Table of Contents

Welcome From The Chief Editor

ICYMI Google AI Image Creation Via Gemini, Pauses Image Creation Of People

PCLinuxOS Recipe Corner - Easy Honey Mustard Chicken

Inkscape Tutorial Removing A Background

Two Quick, Simple Ways To Deactivate Xscreensaver Via A Bash Script

Money Manager EX Account Reconciliation

Get The Most Out Of DuckDuckGo

Good Words, Good Deeds, Good News

PCLinuxOS Recipe Corner Bonus - Cheeseburger Onion Rings

Puzzled Partitions

Screenshot Showcase

From The Chief Editor's Desk...

Spring forward. Fall back. We just performed our biannual, ritualistic “time dance“ on March 10, 2024 here in the U.S.

GAWD! How I really, really hate “Daylight Savings Time!”

Only the goverment…

The image above is my favorite internet meme about daylight savings time. Just because you can, doesn't mean you should. To me, the meme sums up the insanity of the whole time change regimen.

This isn't a U.S.-only problem, either. Other countries around the globe have something similar to the U.S.'s daylight savings time. The U.K. is another, the EU is yet another, and I'm sure there are others. To be perfectly honest, I don't want to waste the time looking it up to see just how many other countries participate in this foolish endeavor.

One of the “lies” “facts” often touted as a “benefit” of daylight savings time is the energy savings it would provide. Except, that didn't happen to any discernible degree. If it's dark outside, people still need lights. Shifting the lighting hours around won't have any effect on energy consumption if people are awake during those hours of darkness.

I'm a proponent of just staying on “standard time” (e.g., NOT daylight savings time) year round. If you want “more hours of daylight,” (and you're not “creating” more hours of daylight, but rather just manipulating a man made representation of time to create that illusion), there's a very simple way to achieve that: get yo' arse out of bed! Rise and shine!

Our forefathers/ancestors woke when the sun came up, and typically, slept when darkness fell (or soon thereafter). That “method” has worked exceptionally well throughout the history of humankind. I suspect it'll continue working just as well for as long as humans are around.

Dad and Ryan

In some ways, daylight savings time creates problems where none existed before. Now, my young family likes to sometimes go to a drive-in movie theater. Yes, believe it or not, we still have one in the town we live in. They can't start showing the movie until it's dark outside. Because of daylight savings time, the movies don't start showing until VERY late at night. If we didn't have daylight savings time, that movie would start showing one hour earlier! That one-hour difference might be the difference between being able to go to the drive-in theater or not being able to go. If the movie started one hour earlier, we'd be able to go more often, the movie would be over one hour earlier, and we'd get one more hour of sleep. That would mean that we might actually be able to go to the drive-in theater on nights when my wife has to work the next day. Under daylight savings time, that's an impossibility due to how late the movies finish playing.

But it goes deeper than personal inconveniences. There are several studies out that show how the bi-annual “time dance” affects our health in negative ways (a quick internet search will net them for you, easily). One study was recently highlighted in an article from the Atlas Obscura website. To quote from the article, “Researchers are discovering that “springing ahead” each March is connected with serious negative health effects, including an uptick in heart attacks and teen sleep deprivation. In contrast, the fall transition back to standard time is not associated with these health effects.”

Yep. Pretty much what most of the other studies on the effects of daylight savings time on our physiology discovered. [SMH!] How many times do they have to study the exact. same. topic. and get the exact. same. results. before they give up on this foolishness? Virtually every single study on the physiological effects of daylight savings time come away with the very same conclusion.

Since I worked for 35 years in health care, I have been acutely aware of these effects of daylight savings time, and the studies that supported those effects. I spent many years (about 1/3 of my work time) working the night shift, where the bi-annual time dance really didn't have much effect. But, the other 2/3 of the time I was working, it was on the day shift, where daylight savings time has a real effect. Yes, just as the studies showed, we were much busier at the hospital in the days right after the “spring forward” nonsense, seeing patients suffering negative health effects that could easily be traced back to the time change.

Manipulating the clock also messes with our natural circadian rhythms. Our body isn't saying it's time to get up, but rather it's your alarm clock. Your body wants (and probably needs) that extra hour of sleep. Like I mentioned before, humans are hardwired to get up when the sun comes up, and to go to bed after the sun goes down (or shortly thereafter).

Yes, humans are adaptable if they're nothing else. But doesn't life, in general, give us enough things to “adapt” to all by itself? Why do we feel the need to add in another “adaptation” … twice a year, no less! … that's entirely avoidable and unnecessary? And then, to top it all off with a cherry on top, they keep trying to tout the “benefits“ of daylight savings time that have NEVER materialized, and despite a multitude of academic and medical studies that illustrate the negative influences of manipulating our clocks twice a year.

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This month's magazine cover is an image from our very own The CrankyZombie. He posted this excellent image of Magnolia blossoms on March 9, 2024.

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Until next month, I bid you peace, happiness, serenity, prosperity … and continued good health!

ICYMI Google AI Image Creation Via Gemini, Pauses Image Creation Of People

by Paul Arnote (parnote)

Image by OpenIcons from Pixabay

Have you ever been out in “public” and just had to go to the restroom … like REALLY bad? That fear is warranted in the U.S., where there are just eight public toilets per 100,000 residents, according to a 2021 report from bathroom-supply company QS Supplies, says an article from Time. That's a public-health issue that acutely affects IBD patients but spares no one, says Michael Osso, CEO of the Crohn's & Colitis Foundation.

The Anatsa banking trojan has been targeting users in Europe by infecting Android devices through malware droppers hosted on Google Play, according to an article from Bleeping Computer. Over the past four months, security researchers noticed five campaigns tailored to deliver the malware to users in the UK, Germany, Spain, Slovakia, Slovenia, and the Czech Republic.

How common are false positive rapid Covid tests? Persistent false positives are more common in women, and those with autoimmune disorders, according to an article from MedPage Today. False negative results are known to occur fairly frequently with rapid antigen COVID-19 tests and, to a lesser extent, with the more accurate RT-PCR tests. False positives are thought to be much less common. Among a large cohort of over 11,000 people, 1.7% had at least one false-positive COVID-19 rapid antigen test despite concurrent negative molecular tests, according to a brief report in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Image by Jan Vašek from Pixabay

You dropped your phone in water, and now it won't turn on. If you're like most of us living in 2024, your first instinct (other than to panic) is to drop it in a bag of rice to soak up all that insidious liquid. The rice trick is just an accepted tactic at this point. Except: We're all collectively wrong on this one. While there have been reports criticizing this go-to method for years now, it's Apple that has all the anti-rice headlines buzzing this week, according to an article from Lifehacker.

Less than a month after releasing image creation to the general public with its Gemini AI, Google is pausing its AI tool that creates images of people following inaccuracies in some historical depictions generated by the model, the latest hiccup in the Alphabet-owned company's efforts to catch up with rivals OpenAI and Microsoft, according to an article from Reuters. Google started offering image generation through its Gemini AI models earlier this month, but over the past few days some users on social media had flagged that the model returns historical images which are sometimes inaccurate. “We're aware that Gemini is offering inaccuracies in some historical image generation depictions,” Google had said in late February.

UPDATE: Just a few days after pausing image creation of people by Google Gemini, Google has expounded on “what happened” with Gemini that led to the search giant “pausing” the creation of AI-generated images of people, in a blog entry. From the blog: “So what went wrong? In short, two things. First, our tuning to ensure that Gemini showed a range of people failed to account for cases that should clearly not show a range. And second, over time, the model became way more cautious than we intended and refused to answer certain prompts entirely — wrongly interpreting some very anodyne prompts as sensitive.”

