We Are All Robots

Bashrc and Gnome-Shell.CSS

2011-07-10T17:53:00.003-07:00

A while back I posted about the elements that make up my bashrc file. It's changed quite a bit over the last couple years as have my thoughts on how best to share such information. A blog is a great place to post one off, snapshots of information but for things that change... not so much. So I decided to host it publicly on Google Docs. At first I put it up there to make it easier to for me to setup new computers but I figure it doesn't hurt for anyone interested to see what it looks like and even add something through discussions and comments.

My bashrc

And while I'm at it I'm also going to post my gnome-shell.css file. I talked about changing this file to make Gnome-Shell a little more space conscious but never got around to posting the changes that I made.

My gnome-shell.css

Enjoy!

Numlock Persistence in Gnome 3

2011-06-07T20:51:00.000-07:00

For some reason numlock is reset every time Gnome 3 shuts down returning to its default state (off). I think most people would expect it to remember its state but this is sadly not the case. But this is Linux, so there is always a work around.

Personally I don't ever want numlock turned off, so this work around is more about always starting up with numlock turned on rather than having it remember its previous state.

Using a program called numlockx there are 2 ways we can do this, when you log in which affects just your account or at startup affecting everyone.

First download numlockx from the repos. For Fedora:
sudo yum install numlockx

1. Turn Numlock on at Login

Launch the hidden application to edit the applications that launch on login:
gnome-session-properties

Add a new entry

Name: Numlockx
Command: numlockx on
Comment: Turns on numlock

2. Turn Numlock on at Startup

As a superuser edit the file /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc
sudo nano /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc

At the beginning of the file add the following line
/usr/bin/numlockx on

Numlock should now have the behaviour that you want!

Courtesy of Vivek

Reenabling the Delete Key in Gnome 3 Nautilus

2011-05-29T15:21:00.002-07:00

In Nautilus Gnome 2, the Delete key used to send selected items to the trash. To do the same in Gnome 3, you now have to use the shortcut: Ctrl+Delete. That's kind of annoying. To change it back, grab dconf-editor from the repos if you don't have it.
sudo yum install dconf-editor

Run it in a terminal
dconf-editor

Go to org > gnome > desktop > interface and check can-change-accels. This will let you dynamically change keyboard shortcuts to menu commands.

Now open up Nautilus and select a file. Open the Edit menu, hover the mouse over the Move to Trash menu item (don't press, just hover!) and hit your delete key twice (the first press disables the previous shortcut the second enables the new one).

That's it! At this point I highly recommend unchecking can-change-accels so that you don't accidently change any other shortcuts.

Courtesy of kryo.

Things To Do On Installing Fedora 15 And Tweaking Gnome-Shell

2011-05-23T14:12:00.003-07:00

I've started using the beta of Fedora 15 (Lovelock) that uses Gnome-Shell and it is awesome! I really dig the new interface. It's clean and simple and stays out of the way. There are no menus to search through to open applications or common files and the integrated chat is just amazing. But it should still be considered beta software. Too many things that you would think were basic changes require command line tweaks or coding knowledge. There are a lot of settings that used to be easy to change in Gnome 2 that aren't easily accessible anymore. Gnome 3 is not yet ready for the computer un-savvy.

1. Gnome Tweak Tool

Though Gnome 3 comes with a single tool for editing System Settings it is no where near complete. So the first thing we need is the Gnome Tweak Tool created by John Stowers to pick up some of the slack. It should be available in the default repos as gnome-tweak-tool. Among other things this will let you easily change themes, add back min/max buttons if you miss them (though I find myself agreeing with the case for their removal) and change font size, hinting and anti-aliasing.

sudo yum install gnome-tweak-tool

2. Startup Applications

Another thing that isn't easily accessible is managing your startup applications. The tool that did this in the past is still available but just missing a launcher. To start it run gnome-session-properties in a terminal.

gnome-session-properties

3. Keyboard Shortcuts

Not exactly a tweak but it is handy to know some of the new key commands used in gnome-shell. Here's an in-depth intro. Some really good ones to know:

Super key (aka System or Windows key) - Switches from desktop to overview modes. You will use this all the time.
rt in the Alt+F2 launcher - This reloads the theme and will be very useful when we start tweaking the theme file later on.
Ctrl+Alt+Shift+Up/Down arrow - Moves the current window to a different workspace. This one I just found today and I already find it pretty useful.

4. Arch tweaks

The ArchLinux wiki has a great list of tweaks, though some caution is necessary when trying them out. My favourite of the bunch is how to disable the accessibility icon. It's great that accessibility is so easy to change for those who need it but it just takes up space for those who don't. ArchLinux also has a more general list of tweaks not specific to gnome-shell that is worth checking out.

5. Extensions

A few other useful extensions have surfaced on the internet. Those I've found particularly handy:

Alternative Status Menu - gnome-shell-extension-alternative-status-menu in the repos. This adds Hibernate and Power Off entries to the top right corner menu so you don't have to hold Alt to get to them.
Windows Navigator - gnome-shell-extension-windowsNavigator It lets you select between open windows in the overview by holding Alt+number. Great for people that like keyboard shortcuts.
Adwaita Improved Theme - A theme from half-left that reduces some of the padding around windows and buttons in the default theme.

Webupd8 (a fantastic blog) also has a nice section of Gnome-shell themes and extensions that you should check out.

