find . -type f -name '*.php' -exec sed -i 's/    /\t/g' {} \;

Explanation:

• find lists all files, one per line, in the current directory and all subdirectories recursively
• . (period) means current directory
• -type f only list files, not directories.
• -name ‘*.php’ only if the name matches * (wildcard) with “.php” at the end
• -exec execute the following command for each result that matched
• sed -i ‘s/    /\t/g’ replace, or substitute, one string for another. I’m searching for four consecutive spaces and replacing with t, meaning tab character. the /g at the end means global, replace each instance wherever it may appear in the file on each line. -i means “edit file in place” so the modified file is saved back to itself.
• {} this inputs the file for the sed command
• \; I think this finishes the -exec parameter for find. Don’t forget the backslash

To change spaces to tabs or tabs to spaces, you can also look into the expand and unexpand commands.

Overall I highly recommend learning the sed command for quick and easy find & replace operations in text files.

More examples of the find command with -exec:

Delete all directories matching a name, such as CVS, under the current directory:

cd /path/to/myproject/directory/src
find . -type d -name 'CVS' -exec rm -rf {} \;

du --block-size=MiB --max-depth=1 | sort -n

• du is the disk usage and will, by default, recursively traverse every directory of the current one, listing the size of the directory by bytes. Without options, it isn’t very helpful (press Ctrl C to stop the process safely)
• –block-size=MiB will convert the bytes amount to megabytes (or Mebibytes), so instead of showing 9437184 (bytes) it will show 9 MiB
• –max-depth=1 will only list size of directories in the current directory. 2 will traverse an additional level down, and so on.
• | sort -n will transfer, or “pipe”,  the output of the du program to the sort utility which simple sorts lines sent to it. -n tells it to sort numerically.
• If you want to sort in reverse order, simply change n to rn

statik@Phenom:~/Pictures$ du --block-size=MiB --max-depth=1 | sort -n
1MiB ./icons
1MiB ./USTM
1MiB ./vector
1MiB ./Webcam
3MiB ./animated
3MiB ./wallpaper
8MiB ./UltraMiami
688MiB ./2010
1600MiB ./2011
2306MiB .

alias duinfo='du --block-size=MiB --max-depth=1 | sort -n'

This is a tremendous amount of money spent which isn’t even for any tangible product, research, or manpower. In the long run this is going to cost consumers by raising product prices (Microsoft gets $5-10 for every HTC phone sold, even though there is absolutely no Microsoft product or technology in it).

I was thinking about the patent problem and how it could be changed to protect the individual or company inventions but prevent big businesses from bullying other companies and hurting the consumer. What if patents could not be transferred to another individual or company without being released into the public domain? In other words if you hold a patent for something that you invented, you would still be fully protected by that patent, but you could not sell or transfer that patent power to someone else. If you decided to sell your company or go out of business, the patents automatically get released in the public domain.

This solution would protect the inventor (person or company) that invented the “thing”, but prevent the fake companies that just buy up patents and sue everybody from existing.

See also: So How Do We Fix The Patent Problem?

UPDATE! Today only, SwiftKey X is free on the Amazon Appstore! Normally a $3.99 purchase.

The fastest and most advanced keyboard for Android, SwiftKey, just got better with SwiftKey X. SwiftKey is an Android keyboard replacement, the first that introduced the idea of next-word prediction and analyzing your e-mail and SMS messages to detect your own word and grammar patterns.

But is it really the best keyboard for Android right now? I think so. Read on past the break to find out why.

Next Word Prediction

I believe this is the only smartphone keyboard that does this. We all know all smartphone keyboards try to guess the word you are typing so you can quickly choose it and move on. But what if you haven’t typed anything yet, or finished a word or a sentence? SwiftKey utilizes this moment to present three possible words that frequently follow the previous. What this boils down to is that you’ll rarely have to type small words like “a”, “of”, “the”, or “am” ever again — just touch the word.

Personal Pattern Pre-analysis

Most virtual keyboards have a learning mechanism that store and give priority to words you use frequently — it learns as you use it. SwiftKey goes a step further and offers to scan all of your e-mail and text messages, and even Facebook messages, to retroactively learn your typing patterns which immediately puts it ahead of every other smartphone keyboard. You can start typing super fast without waiting through any “learning” period — and of course it will learn the more you use it, too.

Arrow Buttons

In the past, many Android phones had a track ball or trackpad to move the text cursor around, in addition to touching the  screen. Well now it seems the trackball is no more, leaving users just with the touchscreen to position the cursor. To assist, SwiftKey can optionally display arrow buttons to move the cursor precisely.
Drawback: HTC Sense comes with a nice iPhone style longpress to bring up a magnified cursor navigation box, but it seems the box closes immediately when going from one word to the next if you’re using SwiftKey. That means you won’t be able to use this nice HTC feature.

