Use the 'ntfsfix' command in Ubuntu to fix your NTFS partitions in Windows, In order to use the 'ntfsfix' command you have to install 'ntfsprogs' (tools for doing neat things in NTFS partitions from Linux) first

You don't have to install  'ntfsprogs' if the 'command not found'' message doesn't appear when you execute the 'ntfsfix' command, to install 'ntfsprogs', try the following commands:

$ apt-cache search ntfsfix
ntfsprogs - tools for doing neat things in NTFS partitions from Linux
$ apt-get install ntfsprogs

Another thing that you should do before executing the 'ntfsfix' command is to make sure that the Windows partition you want to fix is not mounted on Ubuntu, otherwise, use the 'umount' command to unmount it; note that my Windows partition is loaded in '/dev/sdb5', which is using the '/media/disk' mount point, in your case these paths may be different.

Use the command below to disassociate your windows partition to the mount point:

$ sudo umount /media/disk

After succesfully executing the umount command, you may now finally use the 'ntfsfix' command, again '/dev/sdb5' is the path to my Windows partion, most likely yours is different.

$ sudo ntfsfix /dev/sdb5

You'll see the following messages after, messages may vary based on the process that has to be done on your partition, this one is for a successful process (obviously! hehe)

Processing of $MFT and $MFTMirr completed successfully.
NTFS volume version is 3.1.
NTFS partition /dev/sdb5 was processed successfully.

I have combined and modified codes from Twitter's API and Facebook Connect in order to create a working sample that would let webpage viewers to share or publish a link (from a certain site) to their Twitter and Facebook accounts - simultaneously.

For the Twitter login, I prefer to use oAuth, since Basic authorization/authentication is very unsecure and would be terminated soon.

Here are some helpful developer links to get you started Ü

Facebook Connect
Facebook Connect
Facebook Connect Tutorial1
Connect/Demos

Twitter
Twitter API wiki
Beginner’s Guide to OAuth – Part I: Overview
Twitter-async

Of course, a few modification of my code would let you update your status using a dynamic text, but I'll leave that task to you.

Cheers!

This morning my PC's speed began to slow down (I have VirtualBox, Firefox, jEdit, CoreFTP and winamp on load) the usual noticeable lagging of the mouse cursor's movement irritated me, obviously one of the applications was eating a big chunk of the process, so I hit CTRL + ALT + DELETE, to check what was going on...

The CPU usage shows 100%, then I checked which processes has the highest memory usage, the culprit was firefox - BUT I wasn't really browsing memory heavy webpages, still I checked which tab should I close, then I noticed Yahoo! Mail has an animated flash ad (about 400x400). I closed that tab, then checked my CPU usage again, eventually it went down to 13%.

AHA!

This remarkable discovery Ü lead me to download a firefox plugin to block ads.

Lo and behold! The Adblock Plus by Wladimir Palant

It's very easy to install and supports a lot of filter subscriptions.

URL: http://adblockplus.org/en/

Ideally when you're a PHP programmer/developer you should be able to access Windows and Linux at the same time.

Depending on the number and the built of computers that you have, there are 3 ways to achieve Windows and Linux parallelism:

1. if you have several PCs, acquire two computers and install one pc with Linux and the other with Windows, then hook it up on your network

2. if you only have one PC that can support virtualization, go for this option.

3. if your PC cannot support virtualization, purchase a domain and web space installed with Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP (LAMP)

In my case, during development or experimentation, I would opt for #2.

So what are the advantages of virtualization?

1. You could have several operating systems running without having to reboot.

2. It gives you freedom to mess up with the virtual OS environment. If you screwed up on something during development or testing, you could always rebuild the virtual computing environment. Highly recommended and effective for people who want to learn Linux.

3. You'll save on hardware cost.

Currently, I am using Sun Microsystem's VirtualBox - an open source virtualization software that runs on different platforms such as Windows, Linux, MAC OS etc.

I have installed it on my WindowsXP and Ubuntu OS (I have a dual boot PC)...since then I am one happy soul.

I have been a web programmer for 5 years and I have been faithful to only 3 text editors, namely: Maguma, Dreamweaver and jEdit.

Among the 3, jEdit is my "weapon of choice". Again, this tool was introduced to me by k0n, because he's a show off. (haha! just kidding)

jEdit is written in Java and I've tried using it on Linux and Windows. It also has support for other programming & scripting language, such as java, perl, asp, php..and a lot more, you can see the list under Global options > Editing > Change settings for mode drop down box

What makes this text editor powerful is the plugins you can install to make it an advanced XML/XHTML text editor or an IDE.

Here is a screenshot of the "must have" plugins I use.

If you're using PHP, you should definitely install PHPParserPlugin and SideKick.

One of the "cool" things you can do with this editor is customizing the look&feel; if you notice I use a black background, to reduce the stress on my eyes, and I can have an upbeat Saito Hajime background image, like so:

Looks cool, eh?

So give this text editor a try, download it now!