6. Customizing the Interface

One of the greatest new features of gnome-shell is that pretty much everything is done using common web technologies (xml, javascript and css). This gives anyone who's done a bit of web development a huge leg up on making themes and extensions for gnome-shell. One of the first things I wanted to change when I first saw gnome-shell was spacing. Everything in the default style takes up way too much space. All this can be changed in the main style sheet is located at /usr/share/gnome-shell/theme/gnome-shell.css.

Save a copy of the file before you start tweaking in case anything goes wrong!

A must have resource for editing this file is a guide to it's terminology. Best of luck!

7. Things I'm still looking for

There are a few things I still want before I can call my gnome-shell setup perfect. Hopefully I can find someone who's already done some of these or find the time to do it myself.

Replicating the behaviour of the Compiz Grid plugin. I used this all the time, it let you move windows to specific areas of the screen using only keyboard shortcuts. The snap left/right behaviour in gnome-shell is just a cheap imitation and gets in the way when I move windows close to my screen's edge.
Weather information in the calendar menu similar to the gnome 2 calendar.
Have the Open Calendar button in the calendar menu open google calendar in my browser since I don't use Evolution. [Solved, see Jason's comment]
The new Ubuntu style disappearing scroll bars.
Being able to Shutdown/Restart/Hibernate/Suspend quickly, using only the keyboard (anybody know some hotkeys for this? Or maybe I'll just create some .desktop files to implement this behaviour).
Panel icon to notify me of package updates
Number lock persistence, when I log out with number lock on I expect to log in with number lock on. I'm going to report this as a bug.

Facebook Privacy Settings

2011-01-10T22:30:00.001-08:00

A while back, Engadget posted a way to better handle Facebook privacy by using friend lists. Around the time I was also playing around with the idea and admit to stealing some of Nilay Patel's to better round out the modular solution I ended up with.

The difference between my solution and Patel's is that instead of dividing all friends into 1 of 3 lists (Limited, People I don't know well, People I trust) I make categories for my privacy settings and check off which things I want people to have access to when I add them. Let me show you what I mean.

First the 4 categories I've divided my privacy settings:

Privacy: Bio will grant people access to more information on who I am and what my interests are.
Privacy: Contact Info will grant people access to ways of contacting me (email, phone number)
Privacy: Places will grant people access to my check-ins
Privacy: Pictures/Videos will grant people access to my pictures and videos

This way I can grant each person access to different parts of my profile without assuming that our friendship progresses through the same levels of trust.

Now for deciding what each list has access to. Here's what I have though you may want more or less restrictions depending on how paranoid you rank relative to me.

Things I share

Posts by me - Friends Only; Except Limited Profile
Family - Privacy: Bio
Relationships - Friends Only; Except Limited Profile
Interested in and looking for - Friends Only; Except Limited Profile
Bio and favorite quotations - Privacy: Bio
Website - Everyone
Religious and political views - Privacy: Bio
Birthday - Friends Only
Places I check in to - Privacy: Places
photo albums - each Privacy: Pictures/Videos unless more private

Things others share

Photos and videos I'm tagged in - Privacy: Pictures/Videos
Can comment on posts - Friends Only
Suggest photos of me to friends - This is not yet available but when it is Friends Only
Friends can post on my Wall - Enable
Can see Wall posts by friends - Friends Only; Except Limited Profile
Friends can check me in to Places - Disabled

Contact information

Mobile phone - Privacy: Contact Info
Other phone - Privacy: Contact Info
Address - Privacy: Places
IM screen name - Friends Only
Email - Privacy: Contact Info

Hopefully this give the privacy conscious among you some ideas on how to better tackle facebook.

Chromium Tor-Button

2010-09-20T23:46:00.000-07:00

Here's a great LifeHacker tutorial on how to get a button to easily enable and disable Tor in Chrome/Chromium. For those who haven't used Tor before it's a free network of distributed proxies that "prevents somebody watching your Internet connection from learning what sites you visit, [and] prevents the sites you visit from learning your physical location." For more information visit www.torproject.org.

Using tmpfs for Security and Speed

2010-08-14T13:38:00.006-07:00

I have 3.9GBs of RAM of which Ubuntu 10.04 (Lucid Lynx) hardly touches more than 512MBs so I'm going to move all my temporary files to RAM. This will result in 2 things:

Reading and writing temporary files will be much faster.
Temporary files will be more securely removed on shutdown.

Standard practice for Linux is to store temporary files in /tmp. A quick edit of the file system table (located at /etc/fstab) will make sure that the /tmp directory is mounted as a RAM disk using tmpfs. Open up /etc/fstab in an editor (vim, nano, gedit etc.) as a super user and append the following line:

tmpfs /tmp tmpfs defaults,noatime,mode=1777 0 2

Let's go over some of the syntax of the line we just entered. There are 6 parts to any fstab entry, each separated by whitespace:

device: This typically names the device or partition being mounted through either a /dev address or a UUID. Since our entry isn't a physical device we can give it any arbitrary name, I've chosen tmpfs.
mount point: This is where our new file system is attached to the root file system.
type: This is the type of filesystem we're creating.
options: These are options we're giving to the filesystem. The options I've provided are:
- default: Default file system options
- noatime: Linux will update the access time property of a file whenever it is read or written, something that is really only useful on servers or if you use mutt for your email. I add this option to most of my file systems for a small performance boost.
- mode=1777: This will give read and write permissions to everybody.
dump: If set to 1, dump will make backups of this file system. To not make backups we set to 0.
pass: This is the order fsck will check each filesystem. 0 is skip, 1 is reserved for /root and 2 should be used for the rest.

This new mount point will be enable on next reboot.

