Puzzle Game in VLC

Yo, now most of us like games. I really do. Most of have VLC Media Player to play videos. But, did you know that you can combine the two.

No, it's no joke. VLC comes with a setting with which you can transform any video into an interactive puzzle game. The steps are pretty simple. So, here is the how-to:

• Start VLC Player
• Play any video file
• Click on Tools
• Click on Effects and Filters (or you can just press Ctrl + E)
• Click on Video Effects tab
• Click on Geometry Tab

 

• See, that there is tick box for Puzzle Game
• Tick that Box
• Press Close
• Pause the video and play the puzzle.

The puzzle has to be played with the mouse. To play the video, just un-pause the video. As simple as that. Now, you can play a simple puzzle with your favorite movie characters.

Here is a screenshot of me playing puzzle to "42 Ways to Die in Minecraft". I did this on Windows, so if this does not work out for you, then please comment.

Thanks for reading and as always please comment.

Play Tetris on uTorrent

Yep, You read that right. uTorrent is the most populer (as far I know) torrent client, used by thousands of people world wide to download mostly anything from torrent sites.

We are not here to discuss the pros and cons of uTorrent. We are here to play tetris on it.
Yup, it sounds weird but it is true. So, here is the how-to:

• Start uTorrent
• Click on Help
• Click on About

• Now click inside the About dialog box
• Press "t" and start playing tetris

So, now you can play tetris while waiting for your download to complete. A good way to pass the time. Tetris can be played with the arrow keys but you cannot drop tiles with spacebar (so don't press spacebar). I have used Windows, so if this does not work, then please comment.

As Always, Thanks for reading and please comment.

Turn your Web Browser into a Calculator

Hey, there. I know I have been gone a long while now. College. But, I still surfed the net and for you guys found a new neat trick.

As the title tells you can convert your web browser into a handy calculator. Now, don't go jumping and start finding complex calculations. I mean, dude, it does not go beyond a simple calculator. So, without further ado, here is the how-to (rhymes):

• Start your web browser
• Start console (If there are many consoles, just start any one. I used Web Console.)
• Now, just do your calculations..

I just tested it out with firefox portable. Now, I am gonna list shortcuts to open the console for the three most commonly used web browsers. Sorry, can't list them all.

For Firefox, press Ctrl + Alt + K

For Google Chrome, press Ctrl + Alt + J

For Opera, press Ctrl + Alt + I

If you are using the Mac Keyboard, then replace Ctrl with Command.

As Always, thanks for reading and please comment. If I have made a mistake, then please let me know by commenting below.

How To Watch Age Restricted Youtube Videos

Hey, there. How many of you went to Youtube and saw this

I know, it is very annoying. You know, I just wanna watch one video and don't want the hassle of logging in every time something like this pops up.

So, the question is HOW DO YOU REMOVE THIS?

It's basically simple, all you have to do is:

• Look at the address bar, it is something like

youtube.com/watch?v=something_here

• Change that to

youtube.com/v/something_here

And now you can watch, most restricted videos. If this does not work for you or I have made some mistake, then please comment.

NOTE: To pull this off, I used Mozilla Firefox and it worked.

As always thanks for reading and please comment. 

Hide Files and Folder from SpotLight Search

This trick is for Mac users only. Now, guys everyone knows about spotlight. That handy dandy little app on the top right of the screen. This app is basically used to search the system for most of the things.

So, its basically like a system wide search and you can't hide files (this I have encountered personally). So the question which you should ask or have been asking is: How, do you hide files then. This little how-to is here to help.

There are a couple of tricks for that and I am gonna list them one-by-one and also let you know which is the more efficient.


Hide a folder and keep your files in it

To do this, all you need to do:

• Make a new folder and add ".noindex" to the folder name.

If you are gonna use an existing folder, then

• Highlight the folder
• Press Enter
• Now type ".noindex" at the end of the foldername

Now, shift your files in this folder. This basically hides the folder but this folder still shows up in Finder. If someone starts searching with the exact file name, then it might show up in spotlight.


Hide Files

To do this, just do:

• Highlight the file
• Right-Click and click Get Info or press Command-I
• Now go to Name & Extension field
• Add ".noindex" to the end of the file name
• Mac might ask you to choose the extension, then choose ".noindex"

This works, but fails miserably when you have a huge amount of files to hide.


Hide Files in Library Folder

This is tricky. Library is a folder but it does not even show up in the Finder. To actually go there do,

• Start Finder
• Hold option and click on Go in the menu bar
• Now, you see Library (usually it does not show up) and click on it

Once Library comes up, you could hide your files by shifting them here.


Configure Spotlight

This is the last option,

• Click on the Apple Icon
• Click on System Preferences
• Under Personal Tab, Click on Spotlight

• Now click on the Privacy tab

• Click the plus sign (it's on the lower-left side)
• Now choose the folder you want to hide

Or you could just drag and drop the folders in it

Sorry, but you cannot hide individual files by using this method. 

Well, these were the methods I could find. So, if your trick is not mentioned here, then please comment and let us all know.

As Always thanks for reading and please comment.

Install or Run Emacs without Graphics

No offense but this post is for Linux users. Whenever you install Emacs you get the GUI but sometimes you would be in the terminal and would like to start Emacs (without the GUI). This is simple:

• At terminal type:

emacs -nw

Or you could add the following line to your .bashrc or .bash_aliases

alias emacs='emacs -nw'

This way, every time you type emacs, Emacs will start without the graphics.

But, let me say this, Emacs is big so if you are gonna just use emacs without the X, then just simply install emacs without X. For that, just install the package emacs(number here)-nox. So, the package would be like emacs23-nox

And that's that.

Thank you for reading and as always please comment.

Wget How-To

Well, most Windows users know and use apps like download managers. There are some of these apps for linux as well. But, most of the time (I being at the terminal) use a small utility known as wget.

It comes with most linux systems pre-installed. Yeah, it's a command line download manager.

NOTE: For the website (websitenamehere), I have typed everything including the "http://" and it works.


Mirror an entire website

To do that type:

wget -m websitenamehere

 
and that will basically mirror or make a copy of the website on your system with the same name.
You could also do:

wget -H -r --level=1 -k -p websitenamehere

What this baby does is:

• -r tells to download pages recursively
• --level=1 tells wget to download other websites that link to it but just upto one level. Simply, let's say website A links to your website and website B links to website A. Then, this command says download website A but not B
• -H is for spanning hosts
• -k for converting the links so that both websites point to each other on the hard drive and not to the real thing
• -p tells to download all materials to properly display the page (like images, animations, you get the idea)

Resume downloads

Well, if you are on flaky connection, and the download keeps breaking off, then

wget -c fullfilenamehere

fullfilenamehere means the entire address to that file




Specify output document

At times the link don't precisely tell the document name or it could be lengthy, then you could use

wget --output-document=filename

NOTE: filename has to be the full filename with extensions




Download music automatically

First create a file with the list of your mp3 music sources (URLs) but mention them one per line, then

wget -r -l1 -H -t1 -nd -N -np -A.mp3 -erobots=off -i filename.txt

Bulk downloads

Make a file with the list of URLs of the stuff that you want to download, then

wget -i filename.txt

Generate a log for checking broken links

For this, simply type

wget --spider -o wget.log -e robots=off --wait 1 -r -p websitenamehere

There are many more uses for this versatile tool. If I have not mentioned your trick or there is some mistake in mine, then please comment.

As always thanks for reading and please comment.