Tip

For those of you out there who have been hankering for a decent free, open-source file renaming utility, I highly recommend that you give Métamorphose a shot. I've been using the v2 beta in XP and it's been excellent. It's written in Python and is also available for Linux, BSD and Macs.

There are a few minor UI bugs though, but I'm sure that they'll be sorted out in due course.

Hooray for FOSS!

I just found out yesterday that Konqueror natively supports sFTP and another protocol which I wasn't aware of named FiSH. To use either, just enter sftp://foo@example.com or fish://foo@example.com as necessary in the Konqueror URL bar to create a connection. My fledgling experience with FiSH seems to indicate that it's considerably faster than sFTP.

In KDE 4.1, whenever you open a window, it invariably is never opened in a maximised state - something that annoys the crap out of me. While it's something of a chore, the following is how you can sort this out:

1. Open the application and right click on its title bar.
2. Select the advanced menu and move down to click special application settings.
3. In the ensuing pop-up, click on the geometry tab and tick both maximised horizontally and maximised vertically.

While trying to explain the use of the "exclamatory question mark", i.e., the "?!" used at the end of some sentences, I was a little nonplussed when asked if it was really named something so ... verbose. As far as I remember, I've been calling them exclamatory question marks. But it certainly is a mouthful, isn't it?! (sic)

If you are using Skype on Linux and run into the error message "P2P connect failed" while trying to sign in, then your configuration file is very likely corrupt. The fix is to just delete the .Skype directory from your home directory and restart Skype. If you have anything worth saving inside this directory, you can simply rename it instead or alternatively, back it up elsewhere prior to deletion.

The version of Skype on my system is 2.0.0.72 and it was installed (and upgraded) from the Medibuntu repository. I'm pretty certain that the previous version was working fine.

I'm not sure if this was related to my recent install of XP SP3 (I haven't done anything else of note recently...), but I found out today that I was unable to view CHM files on my system. Most of my manuals are stored in CHM format, so, this was something of a pain. While the file itself opened fine, and the content list pane was accessible, the content pane was not; I instead was greeted with a "The page cannot be displayed" error message.

The latest fad going around is the host of MP3 search sites that are cropping up all over the place. Most of these are built off Google searches and can be hit-or-miss. But they're pretty useful for finding that rare track you always wanted, but couldn't find ...

I was in a predicament earlier today where I was stuck with a downloaded (ripped) DVD which was slightly larger than the capacity of a single layer disc. Fortunately, the disc came with an optional Italian audio component, which, when removed, would allow me to burn the DVD without any issues. While I was aware of DVD rippers where you can specify the audio streams that you would like to retain, I was looking for a solution that would work on the VOB files directly.

I'm pretty sure most people are aware of the huge amount of content available on sites like YouTube, Megavideo etc., and of the existence of hangers-on sites such as Keepvid, Clip Nabber etc. as well that let you leech the FLV files directly. Furthermore, I'm also sure that you've noticed many of these leech sites not working more often than not nowadays.

I use SoundKonverter to accomplish all my ripping and trans-coding tasks. It's something of a front-end for all the command-line apps and is a serious time saver.