If you use a VPN (Virtual Private Network), this tip is for you.

The Problem

• you connect to a VPN to get access to your work/whatever network
• your connection is fast but the VPN connection is balls slow
• you try to stream a bit of online radio, go to a website, watch a video, or do anything, which is automatically routed through the VPN connection but everything TAKES AGES because the VPN connection is the limiting factor
• so not only are you frustrated by hiccupping radio, stuttering video, and a never disappearing progress bar but you're also making your already slow link slower, so now remote desktop and other activity for which you've VPN'ed in the first place is taking even longer

Familiar situation? You bet.

The Solution

This solution is for Windows users only but I'm sure similar settings are available in MacOS, Linux, etc.

Here in particular I am using Windows 7 but this solution applies to Windows XP and Vista as well (the menus look only slightly different for those).

1. Open up the VPN Connection's Properties

These properties can be reached by right clicking on the VPN connection in the list of networks and selecting Properties.

2. Go to the TCP Properties

On Windows XP, you might see only the "Internet Protocol (TCP/IP)", while on Windows 7 you will see both IPv4 and IPv6. You will most likely need to select IPv4 then.

3. Head to the Advanced settings

4. Uncheck the "Use default gateway on remote network" checkbox

5. Restart the VPN connection

This should do the trick.

The New Behavior

The new behavior from what I can tell is:

• use a local connection, such as your WiFi or wired connection, so your radio, streaming video, websites, etc should now bypass the VPN connection
• if the request above fails, Windows should only then fall back on the VPN connection

When Not To Use This Tweak

Do not use this tweak if you rely on the VPN to always encrypt all your network traffic.

Temporarily disable this tweak if normally you are OK with not encrypting all of your traffic but are currently using an unsecure network. Examples include a WiFi connection that does not prompt for a password or a public network, such as an Internet cafe.

Enjoy your faster VPN experience!

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My preferred way until recently was Deviant Art, because it had a lot of content and very nice filtering – I could specify my exact resolution.

However, as of some time ago, Deviant Art browsing by resolution disappeared, as evident from trying to find it on their site and from the comments on this post announcing the capability in the first place.

The Solution

Sometimes the solution lies right in front of our eyes – we just have to open them to see it.

A while ago, Google Image Search expanded their support for image size filtering (small, medium, large) to include the actual image size via this query:

imagesize:NNNNxNNNN

And because it's Google, you can add search terms to narrow down the subject.

Here are some examples.

Example 1: "wallpaper"

imagesize:1920×1200 wallpaper

The image size is so specific that it's usually not even necessary to include the word "wallpaper" – most of the results will already be wallpapers, except maybe for a few desktop screenshots.

Example 2: "nature"

imagesize:1920×1200 nature

Example 3: "futuristic"

imagesize:1680×1050 futuristic

Example 4: "cars"

imagesize:1680×1050 cars

Example 5: "babe"

imagesize:1680×1050 babe (be careful if you have SafeSearch off ;-] )

Starter Links Per Resolution

Here are some quick starter links for common resolutions to get you started:

320×396

320×480

800×600

1024×600

1024×768

1152×864

1280×1024

1280×720

1280×768

1280×800

1280×960

1360×768

1366×768

1400×1050

1440×900

1600×1200

1600×900

1680×1050

1920×1080

1920×1200

2560×1024

2560×1600

Conclusion

What sites do you use to get your wallpapers, specifically allowing filtering by resolution? No spam links please.

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Screen is awesome. Once you become comfortable navigating around it, you start using it ALL the time. No more dropped sessions, no having 10 Putty windows open at the same time, no more nohup.

However, with default screen settings I've always felt a bit lost and out of place, mostly because there was no "taskbar" with a bird's eye view of all windows. Pressing ctrl-a, " really does get annoying fast (that's the command that brings up the window selector – screenshot below).

So instead I modded my screen to have a "taskbar" which sits at the bottom of screen and adds:

• the name of each window
• a clear marking of window states, such as
  • the currently active window (* and different background)
  • last used window (-)
  • if you're sharing the current window with someone else (&)
• the current incoming/outgoing bandwidth in bytes/sec, updating every 5 seconds
• the current time
• the load on the server, as reported by the uptime or w commands

Of course, all of the above is customizable to your liking, but this is what I picked for myself.

Without further ado, here's a screenshot:

Doesn't that make you feel much more homey?

Now using a shared screen session for pair programming, as suggested in a recent article posted on Hacker News, suddenly sounds even more appealing.

