Google Hangouts

So it's universally acknowledged and there can be no argument that Google Hangouts, though having some nice features, is pretty bad when it comes to actual chats. I mean really bad.

Want to look at a chat you had 6 months ago? Good luck finding it. (I'm not even sure that functionality is possibly any longer, which says something. Even if it is still around, the fact that it's so obscure that the incredibly tech savvy can't find it readily is an abject failure.) Try finding that old chat with the gmail app? Nah, not happening. Even when you could, it was HORRIBLY broken.

As for missing chats from people, Hangouts is actually worse. You see, if you have Hangouts logged in on one of your devices (Phone or Tablet), the message will be received. But it won't TELL you that you've got the message if you log into your desktop. If you are lucky the message will appear as non-new (already read) message in your inbox. However there are times when it won't even show up there.

So how do you know if someone sent you a message? Well, if you notice that you've received something, then you can go dig through your "Chats" section on your desktop browser with gmail.com.

So yeah, Hangouts is arguably the most broken mainstream app from Google to date, which is really sad. Not to mention the bitch is a pain to log out of. You have to do five clicks and a couple of scrolls. Bad. Bad bad bad.

KDE longer able to handle rars / rar files

Quick one: If you are using KDE (probably on Fedora) in the last several months, and suddenly Ark has stopped being able to open/extract Rar files and gives you the message:

Failed to locate program lsar on disk

This solution may work for you. You need to install the package 'unar', and no that is not a typo. It stands for Unified Archive extractor or something. It's basically a back-end or go-between for Ark to handle multiple file types, such as rar.

Open up the konsole terminal, and type this:

sudo yum install unar

I did not have to even restart KDE, but you may need to restart KDE or reboot before it takes effect.

Tiny Trick to make Autopager work again for Firefox

Overview

tl;dr When a page that should Autopagerize doesn't work, open the "Manage Setting" in Autopager. Find the specific rules for site (via searching usually, and make sure you haven't created any personal ones that overrides it). On the "General" tab on the right, uncheck the option "Enable Javascript while loading page." Then try loading your page again. This fixed my problems.

The Problem

I've been using Autopager for the better part of a decade, and it's changed the way I browse the internet.

Unfortunately I have noticed on occasion that sometimes with certain pages Autopager doesn't work in Firefox like it should, especially when the pages used to Autopagerize properly. (I think that's the right word for it.) For example, Autopager doesn't work on Deviantart in Firefox. I usually attributed the failure to a Rules download problem and left it to be fixed automatically overtime. However lately I've noticed some problems have persisted for months and sometimes years.

Recently I decided it was time to fix this problem.

Diagnosis

First I tried loading the pages in Chrome, and sure enough, they Autopagerized correctly. I created a fresh copy of Firefox with no add-ons, loaded Autopager and tried again. Didn't work, so I could rule out conflicting add-ons.

Googling for help produced no usable information. It's apparently not a well documented problem.

From the autopager home website, I tried importing various different rules for DeviantArt, made by different people. But none of them worked

I began manually inspecting the rules for one problem page (that example happened to be DeviantArt) and I could find nothing unusual or wrong. Then I noticed something I hadn't seen before, a checkbox option to "Enable Javascript while loading page." This was checked. Having nothing to lose, I disabled that option, and tried reloading the DeviantArt gallery I was currently browsing.

Amazingly, it worked! Fantastically!

Cause of Problem

My guess is that while the front end of a page doesn't change a lot, the underlying structure, which includes Javascript, might. It's something the average user and even developer isn't going to notice right away. It can also be done overtime by third-parties so even main websites might not be aware.

I also use NoScript to disable a lot of javascript execution, so this too could cause problems, but it did not in this case. My tests with the fresh profile of Firefox with no add-ons aside from Autopager specifically didn't have NoScript installed. Still, this is worth considering.

