10 Easy Tips To Get In Shape

Christmas time is over, and it's soon a new year to start over and make some good New Years resolutions. Getting in shape, and having a long term plan for the summer might be one. After many years of training and dieting I have some experience in this field, so I thought I would share some of the experience me and my friends have made through the years in 10 easy tips!


1.) Start working out. There is simply no way out. Find an activity you can get comfortable with and enjoy. There is plenty to choose from. Jogging, hillwalking, tennis, the gym or swimming.
2.) Make sure your activity makes you sweat. I have to be honest with you: Light activities is FAR from optimal.
3.) Ask a friend to join you. Everyone has a friend who either works out, or would like to start. Competition or simply encouragement is good, plus it makes it even more social.
4.) Replace certain foods with healthier alternatives. Meat farce with ground beef, regular Pepsi with Pepsi Max, regular cheese with light cheese and the list goes on.
5.) Cut some of the dressing or sauce on your foods. Remember 1 dl of fat is nearly 1000kcal!
6.) After working out, do not cheat on yourself by thinking that you now deserve something unhealthy.
7.) Try getting some protein in every meal. Good protein sources are milk, beef, fish, shellfish, eggs and different types of white and red meat.
8.) Do not cheat on yourself by skipping your training. If you are not feeling 100% that day, head to training anyway and do what you can. Very often you quicken up after warming up a bit.
9.) In stead of the previous chocolate, fast-food and Coca Cola, spend some money on your training wardrobe.
10.) Take measurements and pictures and see the progress. This is maybe the biggest motivators when you see your progress!

Good luck!

How to change network settings in Debian

I used some time on finding this, but it was actually quite easy. The file you need to edit is located at /etc/network/interfaces.


If your ethernet network device is eth0, you simply use this line for DHCP:
iface eth0 inet dhcp
If you want to have a static network address use this:
iface eth0 inet static address 192.168.1.123 netmask 255.255.255.0 gateway 192.168.1.1

For more information look here.

Mini how to use nano in Linux

Open your terminal.
Type "nano" to open the editor or "nano filename.txt" to open and edit a specified file.

Writing - Simply write as you are used to.
Saving - Ctrl+O --> [Enter]
Saving & Quiting - Ctrl+X --> Y --> [Enter]
Find in file - Ctrl+W --> Text to search for --> [Enter]
Go to line - Ctrl+W --> T --> Line to go to --> [Enter]
Find and replace - Ctrl+W --> Ctrl+R --> Text to search for --> Text to replace with --> Y (Replace one instance at a time), N (Do not replace this instance), A (Replace all instances).

How to set background wallpaper in Fluxbox

Fluxbox is way faster then both KDE & Gnome, but on the other hand it can be a bit more tricky to configure since there are no decent graphical user interfaces to help you do this. Setting a new background wallpaper on your fluxbox isn't quite that hard if you follow these easy steps.

1.) Open up a terminal. Personally I prefer xterm.
2.) Now you need to edit the startup file for fluxbox. I prefer using the editor called nano. Simply type "nano ~/.fluxbox/startup", and you will jump into your nano text editor.
3.) Look for a line starting with fbsetbg. If there is a "#" at the start of the line, remove it.
4.) If there is none add one like this: "fbsetbg -f /home/user/.fluxbox/wallpaper.jpg".
5.) Place your wallpaper in the location you just specified.

How to share your pictures online

There are two solutions for this in my opinion. You need to find out what needs you have. Do you need a fast and simple service for forums, blogs etc. or do you need a personal storage service where you can come back and edit your pictures.

If you need a simple and fast service there are several sites offering you exactly what you need, here are some:
MyImg.info - Free Image Hosting service with no signing up or registering required and a lot of functionality. This is my personal favorite service.
Imageshack.us - Free as well, and no signing up required here either.
Xs.to - Free, Fast and no signup required.

If you need personal storage, with the ability to add and delete pictures on your account you should try one of these.
Flickr.com - Very nice and customizeable service, which also works very nice combined with Nokia phones for fast and easy sharing of your pictures.
Photobucket.com - Another nice service for uploading and sharing your pictures and videos with others.

