Akom's Tech Ruminations

I'm not quite sure why a working example of doing this is so hard to find!

As far as I can tell, at the time of this writing there are two choices of ready-made (and free) apps that do this: GDocBackup and php-google-backup, a tiny php script (on google code) that uses Zend libraries. The former is a windows binary and is said to run in Mono. The latter is a php script which currently partially works (can't handle spreadsheets or PDF's). Not wanting to run Mono (an emulator - I might as well write this in Java), and not satisfied with only backing up .doc's and presentations... I hacked up my own.

Here is how I did it

Continue reading "Backing Up Google Docs automatically from Linux"

I am signed in to google talk from many places - blackberry, laptops, desktops, etc - and every once in a while, IM's don't go to the right one. Since I lock my workstation at the office whenever I get up, I figured it'd be nice to have Pidgin log off at the same time.

I am not sure how you would do this in Windows, but in Linux (Ubuntu in my case), I did it like this:

Changed my screen lock hotkey (Ctrl-Alt-l for me) to run the following:

xlock -startCmd "purple-remote setstatus?status=offline" -endCmd "purple-remote setstatus?status=available"

That's it. If you want specific screensaver modes you can stick them in them too:

xlock -mode blank -startCmd "purple-remote setstatus?status=offline" -endCmd "purple-remote setstatus?status=available"

Update: July 2012

Ubuntu has a broken version of xlock (1:5.31-1) which gets the BadMatch (invalid parameter attributes) error. I switched to using slock from "suckless-tools" package, like so:

bash -c "purple-remote setstatus?status=offline ; slock ; purple-remote setstatus?status=available"

Interestingly, after running slock, xlock works too.. it's actually related to dpms: If you run xset +dpms, xlock will work (once).
You can adjust the xlock version for this bug as follows:

xlock -mode blank -startCmd "xset +dpms ; purple-remote setstatus?status=offline" -endCmd "purple-remote setstatus?status=available"

PS: Doing this in openbox:

<keybind key="C-A-l">
        <action name="Execute">
                <startupnotify><enabled>true</enabled><name>Run</name></startupnotify>
                <command>xlock -startCmd "purple-remote setstatus?status=offline" -endCmd "purple-remote setstatus?status=available"</command>
        </action>
</keybind>