Speed and security sounds like something I want Chromium to benefit from as well. To move Chromium's cache to our new tmpfs open up /usr/share/applications/chromium-browser.desktop. This is the configuration file for how Chromium appears in menus and is launched. Near the bottom will be a line starting with Exec similar to:
Exec=chromium-browser %U
Change this to:
Exec=chromium-browser --disk-cache-dir="/tmp" %U

Now to make Firefox use our new RAM disk to store it's temporary files go to about:config and add a new string entry for
browser.cache.disk.parent_directory
and enter:
/tmp

Credit goes to Fewt for inspiring this article, though he goes a little further by also moving logs to RAM, which doesn't seem the safest thing to do, but hey, whatever you want to do with your system...

Nautilus Thumbnails with Drop Shadows

2010-08-14T12:50:00.000-07:00

Replace ugly white bordered thumbnails in nautilus with a drop-shadow effect

nvidia-current Driver Failing to Load

2010-08-07T10:16:00.004-07:00

I've had a really odd issue bothering me the entire time that I've been running Ubuntu 10.04 (Lucid Lynx). About half the time when I start up my computer I get a message that Ubuntu has failed to load the proprietary nvidia driver and is running in low graphics mode.

A number of other people have also run into this issue and have posted on launchpad or in the forums. I've found quite a few suggested fixes for the problem though the ones I've tried haven't worked for me and none have fixed the problem for all who tried them.

Uninstalling the repository nvidia driver and downloading the latest driver from the nvidia website. (how to) I haven't tried this as when my system doesn't have a nvidia driver it fails to boot even to low resolution mode, forcing me to reinstall everything from 9.10 Karmic.
Blacklisting the other graphics drivers. (how to) It didn't work for me.
Boot with nomodeset option. (how to) It didn't work for me
Add bus id to xorg.conf. (how to) Haven't tried it, but it didn't work for another poster.

So far the only thing that has worked for me is the following work around. When the low graphics mode warning appears, log into the terminal and enter:

sudo start gdm

The GDM log in screen then starts up in full resolution. Thanks go to Mr. Moustache for pointing me in the right direction.

Setting Up Lucid Lynx

2010-06-06T22:51:00.006-07:00

It's been a long time since I've posted anything, it seems I just don't have the ego required to maintain a regular blog. Oh well, I'll continue posting things that I find interesting at my own pace. Like a lot of my posts are probably going to be, today's post will mostly be for my own benefit. I want to write down all that I did to set up my new install of Ubuntu 10.04 (Lucid Lynx). That way if things go wrong I won't have to depend on my terrible memory to set it all back up again.

First things first, installing. Something about the way the new Ubuntu handles graphics doesn't agree with my laptop (Asus K60) so I can't run the Live CD or anything. Instead to do a "clean" install I had to install Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala), install a proprietary NVIDIA driver and then do a distribution upgrade. Total time about 3 hours.

Before doing any more package management it's best to switch to the fastest server. So just go to the Update settings and press Choose Best Server. That'll make all the rest happen a lot faster.

Some packages to remove:

Most of the included games (although I like gbrainy)

Some packages to add:

ntp (and then adjust the time and date settings to make use of the nearest ntp server)
ubuntu-restricted-extras
easytag (I'm a little neurotic about how my music files are tagged)
chromium
fotoxx (my favorite app for editing photos, the repositories only hold a very out dated version so I get it straight from the source)
gimp (I don't use it very often but sometimes it's nice to have a photo editing app a little more powerful than fotoxx)
ccsm (choosing between none, normal and extra is no way to manage desktop effects)
vlc (it just plays everything)
gnome-do (I hate navigating menus to launch apps and Gnome Shell isn't quite ready yet)
tilda (got to have a terminal just a key press away)
conky (though I'll probably do it differently for 10.04, this was my old set up)
ubuntu tweak
meld (a great graphical diff viewer)
Compiz 0.8.6 (it's been stable for a while but the default repositories still only have 0.8.4)
powertop
backintime (set this up with an external hard drive and it's the easiest back up system ever)

Flash 10.0 has some issues on 64 bit machines (like not being able to press any buttons inside of flash). Luckily there's a stable beta of Flash 10.1 that works fine. The easiest way to get it is to use the Get64bitFlash script that michael37 put up on the Ubuntu forums.

Some settings I like to change:

power (I don't want my laptop going to sleep when I close the lid to carry it into another room)
font rendering (full hinting baby!)
window buttons (use gconf-editor to put them back to the right where they belong)
enable color bash prompt (uncomment the right line in ~/.bashrc) use green [0;32]
panels and panel elements (I like having only 1 panel at the top and no separate App, Places, System menus)
startup applications
language support (add French and German)
Re-enable Ctrl-Alt-Backspace
Firefox speed settings (though I don't use it much, I still want it to be as fast as possible)
Bash history search (I like my up and down arrows to auto-complete from history based on current input rather than just go through the list of all commands. To do this just add 2 lines to ~/.inputrc: "/e[A": history-search-backward and "/e[B": history-search-forward

Some extensions I like to add to Chromium:

AdBlock
FlashBlock
ChromeMUSE (URL shortener and expander)
Clickable Links (turns text into clickable links)
fsDaily RSS auto-clicker (Script I wrote myself to make reading the fsDaily RSS feed easier)
Ambiance theme

And that's my setup.

64 bit GnoMenu

2010-01-02T00:37:00.005-08:00

GnoMenu is a fantastic project to get a main menu for Gnome that IMHO looks a little nicer than a plain menu system. Check it out:

While GnoMenu is primarily designed for Ubuntu (although it does have packages for other Gnome based distributions) the developers have only created a 32 bit DEB package.