In the fall of 2021, Jacob Geersen, a marine geologist now at the Leibniz Institute for Baltic Sea Research, was teaching a one-week field course at the University of Kiel, says an article from NPR. The class was conducted entirely aboard a research vessel on the Baltic Sea. During the night shift each evening, students mapped the shape of the seafloor at high resolution. One night, in the Bay of Mecklenburg, off the coast of northern Germany, the students fired up the echosounders and mapped a swath of seafloor. When they reviewed the data they had collected, they saw that there was something special on the seafloor. They didn't know it at the time, but not quite 70 feet below the surface, they'd stumbled upon a stone wall more than half a mile long that dated back to the Stone Age — one of the oldest such megastructures on the planet. In research published in PNAS, the team speculates that this piece of ancient hunting architecture may have been used to corral and hunt reindeer, adding a level of sophistication to the prehistoric hunter-gatherers who lived 10,000 to 11,000 years ago. A year later, Geersen, his colleagues and a new batch of students returned to that same site. They lowered a camera down, and confirmed this ridge was made up of thousands of rocks that formed a kind of wall, standing about 1.5 feet tall on average. Geersen didn't know how such a structure, which the researchers dubbed the "Blinkerwall" after a nearby underwater mound called Blinker Hill, could have formed naturally. “It was only when we went to the archaeologists that they said, 'You may have found something very significant,'” he says.

Do organ transplants cause personality changes? That's what one article from MedPage Today explores. Anecdotal evidence suggests a real possibility, but more research is needed. The article illustrates the phenomena with the reports from one patient in her 40s, after receiving a heart transplant. The patient had been experiencing recurrent, intrusive memories of being hit by a car. In these "memories," she was a pedestrian, and she not only saw herself being struck by the car, but she felt the impact as the car struck her torso, sending her airborne. The problem was, this patient had never been hit by a car.

Is the 100-year-old BCG TB vaccine a new weapon against Alzheimer's? That's the question that an article from The Guardian explores. While more research is needed, evidence is pointing towards the BCG vaccine's protective properties for other respiratory infections, as well as playing a role in helping to defeat bladder cancer.

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

A new version of the XLoader Android malware was discovered that automatically executes on devices it infects, requiring no user interaction to launch, according to an article from Bleeping Computer. XLoader, aka MoqHao, is an Android malware operated and likely created by a financially motivated threat actor named 'Roaming Mantis,' previously seen targeting users in the U.S., U.K., Germany, France, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. The malware can execute a wide array of commands (20 in total) received from its command and control (C2) server via the WebSocket protocol. XLoader can transmit all photos to the control server, send all SMS messages to the control server, allow the malware to send SMS messages, export the entire contacts list to the control server, collect device identifiers (to allow tracking), and sending HTTP requests for downloading malware, data exfiltration, or C2 communication.

The DVD's new cousin can store more than a petabit of data, according to an article from IEEE Spectrum. The new discs contain more data than the entire Internet can transmit in a second. A petabit is equivalent to 1 million gigabits. The new discs can store 1.6 petabits of data. That gives these new optical discs some 4,000 times as much data density as a Blu-ray disc, and 24 times as much as the currently most advanced hard disks.

Do you think floppy disks are “dead?” Well, not so fast … maybe not. According to an article from The Verge, floppy disks are still “breathing” with some life. While floppy disks are facing extinction, musicians are still pumping out DIY music projects on them, thanks to Floppy Kick. Floppy Kick is a one-man operation run by Mark Windisch in Debrecen, Hungary. Each disk is numbered as part of a limited run. While floppy disk music arguably peaked in the 2010s, but in the 2020s, it's still going strong.

The historically inaccurate images and text generated by Google's Gemini AI have “offended our users and shown bias,” CEO Sundar Pichai told employees in an internal memo obtained (and published) by The Verge. During the last weeks of February, Google paused Gemini's ability to generate images after it was widely discovered that the model generated historically inaccurate images of historical figures and situations.

Any Linux user trying to send the highest-resolution images to a display at the fastest frame rate is out of luck for the foreseeable future, at least when it comes to an HDMI connection, according to an article from Ars Technica. The licensing group that controls the HDMI standard, the HDMI Forum, has reportedly told AMD that it does not allow an open source implementation of the HDMI 2.1 (or HDMI 2.1+) specification, blocking tools such as AMD's FreeSync from working over HDMI connections at resolution/rate combinations like 4K at 120 Hz, or 5K at 240 Hz. Alex Deucher, an AMD engineer who has long contributed to the company's open source offerings, has kept a related bug thread alive for at least two years, only to deliver the negative outcome on February 28, 2024.

Elon Musk sued OpenAI and its chief executive, Sam Altman, accusing them of breaching a contract by putting profits and commercial interests in developing artificial intelligence ahead of the public good, according to an article from the New York Times. A multibillion-dollar partnership that OpenAI developed with Microsoft, Mr. Musk said, represented an abandonment of a founding pledge to carefully develop A.I. and make the technology publicly available. The 35-page lawsuit is the latest chapter in a fight between the former business partners that has been simmering for years, and it homes in on unresolved questions in the A.I. community: Will artificial intelligence improve the world or destroy it, and should it be tightly controlled or set free? Mr. Musk helped found OpenAI in 2015 as a response to A.I. work being done at the time by Google. Mr. Musk believed Google and its co-founder, Larry Page, were dismissive of the risks A.I. presented to humanity. Mr. Musk left OpenAI's board during a power struggle in 2018. The company went on to become a leader in the field of generative A.I. and created ChatGPT, a chatbot that can produce text and respond to queries in humanlike prose. Mr. Musk, who founded his own A.I. company last year called xAI, said OpenAI was not focused enough on the technology's risks.

Do you have a Reddit account, and dislike the changes Reddit has made over the past year to year and a half? You're probably not alone, according to an article from Lifehacker. Reddit is feeding all user comments and posts into Google's virtual wood chipper, meaning the reconstituted goop of your conversations is going to be spat out by Google's AI language models. The move, as reported by Reuters, is worth $60 million a year for the social network. You might, after reading this, want to delete your Reddit account and everything on it. Reddit, after all, isn't much fun anymore — and not just because they killed off "reddit is fun" last year when they killed off all the good Reddit clients. The truth is that the older Reddit gets the less vital it feels, in part because last year the company seemed outright hostile to the moderators and posters who power the site. The company's upcoming IPO, if the history of other social networks is anything to go by, probably isn't going to make matters any better.

A new White House report (PDF) focuses on securing computing at the root of cyber attacks — in this case, reducing the attack surface with memory-safe programming languages like Python, Java and C# and promoting the creation of standardized measurements for software security, according to an article from TechRepublic. The report urges tech professionals to implement memory-safe programming languages, and to develop and support new metrics for measuring hardware security. This report, titled Back to the Building Blocks: A Path Toward Secure and Measurable Software, is meant to convey to IT pros and business leaders some of the U.S. government's priorities when it comes to securing hardware and software at the design phase. The report is a call to suggested action, with advice and loose guidelines.

You are probably not alone in thinking that things at Google have become ROYALLY screwed up in recent years. If so, you're going to like the article at Pirate Wires about how Google employees are speaking up at the mass confusion happening at the search giant. The employees are talking about a “culture of fear” that is prevalent currently within the company. Hmmm … maybe they should go back to “do no evil.” But then, that all hinges on who is defining “evil” in today's divisive society, where no one can decide or agree on anything.

Image by Arek Sacha from Pixabay

In a collaborative study, researchers from Kyushu University and Harvard Medical School have identified proteins that can turn or "reprogram" fibroblasts — the most commonly found cells in skin and connective tissue — into cells with similar properties to limb progenitor cells, according to an article from Medical Xpress. Publishing in Developmental Cell, the researchers' findings have enhanced our understanding of limb development and have set the stage for regenerative therapy in the future. Many researchers are studying the process of limb development, with the aim of bringing regenerative therapy, or natural tissue replacement, one step closer as a potential treatment.

