Make a slideshow wallpaper (background) easily

It can be annoying to manipulate a xml file to make a slideshow background. Here is a hassle-free solution: XML animated background creator. Just put xmlback file in the archive in /home/username/.gnome2/nautilus-scripts. Now gather images to make a slideshow background in a folder, and open the folder in Nautilus, and run the script from the context menu. Tada~ It's done!

Transform your Linux XWindow into Windows 7 look

OK, I am still a Mac guy and if I can transform my xwindow into Mac OS X look super simply like I can do with Win2-7 Pack 6.0 Multilang Aero!, I will do it. I tried several theme packs for Mac OS X look, they are either very ugly or too complicated. Interestingly, it seems people are more interested in Windows 7 look. It is quite pleasant to see, I agree, and I think it should be so as Microsoft must invest a lot of money to develop the look. So here I go, I gave a try, and it actually looks better to my eyes than many Linux themes out there. Given the simplicity of the installation process (and update or uninstallation process, even though I haven't tried), they must made a lot of effort in the project. I appreciate it!!!

When Baldur's Gate II stuck in the splash screen, in the middle of the game, so on

I find Baldur's Gate II under Wine have a slight problem with my soundcard sometimes.
I tried killall pulseaudio and most of time problem solved.

How to get rid of (or put) desktop, trash can, home folder icons from Desktop

*This can also be done with Ubuntu Tweak application.

I got this from here.

we need to get it one on the desktop. For this, we will be using the Configuration Editor. Open the Run Application window (Alt+F2) and enter gconf-editor. Click Run.

Using the Gnome Configuration Editor

To me, the gconf-editor looks a bit like the registry editor under Windows. In the left pane, click the arrow in front of apps to drop down the hidden options. A listing of applications on your system will appear. The one we are interested in is nautilus. Click the arrow in from of nautilus to show the options there and you should see one labeled desktop. Click desktop.

In the right pane, you will see options for adding the trash can icon to the desktop. Also available are the icons for the computer, home folder and network. Placing a check mark for the icon_visible option for any of these items will place the icon on the desktop. Additionally, you can name these items anything you desire. As a side note, you can always rename the icons directly from the desktop by right clicking the item and choosing Rename...

When you are done making your choices in the Configuration Editor, close the window. That is all there is to getting those icons you have grown to love on the desktop.

How to show all the USB devices dimmed in grey in VirtualBox

Grabbed this from here.
Basically, with setting up correct user group, all the dimmed devices come back to be ready. No.2 concerns iPhone and iPod Touch because it has a problem in connection in recovery mode.
For making VirtualBox work with iTunes, see this page.

1. Setup correct user group
Try this:
1. In the host (10.04 Lucid), System->Administration->Users and Groups
2. Click Manage Groups.
3. In the Groups settings List Box, navigate down to vboxusers
4. With vboxusers high lighted, click properties
5. Click the check box next to your user name to indicate you want you to be a member of the vboxusers group.
reboot the host.

2. Created a USB filter in VBOX, cleared all of the fields except for the "Vendor ID" field.

A driver and GUI for Nike+ Sportband

ps2.
Interesting enough, I tried VirtualBox with USB setting, and it works just fine. But the information was as comsport suggested, so there might be some relation anyway? I wonder, if I need the driver at all, and I think I can just put the information in VirtualBox usb setting by myself.

ps1.
I just found it doesn't run correctly. The error message:
username$ comsport -h
*** stack smashing detected ***: comsport terminated
Segmentation fault

Googled the error message, but I don't know what to do! Can this be a problem caused by checkinstall???
I found a candidate for the solution here:
"I have been dealing with the stack smashing issue for a while with nvclock. I finally was able to compile a version of nvclock 0.8b2 with the "-fno-stack-protector" cflag that works for me every time. I did this by running the configure script and then manually editing all of the Makefile's in the tree and adding "-fno-stack-protector" (without the quotes) to all of the CC= lines."
I haven't dealt with this kind of thing. I'll wait some time to do this. This is quite tiring...
-----------------------

Nike+ Sportband is a good device for tracking jogging, but unfortunately, Nike seems not interested to make a Linux driver. But we have an alternative user made driver, you can grab the driver, comsport, here. Besides I had to install a dependency, i encountered following error for another dependency:

"Consider adjusting the PKG_CONFIG_PATH environment variable if you installed software in a non-standard prefix." I really don't know what was the problem, but I googled the error message and found the problem was not for the program which designated by the error but the developer package for the program (the name of the package will be "theprogramname-dev").

Following instruction is taken from here. (I recommend to use aptitude than apt-get, and checkinstall than make install.)

The best way to solve your problem is:
sudo -s
apt-get update
apt-get install build-essential
apt-get install libusb++-dev
apt-get install libusb-dev
tar -xzf file.tar.gz
./configure
make
make install
now copy file 90-sportband.rules to /etc/udev/rules.d/
restart udev or reinit your pc.
now you have installed your driver.
The GUI needs Java Runtime, do:
apt-get install sun-java6-jre
You can run de GUI doing: java -jar file.jar

Actually it is great to watch BBC iPlayer on Linux

Yes, with get-iplayer, it is now easy to watch BBC shows hosted in iPlayer. This is a quick how-to.

1) Install get-iplayer.
2) Go to iPlayer webpage and find out what you want to watch.
3) Open a terminal window, type get-iplayer "title of the show", it will give you its PID.
4) get-iplayer --proxy=http://(proxy.address.if.you.use.any) --verbose --get (PID) --output "(/download/folder/)"
*without parenthesis
5) It will download the show. For me, if I use the same proxy server, which is free and slow, on iPlayer site, it takes forever to download. But with get-iplayer, it's a breeze!

More detailed explanation can be consulted using get-iplayer --help or visit get-iplayer page.