Thankfully with a few changes to the source and the makefile 64 bit users can work around this issue with relative ease.

1. Download the latest source and extract it. You can use your home directory but you might find that if you need to compile other programs from source that it becomes a bit messy. I like to keep all my sources as well as personal programming projects in a Programs directory but feel free to organize however you like.

2. Make sure you have all the dependencies (found in README.txt). If you are running a regular install of Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic) and haven't deleted any of your python packages you can do this by opening a terminal and running:
sudo apt-get install python-numpy python-xlib deskbar-applet

3. Go to where you extracted the file. Open up MakeFile in a text editor and replace all instances of lib with lib64 (in gedit this is easily done with Ctrl+h).

4. Do the same with:

setup.py
src/bin/GnoMenu.py
src/lib/bonobo/GNOME_GnoMenu.server

5. Also rename the src/lib directory to src/lib64.

5b. Now I haven't tested this part as I don't need it but if you wish GnoMenu to integrate with AWN, Cairo-dock, Gnome-Do or XFCE4 you may have to make similar edits in the files contained in src/share/*/ (Best of luck).

6. Now your all set to compile. Go back to the main gnomenu directory and run the makefile. The easiest way to do this is go to the directory in a terminal and run:
sudo make install

It should now be selectable as a deskbar applet when you right click a panel. Enjoy a beautiful new and theme-able menu.

Why I Switched Back from Arch to Ubuntu

2009-12-26T18:29:00.002-08:00

While I've had a great deal of fun using Arch Linux I've decided to go back to Ubuntu. The biggest reason why? All the recent changes to Linux to create Ubuntu Karmic and the changes being proposed for Ubuntu Lucid. While what can be customize in Arch is fantastic and the wiki, tutorials and community are incredibly helpful, somethings are just too involved to build and too enticing to avoid. But in Ubuntu these things are getting integrated into the default distro so that anyone can use them.

What things do I mean? Take encryption for one. While it is possible to do it in Arch and other distros, Ubuntu makes it a one click process during installation. With one click your /home partition is securely encrypted so that if your laptop is lost none of your personal data will ever fall into the wrong hands (as long as you choose a good password)

The installation process itself is another reason I'm switching. Getting to a useable Ubuntu desktop takes less than a half hour. Installing Arch for the first time took me a good part of a day and while it meant having nearly no wasted space on my hard drive, it wasn't exactly a simple process. So if ever something goes horribly wrong (and it's happened a few time to me already) rebuilding a fully functioning system is dead simple with Ubuntu.

One of the nicest things I liked about Arch was how easy it was to tweak my boot process and speed it up. My laptop was booting in half the time it took to boot to Jaunty. But Canonical's efforts towards speeding up the booting process have been impressive. The gap is becoming smaller and smaller. Upstart, xsplash and soon completing the replacement of hal with udev, there's some amazing technology coming out of these guys.

Canonical's whole drive to bring Linux to the mainstream is another thing I like about Ubuntu. It seems strange but the simple fact that during boot it displays a loading bar rather than terminal output makes it seem friendlier to people that have never seen Linux before. With Arch I used to get reactions like "That's Linux? Looks hard." rather than "U-bun-tu? I thought Linux was all command line and stuff." This is a distro that non-techie people can actually get to use and like so doing some free advertising for Canonical is fine by me. (To the other techie people out there, I agree that the CLI is more useful and prefer it myself but "normal" people actually find these things intimidating and it's a good thing that Linux is going mainstream this way, trust me).

There are some things I'll miss about Arch though. Firstly: having the fastest publish to package time of any distro. Managing packages with Pacman. I never even thought about replacing it with a graphical tool while using it, that app can do anything. Another thing I'll miss is how simple everything was written and divided up. Ubuntu can try to be a little too helpful in its documentation within some of its system files and covers them will tons of commented out settings with lengthy explanations. Although it's nice that they do that for you, it lacks the minimalist beauty of the Arch Way.

In Arch all those settings were explained in the Arch Wiki, another thing I'll greatly miss. That wiki had everything you needed to know to make Arch yours and anything that wasn't there would be in the forums. The Arch community is a fantastic and incredibly helpful bunch of people. And they really know their stuff. I still visit both of these sites when looking for help as they're useful for non Arch related things too.

But I've decided for all it's customizing fun it's time to move on. Good bye Arch, you've taught me much and it's been fun but this geek is moving on to a system where he spends more time using it rather than tweaking it (in theory at least).

Day of Conky

2009-12-17T21:58:00.017-08:00

The Day of Ubuntu wallpaper is a beautiful and subtle transitioning wallpaper that makes your desktop scene of a tree in a field change with the passing of time. To complement this effect I've written a conky configuration that changes colour along with it.

Feel free to make use of the script if you like it, although you'll probably have to modify it to suit your computer. Currently it's set up for a dual core computer with an nvidia graphics card and a screen resolution of 1366 x 768. The script I use to display available updates is based on one by plb (if you make use of it remember to check that the file path in the conky script matches the location of the script).

Here's the conky code, enjoy!

