One of my family members refuses to bookmark anything, saying it’s a given that whatever he saves and tells himself, “I’ll read that later,” gets pushed aside forever. I think he may be right.

I’ve been hoarding quite a few links over the past few weeks, and most of them I told myself I would read later. I’ll drop some of them here, on the hopes that I get the time and urge to actually do something with them.

• A long time ago I found a site which does a much better job of showing the available console fonts than the meager version I compiled years ago. Much nicer arrangement and a better rundown on many of the obscure ones too. Well done, sir.
• I am one of those people who learns better from examples than instructions; to that end, Linux Command Examples is a much better resource for me than just a man page or help flags. Submit your own snippets for the benefit of assimilators like me.
• I name all my computers after the serial number on the bottom; I get and give computers at a rate that really doesn’t allow for meaningful relationships and full names. 🙄 I must be doing it right though, because unless I’m mistaken, my paradigm falls well within the suggestions of RFC 1178. 😉
• AnnaSagrera put together a nice post about using mplayer with some of the video output tweaks, most notably the aa and caca drivers. I don’t agree with her on every point, but she does have quite a few screenshots of what the combinations can yield, on contemporary hardware. I eagerly await a post on jamming Quake 2 through the aa libraries. …
• Still in graphical mode, I have heard of tools that dim or torque monitor light output, according to the time of day. Ideally this should correspond to your diurnal cycle, and prevent late-night browsing sessions from preventing restful sleep. Ricardo Catalinas Jiménez offers one specific to Xorg, free of external software. Bah, who am I kidding? I’ll sleep when I’m dead.
• I was digging around for renaming utilities a few months ago and came across a rock-and-roll solution that only relies on find, sed and mv to get the job done. I tried it with a few test files and it seemed to do the trick, but it’s a little too Wild West for me. I like to have some warning about the damage I’m about to do. 🙄
• I don’t bother much altering the base colors in a terminal, mostly because I’m just not so idle that I have time to tinker with color schemes these days. If you are among the blissfully stressless, you might enjoy this page. No experience necessary; it does all the heavy lifting for you.
• Of course you know about the years-long project to consolidate text-based software into some sort of navigable list. I do occasionally get submissions that are not really programs but probably worthy of mention. As an example, add this to your .bashrc when you get a chance:

  function http() {
      curl http://httpcode.info/$1
  }

  Now you have an online reference at your shell prompt for all those weird HTTP error codes. I only know 404 and 504, and you can look those two up as a test of your new gimmick. Alma sent me the tip, via a reddit post.

• I mentioned Pale Moon the other day as a replacement for the tumor people call Firefox; imagine my chagrin when the Linux maintainer deserts it only days after my feeble endorsement. 😳 I’ve been watching this thread to see if a new champion steps forward. Even if one doesn’t, there have been posts to that thread explaining how to build your own, and it might come to that yet.
• Actual memory usage is a concept that I see misrepresented a lot online. One of the best explanations I know of is here. Not only does it step through the venerable free -m trick, but also takes the time to explain page caching and other memory management. Worth a read, even just briefly.
• I mentioned a long time ago that it is possible to configure an entire computer to work as a router, but that I hadn’t ever met anyone who actually did it. Here’s a very recent Ask Ubuntu page that talks about the process, and comes to a conclusion of sorts. Don’t throw out that Pentium II, friend. …
• Last but not least, if you ever needed a quick rundown on some basic Linux console commands, this page is at once one of the most concise and most useful arrangements I have seen. It’s simple, lacks thick graphics and is easy to navigate in a text-only environment. Bookmark that in elinks and save yourself a lot of trouble.

That’s it for now. I have some others but they will probably require further effort before they are suitable for public mastication. We will post no link before its time. … 😉