The app is $3.99 for Android 2.1 and up phones, and $4.99 for Tablets.
View in Android Market

When I decided to switch from T-Mobile to Verizon for my mobile wireless provider, I purchased the Droid Incredible 2 by HTC. There were a bunch of great new Android models to choose from, including:

• Samsung Droid Charge (4G)
• HTC Thunderbolt (4G)
• LG Revolution (4G)
• HTC Incredible 2
• Motorola Droid X2
• Samsung Fascinate
• Motorola Droid 2
• Sony Ericsson Xperia Play

After doing some research and assessing the pros and cons, it seemed like the Incredible 2 (Dinc2) was the best choice based on these strong points:

• Free with 2 year contract (0.01 actually)
• Above average battery life
• Successor to the Incredible 1 which was highly rated
• Good custom ROM support (prediction for future)

I was able to ignore these weak points:

• No 4G LTE
• No physical camera button
• Single core CPU

Quick Specs:

• 1 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon MSM8255 CPU
• Adreno 205 GPU
• 768 MB RAM
• 1.1 GB Internal Storage
• 16 GB MicroSD card (14.5 GB usable)
• 1450 mAh battery
• 4″ S-LCD Screen (480×800)
• 8/1.3 MP Back/Front camera
• Android 2.2

After using it for a few days I am very pleased. Coming from a Nexus One which was limited to 192 MB internal storage for apps, I’m now free to explore and use more apps and games with the 1.1 GB storage. This is actually still lower than many other current generation phones, but plenty when you consider that many, if not all, apps can be moved to the expandable SD card. For that, the Dinc2 comes with a 16 GB microSD.

The battery life has been amazing after an initial full drain/full charge break in period. Yesterday I had the phone running unplugged for 25 hours from 100% down to about 5%. Today it’s been 13 hours with heavier usage and is still at 25%.

The 1 GHz modern day snapdragon CPU combined with the 768 MB RAM means you won’t have any slow down running the latest applications or navigating the system and web, although this has not really been a problem since the early days of Android phones.

A sleek physical feature is the “rubberized” back side, which provides just the right amount of friction to safely handle while refraining from clinging to your pocket.

While not a fully ‘stock’ Android OS configuration, the extra crap apps that Verizon puts on the phone (game trials, v-cast stuff) don’t get in your way as long as you never launch them. And being HTC you get the Sense UI which comes in handy sometimes, but if you install a custom ROM like Cyanogenmod (not available yet) you might not miss it that much.

If you’re looking for a great everyday phone with above average battery life, a beautiful form factor, and don’t need 4G, let this be the phone for you. At time of writing it can be had for $0.01 with a 2-year contract at Amazon Wireless.

July 8, 2011 Update I’ve been using the phone for over a week now and I am still very pleased with it. I don’t think there is a better phone out there, especially if you can get this one for $0.00. And with custom ROMs just around the corner, we’ll be customizing to our hearts desires!

You can replicate this exact functionality in Ubuntu Linux without installing anything else.

1. Go to System -> Preferences -> Keyboard Shortcuts
2. In the desktop section, find Take a screenshot and highlight it
3. Press Ctrl Shift 3 (or whichever combination you would like)

There is no entry for “Take a screenshot of an area”, so we must create it.

1. Click the Add button
2. Name: Take a screenshot of an area
3. Command: gnome-screenshot -a
4. Click the newly created entry
5. Press Ctrl Shift 4 (or whichever combination you would like)
6. Close the window

Thats it! Now you can press Ctrl Shift 4 and take a screen shot of an area.

The idea is that you use xbindkeys to listen for keyboard commands (input) and then you use xvkbd to type your desired keys (output).

Here is how to remap a combination of keys to another combination of keys on linux:

Install xbindkeys

sudo apt-get install xbindkeys

Create the default config file for xbindkeys

xbindkeys --defaults > /home/your-user-name/.xbindkeysrc

When thats done, install xbindkeys-config, the GUI for xbindkeys (note: the GUI is optional, you could just edit the config file with a text editor).

sudo apt-get install xbindkeys-config

Now the utility the actually does the “typing”

sudo apt-get install xvkbd

Once each is installed, start xbindkeys by bringing up “Run Application” with ALT -F2.

xbindkeys

If you want to launch the GUI editor you can run xbindkeys-config, but I found it to be more confusing than the text file.

Configuring your Shortcuts and Macros

Open your configuration file in your favorite text editor. It is called .xbindkeysrc in your home directory.  Use the # character to comment out lines, such as the default macros placed by the program’s author — after I installed it, Ctrl + F was launching an xterm window all the time.

At the end of the file, put this:

"xvkbd -xsendevent -text "Cz""
   control + semicolon

"firefox"
   control + f

Now I just have to find an easy way to reload my xbindkeysrc config file when I make changes. Right now I’m killing the process and launching it again.

Final note: you can set xbindkeys to launch on startup — in ubuntu, just go to System -> Preferences -> Startup Applications and add a new command xbindkeys.

This year instead of sending out paper cards in the mail, I created a web page with a personal message protected by a password, and e-mailed it out to friends. The password and personal message system is made possible by PHP and MySQL. Some of the graphical effects were made possible by CSS3 rotations, such as the “gift” tag.

To accompany the personal message I also recorded a mix of Trance music that is downloadable or playable with a flash plugin. The mix was made possible with Numark’s iDJ2 and the Behringer UCA222 for recording.

You can view a generic version of the Christmas card.

Or download/play the mix directly.

If you try to search for Logitech RX1000 laser mouse drivers for Windows 7 (32 bit or 64 bit) on www.logitech.com, you will find nothing. The mouse partially works in Windows 7 without drivers — however you won’t be able to customize the extra buttons. To do this, simply search for RX1500 on www.logitech.com for your operating system, install it, and you will be able to customize your mouse via the mouse control panel.

Or simply visit this link: http://www.logitech.com/en-us/428/4431?osid=14&bit=64#section=downloads

Due to the retro nature of the products in the store, we wanted to give the site a kind of retro look from the 60s and 70s. That is why I went with a vibrant color scheme to match the store’s logo. The home page features unique “Brady Bunch” style boxes showcasing certain kitchen products, and they swap every few seconds via ajax requests in the background.

Visitors can check out the gallery, browse for fun products, and purchase using a credit card on a secure PayPal form.

Flying Saucers is based in Asbury Park, NJ.