Wordpress Permalinks not working?

When creating a local website on your own webserver running Apache2 and using Wordpress, you will see that the URL is created by referring to different kind of ID's. This could be Post ID's, Category ID's, Page ID's and so on. So I went into the Wordpress Administration Panel and told it to use permalinks instead. Hoping this would make the URL's a little prettier...

Remmina connection problem

After the latest update on my Ubuntu 14.04 Remmina would not connect to one of my Windows computers. I remembered having had this problem before, but was not able to remember the solution. (Even though I knew the solution was a very simple one.)

So I started googling and after a while I found the very simple solution to this problem.

SUM filtered rows in LibreOffice using SUBTOTAL

In Libre Office Calc you sometimes need to filter data using the Autofilter. And of course you would like to know the sum of the values filtered. This is where you'll want to use the SUBTOTAL() function. To get the subtotal of the filtered values you'll need to tell the subtotal function which function you would like to use on the filtered rows.

LibreOffice - using INDIRECT() for cell referencing

At times I need to summarize values from another sheet in Libre Office, and get an output that will group some values together. In my example I have a small table that could contain from 10 to 1000 rows. The table I want is to be grouped by date, and I want to know how much I have spent on a specific day.

Making or burning ISO images

I was given a burned CD from a friend and decided to make an ISO image of that particular CD. Currently I'm using Ubuntu 12.10 and decided to use the Linux-command: dd

But to my surprise; IT WOULDN'T WORK!!! I have always used that command to make an ISO image, so now I had to figure out why this is not working, and how I could make it work.

LibreOffice 4.1 Solver example

While going through my accounting I found some discrepancies. So I needed to go through a long list of numbers and check whether they have been included in the totals I was checking.
Of course I would like not having to spend hours doing this, so I decided to find out how I could do this using LibreOffice Calc an save myself a lot of time. The time spent making the calculation is now about 1 second. (The time spent figuring this out... Let's just say hours....)

Formatting phone numbers in LibreOffice

Every now and then I need to setup a list containing phone numbers in Libre Office Calc. When the phone numbers are listed I need to have them formatted in 3+2+3 digits. (Or else I'm unable to separate the digits when I am going to make the call.)

Here's the trick how to do this:
In the phone number column I'll select the entire column or the cells I need the formatting on.
Right click the selected area and click Format Cells
In the Numbers tab, I insert the following as Format Code:

###" "##" "###

Make sure to add the space between the " and ".

Correctly inserted phone numbers should now look like: 123 45 789
(A lot better for my ageing eyes.)


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Vmware Server 2 - "Failed to initialize monitor device."

After rebooting the server my virtual machines would not start up again. Neither automatically nor manually. This problem had me confused for a while but I finally found a simple solution.

The problem was that kvm-intel module was loaded, so simply removing this, and restarting the vmware service was sufficient to restart my virtual machines.

sudo rmmod kvm-intel
sudo service vmware restart

After this my virtual machines had no problem starting.

Backup your images on JottaCloud

On JottaCloud you can easily backup your images or files. I use JottaCloud to save a backup of the images I take on my Android phone.

Scaling a pdf file from A3 to A4

This is just a quick tip for converting a pdf file from one pagesize to another.
By using the command convert this is easily achieved.

This is the quickest way I've found to do this:


convert -page a3 infile.pdf -page a4 outfile.pdf

The outfile.pdf should now be sized as an A4 page.
The command is as follows: convert [input file options] infile.pdf [output file options] outfile.pdf

Of course it is possible to convert to and from other sizes as well.

Making an A5 book from a pdf-file

Here's how to create an A5 book from a pdf file. This procedure can be done by creating a script that runs through the needed steps automatically. I'll see if I will do that later. But here is the necessary steps to do this manually.

The mission is to print a folder on A4 paper, and fold it into a book.

