Performance

The script used around 32% of my dual core CPU which, compared to the real DreamScene from my Vista days, is nothing. I didn't feel much lag (if any) and whilst the appeal in a looping desktop wallpaper is lost on me I do know that they are popular with a great number of people. C'mon - the worst you can do is try it out and find it's not for you. 

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Play games and help Science at the same time with 'Foldit'

Kill some free time and help out science at the same time with Foldit - an experimental puzzle game that, simply by playing, helps computers to deal with bioinformatics and protein folding.

Premise

The basic aim is to 'manipulate' the protein on screen according to a set of 'rules' - these are deemed 'puzzles' but are actually doing something a bit more intelligent beneath the surface. 

Wikipedia is a bit more clued up on this, saying: -

"The process by which living beings create the primary structure of proteins, protein biosynthesis, is reasonably well understood, as is the means by which proteins are encoded as DNA. Determining how the primary structure of a protein turns into a functioning three-dimensional structure – how the molecule "folds" – is more difficult; the general process is known, but predicting protein structures is computationally demanding."

"Foldit is an attempt to apply the human brain's natural three-dimensional pattern matching abilities to this problem. Current puzzles are based on well-understood proteins; by analysing the ways in which humans intuitively approach these puzzles, researchers hope to improve the algorithms employed by existing protein-folding software."

Admittedly the game is no World of Goo in the 'ace to play' stakes but will no-doubt be a hit with puzzle-hounds. 

All in all, a mildly distracting (borderline frustrating) way to kill two birds with one polypeptide.


Download
Foldit is a 50 MB download, requires libglut3 & can be download @ fold.it/portal

Thanks to Itai

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Alchemy lets you draw using your voice, in the dark, more

Whilst most drawing applications seek to provide users with as many possible ways to edit and draw accurately as possible, Alchemy doesn't.

The Java-based application seeks to give users 'a way to explore and experiment with alternative ways of drawing'. This ranges from using your mouse to draw to using your voice!

My below-par attempt at drawing something interesting in Alchemy

'Modules' allow for many features to be added (or disabled). Some of these include: -

• Use your voice to control the width of a line or the form of a shape.
• Draw ‘blind’; Turn off the canvas display and explore what shapes emerge from the ‘darkness’.
• Create random shapes. Generate shapes that can be used as a starting point for characters, spaceships, or whatever shape you see in the ‘clouds’.
• Mirror draw. Draw mirrored symmetrical forms in real time.
• Randomise. Mess up and distort shapes.

You won't find undo, section selection, editing options or even paintbucket in Alchemy. Interaction instead focuses "on the output of a great number of good, bad, strange and beautiful shapes."


General features consist of: -

• Record a drawing ’session’: Automatically save the contents of the canvas to a page in a PDF file at set intervals.
• Auto-clear the canvas: Start drawing on a clean slate at set intervals. Force yourself to start over fresh.
• Switch the canvas: Automatically open your sketch in a more ‘conventional’ drawing application, either as a bitmap or vector file.
• Avoid distraction: Alchemy has a very minimal interface, just a simple toolbar that disappears magically, and a fullscreen mode to block everything else out.

Whilst it's a unique and fun application to play with although the novelty soon fades and frustration sets in.

Download/Install
Alchemy is a Java application that can run on all major operating systems. You will need Java 1.5 or higher to use it on Linux.

http://al.chemy.org/download/

Share your works of (non) art!
If you decide to take it for a spin (no matter how brief) send over anything you come up with to metalintogold@omgubuntu.co.uk and we'll post some of the very best (and maybe some of the very worst!) here a few days time!

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