Unless you're unbelievably rich (and most of us using Linux are not), we all have to “do laundry.” Unfortunately, we have some bad news for you: You're probably doing your laundry all wrong, according to an article from the Huffington Post. The “experts” definitely advise against using the infamous “pods” (think of those Tide Pods that the youngsters were ingesting just a few years years ago), due to the lack of ability to control the amount of laundry soap you use per laundry load. You'll be surprised: the amount of laundry soap you need is far, far less than the manufacturers would have you believe. But then, they are in the “business” of selling laundry soap, so there's that.

From the “things that make you ask “why?” department… A 62-year-old German man has received 217 injections of the mRNA Covid-19 vaccine over a course of 29 months, according to a report from The Lancet Infectious Diseases journal. Throughout the entire hyper-vaccination schedule, the patient did not report any vaccination-related side effects.

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

‘It is hijacking my brain' – a team of experts found ways to help young people addicted to social media to cut the craving, according to an article from The Conversation. Many people have compared the addictive nature of social media to cigarettes. Checking your likes, they say, is the new smoke break. Others say the unease over social media is just the next round of moral panic about new technologies. A pair of researchers investigate how social media affects the mental health of young people. More than 75% of teens check their phone hourly, and half say they feel like they're addicted to their devices.

Worried about plastic pollution in your tap water? Try boiling in it, a new study suggests, according to an article from The Hill. Boiling tap water can destroy at least 80 percent of three of the most common plastic compounds that can be found in your water, according to findings published Wednesday in Environmental Research Letters. This means drinking tap water that has been boiled, something commonly done in East Asian kitchens already, may be a safer bet than drinking bottled water. Columbia researchers found last month that bottled water can contain up to a quarter-million fragments of nanoplastics per liter.

According to the American Cancer Society, colorectal cancer is the second-most common cause of cancer among males and females combined. Colon cancer is the third leading cause of death among males and the fourth among females. The ACS estimates that 53,010 Americans will die of colorectal cancers this year. A new study finds that a polyphenol found in a plant used in Chinese medicine known as schisandra or “magnolia berry” could help treat colon cancer, particularly in the disease's later stages, says an article from MedicalNewsToday.

Image by christophe tixier from Pixabay

According to an article from CNN, a clinical trial's encouraging results won US Food and Drug Administration breakthrough therapy status for an LSD formulation to treat generalized anxiety disorder, Mind Medicine Inc. announced Thursday. The biopharmaceutical company is developing the drug. A single dose of MM120 (lysergide d-tartrate) led to a 48% rate of remission from generalized anxiety disorder at 12 weeks following the drug's administration, according to MindMed. The MM120 drug also significantly improved clinical signs of generalized anxiety disorder for 65% of patients within three months, according to results of the phase 2b trial designed to test dosage levels, the company said.

Are you still among the roughly three million people across the planet who are still using Google search and haven't moved on to another/better search engine (/exaggeration)? If so, an article from Lifehacker gives the low-down on how to improve the search results from the beleaguered search giant. To be honest, I was a bit surprised that people are still using Google as their primary search engine.

If you had any doubts about out-of-control data collection, then this next article from the New York Times should erase any doubts. Modern cars are internet-enabled, allowing access to services like navigation, roadside assistance and car apps that drivers can connect to their vehicles to locate them or unlock them remotely. In recent years, automakers, including G.M., Honda, Kia and Hyundai, have started offering optional features in their connected-car apps that rate people's driving. Some drivers may not realize that, if they turn on these features, the car companies then give information about how they drive to data brokers, who in turn, sell it to automobile insurance companies. So, if you're wondering WHY your car insurance rates might have jumped an inordinate amount, this could have something to do with it.

Firefly, Adobe's AI image creation tool, repeats some of the same controversial mistakes that Google's Gemini made in inaccurate racial and ethnic depictions, illustrating the challenges tech companies face across the industry, according to an article from Semafor. Google shut down its Gemini image creation tool last month after critics pointed out that it was creating historically inaccurate images, depicting America's Founding Fathers as Black, for instance, and refusing to depict white people. CEO Sundar Pichai told employees the company “got it wrong”. The tests done by Semafor on Firefly replicated many of the same things that tripped up Gemini. The two services rely on similar techniques for creating images from written text, but they are trained on very different datasets. Adobe uses only stock images or images that it licenses. Just wait until you read Adobe's response to the erroneous creation of AI images (included at the Semafor site). SMH! History DOES repeat itself, even if the images created are historically inaccurate.

Meanwhile, this next “news” item seems to have jumped straight from the movie set of 2004's blockbuster film “I, Robot”, starring Will Smith. Robotics developer Figure made waves on Wednesday when it shared a video demonstration of its first humanoid robot engaged in a real-time conversation, thanks to generative AI from OpenAI, according to an article from Decrypt. “With OpenAI, Figure 01 can now have full conversations with people,” Figure said on Twitter, highlighting its ability to understand and react to human interactions instantly. The company explained that its recent alliance with OpenAI brings high-level visual and language intelligence to its robots, allowing for “fast, low-level, dexterous robot actions.” I swear that the “robot” depicted looks uncannily like the robot “Sonny” from the film. Let's hope he doesn't go awry like “his kind” did in the movie.

The popular artificial intelligence image-generator Midjourney has started blocking its users from creating fake images of President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump ahead of the upcoming U.S. presidential election, according to tests of the AI tool by The Associated Press, according to an article from the Associated Press. With the election in full swing, it's time to “put some foots down on election-related stuff for a bit,” Midjourney CEO David Holz told several hundred members of the service's devoted user base in a digital office hours event Wednesday. Declaring that “this moderation stuff is kind of hard,” Holz didn't outline exactly what policy changes were being made but described the clampdown as a temporary measure to make it harder for people to abuse the tool. The company didn't immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday. Attempts by AP journalists to test Midjourney's new policy on Wednesday by asking it to make an image of “Trump and Biden shaking hands at the beach” led to a “Banned Prompt Detected” warning. A second attempt escalated the warning to: “You have triggered an abuse alert.” The tiny company — which has just 11 employees, according to its website — has largely kept silent in the public debate over how generative AI tools could fuel election misinformation around the world. Midjourney was the only maker of a leading image-generating tool that didn't join a voluntary tech industry pact in February to combat AI-generated deep-fakes that deliberately trick voters.

Image by Vicki Hamilton from Pixabay

A new study from Michigan Medicine shows that what men do recreationally may have some bearing on developing ALS, according to an article from the New York Post (and widely reported by other media outlets). If you golf, garden, or are a woodworker, you may be at an increased risk of developing ALS. The link for golfers and gardeners is most likely related to an increased exposure to pesticides, while the link for woodworkers is most likely related to an increased exposure to formaldehyde. Some women were included in the study, but their numbers were insufficient to be able to discern any links between recreational activities and the development of ALS.

Elon Musk open-sourced the computer code behind his version of an artificial intelligence chatbot on March 17, 2024, an escalation by one of the world's richest men in a battle to control the future of A.I., according to an article from the New York Times. Grok, which is designed to give snarky replies styled after the science-fiction novel “The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy,” is a product from xAI, the company Mr. Musk founded last year. While xAI is an independent entity from X, its technology has been integrated into the social media platform and is trained on users' posts. Users who subscribe to X's premium features can ask Grok questions and receive responses. By opening the code up for everyone to view and use, Mr. Musk waded further into a heated debate in the A.I. world over whether doing so could help make the technology safer, or simply open it up to misuse. In February 2023, Meta also open-sourced its A.I. technology, known as LLaMA.

Are you wondering what kind of income that college education is going to net you? Well, CNBC has an article that lays out the worst and best paying careers within five years of graduation. Leading the list for the lowest paying degrees is Liberal Arts, followed by Performing Arts, Theology + religion, and Leisure + hospitality. They all pay less than the $40,480 median wage in the U.S. The highest paying jobs, as you might expect, are within the STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) fields. Computer engineers lead the pack with the best pay among those with STEM degrees.

