Rosewill RNX-N150HG USB Wireless Adapter and Ubuntu Linux

According to the specifications listed on the packaging, the Rosewill RNX-N150HG USB wireless adapter uses the Atheros AR9271 chipset.

The device installed automatically under Lubuntu 11.10 (physically connect the adapter after booting to OS) Wireless networks became visible almost immediately. The Linux driver for the “Wireless High Gain USB Adapter” is ath9k_htc.

The adapter has a solid feel and a green activity light. The retail package includes a USB extension cable and mini-CD with drivers and software.

Clean Up Wine “Open With” Context Menu Items in Ubuntu

The solution referenced by RigelAlien works in Ubuntu 11.10:

1. Remove ~/.local/share/applications/mimeinfo.cache
2. Restart Nautilus… nautilus -q

 

Convert XLS to HTML Table with SSConvert in Gnumeric Spreadsheet Software

Here is a line command for a linux terminal that converts an Excel XLS spreadsheet file into an HTML document containing (formatted) tabular data:

ssconvert --export-type=Gnumeric_html:html40 filename.xls filename.html

More on the ssconvert command in Ubuntu can be found here.

View a converted spreadsheet as an HTML table pasted into a blog entry.

RSS Feed URL for Facebook Page

Overview:

Find the URI for an RSS feed associated with a Facebook page “wall”.

Requirements:

• A link to a Facebook page (not a profile)
• An RSS newsreader (optional) or web browser

Installation:

1. Locate the page’s id number from its Facebook URL:

   http://www.facebook.com/pages/<pagename>/<pageidnumber>

2. Append the page’s id number to the following address:

   http://www.facebook.com/feeds/page.php?format=atom10&id=<pageidnumber>

3. Copy and paste the web address formed in step two into an RSS newsreader or an RSS-enabled web browser.

SimpleXML and PHP Error Handling – Tumblr RSS Example

Overview

Use PHP’s if…else statement to hide error messages on a web page when an imported RSS feed is unavailable.

Sample error message(s):

Warning: simplexml_load_file(http://username.tumblr.com/no-rss) [function.simplexml-load-file]: failed to open stream: HTTP request failed! HTTP/1.1 404 Not Found in /home/user/public_html/feed.php on line 123

Warning: simplexml_load_file() [function.simplexml-load-file]: I/O warning : failed to load external entity “http://username.tumblr.com/no-rss” in /home/user/public_html/feed.php on line 123

Requirements

• Web server with PHP installed
• FTP or shell access
• Text editor

Installation

Note: The following example uses a PHP foreach loop to limit the number of feed items displayed.

1. Change the “7″ in the second if statement to the desired number of items.  The default number of items in a Tumblr RSS feed is 20.
    
2. Replace the URI in the simplexml_load_file() function with the appropriate feed.
    
3. Replace the output in the second echo statement with a corresponding message.
4. Save the web page as a PHP file.  Test the new feed in a web browser.
    
5. [Optional] Enter a broken link (in step 2) and the message (in step 3) will display.

Code snippet – SimpleXML and PHP Error Handling – Tumblr RSS Example on Snipplr

Reference:

• “SimpleXML processing with PHP”
• “simplexml error handling php”