I was looking for a way out of all the hassles. I even thought about exporting the whole document as HTML and writing a script for generating the table of contents. Before venturing on that adventure however, I decided to give OpenOffice a shot. It turns out that OpenOffice can generate the table of contents on fly. Here is a little preview of what this process actually does.

Contents as in Original Document

Table of Contents Generated by OpenOffice

Just follow these simple steps to create one for your document.

1. Make sure you have a unified structure for the titles. I had all the chapter titles as Heading-1, sub headings as Heading-2 and points and sub-points as Heading-3.
2. Place the cursor in appropriate position. The table will be added after the cursor.
3. Select Insert > Indexes and Tables > Indexes and Tables.
4. Do not change anything in the Insert Index/Table dialog. Click OK.
5. You can always modify the settings and create more complex or peculiar structures as per your wish, but for most of us, the default settings get the job done.

This feature saved a considerable amount of time for me. What is more important is, just like automatic creation, the table can also update itself. Many times you will revise your content, add more points or chapters. The capability to update the contents is a must. Though not in real time, you can update the table of contents, to do so,

1. Place the cursor anywhere in the table of contents.
2. Right-click and select Update Index/Table from the pop-up menu.

and the table will be updated with the new contents and new page numbers. Sometimes you might not be able to place the cursor inside the table of contents. OpenOffice does this to avoid accidental changes in the automatically generated table. It is a protected area. To enable the cursor inside the table, go to Tools > Options > OpenOffice.org Writer > Formatting Aids, and then select Enable in the Cursor in protected areas section. Happy Writing and do send me a complimentary copy of your new book

Google has always kept us informed about the day’s special through it’s artistic doodles on the homepage. They always come up with something good looking and interesting. From past few weeks, they are now using interactive doodles instead of good old static images. Last time, when Hubble Space Telescope celebrated it’s 20th anniversary, Google came up with a doodle with night sky which had option to see some information of few stars and galaxies when the mouse pointer hovered on it.

This time, Google is celebrating the 30th Anniversary of Pac-Man with a interactive classic pac-man doodle as it’s logo on the homepage! Head over to Google homepage and take a look!

Solution?

There are many ways avoid images from being hotlinked, but on WordPress, there is an easiest way to do it with a bunch of other goodies. And that is by using a mighty plugin called “PictPocket“. So install the plugin from your wordpress’s inbuilt plugin installer or install it manually via FTP by download it.

What to do after installing?

Configuration:

After installing it, you can see the PictPocket in the left pane of wordpress admin panel at the bottom. Go to “Overview” and you see this:

Click on “Auto Configuration” button to configure the .htacess file.

Set the “Don’t Hotlink” image:

Create a image with message not to hotlink image (something like this) from your blog and upload it to your server and provide the URL in custom images under “Options” and save it.

What happens next?

After you do all those stuff, you are almost done. Now whenever someone hotlinks an image which is present on your wordpress’s “Uploads” folder in wp-content, you can see it in “Hotlinks” page of PictPocket with details like who has hotlinked with a link to the page containing your hotlinked image and a count with how many times your image has been viewed on the site where it has been hotlinked. Now you can block those sites where your images are being hotlinked.

Click to view large image.

PictPocket will then add those links to it’s blacklist and the your actual image which was hotlinked will be replaced with the image containing the message not to hotlink your images! Cool isn’t it?

That’s all. If you have any question, do let me know in the comment.

One thing Buzz was seriously lacking – is still lacking is the ability to export Buzz updates to other sites like twitter. This has been one of the most annoying thing for me. If Twitter can export to Buzz then why can’t I do the opposite thing as well? But I can, there are now applications that let you post your Buzz updates to Twitter. Here’s how you can do that ?

1. Visit your own Google profile here.
2. Almost all browsers support feeds now, in the address bar on the right hand side, there’s an icon of RSS feed, click on that.
3. Alternatively, you can find the same feed at the URL, http://buzz.googleapis.com/feeds/{user.id}/public/posted
4. This feed only posts all the entries marked public and skips the private entries.
5. Now head over to a service that allows posting to Twitter from RSS feeds.
6. I have briefly summarized 2 services below.

Twitterfeed

Twitterfeed is one of the best feed posting services available. You can chose from an abundance of options like whether you want to post just the title of the feed, or a bit of text to go with it, which URL shortening service you want to use, whether you want a prefix to each tweet (like noob2geek:).