# DAY OF CONKY

# version 1.4

# by Oliver Schmid



# Behaviour

double_buffer yes

update_interval 1



# Window

own_window  no

own_window_transparent yes

draw_borders no

draw_shades no



# Position

gap_x 10

gap_y -85

alignment bottom_left



# Font

use_xft yes

xftfont bauhaus:pixelsize=10



# Colour  Start time Colour

default_color  5E6A73 #  0:00      midnight

color1 5E6941  # 2:20  50% midnight / dawn

color2 5E680E  #  5:00      dawn

color3 5A6D0F  #  7:54  33% dawn / noon

color4 567211  # 10:00  69% dawn / noon

color5 527612  # 12:17      noon

color6 406A2F  # 14:54  33% noon / dusk

color7 2F5F48  # 17:00  69% noon / dusk

color8 1B5267  # 18:40 dusk

color9 3D5E6D  # 23:00  50% dusk / midnight



#### Day of Ubuntu Transitions ####

#  1:00 -  2:00 midnight   #

#  2:00 -  6:00 midnight -> dawn  #

#  6:00 -  7:00 dawn    #

#  7:00 - 13:00 dawn -> noon   #

# 13:00 - 14:00 noon    #

# 14:00 - 20:00 noon -> dusk   #

# 20:00 - 21:00 dusk    #

# 21:00 -  1:00 dusk -> midnight  #

###################################





TEXT

${if_match ${time %k%M}>=220}${color1}${endif}

${if_match ${time %k%M}>=500}${color2}${endif}

${if_match ${time %k%M}>=754}${color3}${endif}

${if_match ${time %k%M}>=1000}${color4}${endif}

${if_match ${time %k%M}>=1217}${color5}${endif}

${if_match ${time %k%M}>=1454}${color6}${endif}

${if_match ${time %k%M}>=1700}${color7}${endif}

${if_match ${time %k%M}>=1840}${color8}${endif}

${if_match ${time %k%M}>=2300}${color9}${endif}

${if_match ${time %k%M}>=2345}${color}${endif}

CPU0: ${freq_g 0} GHz ${cpugraph 0 7,45 888888 888888}

CPU1: ${freq_g 1} GHz ${cpugraph 1 7,45 888888 888888}



${voffset -39}${offset 135}[ ${loadavg 1} : ${loadavg 2} : ${loadavg 3} ]

${offset 165}${running_processes} / ${processes}



${voffset -39}${offset 240}MEM: ${offset 5}${membar 7,45}

${offset 240}SWAP: ${swapbar 7,45}



${voffset -39}${offset 333}HDD: ${fs_bar 7,45 /}

${offset 333}IO: ${offset 13}${diskiograph /dev/sda1 7,45 888888 888888}



${voffset -39}${offset 423}CPU: ${acpitemp}°C

${offset 423}GPU: ${execi 60 nvidia-settings -t -q GPUCoreTemp}°C



${voffset -27}${offset 630}Uptime: ${uptime_short}



${voffset -27}${offset 1230}${texeci 600 /home/oliver/Programs/availableUpdates.sh}

And the available updates script:

#!/bin/sh

# Conky script to display available updates

# by Oliver Schmid



NUMUPDATES=$(aptitude search "~U" | wc -l)

if [ $NUMUPDATES -eq 1 ]; then

echo $NUMUPDATES Update Available

elif [ $NUMUPDATES -gt 0 ]; then

echo $NUMUPDATES Updates Available

fi

Update Dec 18, 2009: There may be a better way to do this by modifying this lua script.

Update Dec 24, 2009: A few minor changes in the timing and colours, compare version numbers for latest source.

Gnome-panel Transparency Without Shadow

2009-12-11T13:57:00.009-08:00

Enabling desktop effects in Ubuntu can be a beautiful thing but it's default handling of window shadows with another effect I like to have which is to make my panel transparent. While I like having my windows make shadows (it makes them look more 3D), I hate it when my transparent panel casts one too.

To get rid of the gnome-panel shadow first install Compiz. Then go to Systems > Preferences > CompizConfig Settings Manager. Under Window Decoration change the setting for Shadow windows from any to !(class=Gnome-panel).

This way the panel no longer casts a shadow but your windows will still get to keep theirs. Tip courtesy of The Fiddler.

Missing GPG Key?

2009-12-06T14:35:00.003-08:00

Today I was installing Ubuntu on my new laptop (my Compaq F700 was sadly destroyed by extensive hardware failure for no apparent reason; the motherboard, hard drive and possibly everything else is all gone. It's been replaced by a shiny new Asus K60). I missed grabbing the GPG key for a new source I was installing. Rather than go track that down I found a more general solution for any missing GPG key.

So when Ubuntu tells you:

GPG error: http://ppa.launchpad.net karmic Release: The following signatures couldn't be verified because the public key is not available: NO_PUBKEY [hex string giving the id of the key]

Just enter:

gpg --recv-keys [replace with key id]

gpg --export [replace with key id] | sudo apt-key add -

sudo apt-get update

Tip courtesy of ironblade.

Installing XPCE Prolog in Ubuntu

2009-11-23T14:56:00.006-08:00

One of my current coding projects at UBC right now is designing a program to help someone play the board game Clue (aka. Cluedo). I can't give away any of the implementation details because part of our grade will depend on how well our program helps us play against the other teams, but I just wanted to share how I got XPCE (the graphical user interface library for Prolog) to work under Ubuntu as it doesn't by default. I did find some help online but it took me a while to understand what this guy meant when he explained the fix. Hopefully I can clear up how to do it.

Here's what he said:

Some of these intallations rename the pl executable. SWI-Prolog however loads a system init file called .rc in the Prolog home dir (typically /usr/lib/pl-). After renaming pl this file needs to be renamed accordingly. And, of course, you need to be running X11 ...

