Author Archives: Ishan Thilina Somasiri

Jan 19

saveMyStatus – A script to manage the chat statuses in a better way in Empathy

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This is a script I wrote long time ago.It will load the last used status when Empathy restarts or when one of the accounts of the user comes online. This functionality was not available in Empathy at the time I wrote this script. Every time I restart Empathy, its chat status was reset to “Available”. But now it seems that the new Empathy versions has the capability to remember the last used chat status (whether it was “Available”, “Busy”, “Away”, or “Invisible”).  But still Empathy cannot remember the chat status message that was used in the last time. This script adds all this functionality to Empathy.

How to use this:


(These guidelines are for Ubuntu 11.04 . But procedure will be lot common
in other Linux flavours too)

0) Get the code from https://github.com/ishanthilina/saveMyStatus

1).Create a folder named “.scripts” in the home directory. Copy this script to that folder.
2).Go to Startup Application Preferences (search for “startup” in dashboard).
3).Click Add.
4).Give any Name you like.
5).In Command, click on Browse and select your script from the file browser (which is in
/home//.scripts)
6).Add a comment if you like.

Now the script will run from the next time you login to the computer. Have fun. And don’t forget to give me feedback 🙂

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Jan 15

How to fix the Folderview screenlet properties dialog exception throw

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Folderview screenlet is one of the screenlets that I have found very useful. But it doesn’t function correctly with the new python version (python 2.7). When the option is selected to view the properties dialog it gives the following exception.

Traceback (most recent call last):

  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/screenlets/__init__.py", line 1913, in button_press

    self.menuitem_callback(widget,'info')

  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/screenlets/__init__.py", line 2119, in menuitem_callback

    self.show_settings_dialog()

  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/screenlets/__init__.py", line 1570, in show_settings_dialog

    se.set_info(self.__name__, glib.markup_escape_text(self.__desc__), '(c) ' + glib.markup_escape_text(self.__author__), 

TypeError: glib.markup_escape_text() argument 1 must be string or read-only buffer, not None

It seems that the variable __desc__ is not set when calling the glib.markup_escape_text() method. So until some geek comes and fix this bug, we can use the following method to overcome this burden. (You’ll be able to follow the same procedure if you are getting this error for some other screenlet too 😀 )

  • Open __init__.py  in /usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/screenlets with root privileges.
  • Find the line se.set_info(self.__name__, glib.markup_escape_text(self.__desc__), ‘(c) ‘ + glib.markup_escape_text(self.__author__) . This should approximately be in the line 1570.
  • Add the following code segment before that line.

if not self.__desc__:

self.__desc__=’Description not set’

(keep in mind that python is sensitive to indentations).

  • Save and restart the screenlet.

Congratulations…! You have fixed a bug in a very naive way….! .

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Sep 25

Set brightness automatically at the startup in Linux

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When ever I restart (or logout and login) my laptop the LCD display brightness is set to the maximum value. Even if I set the brightness settings in the power to the value I need, they won’t be in effect when I restart the machine.

 Please note that rest of the blog article was edited on 5th of August 2012.

To solve this problem I wrote the following python script. First you need to add it to the startup applications list. The command to be given in the startup applications is “python /<path>/<to>/<script>/setBrightness.py < Brightness level>”.

(If you don’t know how to add this to start-up applications please refer http://linuxandfriends.com/2011/06/01/how-to-add-startup-programs-in-gnome-3/ )

An example would be python /home/ishan/.setBrightness/setBrightness.py 20 . If you do not specify a brightness level, the script will change the brightness level according to the time of the day. If it’s between 7am and 8pm, the script will make the brightness be set to 75.  If it’s between 8pm and 7am, the script will make the brightness be set to 20. You can edit these brightness levels by changing the variables day_level and night_level respectively.  

A special thank should go to Sergio Aguilar for adding this neat functionality of brightness changing according to the time of the day and changing the brightness using parameter passing.

If you are using Gnome 3 or Unity – 

Checkout the master branch from https://github.com/ishanthilina/setBrightness.

If you are using Gnome 2 –

Checkout the Gnome2 branch from https://github.com/ishanthilina/setBrightness.

 

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