This service also provides some of statistical data to let you figure out which ones of your posts is generating how many clicks from twitter and details of such things. You can sign up with a free account for Twitterfeed here.

Buzz can tweet

Buzz can tweet, as the name suggests, is primarily a service for posting your buzz feeds to Twitter. It summarizes your Buzz posts in URLs and posts them to twitter making it possible for your followers to get the full enjoyment.

It will share everything from Google services (Maps, Picasa, etc) and will filter the Twitter posts sent to Buzz. Which is the whole point in synchronization after-all. Similar to Twitterfeed like we have the features to chose our choice of shortening services. One added feature is you can optionally only post the Buzz posts tagged as #twitter to Twitter and exclude the rest. If the posts are smaller than 140 characters, there are no links made back to Buzz.

Both these services have problems associated with Buzz. They cannot, in real time, update twitter just like Buzz cannot sync from Twitter in real time. Apart from this glitch, everything else is good to go.

Why use Source Code Editors?

Source code editors is used to work with wide range of computer programming languages in one single applications. They offer features like syntax-highlighting, auto-complete and bracket matching. These features help simplify the and speed up the process of inputing the code and editing them.

Here are the 10 best free source code editors you can count on:

1. Vim (Cross-Platform)

Vim is a highly configurable text editor built to enable efficient text editing. It is an improved version of the vi editor distributed with most UNIX systems, however you can download it for all platforms. And hence it is an acronym for “Vi IMproved” Released under a software license compatible with the GNU General Public License, Vim is free and open source software. Vim is often called a “programmer’s editor,” and so useful for programming that many consider it an entire IDE. It’s not just for programmers, though. Vim is perfect for all kinds of text editing, from composing email to editing configuration files.

Download Vim | Homepage

2. Notepad++ (Windows)
Notepad++ is a free source code editor and Notepad replacement that supports several languages. Running in the MS Windows environment, its use is governed by GPL License. It is distributed as free software. The project is hosted on SourceForge.net, from where it has been downloaded over twenty million times. Based on a powerful editing component Scintilla, Notepad++ is written in C++ and uses pure Win32 API and STL which ensures a higher execution speed and smaller program size. By optimizing as many routines as possible without losing user friendliness, Notepad++ is trying to reduce the world carbon dioxide emissions. When using less CPU power, the PC can throttle down and reduce power consumption, resulting in a greener environment.

Download Notepad++ | Homepage

3. Smultron (Mac)

Smultron is both easy to use and powerful. It is designed to neither confuse newcomers nor disappoint advanced users. It should work perfectly for a whole variety of needs – like web programming, script editing, making a to do list and so on. Smultron has all open documents in a list with beautiful Quick Look icons to your left just like e.g. iTunes so you can easily switch between many documents – you can also choose to display them as tabs if you prefer it that way.

Download Smultron | Homepage

4. Emacs (Cross-platform)

GNU Emacs is an extensible, customizable text editor—and more. At its core is an interpreter for Emacs Lisp, a dialect of the Lisp programming language with extensions to support text editing. Emacs has, perhaps, more editing commands compared to other editors, numbering over 1,000 commands. It also allows the user to combine these commands into macros to automate work. It also allows the user to combine these commands into macros to automate work. As of May 2010, the latest stable release of GNU Emacs is version 23.2.

Download Emacs | Homepage

5. Crimson Editor (Windows)

Crimson Editor is a professional source code editor for Windows. While it can serve as a good replacement for Notepad, it also offers many powerful features for programming languages such as HTML, C/C++, Perl and Java. Syntax Highlighting for HTML, C/C++, Perl, Java, Matlab and LaTeX. Also, it can be extended for other programming languages based on custom syntax files.

Download Crimson Editor | Homepage

6. jEdit (Cross-platform)

jEdit is a mature programmer’s text editor with hundreds (counting the time developing plugins) of person-years of development behind it. jEdit includes Syntax highlighting that provides native support for over 130 file formats. Support for additional formats can be added manually using XML files. It supports UTF-8 and many other encodings. It has extensive code folding and text folding capabilities as well as text wrapping that takes indents into account. The application is highly customizable and can be extended with macros written in BeanShell, Jython, JavaScript and some other scripting languages.