This is what it means:

The command that starts the Prolog command line interpreter gets renamed by installing XPCE. And XPCE looks for a .rc file that has the same name as the new command. The old .rc file however doesn't get renamed by the install and so the whole thing doesn't work.

The easy fix is just to go to the directory that contains all the Prolog and XPCE libraries (mine is /usr/lib/swi-prolog) and rename the *.rc file to the new command (the new command for me happened to be prolog).

When I looked in my Prolog library directory I found 2 .rc files, swipl.rc and xpce.rc. It's confusing but except for the name they we're exactly the same (how to diff). Because of all the duplication and the searching for wrong file names I didn't feel like changing either of their names in case some other package needed either of them and just created a prolog.rc symlink to swipl.rc. Problem solved.

I have no idea why someone hasn't fixed this for Ubuntu as the equivalent packages under Arch Linux work out of the box but I hope this helps.

Guide to Setting Up the Perfect Karmic Desktop

2009-11-10T15:10:00.000-08:00

Mostly for my own benefit I'm going to describe the process I go through to setup my desktop on a new install of Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala). The benefit for myself is that if anything goes horribly wrong, a reinstall becomes incredibly easy as everything I've done is written down in one place.

1. Switch to Fastest Mirror

Go to System > Administration > Software Sources select Download from: Other and Select Best Server.

2. Graphics Card Driver

My current GPU (GeForce G102M) isn't very well supported by the open source driver (800x600 resolution on my 1366x768 screen is unacceptable) so grab the latest driver.

3. Remove Unused Programs

-Bluetooth - I don't have a device that uses it (or a computer that supports it).
-Empathy - Trying to integrate facebook chat with empathy hasn't worked for me, I don't use any of the video chat features and I don't like how the groups can't be reordered so I'll stick with Pidgin.
-Evolution - I worship at the altar of the all powerful Google.
-F-Spot - My photo editing is done through the much more capable (yet under appreciated) application fotoxx, check it out.
-Games (Solitaire, Blackjack, Five or More, Four in a Row, Iagno, Klotski, Mahjongg, Nibbles, Robots, Same GNOME, Sudoku, Tali, Tetravex) - I am so glad Canonical has decided to trim this list for Lucid.
-GIMP - While I think the application is a great alternative to Photoshop I don't do any graphic design work and have never really used it.
-onBoard - I unfortunately don't have a tablet.
-Orca - I am fortunately not visually impaired.
-PalmOS Devices - I don't have one.
-Rhythmbox - I prefer gMusicBrowser.
-Totem - I'm a VLC man.
-Transmission - I prefer Deluge.

4. Install Missing Programs

-BackInTime - Back ups have saved my ass so many times, I highly suggested you regularly back up to external media (I use an external harddrive) as well as use Ubuntu One or another online syncing service to back up things that change daily like a current project that you are working on.
-Cheese - Might as well have an app that uses the webcam in my laptop.
-Chromium - Fast, sandboxed and minimalist browser with extensions like: AdThwart, ChromeMUSE, fsdaily redirect, FlashBlock Google Mail Checker, Surf The Channel - Remove Ads, Xmarks.
-CompizSettingsManager - Ubuntu comes default with Compiz but without a decent settings manager.

-Conky - Systems monitor on your desktop, check out my current one: Day of Conky that goes great with the Day of Ubuntu transitioning wallpaper.

-DayPlanner - Handy little app to remember my schedule.

-Deluge

-DVDplayBack - Install libdvdread4 and run "sudo /usr/share/doc/libdvdread4/install-css.sh"
-Flash - The lastest version of 64 bit flash for Linux.

-Fotoxx - download here.

-Gnome Do - Handy app launcher.

-GnuCash - Finance Manager.
-gstreamer plugins - common codecs to play all your media.

-NTP - keeps clock up to date.
-Pidgin
-PidginFacebookChat - It's in the standard repositories but here is the latest version.

-pptp - To connect to UBC's VPN.

-Preload - an adaptive readahead daemon (it looks at which apps you use most often and loads them into memory before you need them so that they start faster).

-Tilda - Drop down terminal, incredibly useful if you constantly switch between GUI and CLI like I do.
-UbuntuTweak - Handy to change some settings as well as install the repositories and latest versions of certain applications.
-vim - Much more fun than nano.
-VLC

5. Apply Fixes

-Notification - All notifications should be in the top right corner.
-Panel Shadow - Transparent panels drop unsightly shadows.

6. Change Some Settings

-Basics - Compiz effects, default programs, keyboard shortcuts, language support (English, French and German), main menu layout, mouse speed, power settings.
-Bash - history searching, aliases and functions.
-Font - Hinting and sub-pixel smoothing.
-Panels - I like having just one panel at the top of my screen and one main menu.
-Startup Apps - Disable the GNOME Login Sound, Indicator Applet and add delays to most everything else to make login in faster (that link also has some other speed hacks, some safer than others).

Functional Programming Languages, Code Readability and Multi-core Processors

2009-10-05T22:09:00.003-07:00

Two of my computer science courses this year have to do with learning functional programming languages. The other day (actually about a month ago, this post has taken me a while to write as I've got plenty of school work to do and that's taken precedence) one of my professors mentioned that first year computer science courses were now teaching Scheme instead of the Java I learned at the time. More and more I come across mentions of Functional Programming Languages (FPLs) and how they're the next big thing. But why? And what makes them so different from the Java and C++ and other imperative programming languages (IPLs) that I've learned?

