BOINC stands for Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing, and is a program which allows your computer to help science. BOINC is a program which allows you to connect to an assortment of different science related projects, and help use your computer's spare processing power to crunch problems called WUs (Work Units).
There are many different science projects to choose from, and you can choose which ones you want to help with your computer. First we will have to install BOINC though.
This time, I will show you how to install/remove programs a different way from usual, perhaps even easier than the others. Click Accessories -> Add/Remove...
In the new window which opened, type BOINC into the search, and install the program. BOINC should now be installed under Applications -> System Tools -> BOINC Manager.
Boincstats is a website which helps make it a lot easier to add/join/remove projects from BOINC, you can register for an account here (Link). After signing up for an account and activating by checking your email, open up BOINC and follow these instructions (Link). After doing that, your BOINC will automatically contact BOINCStats to update and synchronise your account.
Now since you have connected BOINC to BOINCStats, you may log into the BOINCStats website with your username and password. After logging in, on the left hand side you should see "Sign-up for projects," click on that. Look through the project descriptions to see if anything catches your eye, and press the Create Account button for each one you want to join.
I highly recommend Rosetta@Home (help fold proteins to cure diseases), AQUA@Home (working on building a quantum computer, and these WUs are testing quantum algortihms), and MilkyWay@Home (making a highly accurate model of the MilkyWay).
After joining whichever projects you want to join, press the Start button at the bottom of the screen. Now press "Project resources" on the side, press the "Attach All Hosts Now" buttons for all the projects you want to connect to, and press Update. You may also want to check off any projects you want to attach to by default (if you connect more of your computers to BOINCStats, your computers will automatically join these projects).
Now, open up BOINC, and press Tools -> Synchronize with BOINCStats BAM!. This will update your BOINC, and attach to the science projects you selected. You will begin downloading WUs, and helping science with your spare processing power.
For those who are interested in seeing my stats, click here.
Thursday, April 30, 2009
#13: Torrents
One of the most successful ways of transferring information to many users very cheaply is through a P2P (Peer To Peer) protocol called Torrents (.torrent is the extension). In torrents, there are seeders (those who share the full file) and leechers (those who are downloading the file). The torrent protocol allows you to share your bandwidth to help spread files to other users, thereby lowering the strain on servers who offer these files to users.
For example, I share all of the Ubuntu torrents, and I would highly recommend you share Ubuntu as well if you love it just as much as I do. This will also help save Canonical (the company which works on Ubuntu) much money in server and bandwidth costs. It will also help save money from the sites which help mirror Ubuntu downloads as well.
Ubuntu has a torrent program installed by default called Transmission, and it is a decent program which you can use if you want, but I recommend using a torrent program called Deluge. I would search for it on Synaptic Package Manager (System -> Administrator -> Synaptic Package Manager), search for deluge, and install it.
I would recommend before helping upload Ubuntu through torrents, to test your internet connection so Deluge can be set up correctly. Speed Tests can be run here:
http://www.dslreports.com/speedtest
After running your speed test, you should get a download speed and an upload speed. What is important here is just the upload speed, which is in Kbps (Kilobits per second), you will want to convert this number into KBps (Kilobytes per second), so open up calculator, and divide the upload number by 8 in order to get how many KBps your upload connection is, now multiply this number by .7 (70%) in order to get a nice upload speed while leaving enough breathing room for surfing the interwebs.
You will now want to find .torrent files of Ubuntu, which can be found on Ubuntu's website here:
http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/downloadmirrors#bt
You can download whichever versions you like, share them all if you want to (I highly recommend it). If you are low on space though, or do not want to take up too much, just share the desktop-i386 version.
After downloading all the .torrent files, find them on your computer, right click, and press "Open with... Deluge". Add the torrents, and you will begin downloading them. Once Deluge is open, push Edit -> Preferences -> Bandwidth, and set the upload limit to the number you computed earlier.
If you want to learn more about Deluge, you may look around their website which is here:
http://deluge-torrent.org/
For example, I share all of the Ubuntu torrents, and I would highly recommend you share Ubuntu as well if you love it just as much as I do. This will also help save Canonical (the company which works on Ubuntu) much money in server and bandwidth costs. It will also help save money from the sites which help mirror Ubuntu downloads as well.
