And then write some code:

using Notifications;
 
//...
 
// Instantiate a notification
Notification myMessage = new Notification();
 
// Set title and message
myMessage.Summary = "About";
myMessage.Body = "This is an about message.";
 
// Set icon name
myMessage.IconName = Stock.About; // Comment this if you don't want an icon to appear
 
// Finally, show the notification
myMessage.Show();

These are a couple of screenshots of my test application:

Download the test project here: TestNotify (31)

Created by: MBA Online

Little more than three days is left for the Humble Indie Bundle 3, a GREAT offer to acquire seven great multiplatform games (they work on Windows, Mac and Linux!). This is a GREAT offer because you put the price, you pay WHAT YOU WANT for all of these awesome games! Part of your purchase goes to developers and part to charity foundations (EFF and Chil’d Play) and you decide how it is divided. Besides, you can install the games whatever times you may like since all of the games are DRM free! You can redeem them on Steam and Desura even.

But if it is not enough to convince you, if you pay $6 or more, you get five more games that were part of the Humble Indie Bundle 2!

I’ve already made my purchase, what are you waiting for? Go to humblebundle.com and enjoy!

I’m really willing to try this new version, what about you? What is your favorite library among SDL, SFML and Allegro?

Have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! See you in 2011!

If you can read Spanish, here you have the instructions on How to Make a Christmas Tree

$ pv file.tgz | tar xzf - -C target_directory

This will show elapsed time, percentage completed with a progress bar and an estimated time to completion (ETA), something like this

1.16MB 0:00:20 [6.06MB/s] [==================>               ] 55%  ETA 0:00:37

Some more info about pv and examples at: A Unix Utility You Should Know About: Pipe Viewer.

Nicer progress bar using dialog

#!/bin/bash
 
(
for i in {0..100..10}
do
	echo $i
	sleep 1
done
) | dialog --gauge "Progress" 10 40

And this is the command to show the progress of file extraction using pv and dialog:

$ (pv -n file.tgz | tar xzf - -C target_directory ) \
2>&1 | dialog --gauge "Extracting file..." 6 50

The -n parameter makes pv output only percentages, which we pipe and send to dialog as input. It will result in something like this:

I’ve been using this command for some commonly used scripts at work and now they look a lot nicer .

Get notify-send

# aptitude install libnotify-bin

Test it

$ notify-send Title Message

This will show a notification balloon on the top rigth corner of your screen with the indicated title and message. Really, it’s been really useful for my everyday use, I can start a batch process and go on with my other activities, then I receive a notification when the process finishes or requires my attention .

A very simple example is to compile a big program such as alsa:

$ ./configure && make && notify-send "Ready to install"

Or a more elaborated and really nice one .

These days I had to install the software for Ubuntu Lucid (32 bits) at work, and I think I’ll list the required steps to have it working so that I don’t forget them , and maybe it can be of help.

1. Download pk2cmd source code for Linux/Mac OS X (it’s a command line application), you can get the code from the official PICkit2 page under the Linux and Mac OS X Software section at the bottom of the page or using this link: pk2cmdv1.20LinuxMacSource.tar.gz
2. Uncompress the file and cd to the directory

   $ tar xzvf pk2cmdv1.20LinuxMacSource.tar.gz
   $ cd pk2cmdv1.20LinuxMacSource

3. Make sure you have libusb development files:

   $ sudo aptitude install libusb-dev

4. Build the application for linux (this is for Linux kernels 2.6, for older kernels and/other systems (FreeBSD, Mac) check the ReadmeMakefile.txt file.)

   $ make linux

5. Make install as root

   $ sudo make install

6. The device definitions file is copied to /usr/share/pk2/ directory, in order to be able to access it this directory should be in your path. To add it, edit your .bashrc file (in your home directory) and add these lines at the beginning:

   PATH=$PATH:/usr/share/pk2/
   export PATH

7. Test your installation:

   $ pk2cmd -?v

   If PICkit2 is not present (plugged in), you get:

   Executable Version:    1.20.00
   Device File Version:   1.55.00
   OS Firmware Version:   PICkit 2 not found
    
   Operation Succeeded

   If PICkit is plugged:

   Executable Version:    1.20.00
   Device File Version:   1.55.00
   OS Firmware Version:   2.32.00
    
   Operation Succeeded

For instructions on how to use pk2cmd execute it using the -?h parameter. As an example, if you want to program a sample.hex file to a pic16f84a you’d execute:

$ pk2cmd -ppic16f84a -fsample.hex -m

The output would be

PICkit 2 Program Report
3-7-2010, 9:55:24
Device Type: PIC16F84A
 
Program Succeeded.

That’s it. If you get an error message indicating that PK2DeviceFile.dat file can not be found, confirm whether /usr/share/pk2/ directory is in your path.

I have worked successfully with several micro controllers (12F508, 12F629, 12F683, 16F84, 16F628, 16F88, 18F2550 and 18F4550), under Ubuntu 32 and 64 bits without any major problem (sometime ago I read about some issues working under Ubuntu 64 bits, but I tried and didn’t find any).