1. Calculate:  (number of pages \ 4) + 1 = Sheets  (This is needed as the -s parameter in the psbook-command. If the original document has 9 pages then we need to use the following calculation: (9 \ 4)+1 = 2 + 1 = 3)  2 sheets will hold 8 pages which is one page less than the document. 3 sheets will hold 12 pages and is more than the document.
2. Convert the original file to a .ps-file:  pdftops original.pdf new_original.ps
3. Create the pages in the book: psbook -s3 new_original.ps new_original_book.ps   (Refer to step 1 for info about -s3 parameter)
4. Reorder the pages using psnup: psnup -l -n2 new_original_book.ps new_original_folder.ps  (Parameter -l is to print in landscape, and -n2 is to place 2 pages on each page.)
5. Convert back to pdf-format: ps2pdf new_original_folder.ps folder.pdf
6. Remove temporary files: rm new_original_*

After we have printed the book; the pages should come sequentially as in all books. Fold, staple and deliever you brochure/folder. If the original document is more than 4-5 pages we might want to cut a little in front of the book after we have folded it.

Encrypted storage

In case you have documents and files you don't want anyone to be able to see there is always the possibility to use truecrypt. Truecrypt will let you use a file or partition as an encrypted storage. It is easy to use and not at all hard to understand. It also supports Linux, Windows and Mac so you can use it on whatever platform you wish.

Truecrypt is no longer safe.
Check their website before using it.

You can even encrypt part of an USB-pendrive and include the files for running the truecrypt program on the USB-drive. This way you will be able to use you USB-device on other computers without needing to install the package on the computer you are working on. (But you will need admin privileges.)

To download TrueCrypt head over to their web-site. Go to the download page and download the package for your platform. After downloading the Linux gzipped tarball you simply extract it and run the truecrypt installation-file.

Step 1:
Run truecrypt to open the GUI for the program and create a new encrypted volume. Using a file is as it can be. Click on Create Volume, select the folder to put the file in, and give it a filename. Follow the instructions to set the encryption, password and any other option.

Step 2:
In the TrueCrypt main window select the slot you want to put your encrypted volume in, click on Select File and navigate to the file you created in the previous step. Click on Mount and type your password for the encrypted filesystem when prompted.

Step 3:
Add files or folders to your encrypted filesystem as you do to any filesystem.

That's all there is to it.
Easy and well functioning way of keeping some documents private.
To use a portable USB-drive check the documentation on TrueCrypt web-site.

Jupgrade [migrating undefined]

The last week or so I've been working on updating and migrating a Joomla! site. Going from Joomla! 1.5.26 to 2.5 seemed to be smart upgrade. Unfortunately I ran into some problems when trying to use Jupgrade to migrate the database. I also got some problems with some outdated components but I got most of the stuff working.
The biggest problem I encountered was the "migrating undefined" problem. Luckily I found an easy, but perhaps ugly, solution to this problem.

Converting imagefiles

Using your digital camera or mobile phone makes it easy to take snapshots you want to share online, on facebook or by email. But the size of these images can be quite big since many cameras and mobile phones take pictures at 8-12 Megapixels. Then it is nice to know about the convert-command on linux that will allow you to batch convert images.

Changing the info for a pdf-file

Usually when creating a pdf-file I do it from Libreoffice. But sometimes I need to scan some pages and create a pdf-file from that. On those occasions the title showing up in the pdf-viewers title bar is either blank or is being filled by the scanner software.
I like my pdfs to look more professional so I change the Title value and usually also the Author value.

Adding an index to your pdf-file

Have you ever created a pdf-file from multiple documents? And wanted to have a clickable index for the pdf-file?
on more than one occasion have I created documents that I need to make an index to, and after some gogling I have come up with the solution that I will share in this article.
We only ned a couple of files and programs to make this work.

Merging pdf-files

Merging and splitting pdf-files is very easy if you have pdftk installed. Using it is as simple as you could ever want it. But I usually end up having to check the man-page if I want to do more complex stuff. I use it everytime I need to do something with a pdf-file. Although there are GUI options my preferred program for working with pdf-files are pdftk.

Thunderbird and MailMerge

Mozilla Thunderbird have quite a few good extensions. One of them is MailMerge. This extension allows for using Thunderbird to send personalized emails. Of course there are some rules you need to obey to for this to work. But here is a quick how-to for sending personalized emails to a group of friends or colleagues.