Download jEdit | Homepage

7. KDevelop (KDE)

KDevelop is a free, open source IDE (Integrated Development Environment) for MS Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, Solaris and FreeBSD. It is a feature-full, plugin extensible IDE for C/C++ and other programming languages. It is based on KDevPlatform, and the KDE and Qt libraries and is under development since 1998. The current version 4.0.0 was officially released at 1st May 2010. The previous stable version 3.5.5 supports many programming languages such as Ada, Bash, C, C++, Fortran, Java, Pascal, Perl, PHP, Python and Ruby. Released under the GNU General Public License, KDevelop is free software.

Download KDevelop | Homepage

8. PSPad (Windows)

PSPad editor is a freeware text editor and source editor intended for use by programmers. PSPad has many software development-oriented features, such as syntax highlighting and hex editing, and is designed as a universal GUI for editing many languages including PHP, Perl, HTML, and Java. It integrates the use of many project formats for handling and saving multiple files. Other features include autocompletion, tabs, FTP client and find/replace using regular expressions. PSPad interface is based on the MDI with tabs for editing multiple files and better open document manipulation.

Download PSPad | Homepage

9. Eclipse (Cross-platform)

Eclipse is a multi-language software development environment comprising an integrated development environment (IDE) and an extensible plug-in system. It is written primarily in Java and can be used to develop applications in Java and, by means of various plug-ins, other languages including C, C++, COBOL, Python, Perl and PHP. The IDE is often called Eclipse ADT for Ada, Eclipse CDT for C/C++, Eclipse JDT for Java and Eclipse PDT for PHP.

Download Eclipse | Homepage

10. NEdit (Cross-platform)

NEdit is a multi-purpose text editor for the X Window System, which combines a standard, easy to use, graphical user interface with the thorough functionality and stability required by users who edit text eight hours a day. It provides intensive support for development in a wide variety of languages, text processors, and other tools, but at the same time can be used productively by just about anyone who needs to edit text. NEdit, is entirely a volunteer effort, benefits from a strong developer and user community. As of version 5.1, It is freely distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License.

Download NEdit | Homepage

Say hello to ReclaimPrivacy.org. This website provides an independent and open tool for scanning your Facebook privacy settings.

Visit the site, and drag the “Scan for Privacy” bookmark link to your bookmark bar. Login to your Facebook account and click on the bookmarklet and it starts scanning your facebook settings and suggests you what changes you are ought to do in Privacy Settings.

Make all the necessary changes and scan recursively until everything looks fine and stay away from threats.

Note: This tutorial is written based on actual processes done on Ubuntu 10.04. This tutorial can also be used to install Dreamweaver on other distros like Fedora and Mint etc.

Here’s how:

1. You need to have Wine installed on your Ubuntu. To find out how to install Wine, read this.

2. After completing the installation of Wine, download “wintricks” by typing this in your Terminal:sudo wget http://www.kegel.com/wine/winetricks

3. In order to make Dreamweaver CS4 install successfully on your Ubuntu via Wine, you need to download and install few windows based dependencies. This is the reason why we downloaded winetricks in previous step. winetricks will download those dependencies with a simple command, making it easy to install those dependencies. Type:sh winetricks msxml6 gdiplus gecko vcrun2005 ie6 dcom98This will start downloading those dependencies and will run a setup program after each files are downloaded. Just install all those setups that it prompts you to do so. This might take time depending on the speed of your Internet.

4. Now download atmlib.dll file and move it to system32 folder in your Wine’s C:wget http://www.noob2geek.com/wp-content/uploads/files/atmlib.dllsudo mv atmlib.dll ~/.wine/drive_c/windows/system32/Or download it manually from here and copy paste it to Applications > Wine > Browse C: Drive > windows > system32

   If everything goes perfect, it will ensure that your Wine is now ready to install Dreamweaver on it.

5. Pop-in your Adobe Dreamweaver CS4 CD/DVD and open the Terminal and change the path to your drive. Or better copy the installation files to your Documents folder and put it a another folder named Dreamweaver CS4.

cd Documents/Dreamweaver CS4

Now make sure the main setup file lies directly within Dreamweaver CS4 folder and run this command:

wine setup.exe

6. After installing, you can run it from Applications > Wine > Programs

Note: The name of the setup file may vary. It can be setup.exe or some other.

Important: If you already have Adobe Dreamweaver CS4 installed on your windows installation, skip Step 5 and run the Dreamweaver.exe file directly from the installed directory by browsing through the C: in wine.