CC BY-NC-SA 4.0, Thibaut Roger/NCCR PlanetS

Late last year, astronomers discovered a fascinating star system only 100 light-years away from us, according to an article from Space.com. Its six sub-Neptune planets circle very close to their host star in mathematically perfect orbits, piquing the interest of scientists searching for alien technology, or technosignatures, which they argue would offer compelling evidence of advanced life beyond Earth. To be clear, no such evidence was found in the system, dubbed HD 110067. However, the researchers say they're not done looking yet. HD 110067 remains an interesting target for similar observations in the future.

Google just can't help themselves. They are BOUND AND DETERMINED to keep the website killedbygoogle.com alive. After killing off 17 features for Google Assistant in January 2024, Google is also taking one of the best features of its phone app to the chopping block — the ability to search for nearby businesses, according to an article from Lifehacker. Google first announced this upcoming change back in February, stating that “we've found a very small number of people use this feature, and the vast majority of users go to Google Search or Maps when seeking business-related phone numbers.” Now, though, it has finally pulled the plug: 9to5Google reports that the feature has officially vanished from the Google phone app.

The “missteps” by Google's AI just keep coming. Now, according to an article from Bleeping Computer, Google's new AI search results promote sites pushing malware and scams. Google's new AI-powered 'Search Generative Experience' algorithms recommend scam sites that redirect visitors to unwanted Chrome extensions, fake iPhone giveaways, browser spam subscriptions, and tech support scams. Earlier this month, Google began rolling out a new feature called Google Search Generative Experience (SGE) in its search results, which provides AI-generated quick summaries for search queries, including recommendations for other sites to visit related to the query.

PCLinuxOS Recipe Corner - Easy Honey Mustard Chicken

Easy Honey Mustard Chicken

Serves: 4

INGREDIENTS:

3/4 cup Dijon honey mustard salad dressing
1/3 cup chicken broth
1/3 cup half-and-half cream
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon pepper
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
4 boneless skinless chicken breast halves (6 ounces each)
3 tablespoons olive oil, divided
1/2 pound medium fresh mushrooms, thinly sliced
1 large sweet onion, halved and thinly sliced

DIRECTIONS:

In a small bowl, combine the first 5 ingredients; set aside. Place flour in a shallow bowl. Add chicken, a few pieces at a time, and toss to coat; shake off excess. In a large skillet, heat 2 tablespoons oil over medium-high heat. Brown chicken on both sides. Remove from pan. Add mushrooms and onion to same pan; cook and stir until tender, 6-8 minutes.

Add dressing mixture, stirring to loosen browned bits from pan. Return chicken to pan; bring to a boil. Reduce heat; simmer, uncovered, until a thermometer inserted in chicken reads 165F, 12-15 minutes longer.

TIPS:

Serve over noodles or rice. Serve with toasted french bread and green salad.

NUTRITION:

Calories: 535, Carbs: 23g, Fiber: 1g, Sodium: 548mg, Protein: 38g

Inkscape Tutorial Removing A Background

by Meemaw

It seems like we're always finding a graphic for a project we're working on, and it would work wonderfully, if it didn't have that pesky background. While Inkscape isn't really the best program to use for removing a background, it can be done.

I found a photo of a butterfly that I could use in another project I'm working on, but the background leaves something to be desired.

If I could take out the background, it would be a beautiful butterfly in a different project. The method here is to create a path that you can use to clip the butterfly away from the background. In Inkscape, the subject has to be pretty clear and with a defined border between the subject and background.

Open your graphic in Inkscape. Before you do anything, set the opacity of your graphic down to at least 50%, so that when you start drawing your path, you can see the lines. Choose your Bezier pen and set the mode to BSpline up in the toolbar. You might have to set your stroke color to something besides black so you can see it. I used green.

When you get all the way around your subject, click on your starting point and the path will close. If you need to include the edge of the page, just go a bit off the edge and make sure your path closes.

With your path chosen, hold the shift key and choose your starting graphic. Go to the menu and choose Object > Clip > Set Clip. Everything outside your path will disappear. If you find that your outline is off a bit, you can choose Object > Clip > Release Clip, and try it again. When you get it the way you want it, you can set your opacity back up to 100%.

This can be exported as a png and placed into your other project. Saving it as a png will create a transparent background so it can be put anywhere.

Two Quick, Simple Ways To Deactivate Xscreensaver Via A Bash Script

by Paul Arnote (parnote)

One of the most annoying things when you're watching a video is when your screensaver activates. Sure, and IF I remember to do it, I could go in and disable the screensaver before watching the video in my favorite media player. But, I usually “forget” that step. Yes, I could just pause the video and then go into my screensaver's settings and disable it, saving myself from continual periodic interruptions from the screensaver activating. That whole process involves several [very inconvenient] steps. But … what if there was a way to toggle my screensaver with a single mouse click? That would make the whole process WAY easier.

This Is Spinal Tap, playing in Kaffeine

Now, I use almost exclusively the Xfce desktop. But, mainly due to a lack of screensaver options, I have Xfce's default screensaver disabled completely. Instead, I prefer to use Xscreensaver. I'm much more familiar with it, and it has many, many options available to use (even though I mostly use the “Blank” screensaver). At least, I have options available.

On my HTPC that's “permanently” attached to my living room television (it's a repurposed, refurbished desktop computer that resides on my entertainment center), I circumvent the problem in two different ways. First, I have Xscreensaver set to disabled. That alone takes care of the problem. But, just in case, the second way is that even if I didn't have Xscreensaver disabled, there is a setting in VLC (my primary media viewer on my HTPC) to disable the screensaver whenever VLC is displayed in full screen mode, which is how it's used on my HTPC. So, at least on my HTPC, the possibilities for Xscreensaver to pop on at the most inopportune times are zero.

I looked around, and I was quite disappointed by the lack of scripts or programs to quickly and easily suspend or disable Xscreensaver. There is a SUPER nice bash script over at GitHub, called LightsOn+. All 348 lines of it. But, even it fell short of what I wanted. It ONLY works with videos being displayed in various browsers, or with videos being played full screen. Even then, if you're not using one of the media players LightsOn+ is looking for (LightsOn+ recognizes MPV, Mplayer, VLC, and Totem), then the script is of limited value, unless you go in and modify it to accommodate the media player you prefer using. As it exists in the version on GitHub, if you use Kaffeine or SMPlayer (two relatively popular media players on Linux), you're (as Scooby Doo would say), “outta ruck.” There are *many* times when I'm watching a video … don't let this freak you out … in my media player's window. That means NOT full screen. Which means LightsOn+ won't help. I know. How dare I? BUT, that's how I tend to generally use my media players on my other, non-HTPC computers. So, unless I'm watching a video full screen, even LightsOn+ is of limited value to me.

Barbie, playing in VLC

For what it's worth, LightsOn+ is a fork of the original LightsOn script (also available on GitHub). And, LightsOn+ is reported on GitHub to have 15 additional forks. After seeing how “complex” the LightsOn+ and LightsOn scripts are, without either meeting my needs, I didn't bother to check out all the forks. It was time to see if I could figure out another approach.

For what it's worth, while I was looking for a solution, a lot of people suggested using the playback of sound as criteria for suspending screensaver activity. But, I took exception to using that criteria, since there may be times when you're listening to audio, like streaming audio content (I sometimes listen to baseball Spring Training games streaming in the background), a podcast, or MP3 music files, when activation of the screensaver might actually be appropriate (or at least doesn't pose a problem like it does with the playback of video content).