Ubuntu has a torrent program installed by default called Transmission, and it is a decent program which you can use if you want, but I recommend using a torrent program called Deluge. I would search for it on Synaptic Package Manager (System -> Administrator -> Synaptic Package Manager), search for deluge, and install it.
I would recommend before helping upload Ubuntu through torrents, to test your internet connection so Deluge can be set up correctly. Speed Tests can be run here:
http://www.dslreports.com/speedtest
After running your speed test, you should get a download speed and an upload speed. What is important here is just the upload speed, which is in Kbps (Kilobits per second), you will want to convert this number into KBps (Kilobytes per second), so open up calculator, and divide the upload number by 8 in order to get how many KBps your upload connection is, now multiply this number by .7 (70%) in order to get a nice upload speed while leaving enough breathing room for surfing the interwebs.
You will now want to find .torrent files of Ubuntu, which can be found on Ubuntu's website here:
http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/downloadmirrors#bt
You can download whichever versions you like, share them all if you want to (I highly recommend it). If you are low on space though, or do not want to take up too much, just share the desktop-i386 version.
After downloading all the .torrent files, find them on your computer, right click, and press "Open with... Deluge". Add the torrents, and you will begin downloading them. Once Deluge is open, push Edit -> Preferences -> Bandwidth, and set the upload limit to the number you computed earlier.
If you want to learn more about Deluge, you may look around their website which is here:
http://deluge-torrent.org/
#12: VLC Media Player
VLC Media Player is my favorite media player of all time, and I highly recommend it to everyone. You might have noticed when you try to play many video files in Ubuntu, it will ask you to download codecs. Codecs allow the computer to read certain filetypes, in order to figure out the information and display it to you correctly. Many of these codecs are not installed initially in Ubuntu because they are proprietary (owned by a company or certain people), and want to collect fees for including it in any commercial products. Mostly all of these are free for private use, there is NEVER a time you will need to pay for a codec (since you are a layman, and we are using Linux after all).
VLC Media Player will most likely play any video file you can throw at it (which is the reason I mostly recommend it, you will never have to install a codec again), with a pretty minimalist interface, decently low memory usage, and it works on many different Operating Systems (yes, yes, even the dreaded Windows).
In order to install VLC through the GUI, all you have to do is System -> Administrator -> Synaptic Package Manager, and search for VLC. Choose the files vlc, vlc-plugin-esd, and mozilla-plugin-vlc.
If you want to install it through the command line, you may type this (as always, when using sudo, it will ask for your password in order to gain administrator priveleges in order to install a program):
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install vlc vlc-plugin-esd mozilla-plugin-vlc
VLC Media Player will most likely play any video file you can throw at it (which is the reason I mostly recommend it, you will never have to install a codec again), with a pretty minimalist interface, decently low memory usage, and it works on many different Operating Systems (yes, yes, even the dreaded Windows).
In order to install VLC through the GUI, all you have to do is System -> Administrator -> Synaptic Package Manager, and search for VLC. Choose the files vlc, vlc-plugin-esd, and mozilla-plugin-vlc.
If you want to install it through the command line, you may type this (as always, when using sudo, it will ask for your password in order to gain administrator priveleges in order to install a program):
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install vlc vlc-plugin-esd mozilla-plugin-vlc
#11: Bookmark Star
The Bookmark Star in Firefox, allows you to quickly bookmark, sort, organize, and tag websites which you want to be bookmarked. Visit any website which you would like to bookmark, and press the White star on the right side of the Awesome Bar:
It should turn into this:
The Gold Star means that this web page is already bookmarked, and by default it places it in the Unsorted Bookmarks Folder. If you click the Gold Star again, this little menu pops up:
From here, you can quickly remove the bookmark, name the bookmark, sort this bookmark in folders, add it to your Bookmarks Toolbar, or add tags to this bookmark.
Most of them are self explanatory, and adding tags allows you to easily find websites later. If you sort a website under the tag "recipes", if you typed recipes into the Awesome Bar, your bookmark would appear as one of the websites to choose from. This allows you to easily sort through hundreds of bookmarks to find what you are looking for.
