KDE and Cricket scorecard…

I was just seeing the scorecard in the India-Pakistan match. I wondered whether I could help out my browser from those refreshes. I wasn't seeing each and every line of the commentry, so why not have something better, like a desktop scorecard, but a little less annoying.

I wrote a script that will SPECIFICALLY give me a live scorecard of TODAY's CRICKET MATCH. It can be modified to work more generically. Here is a sample output.

Just download it and run. It will work if you have KDE.

#!/bin/sh

while [ 1 ]
do
        rm -f IND_PAK_ODI4_16FEB2006.main.html
        wget http://usa.cricinfo.com/db/ARCHIVE/2005-06/IND_IN_PAK/SCORECARDS/frames/IND_PAK_ODI4_16FEB2006.main.html
        info1=`cat IND_PAK_ODI4_16FEB2006.main.html | grep overs| grep Cricinfo| cut -f 2 -d \'`
        info2=`cat IND_PAK_ODI4_16FEB2006.main.html | grep overs| grep Current|cut -f 2- -d :|cut -f 1 -d \<`
        info2="Current Partnership: $info2"
        info3=`cat IND_PAK_ODI4_16FEB2006.main.html | grep overs| grep Last|cut -f 2- -d :|cut -f 1 -d \<`
        info3="Last batsman: $info3"
        info="$info1 — $info2 —  $info3"
        kdialog –passivepopup "$info" 30 &
done

Eat cricket, sleep cricket, use only K D E!!

Media player and Multimedia keys

Have you seen things just work in Windows with Winamp? Play and Pause, Previous, Next, Stop, etc? I always wished my keyboard is able to do the same in KDE too.

I use AMAROK player, so, I generally want my amarok to play or pause audio. In the control center, there is a section called Regional and accessibility/KHotKeys

Here, we can add events and their actions. By default, there are two groups of events, “examples” and “menu editor entries”. First, I created a new group, “Amarok commands”. In that group, I added a new action. I named the new action as “amarok play pause”. Now, I added a new trigger as “shortcut”, and in that, I specified the “play pause multimedia key” (to specify, just press the key, hehe). And specified the action as “command/URL” and in that “amarok -t”. Now, after applying, pressing “the play pause multimedia key “plays pauses” amarok.

To find out the command for your media player, generally,
{player name} –help
tells you which commands are for what.

amarok -t // play pause
amarok -s // stop
amarok -r // previous
amarok -f // next

Also, it is important to note that there was a mapping called “XF86AudioPlay” for the keycode of “play pause multimedia key”. So, its important to select the correct “keyboard model” from Control Center -> Regional and Accessibility -> Keyboard Layout. For me, the model is “Microsoft Natural Keyboard Pro/Microsoft Internet Keyboard Pro”.

If your layout doesn’t have a mapping, then, we can always use “xmodmap” to select an “unused mapping” for the “key”. Some of the other unused “mapping codes” are F13 F14 F15 F16, etc. if your F keys are till F12 only.

Have fun!

Some great effects in KDE

Control Center -> Desktop -> Window Behavior -> Translucency.

This thing is a new feature in KDE which I discovered. It is under “experimentation” and does work a little “buggily”. I enabled it. It gets enabled once you enable it and relogin to KDE.

The shadows and translucency are really buggy in resizing, moving and maximizing windows. But, the Effects — Fade in and Fade out are really nice. Though, that means a little delay in application response, but its really nice. I disabled some advanced effects of the “KDE Theme” I was using, and enabled this effect. Looks great.

You might consider ticking “disable ARGB windows”, I don’t know what it does though.

Now, when I open a Window, it fades in and fades out, something like given in the “Tour Windows XP” thing, never seen it happen in real working Windows XP though.

P2P sharing, KDE look and feel and me

Okay, gaim is not working these days. So, no yahoo, no chat.. and a lot of time! Just keep playing with the system.

I was looking at some p2p network sharing software. I found two excellent softwares, DCGUI and LIMEWIRE. DCGUI is a client for Direct Connect protocol based networks and Limewire connects to Gnutella network. DCGUI is Qt/C++ based and Limewire is Java based.

I downloaded
dcgui-qt-0.3.2-0.lvn.1.3.91.src.rpm (rpm.livna.org)
dclib-0.3.2-0.lvn.1.3.91.src.rpm
LimeWireLinux.rpm (www.limewire.com)

and did…
rpm -hiv dc*.rpm
cd /usr/src/redhat/SPECS
rpmbuild -bb dclib.spec
cd ../RPMS/i386
rpm -hiv dclib*.rpm
cd ../../SPECS
rpmbuild -bb dcgui-qt.spec
cd ../RPMS/i386
rpm -hiv dcgui*.rpm

and then…
rpm -hiv –nodeps LimeWireLinux.rpm
–nodeps was required because I did not install JRE but there was a JRE because I had JDK1.5.0 installed and its bin directory was in the system path variable.

Rest of the time I spent installing some themes and other stuff from http://www.kde-look.org.

At the end of the day… I realized that neither gaim, nor kopete will work. What worked was yahoo messenger for Linux(RH9).
rpm -hiv rh9.ymessenger-1.0.4-1.i386.rpm (http://messenger.yahoo.com)

Works, works bad… but still.. it works!!