Dropbox : some files and folders not syncing

This one drove me slightly mad for a few hours.  For me the fix was simple, open the Dropbox preferences, go to Account then click Selective Sync.  Check the boxes of the folders not showing up.  I have no idea how this happened as I highly doubt I set these items to not sync in the first place.

Chrome : slow "resolving host" and err_name_not resolved

Noting this problem happening a lot more recently, even on my very fast internet + using Google DNS.  Tested the same slow/problem pages in Firefox and all is well.

This seems to have fixed it for me.

Copy/paste this into a new tab

chrome://net-internals/#dns

click "Clear Host Cache"

restart Chrome

At first it may throw another err_name_not resolved but after that it should be ok.

Linux Mint + Toshiba laptop : can't adjust brightness with Fn keys / keyboard

This is not an uncommon problem.  For me if I try to use the Fn + brightness up/down keys a popup appears showing the battery status.  After some Googling I found several results, which worked for many people but did nothing for me.  My fallback trick of adjusting the brightness before the OS boots didn't work either.  Fortunately I found this command in buried in the comments somewhere and it works fine.

SUDO'd

echo 160 | sudo tee /sys/class/backlight/intel_backlight/brightness > /dev/null

That's pretty dim.  For slightly brighter pick a higher number

echo 260 | sudo tee /sys/class/backlight/intel_backlight/brightness > /dev/null

While you're at it might as well install GTK Redshit to save your eyes some at night.

ROOT

dim 

echo 160 | tee /sys/class/backlight/intel_backlight/brightness > /dev/null

brighter

echo 260 | tee /sys/class/backlight/intel_backlight/brightness > /dev/null

This also seems to work on Debian and CentOS.

Solved : Keyboard media keys (next, pause) stop working with Spotify

For the past week or so I've had this really annoying problem.  Randomly the media keys on my Toshiba laptop would stop working, so I could only switch songs if I stopped what I was doing, went back to spotify, then moved the mouse and clicked the next button like some kind of cave man.

I Google'd it several times and the fixes would work, but not for very long before they problem started again.  I tried drivers and all kinds of stuff.  Made sure my Chrome didn't have a Google Music extension (common cause of this bug).

I solved this problem by closing iTunes.  After that my media keys work perfectly again.  While iTunes was open it was trying to retake control of the media keys like some kind of nazi every few seconds.  Which is why the fixes worked, but not for long.

So if your media keys don't work in spotify close whatever over music player shit you have open, yo.