Remember me saying I like Xscreensaver because of all the options it provides? Well, one of those options is the ability to control and interact with Xscreensaver from the command line. Also, being able to control and interact with Xscreensaver from the command line also means that you can include those commands in a bash script. Hmmmm.

So, that got me thinking. My early iterations of the script just did one thing: disable the activation of Xscreensaver. But then, when I'm done watching a video, I needed a way to restore/re-enable Xscreensaver so it could continue doing its intended job. So, I had one launcher setup to run the script to disable Xscreensaver, and another launcher just to restore/re-enable Xscreensaver. That method certainly worked, and worked well. But it was a bit inconvenient and a bit of a kludge, having to have two launchers.

So, I wondered … could I make just one script, and thus just one launcher, to do both actions? Let's just call that “challenge accepted.”

Now here's something else that's funny. Back in October 2020, I had proposed a similar “solution” in the PCLinuxOS forum. And, to be 101% honest, I had completely forgotten about that post that I made nearly four years ago. But wouldn't you know it, that “other solution” works just as well today as it did in 2020. My “other” solution is based on turning off Xscreensaver for a specified amount of time (in minutes), and then reactivating it when that time has elapsed. It seems I've been down this path before. No wonder why the scenery looked so familiar, eh? That's ok, though. It's good to have multiple ways to “solve” a singular problem. One deactivates Xscreensaver for a specified number of minutes, and the other one deactivates/reactivates Xscreensaver with a single mouse click, on a schedule YOU decide, when you decide.

We'll take a look at both scripts. I have gone back and “enhanced” the timer-based script, both to prevent the “mental acrobatics” to convert hours and minutes to the total number of minutes, and to provide some feedback. We'll take a look at the version of the script that toggles Xscreensaver with a mouse click first.

Indiana Jones: The Dial of Destiny, playing in Mplayer

Toggle Screensaver

I call the script I came up with “toggle-ss.sh.” It doesn't create any windows, so there's no Yad or Zenity dialog boxes. But, it works very simply and very well to temporarily disable Xscreensaver with just one click of the mouse, instead of going into the PC menu, filtering down through to the “Configuration” category, filtering down through that list of programs to Configure Xscreensaver, opening that, and then disabling the screensaver. And then you get to do that whole process again after you're done watching your video, just to re-enable the screensaver. IF you even remember to re-enable Xscreensaver after you've watched your video(s).

You can download the script from the magazine's website. As usual, download the script to the location where you store your scripts, strip the “.txt” file extension off of it, and mark the file as “executable.”

First, below is the script. Then, we'll go through the script, line by line, explaining what's happening.

The first thing you might notice is that my script is nowhere near 348 lines of bash code. Nope. I've accomplished what I needed in just 17 lines of bash code. That's just less than 5% of the number of lines of bash code in the LightsOn+ script. So far, so good. Small and economical. In fact, the whole script is only 520 bytes long.

Line 1, of course, is the typical opening stanza in any bash script … the bash script shebang that tells bash that yes, this is a bash script. Line 3 is the start of an if-then-else statement, and it checks to see if a “lock” file exists in the user's ~/tmp directory. That will mean that the screensaver is already disabled. In line 4, if that “lock” file is found, it is removed, restoring normal functionality to Xscreensaver by exiting the script. There's nothing in that file, but the presence/existence of that file is key. So we know that something has occurred, (line 5) we use notify-send to pop up a notification message (shown above) in/near your notification area. In our use of notify-send, we use the “org.xfce.ScreenSaver” icon to provide a graphical element to the notification. If you do not have this icon on your installation, you can change the icon to one that is on your system. Or, you can just eliminate the “--icon=...” part of notify-send altogether (but you'll end up with a plain vanilla notification). Then, we tell the script to exit in line 6.

Of course, if the “lock” file doesn't exist, it skips right over the first part of the if-then-else statement and moves right on to the “else” part of that conditional statement. That first line in the “else” part of the if-then-else statement (line 8) uses the “touch” command to create the “lock” file. Line 9 uses the notify-send command to display a message in/near your notification area that Xscreensaver has been “turned off” (image above) In actuality, it isn't turned off. Rather, it's just disabled. Line 10 starts up a while-do loop that returns true if it finds the “lock” file (which it should, because we just created it). For as long as that “lock” file exists while the script is executing, it will stay in the while-do loop, executing the commands within that loop over and over again. We can safely ignore line 11, because it's just a comment line. In line 12, we tell the script to “sleep” for 30 seconds. After that 30 seconds has elapsed, line 13 tells Xscreensaver, via the xscreensaver-command - deactivate command, to disable the screensaver. Any output from the xscreensaver-command is redirected to the Linux “black hole” known as /dev/null, to prevent any nuisance messages (just in case you're running it from the command line in a terminal). Line 14 closes up the back end of the while-do loop, and exits the script, while line 15 closes up the back end of the if-then-else loop. Finally, line 17 tells the script to exit cleanly.

That's really it! If you activate the script without the presence of the “lock” file, the “lock” file is created, and Xscreensaver is disabled by issuing the “-deactivate” command every 30 seconds. If you activate the script again, and the “lock” file is found, that “lock” file is removed, and the normal functionality of Xscreensaver is restored.

I created this script to be run from a launcher, either on one of your panels (my personal preference), or on your desktop. The images above show the launcher defined on my Xfce desktop, and the “Edit Launcher” dialog box where you fill in all of the necessary data for that launcher.

As I mentioned earlier, I use the Xfce desktop pretty much exclusively, coupled with Xscreensaver (instead of Xfce's default screensaver, xfce4-screensaver). If you use Mate, KDE, LXQt or some other desktop, this script will work exactly as described here, just so long as you're using Xscreensaver to manage your screensavers. If you are, however, using a different screensaver management program (e.g., Kscreensaver, etc.), then you may be able to alter the script to call on that particular screensaver management program, instead of Xscreensaver. But, since I don't run or use the “other” desktop flavors, I can't really say with a lot of certainty what it is you could/would/should/might do to accommodate any other screensaver but Xscreensaver. And, as far as I know, Xscreensaver, with all of its many options, is desktop-agnostic, and should be able to run on any desktop.

Timed Screensaver Deactivation

This is an “enhanced” version of the script I posted in the forum four years ago (you know … the one I posted in the forum and “forgot” about). The original version required the user to do the “mental acrobatics” of converting hours and minutes into the total number of minutes to deactivate Xscreensaver. This version has separate entry dialogs for hours and minutes, relieving the end user of having to perform those calculations themselves. This “enhanced” version of the script also displays a notification when Xscreensaver is deactivated, complete with displaying the amount of time that Xscreensaver has been set to be deactivated. Then, 15 seconds before Xscreensaver reactivates, another notification pops up to let the end user know that Xscreensaver will be reactivated.

Unlike the “toggle” version, this timed version of the script to deactivate Xscreensaver uses Zenity dialog boxes for the end user to enter the number of hours and the number of minutes to deactivate Xscreensaver. That, coupled with the time “calculations” in the script, make this version of the script a little bit longer. Specifically, this version of the script is 1,068 bytes long, or just a scad more than 1.0KiB.

You can download the timer-based version of the script from the magazine website. Just as with all of the other scripts you can download from the magazine website, save it to where you normally store your scripts, remove the “.txt” file extension, and mark the file as being “executable.”

So, here's the timer-based version of the script to deactivate Xscreensaver.

So, let's look at what's going on in the script. As with all bash scripts, Line 1 is the “shebang” that all bash scripts start with. In lines 3 through 7, the user is presented with a Zenity dialog box to enter the number of hours you want to deactivate Xscreensaver (image above). That number is quietly converted to minutes. If the user clicks on the “Cancel” button, the script exits.