How to remove dust from computer, and make it stay clean

So you are opening your cabinet and you notice all the dust. Surely not any good either for your computer or the fire safety. Here is a quick-step how to on removing it and making your computer stay clean.

Part 1: Remove the dust
Turn of the computer, and take all necessary measures before touching any parts, so you don't short-circuit any parts. Open it up, and remove as much dust as possible. Get yourself a spray can with compressed air to clean your motherboard and other vulnerable parts. Cleaning fans is a bit harder, and you might have to detach them in order to get everything.

Part 2: Making the computer stay clean
What I have found to be a good solution is getting a fan which blows air in with a good particle filter. Either 2x80mm fans blowing at low speed, or a big 120mm fan. This has kept my computer clean for years, although I have to clean the particle filter every now an then.

How to backup your data, 4 solutions

Backup backup backup! Keep that in mind. Sooner or later your computer will meet the dead end and there is pretty much no way back if you haven't backed up your data.

Here I will give you 4 easy solutions for backup up your data.
1.) Online backup! Get yourself an account at adrive.com. Here you get 50GB of storage for free, which is a great service. Fast, easy and free!
2.) Harddisk backup. Probably the fastest and easyest. Go buy a external USB or NAS drive with 500-1000GB of storage, and you are set. If you want 100% safety, you can buy the Western Digital Mirror edition which will mirror your data in a RAID system on 2 disks, which of course is safer then 1.
3.) Blu-ray/DVD/CD Backup. DVD and CD media is pretty cheap, and now that Bluray also is entering the private market this could also be a solution.
4.) USB memory drive. The space is limited, though the drive itself is very small. Somewhere around 16-32GB is the max today, which can be very limited, and the flash drives is not the most reliable media available.

Cheap fashion shopping with discount codes

I do a lot of internet shopping when I am looking for new clothes. I usually shop at revolveclothing.com which has a lot of greatlooking clothes. Remember to use a discount code when buying there, and you will get 10-30% off the price!

Here's the codes and a nice first-timer trick:
1) The first time you buy, send them an e-mail right after your order has been placed and ask for 30% off first time discount.
2) 15% off, works everytime: JT
3) 25% off: HOLIDAY08
4) 20% off: REVOLVEPEOPLE08

There is more and updated discount codes to revolveclothing and other sites right here.

Photos from Split, Bol and Dubrovnik

August 2008 me and my SO had a one week vacation to Bol on the island Brac in Croatia. Croatia is a great place to travel with very nice people and beautiful surroundings. Here are some of my photos from our vacation.

This is a picture of Zlatni Rat a beach famous for its clear water and changing position due to the changing water streams.
Wish I had one of those. There were lots of sailing and luxury boats on the Wish I had one of those.
This is from when we arrived Split. It was a 3hour(!!) travel from when we arrived with the airplane until we arrived Bol on the island Brac.
This is from when we finally arrived the island we were supposed to stay at, Brac.
Another picture from split.
A photo from Bol, Brac where we stayed.
We took a one day trip to Dubrovnik. It was quite amazing to see the city inside the walls. Recommended to everyone!
Another beautiful photo from Dubrovnik. The photo speaks by itself.
The clear water at Brac, Bol.

Girlfriend gift ideas

I keep hearing people complaining about ideas about what to give to their girlfriend. I've been together with mine for some years now, and it has really never been a BIG problem finding gifts to satisfy her, and she is pretty fastidious.

Here's a nice list of tips:
1.) Necklace. You find these in all sorts. If you are not gonna spend that much you might buy a her a silver necklace with a golden heart on or something. Both me and my girlfriend prefer white gold as it looks more classy in our opinion. Remember to use the staff in the jewelry shop for all they are worth! Ask them what you want (look, price-tag) and hear what they have to say.
2.) Rings. I've given her two so far. But remember to buy rings that match. Again: ask the staff in the jewelry shop.
3.) Bracelets. These ones you can get pretty cheap as well.
4.) Watch. Lots of nice watches in every style. Last Christmas I bought here a quality swiss watch of the brand Certina:
5.) Digital camera, mobile phone, gift cards etc. All this is handy stuff. But try not to give her this the first year, at least my girlfriend would be pretty disappointed. :)
6.) A trip to some destination. Maybe a weekend trip somewhere? In Europe there are several cheap and nice destinations for this. Prague is one great example.