While on the topic of bookmarks, in order to sort bookmarks manually, you may press Bookmarks ok the main bar, and then press Organize Bookmarks. This will bring you to the Library where you can sort all your bookmarks into folders, add folders, change names, add tags, etc.
It should turn into this:
The Gold Star means that this web page is already bookmarked, and by default it places it in the Unsorted Bookmarks Folder. If you click the Gold Star again, this little menu pops up:
From here, you can quickly remove the bookmark, name the bookmark, sort this bookmark in folders, add it to your Bookmarks Toolbar, or add tags to this bookmark.
Most of them are self explanatory, and adding tags allows you to easily find websites later. If you sort a website under the tag "recipes", if you typed recipes into the Awesome Bar, your bookmark would appear as one of the websites to choose from. This allows you to easily sort through hundreds of bookmarks to find what you are looking for.
While on the topic of bookmarks, in order to sort bookmarks manually, you may press Bookmarks ok the main bar, and then press Organize Bookmarks. This will bring you to the Library where you can sort all your bookmarks into folders, add folders, change names, add tags, etc.
#10: RSS Feeds
RSS Feeds allow users to quickly get access to the newest articles/posts from certain websites. Next time you visit one of your favorite websites, look at the Awesome Bar (this is the name the Firefox developers call the box where you type in websites), and at the right side of that box, you will most likely notice the RSS Symbol. If you click on this, it will bring you to a website where you can subscribe to an RSS Feed (Push the Subscribe button).
After subscribing to an RSS Feed, it will by default install to your Bookmarks Toolbar. From there, you can drag it around to place it where you want (I like to place my RSS Feeds on the left side of the toolbar, while having my normal bookmarks towards the right). Now, if you click on the RSS Feed on the toolbar, you will see the titles of all of the newest articles/posts/videos, and if you click on one, it will automatically open a window to that page (I would recommend a Middle Click in order to quickly open in a new tab).
This allows you to get access to your favorite websites, without ever having to sit on the website refreshing every two seconds waiting for new things to happen. Every so often just click on the RSS Feed and see if anything catches your attention, if not, spend time elsewhere until something does reel you in.
#9: My Favorite Firefox Add-ons
For those of you who have never heard of Add-ons, they are little additions to Firefox to make your browsing experience better. This is a list of the top Add-ons which I personally use, and highly recommend to everyone. These can either be installed by looking through Firefox's own built in Add-on browser, or by going to Firefox's website, and clicking on the Add-ons tab.
Adblock Plus (Link) is an Add-on for firefox which blocks all ads. This allows your bandwidth to be used much more wisely, and not be wasted on advertisements. The Internet itself gets a much cleaner look as well. After installing Adblock Plus, you will have to restart Firefox. After restarting you will be greeted with a screen to choose which blocklists you want to use, just choose the one which covers your country (most likely the EasyList (USA) blocklist). After choosing your blocklist, say goodbye to ads forever.
QuickRestart (Link) is an Add-on which allows you to restart Firefox very easily. After installing this Add-on, you can restart Firefox by either pressing Ctrl+Alt+R, or you can add a little button to your toolbar in order to restart at the push of a little button. If you right click the Main Bar (the bar which says File - Edit - View - History...), you can choose Customize. After choosing customize, you will be able to drag around different items, add buttons, move toolbars, and customize Firefox to better suit your style. If you scroll down the window that opens up, you should see a QuickRestart button. Click and drag the button to wherever you want, and place it there (I recommend placing it right next to Help for very easy access).
Video DownloadHelper (Link) is an Add-on which allows you to download multimedia files from many streaming websites. After installation, an easy to use button is added to your navigation toolbar which lights up any time there is downloadable content. You can then choose which file you want to download from the dropdown menu, click it, and begin your download. On the site that is called Youtube, which many of you probably frequent, it will add an even more convenient button right next to the video, which will allow even quicker access to downloading the streaming content.