Lines 9 through 16 present a Zenity dialog box to allow the user to enter the number of minutes to disable the screensaver (image above). So, let's say you're watching a video/movie that is 1:47 (one hour, 47 minutes) long. You would enter “1” for the hours, and “47” for the minutes (or you could round it up to 1:50, if you so choose). If the number of minutes is less than zero or greater than 59 minutes, an error message is displayed, and the script exits. If the user clicks on the “Cancel” button, the script exits.

Line 18 adds the total number of minutes, and stores them in the variable named “TIME”. Line 20 uses the “printf” command to format the message that we'll display in the notification that Xscreensaver has been turned off for HH hours MM minutes. The “printf” command gives us a LOT more options to format the text the way we want, compared to the more common “echo” command. Line 22 uses the “notify-send” command to display that notification message (image above).

Then, lines 24 through 29 set up the “while … do” loop that decrements the number of minutes ($TIME) once every minute, and issues the “xscreensaver-command -deactivate” command on every pass through the while … do loop. All output from the “xscreensaver-command -deactivate” command is sent to the Linux black hole, known as /dev/null, to suppress any output from the xscreensaver-command. It then “sleeps” for 60 seconds, and continues in that manner until the specified amount of time is up (when $TIME reaches zero).

With line 31, which is executed when the specified amount of time has elapsed, another notification is displayed (via the “notify-send” command) to inform the user that Xscreensaver will be reactivated in 15 seconds (image above). Line 32 sets up the 15-second delay, before line 33 issues the “xscreensaver-command -activate” command to reactivate Xscreensaver. Any output from that command is, again, sent to /dev/null to prevent any “nuisance” messages from being displayed (should you be launching this from the command line). Finally, line 34 exits the script cleanly.

You could very well alter the script to NOT activate Xscreensaver. The “xscreensaver-command -activate” command starts Xscreensaver immediately. If you don't issue this command, Xscreensaver will activate on its own, since the specified amount of time has elapsed and Xscreensaver is no longer being suppressed with the “xscreensaver-command -deactivate” command being issued every minute. So, if you choose this route, you can comment out the “sleep 15s” and “xscreensaver-command -activate” commands (make the first character on each line a # symbol), and change the message in the notification popup to “Screensaver now active.” I think it's still important enough, though, to let the user know that Xscreensaver has resumed its “normal duties.”

Also, you may use whatever icon you wish for the notification command(s). I chose “preferences-desktop-screensaver” because it's relatively unused, is slightly different from the icon used in the toggle-ss.sh script, and it best reflects the purpose of the script. In fact, you may need to change this icon image simply because you may have different icon sets installed on your computer than I have installed. I like the Faenza icon set on Xfce, so my choice of icons is somewhat dictated by what icons that icon set includes.

This is the “Edit Launcher” window in Xfce. I've entered the “Name” as “Timed Screensaver,” and “Deactivate Xscreensaver for the specified amount of time” in the “Comment” field. The command is changed to “timer-ss.sh” in the “Command” field, and I've selected a clock icon to better indicate that this script is time-based. On my copy of Xfce, my launcher is on my top panel. You can also place this launcher on your desktop, if you so choose.

Wrapping Up…

We didn't really do anything “fancy” here with either of these two scripts. We didn't use dBus paths to enable and disable the screensaver (which is possible, and one method which scripts like LightsOn+ employ). I just wanted to keep things as simple as possible. While I'm not calling out or disrespecting the authors of scripts like LightsOn+ or any of its derivatives (props to them for creating them), I didn't think it required anything as complicated or complex as what they created. At the end of the day, those scripts only work if you're watching a video full screen, or in a browser. But, if you're watching a video or movie in a media player window that is NOT playing full screen, you're outta luck with those “other” scripts. I really set out to keep things as simple as possible. This is, after all, PCLinuxOS, and the PCLinuxOS motto is “Radically Simple.”

As a result, I have presented not one, but two MUCH leaner bash scripts that essentially achieve the same end result. If you read through the documentation for the “xscreensaver-command -deactivate” command, one of the things it mentions is the ability for it to be called repeatedly from a bash script to inhibit the activation of Xscreensaver … which is exactly what this script does. And, this script works regardless if you're watching a video or movie, or not. Let's say you have a complex/complicated process going on that you want to monitor. You might not want the screensaver activating, and interrupting your oversight of the process(es). Any time you want or need Xscreensaver to “pause” its normal activities, these small scripts can be used to deactivate it, and then run again to return Xscreensaver to its normal duties and functionality (in the case where we toggle Xscreensaver off and on), or for a specified amount of time before Xscreensaver is reactivated without any further actions on your part (in the case of the timed version).

Now, at last, I can watch a video or movie in my favorite media player(s) without having to worry about the screensaver activating right in the middle of a key scene, and without having to burrow deep into the PC menu to bring up the Xscreensaver setting. Those “favorite” media players, on my computers, are VLC and Kaffeine … and Kaffeine isn't even an option with LightsOn+, without modification of the script. Now, it's one click of the mouse to disable the screensaver, and one click of the mouse to return things to “normal,” regardless of what media player I'm using, or regardless of the reason I'm wanting to suspend activation of Xscreensaver. Or, you can disable the screensaver for a specified amount of time. Linux is all about “choice,” and in this case, the choice is yours as to which one you decide to use.

Money Manager EX Account Reconciliation

by David Pardue (kalwisti)

This tutorial covers how to reconcile an account in MoneyManager Ex (ver. 1.6.4, released on 10 June 2023). The reconciliation procedure is not discussed in the program's Help file, nor in the FAQ; it seems to be a fairly frequent question in the MMEX Discussion Forum, so I thought it would be helpful to create a how-to. A special hat tip to user JustGreg from the MMEX Forum, who provided a basic explanation of the procedure in January 2015. Although the procedural details of reconciliation have changed with newer versions of MoneyManager Ex, the basic principle remains the same.

Note: This reconciliation procedure also works with the latest version of MMEX (1.7.0, released on 26 Dec. 2023). However, please be aware that your current database will be updated once you run ver. 1.7.0, so you will no longer be able to open your MMEX database with earlier versions of the software. Another change announced by the MMEX developers is that as of ver. 1.7.0, only Flatpak images are officially supported for Linux builds.

It is good practice to reconcile your account regularly, to ensure its accuracy and avoid accounting errors. Reconciliation will help you catch mistakes–such as a business charging you the wrong amount, you forgetting to record a transaction, or transposing numbers while entering a payment or deposit.

On the Account page (ledger page), click on the View All Transactions box, then choose the option View with Transaction Filter.

A Transaction Filter pop-up window will appear. Select/tick the Status section, and choose Unreconciled from its drop-down menu.

Click the OK button to close the pop-up window.

Verify that the Reconciled Bal on the Accounts page is equal to your bank statement's Beginning Balance.

Note: If you are reconciling your account for the very first time, MMEX's Reconciled Bal may be the same amount as your Opening (Account) Balance.

Begin the reconciliation process by selecting the first transaction shown on your bank statement. In the MoneyManager Ex ledger, click on that transaction to select / highlight it.

Press the "R" key to mark the selected transaction as reconciled.

Note: When the transaction has been reconciled, it will disappear. Don't panic! … The transaction was not deleted–just temporarily removed from the ledger in order to "declutter" it.

Continue marking the transactions reported on your bank statement as reconciled by selecting the matching transaction in MMEX's ledger and pressing the "R" key.

(All of the transactions shown on your bank statement should have corresponding entries in your MMEX ledger. If you discover that a transaction has been omitted from your MMEX ledger, then create a New Transaction for the item).

If you make a mistake and need to unreconcile a transaction, select it and press the "U" key.

As you proceed with reconciliation, you will notice that the amounts for Reconciled Bal, Diff and Filtered View Bal will change. (You do not need to take any action here, other than to be aware that MMEX is "doing the reconciliation math" for you).

After all items on your bank statement have been done, check to see if MMEX's Reconciled Bal matches / is equal to the Ending Balance of your bank statement.