Hope this helps :) Please add your tips to the comment field down below.

How to clean your fridge and freezer

Some days ago I had to clean out my fridge and freezer. It took some time, but it became pretty nice and clean afterwards. Here is my fast "clean your fridge & freezer howto" :)
Fridge:
1) Turn off the power.
2) Take everything out. Take a freshness check, and throw everything your dont need. Take a piece of paper and clean off bottles with oil, sauces etc if they have been leaking.
3) Take out all drawers, shelvings and everything else that can be taken out.
4) Clean the fridge. Do not use HOT water. I used some sort of MrMuscle/Jif etc. spray, and at the end a final wipe with a clean paper and water.
5) This one is more of a tip:

Has your fridge been leaking water lately? Then it's probably because of the drainage pipe which has managed to get closed by dirt. It's simple to fix. The drainage pipe is usually located in the back inside of your fridge. Find something which is slim and long and try to stick it through. I used a paper clip which I folded out. After cleaning the pipe take a look at the back of your fridge and remove the dirt. (The drainage pipe is for letting the water out into some sort of holder in the back, which heats it up and makes it vaporise. Smart huh?:) )

Freezer:
I only have a small freezer located on the top of my fridge, so it did not thing it would be such a job. But here's a fast how-to:
1) Turn of the power.
2) Find somewhere to store the food. I simply put it outside in my car since it was several minus degrees celsius. You can use a cooling bag or put it under a carpet or something. A tip could be to freeze some 1,5L bottles with water the day before so it better keeps cool.
3) Make some bowls with HOT water and but it inside the freezer and shut it. This makes everything cool up pretty fast.
4) Take out all the ice/snow. A finger tip rule might be to clean out the freezer when it becomes more snow/ice then a pencil thick.
5) Clean it out like you did with the fridge.
6) Turn on power, and put everything back in :)

PS... Make sure to check your fridge and freezers manual in case it needs special cleaning procedures.

Congrats, you are done! :)

RJ45 wall jacks/mounts setup

Earlier this week I bought some RJ45 wall jacks in order to make my network setup look a little more neat. Having Ethernet cat-5 cables out of the walls doesn't look very well, especially if you are not using them.

These wall jacks looks pretty neat, and only cost me about 6$ each. (The on-top cover is missing on this picture, but you get the picture.
Opening it up on the bottom-side it looks like this, with me holding my cat-5 cable spread which I was supposed to connect.

Brave and unknowingly I started trying to hook the cables up to the connectors. First having problems trying to sort out what the GGGG/ABAB (GAGBGAGB) ment, which I found out was all about two different wiring schemes T568A or T568B. The regular one to use is A. So I had to use the left and right GA schemes. I was also missing a light-brown cable, but that had to be the white one.

After 15 minutes of trying to hook up one single cable to a connector, I simply gave up. I understood that I was missing some sort of tool. Stupid as I was, I pretty fast found out what I was missing is a Punch/Impact Tool. Just take a look at this youtube video which pretty much explains everything. It's actually a pretty genius and smart way to connect these cables.

A minute later I found the tool on the website to a locale hardware store, and it costs about 30$ for this punch/impact tool. Gonna go buy it sometime next week.

Idesktop tweak

Idesktop is in my humble opinion the best desktop tool for linux. In order to make it fast enough I really recommend doing this simple, but effective "tweak". It might not be advanced enough to be called a tweak, but it has sped the functionality up for me at least.

The tweak simply consists of making the desktop icons only need a single click instead of a double click for execution. Since there seems to be no "affirmative" response from the icons when you doubleclick, it is hard to know wether or not the application has been started or not. With a single click setup you allways know it has been executed.

Here's my .ideskrc setup, which works pretty well:
table Config
FontName: verdana
FontSize: 10
FontColor: #ffffff
Locked: false
Transparency: 100
Shadow: true
ShadowColor: #000000
ShadowX: 1
ShadowY: 2
Bold: false
ClickDelay: 300
IconSnap: true
SnapWidth: 55
SnapHeight: 100
SnapOrigin: BottomLeft
SnapShadow: true
SnapShadowTrans: 200
CaptionOnHover: false
end

table Actions
Lock: control right doubleClk
Reload: middle doubleClk
Drag: left hold
EndDrag: left singleClk
Execute[0]: left singleClk
Execute[1]: right doubleClk
end

Hope this helps...