Stylish (Link) is an Add-on which allows you to change the look of websites, according to these styles which you download from Stylish's website, www.userstyles.org. Once you read their website, you can look through all the different Stylishes users have created, and choose which ones you want. My favorite Stylish by far is Darkoogle, which makes Google look like this:
Enough has been said.
Hope you all enjoy these three Add-ons as much as I do, and don't forget to go look at Firefox's website for your own Add-ons, there are plenty to choose from.
Adblock Plus (Link) is an Add-on for firefox which blocks all ads. This allows your bandwidth to be used much more wisely, and not be wasted on advertisements. The Internet itself gets a much cleaner look as well. After installing Adblock Plus, you will have to restart Firefox. After restarting you will be greeted with a screen to choose which blocklists you want to use, just choose the one which covers your country (most likely the EasyList (USA) blocklist). After choosing your blocklist, say goodbye to ads forever.
QuickRestart (Link) is an Add-on which allows you to restart Firefox very easily. After installing this Add-on, you can restart Firefox by either pressing Ctrl+Alt+R, or you can add a little button to your toolbar in order to restart at the push of a little button. If you right click the Main Bar (the bar which says File - Edit - View - History...), you can choose Customize. After choosing customize, you will be able to drag around different items, add buttons, move toolbars, and customize Firefox to better suit your style. If you scroll down the window that opens up, you should see a QuickRestart button. Click and drag the button to wherever you want, and place it there (I recommend placing it right next to Help for very easy access).
Video DownloadHelper (Link) is an Add-on which allows you to download multimedia files from many streaming websites. After installation, an easy to use button is added to your navigation toolbar which lights up any time there is downloadable content. You can then choose which file you want to download from the dropdown menu, click it, and begin your download. On the site that is called Youtube, which many of you probably frequent, it will add an even more convenient button right next to the video, which will allow even quicker access to downloading the streaming content.
Stylish (Link) is an Add-on which allows you to change the look of websites, according to these styles which you download from Stylish's website, www.userstyles.org. Once you read their website, you can look through all the different Stylishes users have created, and choose which ones you want. My favorite Stylish by far is Darkoogle, which makes Google look like this:
Enough has been said.
Hope you all enjoy these three Add-ons as much as I do, and don't forget to go look at Firefox's website for your own Add-ons, there are plenty to choose from.
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
#8: Upgrading to Open Office 3 on Ubuntu 8.10
Ubuntu 8.10 shipped with Open Office 2.4. Since then, version 3.0.1 has come out, which brings about many advantages over 2.4.
First, we will need to update the repositories. Be very sure that you do not add repositories from untrustworthy sources.
Repositories are servers where Ubuntu will check for updates for all of the programs installed on your computer. This article will explain how to add the Open Office repository to Ubuntu using the GUI, because I think it is easiest.
Go into System -> Administrator -> Software Sources. This will open up this window:
Then click on the "Third-Party Software" tab, and click the Add button in the bottom left corner. It will ask you to Enter the Complete APT Line of the repository, enter in this line:
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/openoffice-pkgs/ubuntu intrepid main
Then click add source, and make sure that the box is checked. After clicking Close it will probably tell you your things are out of date, so go into System -> Administration -> Update Manager, and it will update everything for you. The Open Office 3.0.1 (or whatever the newest version is at the time) should be downloadable now. These will automatically be checked along with all the other programs, and will automatically be updated along with the rest.
First, we will need to update the repositories. Be very sure that you do not add repositories from untrustworthy sources.
Repositories are servers where Ubuntu will check for updates for all of the programs installed on your computer. This article will explain how to add the Open Office repository to Ubuntu using the GUI, because I think it is easiest.
Go into System -> Administrator -> Software Sources. This will open up this window:
Then click on the "Third-Party Software" tab, and click the Add button in the bottom left corner. It will ask you to Enter the Complete APT Line of the repository, enter in this line:
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/openoffice-pkgs/ubuntu intrepid main
Then click add source, and make sure that the box is checked. After clicking Close it will probably tell you your things are out of date, so go into System -> Administration -> Update Manager, and it will update everything for you. The Open Office 3.0.1 (or whatever the newest version is at the time) should be downloadable now. These will automatically be checked along with all the other programs, and will automatically be updated along with the rest.
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