(If the balances are not equal, then there is an error of some sort that requires further investigation. In my experience, it is more likely that data entry errors will be your fault rather than the bank's).

When you finish reconciling, you will notice that the only entries displayed in MMEX's ledger are transactions which have not yet cleared your bank/financial institution. The Status column is blank–indicating those entries are not yet reconciled.

As a final step, return to the View with Transaction Filter box, click on it and then choose the View All Transactions option.

All the transactions in your MMEX ledger should now be visible. The transactions which you have reconciled will have an "R" in the Status column.

Good luck reconciling, and have fun with MoneyManager Ex!

Get The Most Out Of DuckDuckGo

by Paul Arnote (parnote)

Ever since shortly after the internet began, search tools became very, very important. Otherwise, how would anyone find the information they are seeking? It would be very much like going to the library, but without the Dewey Decimal cataloging system (or any other library cataloging system) to help you find the information you're seeking. You might get lucky and find the information you're looking for, but then again (and most likely), maybe not.

Once the World Wide Web started, in particular, the available information online exploded. We've seen search engines come and go, as they peak and wane in popularity. There are people using the internet now that have never heard of a gopher search. Others have never heard of AltaVista. Many don't remember when Yahoo! was the “go to” search engine. Bing. MSN. The list marches onward.

Today, the search “giant” is Google, owned by the Alphabet corporation. In many ways, Google has become synonymous with performing searches. How many times have you heard someone say “let me Google that” when they really mean “let me perform an internet search for that?” You NEVER heard anyone say “let me Bing that” or “let me Yahoo! that” or “let me AltaVista that.” And that is how synonymous Google has become when it comes to claiming the “King of the Mountain” crown of the search engines.

However, due to many missteps by Google, there are LOTS of people who shun and avoid ANY interaction with Google (or at least try to minimize their interaction with Google whenever and wherever possible), either the search engine or any of its various products. One search engine that has come on strong in recent years to offer an alternative to Google is DuckDuckGo (DDG). Unless you've been living under a rock, you've seen their advertisements on TV about how DDG doesn't have ads that “follow you around the internet.” DDG has struck a chord with those interested in preserving their internet privacy.

As a result, many people (myself included) have made DDG their default search engine for their internet searches. To say that I've been happy with the search results from DuckDuckGo would be an understatement. I switched to DDG as my primary search engine more than a couple of years ago, and I can't say that I miss Google's search engine even a little bit. DDG has been a drop-in replacement for Google's search engine.

When the magazine website needed a tool to replace the search tool we were using that went “belly up” for who knows what reason, I turned to DDG. It has performed flawlessly.

So, let's look at ways to customize and improve the results of the searches you perform on DDG. You, like me, might be surprised at all of the “hidden” features that DDG possesses.

Start With DDG's Settings

Open DDG in a browser tab, and type something in to search for. Don't complicate it, because (at least in this situation) we really don't care about the search results. Instead, I just want to get you to where you can make these changes.

At the top of the search results, you will see a “menu” option for “Settings.” When you click on it, you will see what I call the “simple settings.” Through the simple settings dialog, you can change a few things, like choosing between a light and dark theme and a few other minor settings. By clicking on the “All Settings” at the bottom of the dialog, you'll gain access to all of the options for DDG. Below are my settings for DDG on my main laptop, under the “General” category.

As you can see, I have just about every option “turned on” in the “General” settings with the exception of “Safe Search,” which I have turned off. Your settings may look a bit different, because DDG doesn't come with all of the options turned on by default. For example, “Safe Search” defaults to “Moderate,” while things like “Infinite scroll” and “Open Links in a New Tab” are turned off by default. You may also want to set the “Units of Measure” field. Since I live in the U.S., I changed it to “US-based” to more accurately reflect the measurements I use most. Feel free to customize DDG to how you like to interact with the data you get from a search engine. If you don't like something, it's a trivial task to go back in and change it back.

Under the “Appearance” and “Privacy” categories, I really haven't changed anything, so the settings depicted above should be the default settings that DDG uses.

You would also do well to read through this page from the DDG online help. With these guidelines, you may improve your search results and filter out results that may not have any relevance towards the information you're seeking. I won't reprint it here when it's readily accessible at the previous link.

Perform Site-Specific Searches

Let's say you're looking for different ways to cook up your instant ramen noodles. You remember seeing a recipe on a site, but are having difficulty locating it. Simply precede your search request with site:nameofsite.com, and your search results will be ONLY from the specified site. In my example above, I used “site:lifehacker.com ramen” as my search criteria, and all of the instant ramen noodle recipes from Lifehacker.com are shown. To be perfectly honest, this is EXACTLY how the DDG search on the magazine website functions. By the way … the second recipe listed in these search results is deee-licious! Plus, it's fast and easy to make.

Find Your Favorite Cheat Sheet

If you're needing a “cheat sheet” to your favorite program, DDG has your back. Just type [name-of-program] cheatsheet as your search criteria. In the image above, I entered “gimp cheatsheet.” DDG populated the top part of the search window with a brief list of keyboard shortcuts for GIMP. Note the “Show More” option at the bottom of the brief list. When you click it, the cheat sheet will expand to cover WAY more screen real estate with many more keyboard shortcuts. I also tried this with “nano cheatsheet,” and I got a pretty comprehensive list of keyboard shortcuts to use with the nano text editor. Also notice how (at the top) DDG has added the “category” of “Cheat Sheets” to the output, right after “Shopping” and before “Settings.”

Use The !bang

If you need to search another site (e.g., YouTube), you can perform your search from within DDG. In turn, the “other” site will load with your search preloaded. Currently, DDG has OVER 13,500 “bangs” available to quicken your searches. For example, if you want to view crazy cat videos on YouTube, just type “!yt crazy cat videos,” and YouTube will open up with your search results preloaded. Similarly, if you want to search Wikipedia for PCLinuxOS, you can type “!w pclinuxos” and Wikipedia will open with your search. This saves you some time by allowing you to search right from DDG, instead of opening up the site and then performing your search from the host site. To see a full list of “bangs” that DDG has, click on the “Learn More” link at the bottom of the brief list of “bangs” initially presented. Then, when you need it again, just type the “!” and bang “abbreviation” to perform your search right from DDG.

Go “Lightweight”

Sometimes, you don't want or need all of the “fluff” that a traditional search page loads. Most “normal” search pages on both DDG and Google are around 2MB in size. But, if you have a slow internet connection, you might be interested in the “lite” version of DDG. The image above is literally all there is to the web page. It comes in at only about 200KB in file size. It also makes fewer requests than the full-blown web page, resulting in a faster delivery of search results. Even with the proliferation of high-speed internet connections, there are still people with [painfully] slow internet connections. To access it, simply type https://lite.duckduckgo.com/lite in your browser's address bar.

Calculate Common Conversions

There's little need to install or use another program to perform common conversions when DDG will perform them for you, with no added overhead or baggage. In the image above, I've converted 35°F to Celsius. You can perform just about whatever type of conversion you want. For example, I also typed in “$45 to pounds,” and it informed me that $45 (U.S.) was equivalent to £35.37 (at the current exchange rate). Using the dropdown list, I changed GBP to Euros, and it informed me that $45 (U.S.) was equivalent to €41.41, at the current exchange rate. Miles to kilometers? Inches to centimeters? Quarts or gallons to liters? They're all handled by DDG with speed, ease and accuracy.

Shorten URLs

There may be times when you don't want or need to spell out some of these HORRENDOUSLY LONG URLs of things you've found on the internet. For example, let's say you have a free Twitter/X account, where you are typically limited to 280 characters for a post (paid users get up to 25,000 characters per post). You don't want to waste 185 characters of your 280 character allotment on an unwieldy, lengthy URL. Never fear, because DDG can provide you a shortened URL for that monstrosity URL. Just enter “shorten,” followed by the URL you want shortened, as in the image above. DDG will provide you with a shortened URL that is typically significantly shorter than the “long” URL.