Howto: Functional debian (fluxbox) setup on laptop

Since i've been running debian on my desktop I've always complained about the speed I needed. I've finally found a solution which I am happy with which consists of the following setup:

- Debian Testing (edit your /etc/apt/sources.list and make it run the Unstable packages). I found that running stable on a desktop setup is not necessary and is plain stupid because you will miss out on a lot new development.
- Fluxbox as a GUI. Nowhere around this one. When you first boot it, you will probably hate it because you are missing a lot. But hold on. Fluxbox is the fastest setup I've tried so far.
- Idesktop. In fluxbox you need to use this for getting desktop icons.
- Conky. Gives a neat status bar on your desktop.
- Rox-filer. Fastest filebrowser.
- Hotkeys. Great application for making you multimedia hotkeys work. (Volume up/down, mute etc.)

After you have installed the applications, you need to edit your ~/.fluxbox/startup file. Here is the lines you need to make sure are present:
nohup idesk > /dev/null & ## This will automaticly start idesktop
/usr/bin/hotkeys -t nx7400 -Z & ## Start the application which makes your shortcut media keys work
/usr/bin/conky -d & ## Start conky, and the "-d" parameter makes it visible on all 4 desktops.
fbsetbg -f /home/User/.idesktop/collateral.jpg ## Set a background image on your desktop.

I guess this is enough to give you a head start. Keep looking on my blog, I will add more information on how to set up a great linux desktop system with more information on each program.

Solution: Debian error with iwlwifi

Having problems with the iwlwifi driver? Having cpu spikes? I have the solution which removed the problem for me.

My distro is: Debian Unstable 2.6.26-1-686 on a HP Compaq NX 7400

My /var/log/messages log keeps giving me this:
Dec 26 14:32:14 Computer kernel: [ 25.627105] iwl3945: Intel(R) PRO/Wireless 3945ABG/BG Network Connection driver for Linux, 1.2.26ks
Dec 26 14:32:14 Computer kernel: [ 25.627105] iwl3945: Copyright(c) 2003-2008 Intel Corporation
Dec 26 14:32:14 Computer kernel: [ 25.872598] iwl3945: Detected Intel Wireless WiFi Link 3945ABG
Dec 26 14:32:14 Computer kernel: [ 25.971231] iwl3945: Tunable channels: 13 802.11bg, 23 802.11a channels
Dec 26 14:32:25 Computer kernel: [ 48.857785] firmware: requesting iwlwifi-3945-1.ucode
Dec 26 14:32:28 Computer kernel: [ 51.711991] firmware: requesting iwlwifi-3945-1.ucode
Dec 26 14:32:45 Computer kernel: [ 68.909152] firmware: requesting iwlwifi-3945-1.ucode
Dec 26 14:33:02 Computer kernel: [ 86.102172] firmware: requesting iwlwifi-3945-1.ucode
Dec 26 14:33:19 Computer kernel: [ 103.261871] firmware: requesting iwlwifi-3945-1.ucode
Dec 26 14:33:37 Computer kernel: [ 120.481994] firmware: requesting iwlwifi-3945-1.ucode
Dec 26 14:33:54 Computer kernel: [ 137.602729] firmware: requesting iwlwifi-3945-1.ucode
Dec 26 14:34:11 Computer kernel: [ 154.735711] firmware: requesting iwlwifi-3945-1.ucode
Dec 26 14:34:28 Computer kernel: [ 171.870045] firmware: requesting iwlwifi-3945-1.ucode

So if you wont need the wireless card, simply disable it:
user@System:~$ su
Password:
System:/home/user# lsmod | grep iwl
iwl3945 78772 0
mac80211 139680 1 iwl3945
led_class 3908 1 iwl3945
cfg80211 21576 2 iwl3945,mac80211
firmware_class 6816 2 iwl3945,pcmcia
System:/home/user# rmmod iwl3945
System:/home/user# lsmod | grep iwl
System:/home/user#