That’s it. If you come across any problem during the process, do let me know in the comments.

When it comes to blogging, if your blog has more than one administrator or writers, there will be a need to leave messages to your fellow admin/writers to send messages or a to-do list. WordPress being one of coolest blogging software, it has as loads of plugins in it’s arsenal to cram in additional features. And one such plugin is “WordPress Admin Notepad” which enables you to leave sticky notes to your fellow bloggers.

Install the plugin:

Install the plugin either automatically from plugin installer in your wordpress admin panel by searching “WordPress Admin Notepad” or install it manually via FTP by downloading it from here. After installing, activate it.

Configure and start using it:

Navigate to Settings > WordPress Admin Notepad

Now that you have WordPress Admin Notepad installed, you must make a small configuration to make it work and ofcourse leave a message to see how it works.

Here, the first thing you notice is a large text box where you can leave notes. And then plugin comes with couple of options to customize it the way you want it to work.

In the Options, you must enable “Current Saved State of Notepad?”. If this is not ticked, it won’t display the note in dashboard. Also, you can tick “Disable Notepad Toggle at top right corner?” if you want the note to be displayed in all the pages of admin panel. I don’t suggest using this feature, because it annoys you sooner or later. So it’s better to show it only in dashboard.

The “Permission to Notepad?” option gives you control over to which usergroup the notepad should appear. This comes handy if you don’t want your contributors or subscribers from peeking into your admin notes.

Now after configuring it once, you can start leaving notes in WordPress Admin Notepad. You must click on “Note” on top right corner of screen to bring in the box the enter text. You can immediately save the changes you made from there as well. And whenever your fellow admin or writer logins, they can see what your message.

That’s it.

How to display recent posts in WordPress without using any plugins:

1. Login to your WordPress Dashboard and navigate to Appearance > Editor
2. Now decide where to display the recent posts. For instance if you want to display after single post, then open “single.php”
3. Paste this code where you want the recent posts to appear. (Don’t put it in any of the PHP loops).

<ul>
<?php
global $post;
$myposts = get_posts('numberposts=6&offset=1');
foreach($myposts as $post) :
setup_postdata($post);
?>
<li><a href="<?php the_permalink(); ?>"><?php the_title(); ?></a></li>
<?php endforeach; ?>
</ul>

Just in case if you want to customize the list, a small explanation might help:

In line 4, you can see numberposts=6. This will display 6 recent posts. You may increase or decrease the number as your wish. Then, offset=1 will exclude one latest post since we are displaying recent posts and not the latest posts. You can set it to zero to display as latest posts.

Update the file and you are done. Now it will display a list of recent posts in your single posts or wherever you place it.

Adding a link to an HTML page is quite simple and the syntax for that is,

<a href="url">Link text</a>

Now, this code will cause the browser to go to the ‘url’ upon clicking the Link Text. The ‘href’ attribute is used to designate the target address of the link.

What Are Anchor Links

Anchor links are an extremely useful tool for easy navigation on extremely large posts and pages. These links, also called internal links or page jumps are used to navigate inside the page from one place to another. You might have seen links like ‘Go To Top’ or, footnotes which again allow jumping back to the last position. These are called Anchor Links. It’s very easy to create Anchor links in a page with a couple of lines of coding.

Creating Anchor Links

To create simple Anchor links in wordpress posts, first switch to the HTML editor mode. Inside that mode, suppose you want to create a link to go to a specific part of the page like the example anchor at the top, you can do so by adding this simple code.

Example Code

What we have done in this page is, I have set an anchor to this heading. The code reads as,

<h3 id="Example">Example Code</h3>

At the top of the post, you can see a link called example. When you click on that link, the page will jump to this heading. The hyperlink created at the top of the post has a code similar to this,

<a href="#Example">example</a>

So, whenever you click on the example link at the top, it will search for an element named Top in the page (as the link is relative). When it finds an object with the specified name, browser jumps to that location. Here, the current heading is named Example and the link at the top jumps to an object named Example so, when you click on that link, the browser jumps to this heading.

It’s pretty simple actually, in even more simple words, a named anchor is created like this,

<a name="anchor">Named Anchor</a>

And a link to that named anchor, within the same page is created like this,

<a href="#anchor">Jump to the Named Anchor</a>

If you want a link to jump to a specific location in a different page then you will have to provide the full path of the link. (along with the URL and the path). Return to the Top.