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Misc
Change Your MAC Address in Linux
Jul 16th
Some times it necessary to change your network MAC address on your linux box.
Unlike Windows, which requires some registry editing or even specialized tools, its just a command line away in Linux.
For example, lets change the MAC address of your first netwrok card, usually called eth0.
Let’s swith to being the root user and view the current MAC address:-
ifconfig eth0
You should get something similiar:-
[root@rhel-5new ~]# ifconfig eth0
eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 08:00:27:2C:D2:B5
inet addr:192.168.0.108 Bcast:192.168.0.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
inet6 addr: fe80::a00:27ff:fe2c:d2b5/64 Scope:Link
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:20545 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:18348 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:10083277 (9.6 MiB) TX bytes:7489363 (7.1 MiB)
Interrupt:11 Base address:0xd020
The MAC address is listed next to the HWAddr column, which is 08:00:27:2C:D2:B5 in this case.
We’ll change it. First shutdown the network interface.
ifconfig eth0 down
Now change it to say, 08:00:27:2C:D2:B4.
ifconfig eth0 hw ether 00:00:27:2c:d2:b4
Bring the interface back up.
ifconfig eth0 up
Finally, lets have a look at the new mac address.
[root@rhel-5new ~]# ifconfig eth0
eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:00:27:2C:D2:B4
inet addr:192.168.0.108 Bcast:192.168.0.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
inet6 addr: fe80::200:27ff:fe2c:d2b4/64 Scope:Link
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:20957 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:18642 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:10146055 (9.6 MiB) TX bytes:7520724 (7.1 MiB)
Interrupt:11 Base address:0xd020
You can see that the HWaddr field now reports 00:00:27:2C:D2:B4.
Check Your Spelling in Linux using the Command Line
Jul 15th
You can do a spell check on from the command line in Linux.
First, make sure you have aspell installed. In Fedora, just yum install it.
$ yum install aspell
You’ll also need a dictionary, from which aspell can search for words.
A yum search aspell will give you a list.
[raja@atreides visilon]$ yum search aspell ----------------------------------------------------------- aspell-af.i586 : Afrikaans dictionaries for Aspell aspell-bg.i586 : Bulgarian dictionaries for Aspell aspell-br.i586 : Breton dictionaries for Aspell aspell-ca.i586 : Catalan dictionaries for Aspell aspell-cs.i586 : Czech dictionaries for Aspell aspell-cy.i586 : Welsh dictionaries for Aspell aspell-da.i586 : Danish dictionaries for Aspell aspell-de.i586 : German dictionaries for Aspell aspell-el.i586 : Greek dictionaries for Aspell aspell-en.i586 : English dictionaries for Aspell aspell-es.i586 : Spanish dictionaries for Aspell aspell-fr.i586 : French dictionaries for Aspell aspell-ga.i586 : Irish dictionaries for Aspell aspell-gl.i586 : Galician dictionaries for Aspell aspell-hr.i586 : Croatian dictionaries for Aspell aspell-id.i586 : Indonesian dictionaries for Aspell aspell-is.i586 : Icelandic dictionaries for Aspell aspell-it.i586 : Italian dictionaries for Aspell aspell-no.i586 : Norwegian dictionaries for Aspell aspell-pl.i586 : Polish dictionaries for Aspell aspell-pt.i586 : Portuguese dictionaries for Aspell aspell-ru.i586 : Russian dictionaries for Aspell aspell-sl.i586 : Slovenian dictionaries for Aspell aspell-sr.i586 : Serbian dictionaries for Aspell aspell-sv.i586 : Swedish dictionaries for Aspell aspell-fo.i586 : Faeroese dictionaries for Aspell aspell-gd.i586 : Gaelic dictionaries for Aspell aspell-nl.i586 : Dutch dictionaries for Aspell aspell-ar.i586 : Arabic dictionary for Aspell aspell-bn.i586 : GNU Aspell Bengali Dictionary Package aspell-gu.i586 : GNU Aspell Gujarati Dictionary Package aspell-he.i586 : Hebrew dictionary for Aspell aspell-hi.i586 : GNU Aspell Hindi Dictionary Package aspell-ml.i586 : GNU Aspell Malayalam Dictionary Package aspell-mr.i586 : GNU Aspell Marathi Dictionary Package aspell-or.i586 : GNU Aspell Oriya Dictionary Package aspell-pa.i586 : GNU Aspell Punjabi Dictionary Package aspell-sk.i586 : Slovak dictionaries for Aspell aspell-ta.i586 : GNU Aspell Tamil Dictionary Package aspell-te.i586 : GNU Aspell Telugu Dictionary Package
That’s a lot of languages. I’ll just install the English dictionaries.
yum install aspell-en.i586
Now the fun part. Checking your spelling via command line.
