Archive for February, 2009

Create Multiple Firefox Profiles For Different Uses

Feb 22nd

Posted by raja in How To

No comments

Ever had a problem where your Firefox crashes during development because you were browsing multiple tabs in another window?

Or using the latest Firefox beta always messed up your current extensions / settings?

Use Profile Manager.

This keeps separate instances of firefox running, so one crash won’t affect the other windows.

To access the Profile Manager, first open Firefox as usual, then from the your os command prompt, launch the profile manager by typing the following command:-

firefox -profilemanager -no-remote

My FireFox Profile Manager

As you can see, I have created 3 profiles here, my default profile, a Development profile as well as another beta profile for me to test the latest firefox beta, Minefield (www.mozilla.org/projects/minefield/). I set the default profile as my default (duh!), for normal web browsing.

The ‘-no-remote’ option allows you to start a new Firefox process that is invisible to the first process.

The ‘-P’ option allows you to specify which profile to start. Look at your profile manager for the names in case you forgot ;)

I then created some scripts in my ~/bin directory to launch the Development & Beta profiles seperately.

Here’s a sample script, note that I piped all of ‘em ugly error messages to /dev/null and made sure the process ran in the background. This frees up your terminal for more important things.

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#!/bin/bash
echo "Starting devfox ;)"
/usr/bin/firefox -P "Development" -no-remote > /dev/null 2>&1 &

Another tip, getting confused with which profile(s) you have open? Use Themes to differentiate them ;)

For more information, read on the following links:-

Opening Firefox With Another Profile
Firefox Profile Manager

Other uses for this include, your own ‘incognito’ mode for firefox, ala Chrome.

Hope you find this helpful ;)

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Some Mplayer Tips

Feb 14th

Posted by raja in How To

No comments

Basically a reminder for me as well as a reference for others. ;)

  • Audio Volume

    Sometimes the default volume in videos are pretty low, even after you turn up the speakers. This is where the audio filter option of mplayer comes in handy. By default, the value is 10:0, and by using the -af switch, you can increase it. e.g.

    mplayer some-video.avi -af volume=20:0

    This amplifies the default volume to double what it currently is. Experiment with the settings, you might find it handy.

  • Subtitle Font Size

    For some insane reason, the default font size for subtitles in mplayer are like the gargantuan contraptions used by the aliens that invaded earth in War of the Worlds. Usually occupying at least a fourth of your viewable screen, they make your viewing experience well, less pleasurable.

    Fix this by adding the following switch to your commandline:-

    mplayer -subfont-text-scale 2 video.avi

    where the number refers to the percentage of scren size used render the subtitles. I find 2 a pretty good value, as it achieves a fine balance between readability and screen estate usage.

Remember, as with other command line programs in Linux, you can chain these options, so all together, it would look like this:-

mplayer -af volume=20:0 -subfont-text-scale 2 video.avi

Happy viewing!!! :)

How to convert .cue / bin file to .isos in Fedora Linux

Feb 6th

Posted by raja in How To

2 comments

For those of you who need to, here’s how to convert those .bin/.cue files to .isos in Fedora Linux.

First install bchunk from yum:-


yum install bchunk

Then, in the directory with your .bin/.cue files, run the bchunk program like this:-


bchunk -v name_of_bin_file.bin name_of_cue_file.cue new_iso_name

For example:-


[raja@atreides ]$ bchunk -v name_of_bin_file.bin name_of_cue_file.cue new_iso_name
binchunker for Unix, version 1.2.0 by Heikki Hannikainen
Created with the kind help of Bob Marietta ,
partly based on his Pascal (Delphi) implementation.
Support for MODE2/2352 ISO tracks thanks to input from
Godmar Back , Colas Nahaboo
and Matthew Green .
Released under the GNU GPL, version 2 or later (at your option).

Reading the CUE file:

Track 1: MODE1/2352 01 00:00:00 (startsect 0 ofs 0)

Writing tracks:

1: new_iso_name.iso
mmc sectors 0->117357 (117358)
mmc bytes 0->276023664 (276023665)
sector data at 16, 2048 bytes per sector
real data 240349184 bytes
229/229 MB [********************] 100 %
[raja@atreides ]$

There you go, a new .iso file named new_iso_name.iso should be created. ;)

Monsters Vs Aliens

Feb 5th

Posted by raja in Misc

2 comments

Here’s a movie I’ll be waiting for. Looks Extremely hilarious.

For those of you having trouble getting the 1080p hi def trailer, I’ve downloaded it for you, available on rapidshare. Here it is ;) :-

http://rapidshare.com/files/193910331/monstersvsaliens-tlr2_h1080p.mov

The Super Bowl Porn Glitch

Feb 4th

Posted by raja in Misc

No comments

Yeah, some people can’t blame the recession for losing their jobs. Imagine this in Malaysia during a Liverpool vs Manchster United match, heads will roll ;)

SuperBowl Porn Glitch