It used to be the case that hardware was expensive and programmers were cheap. So the greater your code was optimized the better the end result. This gave rise to C, C++, etc. which were absolutely great for writing code that used as little memory and processing time as possible. Unfortunately, this came at a sacrifice of Code Readability. Take this comparison of Quicksort written in C++:

int partition(int a[], int p, int r) {

int x = a[r];

int j = p - 1;

for (int i = p; i < r; i++) {



if (x <= a[i]) {

j = j + 1;

int temp = a[j];

a[j] = a[i];

a[i] = temp;

}

}

a[r] = a[j + 1];

a[j + 1] = x;



return (j + 1);

}



void quickSort(int a[], int p, int r) {

if (p < r) {

int q = partition(a, p, r);

quickSort(a, p, q - 1);

quickSort(a, q + 1, r);

}

}

With Quicksort writen in Haskell, a purely functional programming language.

quicksort:

qsort [] = []

qsort (x:xs) = qsort (filter (<= x) xs) ++ [x] ++ qsort (filter (> x) xs)

Even with no knowledge of Haskell and just a basic knowledge of functions you can see that what it does is map an empty domain to an empty range, and for all other cases recursively sort the smaller and larger halves and then concatenate that list. Now try and work your way through the C++ version for the first time (one of my earlier compsci classes took almost an entire 1 hour lecture to do this).

Today hardware is cheap, our processors are lightning fast, while software developers are getting payed better (at least in the US). So with less time spent writing code, you have more time for debugging (which becomes quicker because your code is that much more readable) and you can release your software faster, meaning your company is ahead with the newest thing and makes more money.

We have nearly reached the physical limits of how small we can make computer chips. The big thing now in chip design is multi-core. Everything is duo this or quad that, the PS3 even has some 8 cores. The challenge now is making use of all these cores. Code doesn't naturally know when it can be split into parallel tasks so developers wanting to take advantage of these new multi-core chips are having to pour over their old code and figure out what can be made parallel and what needs to stay serial.

So again, code readability comes into play as people go over the old things and try to parallelize them. The other big challenge with parallelization in IPLs is managing side effects. Parallel processes will need access to the same bits of data but if one process changes a bit of data and doesn't tell the other processes then those parallel process will not only give out the wrong solution but really strange solutions that don't make any sense when reading over the code. So imperative languages have things like locks and semaphores to guard data.

But then there are FPLs. A purely functional language doesn't need these concurrency controls. Why? Because of referential transparency. FPLs guarantee that given the same input, the same output will always be returned. Any function in an FPL has to have all needed data passed in. When it passes back its output, that's it. Only the output comes back nothing else has changed, no side effects.

Anyways, just some things to think about. And a note, I'm not saying FPLs are necessarily better than IPLs just that they have certain advantages that should be noticed more rather than giving all the attention to more common languages like C++ and Java. But FPLs also come with some concepts that can be hard to rap your head around like monads, the way FPLs handle I/O and state changes without introducing side effects. And if you don't like recursion, it's probably not for you, these languages are all about recursion.

Robots Learning and Moving Smoothly

2009-09-27T00:10:00.003-07:00

Just wanted to talk about a couple really cool robots. First off, ASIMO. Honda's brainchild is smart little fella. He sees in 3D, can judge distances, direction and speed of multiple moving objects. He can recognize voices, faces and hand gestures, objects and terrain. He talks and he learns.

That last part is the part that has me most awestruck. Check out ASIMO's learning in this clip.

He learned the difference between a table and a chair! Holly crap. Like the guy in the video said, he isn't just recognizing objects, filing them away in a database and comparing new objects to ones he already "knows", he's learned some fundamental concept of a chair and judged that a table is different.

Did you see how they never named the chair and table like they did with the toy duck, "grandpa" and the mini cooper? All they told ASIMO to do was "learn what this flat thing is". So he couldn't just associate a word with a particular object, he had to think about what made this new object unique. I wonder though if "flat" was some sort of hint? Could that key word have helped ASIMO realize that a key feature of a chair is it's flatness? He must also have set some bounds on the size and shape of a seat and it's height off the floor because he could differentiated it from a table. I wonder if a big chair or a small table would confuse him? In any case, consider me very impressed.

This other one is a bit old but I still consider it one of the greatest examples of a robot moving as naturally as something alive. See Big Dog handle a bunch of different terrains, slopes, slipping on ice (1:24) and someone trying to kick it over (0:33).

Pretty freaking cool. Robots are learning better and better how to think like we do and how to move like we do. These are exciting times we live in.

Favorite Blogs

2009-09-12T14:05:00.006-07:00

I love my Google Reader. I follow quite a few blogs and there's no way I would be able to keep track of them all (and stay sane) without it. I thought I'd share some of my favorites today and get you edu-ma-cated.

Computer Blogs:

Tech Source from Bohol : "Source for technology hacks, insights, tutorials, news, reviews and more" this blog posts a great weekly round up of interestings posts from around the net.

LWN.net : "Comprehensive coverage of development, legal, commercial and security issues" of the Linux world. Premium content becomes free after a week, but regular content is still good like benchmarks of Con Kolivas' new BFS scheduler.

Web Upd8 : General computer news with a focus on Linux. Posts include the announcement of a Google Maps based Monopoly game that will span the globe.

Robot Blogs:

Artificial Intelligence and Robotics : While it isn't updated regularly, its posts are always interesting. Like this announcement of a pressure sensitive keyboard being developed by Microsoft.

robots.net : "All the news that's fit to assimilate", including topics like Your Friendly Neighborhood Spiderbot.

