Tag: Tools

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Just Search Portal update, now customizable!

The Just Search Portal - just got a big upgrade. It is now possible to customize the layout of the portal by choosing what search engines to see and where they should be positioned. The search buttons colors can also be changed.

The customizations are done on a separate page reachable …

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Making sharp and compact PDFs from scans

I've found that document scanner software rarely generates good PDF files when scanning plain text documents. The PDFs are often big in file size, with artifacts and may not be sharp and contrasty enough for a clear reprint. The issue is that lossy compression similar to JPEG is used in …

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hashstress - Hardware stress test using hash calculations

This post is about a little script I wrote named: hashstress. It's intended for stressing and testing the correctness of disk I/O, cache, memory and processing subsystems for an extended period of time. The basic idea is to generate files with random content and repeatedly calculate hash checksums verifying …

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Setting individual mouse pointer speeds in Linux with micetune

This post is about micetune, a Python script I wrote for setting individual pointer speeds for different mouse devices in Linux, with the ability to reduce the speed beyond what the control center setting allows. The script changes the real pointer speed without involving acceleration.

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Passing URL parameters to client only

I wanted to implement a search plugin for the Just Search Portal so searching shortcuts built into browsers could be used to pull up the portal conveniently. To make this work, the portal must support retrieving queries from the URL like other search engines ...

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The Just Search Portal

The Just Search Portal is single file static HTML page that simply provides a search bar and buttons for submitting the query to search engines. The page is made with a focus on not distracting the user and on privacy. No ads or recent activity is shown like in many …

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Making parallel text PDFs for e-readers

This post explains the scripts: dualtext2pdf and dualtext2html that convert two Markdown formatted texts with alignment cues into a dual text or parallel text PDF. The scripts are intended for generating bilingual e-reader friendly PDFs to practice a foreign language.

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The making of this blog with Pelican

For this version of the blog I decided to go for static website generation. Read on for thoughts about this decision, why I didn't like WordPress, and generally how I tried to make a simple efficient website respecting privacy this time.

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