Solution
So the solution when a page that should Autopagerize doesn't work, open the "Manage Setting" in Autopager. Find the specific rules for site (via searching usually, and make sure you haven't created any personal ones that overrides it). On the "General" tab on the right, uncheck the option "Enable Javascript while loading page." Then try loading the page again.

Clean Up Twitter's cluttered website

I don't like Twitter. But the service has its uses. So if you ever have to use the Twitter website and you don't want to view all the garbage they forcefully throw at you, such as Trending and Suggestions for things to follow, here is a really easy way to remove that worthless junk.

If you are running Adblock Plus (and you probably should be), you can simply add these custom filter rules to that add-on's preference configuration:

twitter.com##*.ProfileWTFAndTrends
twitter.com##*.wtf-module
twitter.com##div.trends-inner

And now suddenly Twitter is significantly less annoying.

Baloo File Indexer / File Extraction

How to fix Baloo File Index --> Disable it!

Problem

Many desktop indexers as they are implemented in KDE unfortunately are problematic. They are slow and resource hogs, taking up gigabytes of drive just to store indexes of files you won't use. Worse yet, they habitually lag my machine. The problem really arises when I'm copying multiple gigabytes of files over USB (but usually less than 30 files total). The Baloo file extraction process starts up and lags frequently.

Unfortunately there is not neat graphical way to disable the Baloo indexer. 

Quoting one of the Baloo authors:

There is no explicit “Enable/Disable” button any more. We would like to promote the use of searching and feel that Baloo should never get in the users way. However, we are smart about it and IF you add your HOME directory to the list of “excluded folders”, Baloo will switch itself off since it no longer has anything to index.

Solution

Here is how to disable Baloo from operating. Edit the file $HOME/.kde/share/config/baloofilerc. It is enough to edit it and change the option:

Indexing-Enabled=true 

to (or add if there is not such option)

Indexing-Enabled=false

to disable baloo.

I know it is way too easy but it did work for me and also for the guy who posted this simple solution on this page.

LibreOffice Color Scheme

Quick blurb about changing color schemes in LibreOffice. I typically use Google Docs for most things but for everything else, it's either Vim or LibreOffice. I prefer dark color schemes, as pure white ones can make my eyes hurt. But I've never been successful with changing or adjusting LibreOffice colors for long or very thoroughly.

While googling for some help, I found this solution:

Tools > Options > LibreOffice > Accessibility > Automatically detect high-contrast mode of the operating system 

In LibreOffice help it says: “High contrast is an operating system setting that changes the system color scheme to improve readability.” I just had to share this since it solved my problem.

 Be sure to also check "Use automatic font color for screen display."

Amarok FLAC Problems -- Gstreamers vs. VLC Backend

Problem

So I really like the music player Amarok. It's overall excellent, even if I don't use most of its exotic features.

The majority of my music library is in FLAC format now (and growing, since I'm converting). For at least 2 years the Gstreamers backend has performed abysmally with stop-and-go-glitches in FLAC playback. I always figured they would fix it, since this is a major format and it's a serious obvious glitch. But I'm done waiting. In Amarok, this meant if two FLAC files were in my playlist, there was a 50-75% chance it would have glitched playback.

As far as I can tell, this is NOT an Amarok bug at all. The fault lays 100% in Gstreamers. In (many?) desktop environments, the gstreamers audio backend provides support. We need to replaces this, immediately. So here's the fix.

Solution

VLC comes to rescue with an actually functioning sound backend.

1. Install the VLC backend.

In Ubuntu or Debian:

apt-get install phonon-backend-vlc

In Fedora:

yum install phonon-backend-vlc

2. Change backend selection in Phonon: Go to System Settings → Multimedia → Backend
Choose VLC and click Prefer. Your screen should look like:


Note: KDE used to support the Xine backend but this has since been deprecated.
3. Restart KDE, or possibly restart the entire system. I'm not sure if the PulseAudio system requires a full restart.

This will also solve problems with Volume Override that can occur under GStreamers, even if you have disabled it.

Caveat

Replay Gain doesn't work under VLC backend sadly.