URL Encoding

To be honest, I'm not sure of how useful this “ability” is, but I guess it's nice to know it's an option, should a need ever arise. If you enter “url encode” in the DDG search box, followed by the URL of the site you want to encode, DDG will provide you with the percent-encoded URL, similar to what you see in the image above.

Make A QR Code

Those unreadable (by humans, anyways) blotched things called QR codes are becoming increasingly common. DDG can create custom QR codes for you based on the information you put on the search bar line. Just enter “qr https://www.somewebpage.org” (replace, obviously, www.somewebpage.org with the website you're trying to access via the QR code), and then hit enter. You can right click your mouse on the QR code, and download it to your computer as a graphic file that you can then share, put on items, or place in documents.

Ready! Set! Go! With The DDG Stopwatch

If you need, DDG can also provide a pretty nice stopwatch for those times you need to monitor how long something is taking, or the next time you're keeping time in a race between the kids of the neighborhood. Just type “stopwatch” into the DDG search box, and you should see something like in the image above.

3 … 2 … 1 … Countdown Timer

If you need to set a countdown timer (dinner in the oven, perhaps?), DDG has you covered. Just type “timer” in the DDG search box (and hit Enter), and you should see a countdown timer similar to the one in the image above. Set the time for your countdown timer, then click on the large “Play” button on the left. An alarm sound will play when the timer has elapsed. And, do you see that rather large “+” sign on the right? Click that, and you can add additional timers. I suspect you can display as many timers as you need (and that will fit in your browser window?).

HTML Character Lookup

If you're trying to create a website, chances are exceptionally high that you've had to stop and look up the HTML character code for some symbol. DDG makes it easy to find a list of HTML character codes. Just type in “html characters” in the DDG search box (press Enter), and you should see something similar to the image above. If you click on the “Show More” link at the bottom left, DDG will show you every HTML code for every character you could possibly come across.

Alternatively, you can type “html ©” in the DDG search box (I don't have to keep saying to press Enter, do I?), and you should see something like the image above. This version gives you just the HTML character code for the character you entered. This could save you some time, instead of weeding through the entire HTML character list.

Calculate This!

If you need a quick (and quite capable) calculator, just type “calculator” in the DDG search box. You should see a calculator similar to the one shown in the image above. It'll save you time, especially if you're working in a browser already. Just pop open a new tab, go to DDG (if it's not already your homepage), and type “calculator” in the search box. It'll be faster than launching another program.

Generate Passwords

If you need a decent, random password, head over to DDG and enter “password xx” in the search box. The “xx” part is how many characters long you want your password to be.

Generate Passphrases

If you'd prefer to use a random passphrase instead of a password (they are purported to be more secure and user-friendly than passwords), DDG can generate one for you. Just type “random passphrase x words” into the DDG search box. The “x” is the number of words you want in the passphrase. In the image above, I generated a passphrase six words long. DDG will create a random passphrase up to 10 words long. And, if the service/site/wherever doesn't allow/like spaces in the passphrase, just omit them and run all the words together. Passphrases are typically WAY easier for users to remember than random passwords, and they get their security due to their length, the randomness of the words, and the varying lengths of the words used.

Let Me Check My Calendar

Want quick access to a current calendar? Just type “calendar” in the DDG search box, and the current month's calendar will be displayed. It should look something like the image above.

If you want to see a calendar from literally ANY date, just enter that date after “calendar.” For example, I put in D-Day's date. DDG gave me the calendar for June, 1944, with the sixth of June highlighted. Want to see what day of the week your birthday is on in nine years? Just specify that date.

Summary

I can only imagine that you are as surprised as I am at the “tricks” up DDG's sleeves. With these tips, tricks and hints, I'm certain that you will find shortcuts to using DDG as effectively as “they” designed it.

Good Words, Good Deeds, Good News

compiled by Meemaw

Firefighter Rescues Trucker Whose Truck Went Through The Guardrail

A Kentucky firefighter is being celebrated for making the daring rescue of a woman whose truck crashed over a bridge's guard rails, leaving her dangling nearly 100 feet above the Ohio River.

CBS News captured harrowing footage showing 29-year-old Bryce Carden of the Louisville Fire Department carrying a female tractor-trailer driver back to safety after she was trapped in the truck's cab for 40 minutes.

Abandoned Puppy Will Receive Special Training

An abandoned puppy is now living a life some dogs could only dream of thanks to kind-hearted law enforcement officers in Price, Utah. Police officers recently shared the story of the two-month-old pup now called Pee-Dee who was discovered in a box on the side of a highway on February 10, KUTV reported Thursday. He was out in the freezing weather, but whoever abandoned him left a paper with his breed, birthday and vaccination records. He has been a really cheerful dog, and officers have decided to have him trained as a certified critical incident emotional support dog.

Sisters May Be World's Oldest Live Siblings

The six Overall sisters believe they are the oldest living siblings, and have reached out to Guinness World Records to have it checked. They range in age from 88 to 101. They mentioned that they had an older brother, Stanley, who had passed away, but would have been 102.

“I think he would be thrilled with it, and very proud of all of his sisters because they all meant the world to him,” Stanley's daughter said.

Iowa Teen Learns To Walk Again

Grace was in an accident in September which resulted in a traumatic brain injury. She has since been in a rehabilitation center, working very hard to recover, which for her, includes learning how to walk again.

According to her occupational therapist, “She had multiple complexities that we were dealing with — vision, weight-bearing precautions, limited movement in her arms, in her legs, and so initially, we were just working on her arousal.” They have nicknamed her Amazing Grace.

She has worked very hard to overcome all her problems, including mental problems, but she is excited to go home. “It was a lot of work, and I'm still doing a lot of work at home and here, but it's good to have all the surrounding communities help support me through all this hard work,” she said.

Special Needs People Attend Night of Wonders

A Nebraska organization, Bridge to Independence, organized an evening where kids with special needs could dress up and spend some time with their families. Many special needs kids attend their high school proms, but some have needs the personnel may not be able to accommodate.

Bridge to Independence President Dr. McKenzie Schneider said, “Typically, you have to be 14, 15 years of age. And with that, we've actually got a couple of terminally ill children here tonight that won't live to be 14 or 15 years of age.” This event was open to all ages.

They plan to hold the event yearly.

PCLinuxOS Recipe Corner Bonus - Cheeseburger Onion Rings

Cheeseburger Onion Rings

for 6 onion rings

INGREDIENTS:

1 lb ground beef
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper
1 teaspoon onion powder
1/4 lb cheddar cheese, cut into 1 inch (2 cm) squares
1 large white onion
1 cup flour
5 eggs, beaten
3 cups panko breadcrumbs
oil, for frying
ketchup

DIRECTIONS:

Heat oil in a pot over medium heat to 350°F (180°C).

In a bowl, mix together the ground beef, salt, pepper, and onion powder.

Peel and slice the onion into 1-centimeter (½ inch) rings. Detach the rings from each other.

Take a spoonful of the beef mixture and press it into the bottom of a ring.

Push a cheddar square into the center of the beef.

Seal the top with another spoonful of the beef, pressing it flat.

Repeat with the rest of the rings.

Place the flour, eggs, and bread crumbs into three separate bowls.

Dip a ring into the flour, shaking off excess, then into the egg, then bread crumbs, then back to the eggs, and one last time into the breadcrumbs.

Repeat with the remaining rings.

Fry the rings for 6 - 7 minutes, until deep golden-brown.

Drain on a paper towel, then serve with ketchup!

Enjoy!

NUTRITION: Serving size: 2 pieces

Calories: 250,    Carbs: 25g,    Fiber: 2g,    Sodium: 660mg,    Protein: 8g

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