Just type aspell -a and it will give you a prompt. I’ll intentionally type a misspelled word and see what it returns:-
[raja@atreides visilon]$ aspell -a @(#) International Ispell Version 3.1.20 (but really Aspell 0.60.6) psychatrist & psychatrist 5 0: psychiatrist, psychiatrists, psychiatrist's, psychiatry's, psychiatric
I spelt ‘psychiatrist’ wrongly, and it gave me back a few suggested corrections. (Ok I admit, I didn’t know how to spell it in the first place. 
)
Lets see what happens when you give it a correctly spelled word:-
[raja@atreides visilon]$ aspell -a @(#) International Ispell Version 3.1.20 (but really Aspell 0.60.6) disapprove *
Yes, it returns an asterisk(*), showing you’re spelling is correct.
Press Ctrl + D when you’re done, to bring you back to the command line.
If you have a text file, you could check that using aspell as well. For example, here’s some sample text:-
Mary had a little lamb. It's fleede was whote as snow.
We’ll save it as mary.txt and run aspell like this to check the file:
aspell check mary.txt
You’ll get a interface like this, highlighting every misspelled word, with the suggested actions.
Aspell in action
When done with the checking, aspell will exit, saving the previous copy with a .bak extension. 
Stop Vim from Highlighting Search Results
Jul 14th
You can search to words in vim using the ‘/’ key when you’re in command mode. Unfortunately, new admins in their desperation to find a word may inadvertently specify a term too generic.
Vim provides search highlighting, but sometimes, the results are just plain fugly. For example, when searching for the word module in a httpd.conf file, this is what could happen:
Vim showing Highlights
Yeah, not really the the most visually pleasing. To temporarily turn of highlighting, just type
:nohlsearch
in vim command mode.
The next time you search for something, or press the ‘n’ key, it will be automatically turned back on.
Police report against Al-Islam
Jul 14th
Sigh. Never thought I’d bog about this.
Can’t people just live together?
Henotheism (Greek εἷς θεός heis theos “one god”) is a term coined by Max Müller, to mean worshiping a single god while accepting the existence or possible existence of other deities.
Fully explained here, in the one & only Wikipedia.
How to Get a Cool Manga Avatar as your Gravatar
Jul 8th
A lot of websites now support Gravatars.
What exactly are Gravatars?
A gravatar, or globally recognized avatar, is quite simply an image that follows you from site to site appearing beside your name when you do things. Avatars help identify your posts on blogs and web forums, so why not on any site?
WordPress has plugins that allow you to insert them into your comments, so you have a common picture across the sites you post.
While looking for a cool avatar, thanks to my friend Danny, I found this site that allows you to customize your own manga like avatar, called Face Your Manga.
Pretty cool. I’ve got mine. How about you?
Monsters Vs Aliens
Feb 5th
The Super Bowl Porn Glitch
Feb 4th
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 
I need a wireless mouse…
Jan 25th
And my friend Abi is running a contest with the prize being a cool wireless mouse. The cheapskate in me forced my brains to rack up something. The garbage that came out wasn’t too pleasing, but here’s my shot at something free:-
Rajaseelan spotted a hog,
Wanting a good picture to blog,
He angled up by a log,
Unfortunately delirium from sipping eggnog,
Made him fall into the bog.
Crime & Passion
Jan 17th
Holy Cow!!! I just saw this on youtube. I had to post this, anyone who grew up as an 80’s SBC child will instantly recognize this. One of their locally produced cops & thieves dramas, with an uber-catchy theme song. The one posted on youtube is the mandarin (?) dub, but either way its definitely worth a listen.
Contest @ Abinesh’s Delirium
Jan 13th
My friend Abi is having a contest where some people will get free WordPress stickers if they meet certain criteria. Too bad I didn’t follow this earlier on. This is what happens when you dont read your RSS feeds. 
Oh well, he’s promised to have more contests in the coming year, so I’ll keep my fingers crossed.