Installation

Here's what you need to get this bar on your screen:

• download my .screenrc (0 B, downloaded 965 times) and put it in your home directory. Make sure the location of wormulon (installed in the next step) is correct. Also, specify the right network interface (eth0 in most cases).
  Here is the file, for reference:

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# Monitor eth0 bandwidth and update every 5 s
# Assign the output of this cmd to '%1`' and use it in the below hardstatus line:
backtick 1 0 0 /usr/local/bin/wormulon -d 5 -i eth0
 
hardstatus alwayslastline "%{bw}[%H] [%?%-Lw%?%{wb}%n*%f %t%{bw}%?%+Lw%?]%=%{bw} [%1`] [%c:%s] [%l]" # modified from http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/screen-users/2007-08/msg00008.html
 
# Set the scrollback length:
defscrollback 10000
 
# Select whether you want to see the copyright notice during startup:
startup_message off

• download and compile wormulon (wormulon-0.1.4.tar.gz 45.3 kB, downloaded 473 times or from a mirror) – a nifty little program that shows incoming and outgoing bandwidth and is perfect for integrating with screen. You can omit this step if you don't want the bandwidth monitor. I know the name is a bit odd but it's a legit little open source utility – feel free to check out the code.

tar xvzf wormulon-0.1.4.tar.gz
cd wormulon-0.1.4/
./configure && make
sudo make install # this installs into /usr/local/bin/;
                  # alternatively, copy the wormulon binary wherever you
                  # want and update the path in .screenrc

Now restart screen and you're good to go.

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Introduction

The tricks I am going to describe allow you to create unique gmail addresses that still hit your existing gmail inbox, without actually making new gmail accounts.

This can be useful in a variety of situations when you need to use multiple email addresses without having the pain of maintaining them, such as

• using unique emails while registering for the same service more than once (say, paypal)
• giving out a unique email address to see if you start getting spam to it later – that way you know exactly who to blame for it
• more generally, easily create email rules to sort incoming emails into folders, delete them, mark as important, etc.

The hints are not new by any means but it seems like most gmail users are not aware of them. So, without further ado:

Gmail Ignores Dots In Gmail Addresses

Did you know this? I sure didn't, until today, when I read a blog post by a fellow Russian blogger streetmakarov. Apparently, gmail completely ignores dots, so you can insert them anywhere you want in your email address.

Thus, foo.bar@gmail.com is the same as foobar@gmail.com, which is the same as f.o.o.b.a.r@gmail.com, etc – they will all arrive in the same inbox.

This begs the question – what if I registered foo.bar@gmail.com while someone else already owns foobar@gmail.com? Well, some digg and arstechnica users got their panties in a bunch over this a while ago, just to realize that gmail doesn't allow registering accounts that would clash in any way – so if I already own foobar@gmail.com, nobody can register foo.bar@gmail.com or any other combination.

You Can Append a "+ANYTHINGYOUWANT" To Your Username

I think this trick is even more awesome and flexible than the previous one. If your email is foobar@gmail.com, then you can use foobar+blabla@gmail.com, foobar+monkeybananas@gmail.com, etc and those will still land in your original inbox.

This makes it even easier to track the addresses you give out. For example, when I register new twitter accounts, I enter my email as myrealemail+mynewtwittername@gmail.com and then set up a filter in Outlook to filter those out to a separate folder. Simple, painless, and effective.

The only downside to this method is some sites foolishly (or purposely) disallow plus signs in email addresses. Oh well, you can use trick #1 for those.

Conclusion

Do you know other tricks related to "uniquefying" your gmail address? Feel free to share in the comments.

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In this article I’m going to discuss a number of useful Firefox extensions and tips. This list is not a “COMPLETE GUIDE TO FIREFOX!!!111!” but a collection of some, albeit many, extensions and techniques I find useful, with detailed descriptions and illustrations. I try to make my reviews as personal as possible and express my own points of view, so I will not be using any boring official descriptions altogether. Short, concise, and useful – that is my goal.

Right now I use 53 extensions in total. If you think that’s a lot, you might be right. However, because Firefox is so mature and new extensions come out every day, it is not as crazy of a number as it was 2 years ago. Firefox gets faster, I download more extensions, and the end result is I’m happier as a user because Firefox suddenly provides me with a lot more features at approximately the same running speed. I plan on continuing to increase this number.

Here’s a quick slightly obsolete screenshot of the extensions I’m using:

Firefox Tips

Before describing extensions, I wanted to mention a few tips about Firefox itself. If you are interested in extensions, proceed to part 2 right away, however I urge you to read these too.

Using the bookmarks bar and shortened names

You can fit a lot of quick bookmarks on the little bookmark bar if you shorten the names to 1 or 2 characters.

