File this under "I should have known about this but didn't." Let's say you don't have a mouse, or your mouse is having problems, yet you still need to somehow move your pointer from A to B. It's easy in KDE: press Alt-F12. You can now move the pointer with your arrow keys. When you're finished, press Alt-F12 again, & you're back to the mouse. Easy peasy. How do you do this in GNOME? Let us know! (Check out all of our posts on KDE and the mouse.) ...

Ohmigod I love this extension. Love it! We all have to fill in forms all the time online, especially if we blog. Unfortunately, many of the textboxes we have to use are too small, either in width and height, or both. Now we've got a solution: the Resizeable Textarea extension for Firefox. Install it, restart Firefox, and go to a page that contains a textbox. Move your mouse to the bottom right corner, click and drag to resize, and you've instantly got a much bigger textbox resized to your specifications. Now THAT is cool! (Read all my postings about Firefox.) ...

OK, you asked for it, so here it is: my .vimrc file (edited a bit, so do NOT just copy & paste this whole thing into your .vimrc file!), available for your copying & edification. Everyone else, post a pointer to yours in the comments (do NOT just cut & paste your .vimrc file in, as the blog software will strip stuff out)! set tabstop=2 set expandtab set shiftwidth=2 set guifont=Andale\ Mono/9/-1/5/48/0/0/0/1/0 " Set fileformat to Unix set ff=unix " Set encoding to UTF set enc=utf-8 " autosave if i switch to another buffer set autowrite " syntax highlighting on set syntax=on " line numbers on set nu " enable use of the mouse in terminals as well as gui set mouse=a " Set wrapping set textwidth=> set nolinebreak " Set no auto indenting set noautoindent " Searching " Use emacs-like incremental search (find as you type) set incsearch " Make searches case-insensitive, unless they contain upper-case letters set ...

A few weeks ago, I was having an annoying problem with my computers. Under my desk, I have 4 boxes, all linked to a central USB-based KVM switch so I can share a monitor, keyboard, & mouse between them. From left to right, this was the order: Box 1: Box 2: Box 3: Open space Box 4: PIII 1 GHz Linux P4 2.6 GHz Linux G3 Mac for my feet PIII 500 MHz Linux I never had a problem with boxes 3 & 4, but boxes 1 & 2 were giving me fits. Box 1 would lock up constantly, at odd times, for no apparent reason, while box 2 would sloooooooooooooooow doooooooooooooooowwwwwwwwwn to a crawl before finally locking. Nothing would work as input - neither mouse nor keyboard - so I would have to push the power buttons on the front to recyle them, which just sucks. This was driving me crazy for several weeks, until finally I asked my fellow Penguinistas at a meeting of the Central West End Linux Users Group (CWE-LUG). It puzzled them for a while too, before finally Robert Citek was ...

One of the absolutely coolest freakin' things about Firefox is that you can install extensions that make it even better in any of over 100 different ways. I'm a big extensions addict, and while I cover many very cool extensions in my Firefox book (more info soon!), I can't cover them all. Below is a list of currently installed extensions on my Firefox. The list is generated using an extension - natch - called ListZilla. As I change things, I'll update this list & keep y'all posted. PS: If you wanna know more about an extension - like what it does - hold your mouse over a link & view the tooltip that pops up. PPS: I've placed a * after the extensions that I think are killer … y'know, required. A9 Toolbar 1.0.10.50 Adblock 0.5.2.039 * Autofill 0.2 * BugMeNot 0.6.1 Card Games 0.15 ChromEdit 0.1.1.1 Diggler 0.9 downTHEMall! 0.9.4 Flashblock 1.0RC3 * Foxylicious 0.2 ListZilla 0.5.1 McSearchPreview 1.6 miniT ...

The Weblogs, Inc. network features over 100 independent, unfiltered bloggers producing over 1,000 blog posts a week across over 75 industry-leading blogs. Each week we ask our bloggers to choose their top posts, which we bring to you in one easy-to-read weekly post. You'll find links to the hottest posts from the past week after the jump including an Engadget Blinged-out Gadget Contest, the worst TV news of the week and information on the possible death of Tom Hanks. Enjoy! ...

The Weblogs, Inc. network features over 100 independent, unfiltered bloggers producing over 1,000 blog posts a week across over 75 industry-leading blogs. Each week we ask our bloggers to choose their top posts, which we bring to you in one easy-to-read weekly post. You'll find links to the hottest posts from the past week after the jump including an motion detection for Flash games, favorite Kids in the Hall moments and even a Spanish Autoblog announcement. Enjoy! ...