Using keywords for bookmarks

A little less known trick is to use the keywords property of your bookmarks. For example, here I assign a keyword ‘d’ to my digg.com bookmark. Then I can just go to the url bar, type in ‘d’, Enter and voila – digg starts loading.

Protecting and locking tabs

Protect a tab will prevent you from closing it.

I use this functionality on my most frequently visited sites – so frequently that I never want to close them. They include the iGoogle homepage, Google calendar, Remember The Milk TODO list, my Trac tickets at work, and a few other things.

These protected states are saved even if you close and open Firefox (but unfortunately, not if you use QuickRestart described in part 2). Protected windows are marked by a symbol.

Locking a tab is similar, but instead of not being able to close it, you are not able to change the url. Any url change attempts will produce a new tab. I personally never use this feature but some may find it handy. Locked windows are marked by a symbol.

Note that you need the Tab Mix Plus extension (described in part 2) for these tricks.

Restoring sessions

While Firefox 3 now has a built-in session restore feature, it’s not very robust. That is why I still use the Tab Mix Plus (described in part 2) session restore feature set. TMP’s session manager remembers protect and lock statuses, tab history, selected tab, and everything else about the session. I will describe TMP in more detail later.

Using keyboard shortcuts

In my experience, keyboard shortcuts are primarily used by power users, while the rest of the population uses a mouse. However, shortcuts are immensely effective time savers and, if you mouse a lot, will provide a relief for your wrist. Let’s take a look at a few easy and important ones.

Ctrl-L and TABs

Ctrl-L will put the focus on the url bar, no matter where you are on the page. It is equivalent to F6 in IE, except it’s actually robust. So, when I’m ready to type in the name of the site, my fingers are already on the keyboard. Ctrl-L doesn’t even require extra movements.

TAB (the key, not the Firefox tab) once after you’ve pressed Ctrl-L and you’re in the Firefox search bar (the one I set to imdb a bit later in the article). TAB twice and you’re in the Google toolbar, if you have it installed.

Ctrl-Enter and Shift-Enter

Ctrl-Enter is a tremendous time saver. It appends “.com” to whatever you have in the url bar and prepends “http://www.”. Type in “google”, press Ctrl-Enter, and voila, you’re at www.google.com. Similarly, Shift-Enter, appends “.net”.

Ctrl-T

Ctrl-T opens a new tab.

Ctrl-Shift-T

Ctrl-Shift-T opens the last closed tab(s), in the order they were closed.

Ctrl-Alt-T

Ctrl-Alt-T duplicates the current tab. Yet again, this is a feature of Tab Mix Plus (described in part 2). Oh how much I love you, TMP.

Ctrl-TAB, Ctrl-Shift-TAB

Ctrl-TAB is probably the most frequently used key combination. It cycles between tabs forward while Ctrl-Shift-TAB does it backwards.

Ctrl-W

Ctrl-W closes the current tab.

Space

Pressing space is a quick way to scroll down one page. It’s a lot of times more convenient than finding the small PgDn button, especially if you have fat fingers.

Setting the Firefox search bar to IMDB

Because I already use the Google Toolbar (one of the most useful toolbars out there) there is little point keeping Firefox’s default search box set to Google. I prefer IMDB (Internet Movie DataBase) myself but you can easily set it to another search engine.

End of Part 1

This marks the end of part 1 in the series. Proceed to part 2.

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So… I'm contemplating:

• printing out the event schedule and drawing a zig-zagging "map" of exactly where I'll be jumping to next, once the previous presentation ends. I'm actually wondering if I'll need to figure out where all the events are located exactly in advance. How big is that place? Did Google invent in-building walking maps yet? Do people normally jump from one presentation to another parallel one or is that unheard of?

• bringing a laptop to take notes. I find it that my brain tends to retain mostly the general ideas for a good period of time. Code details and specifics tend to flush a lot sooner. Keeping notes (and publishing them online) is the best way to retain all this tasty information. Learn it and starting doing it, don't be lazy. For my note taking application, I actually prefer Microsoft (:gasp:) OneNote. It keeps things organized and has a coupe of neat tricks up its sleeve, like built-in OCR, Win-S shortcut for a quick area-defined screenshot, integration with Outlook, audio note-taking. Aha!..

• recording audio at every presentation, is that allowed?

• getting plenty of sleep the night before each conference day, as the amount of information is going to be simply crushing. I guess I'm going to have to postpone my 3am sessions until Friday or so.

• bribing an organ thief to steal Peter Zaitsev's brain and replace it with a statistical computer chip capable of running 17 billion MySQL benchmarks a second. Nobody is going to notice the difference anyway.

Do you have any tips? How do YOU handle conferences? Please share in the comments.

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