BotJunkie : Obsessively chronicling Man's inevitable descent into cybernetic slavery. One robot at a time. Check out this hilarious (but slightly NSFW for swearing and crude humour) video of the seven robots most likely to rise up against humanity.

Science Blogs:

Discoblog : Discover has a bunch of very good blogs. This one is particularly good at informing you of the latest and greatest discoveries from scientists all over the world. Recently proven: beautiful women really do make men dumber.

Science Not Fiction : Another from Discover, SnF discusses the science done on things you would think only matter in movies, like how Canadian mathematicians recently modeled a zombie outbreak

NCBI ROFL : A blog about the strange things some people get away with researching, like an experimental study on the effect of garlic on vampires. (Warning: topics may involve human sexuality and potty humour)

Random Blogs:

Lifehacker : A great source of information on life with a focus on technology, sharing such vital information as these Top 10 MacGuyverisms

Geekology : Humorous blog about pop culture, technology and geeks. The author's sarcastic take on any and every topic is incredibly entertaining; check out this post about a woman fired for using caps in a company email.

xkcd.com : IMO the greatest web comic ever. Very, very geeky humor, sometimes so much so that even I don't understand it. On those days I learn something new, which really is even better than understanding the joke right off the bat. Check out this strip about internet love.

Do you author or follow a great blog that I may not know about? Post in the comments.

Lucid Dreams

2009-09-09T18:23:00.002-07:00

Today's post is a slight departure from the usual computer related blogging. I found a tutorial on how to improve your chances of having a lucid dream which sounded like a bunch of fun. These are really cool dreams in which you're aware that you're dreaming. You can then take control of your dream and change things to what you want them to be. Awesome eh?

I've actually had 2 lucid dreams in my life, both incredible experiences. The first I was just walking around in my house until I realized I was dreaming. Then I went outside and tried to fly. I wasn't very successful, I got a little hover going but not much more than that. I just couldn't force myself to forget basic physics, maybe I'll imagine wings or a jet pack next time. Still, simply being able to decide what happened next in a dream was an amazing feeling.

My second experience was much cooler. It was also the first time I noticed vibrant colours in a dream. I was walking around a city in which all the buildings were without windows and painted ridiculously bright colours. Skyscrapers of neon blues, reds and yellows. Very trippy. The city was deserted until I met a blond girl. I can't remember what we talked about but after a while she taught me how to teleport myself. So we spent the rest of the dream teleporting from roof top to roof top around the city. Strange dream but I woke up with a smile on my face, which is a fantastic way to start the day.

Anyways, try it out and post a comment if it works for you.

Phase of the Moon Bug

2009-09-06T13:22:00.002-07:00

There are some software bugs that involve conditions so strange and complicated no one can understands their causes. Their bug reports usual say 'depends on this, this, that and the phase of the moon'. While they have a cute name they are anything but to solve. What have been cute are bugs that really do depend on the phase of the moon!

When you're done with that, check out these other unusual software bugs.

Fotoxx and kornelix

2009-09-03T19:48:00.010-07:00

First off, I have to give a shout out to kornelix, sole developer of the fantastic image editing program fotoxx and other projects. Not only has he developed a light weight, easy to use and amazingly powerful photo editing application, but he's incredibly easy to get a hold of for bug reports and feature requests. And even faster at implementing those changes.

I've been using fotoxx to edit the hundreds of pictures I took on my fantastic backpacking trip through Germany last month. It's hands down, the best photo editing program I've ever used. While Photoshop and GIMP are more powerful, fotoxx is infinitely easier to use and unless you edit photos for a living, it has more than enough features for your needs. My favorite so far, has been Panorama. You can take a series of pictures of a landscape and as long as they have some degree of overlap, fotoxx can stitch them together seamlessly. (For Best Results: try not to have people, water or other things that move a lot between shots). Check out the view from Castle Rheinfels in St. Goar:

A few days ago I noticed a recent change, fotoxx 8.3 was released. Along with it came bug fixes and feature requests I had sent in an email to kornelix on August 28th. Version 8.3 came out Sept 1st, 4 days after I made a request for separate Save and Save As buttons, keyboard shortcuts and a fix for a bug that distorted images when they were rotated! They're pretty minor things, but to have a new version 4 days later is impressive. Thank you kornelix.

Arch Quickest in Publish to Package

2009-07-20T15:13:00.006-07:00

I've been relatively busy lately, planning my trip and hanging out with all the friends I won't see during my month away, and I've fallen behind on the blogging. I apologize, but I'm not sorry =)

Just thought I'd post an interesting link today showing just how fantastic Arch Linux is. Because of it's rolling release model, Arch is always trying to hold in its repositories the newest release of any piece of software. Open Source Watershed has some numbers now on just how fast Arch is kept up to date in comparison to other distros, especially those that don't follow a rolling release.

I find it very comforting to know that I have the latest version of a program. All the latest bug fixes, security updates and the newest features. I'm sure that major releases and serious bug and security fixes are released in a timely fashion in other distros but you can't beat an average of 2 weeks to repo packaging that Arch Linux has =)

For the interested, here are a few other Linux distributions that hold to the rolling release model.

Swiftweasel and Add-on Collections

2009-07-14T16:59:00.009-07:00

I decided to move over to Swiftweasel for the majority of my web browsing needs. The performance boost given by the processor optimizations isn't very big but I'll try anything if it makes my system faster =P (Side Note: I chose Swiftweasel over Swiftfox because it's AUR package was up to date, while Swiftfox was still based on 3.0. They are essentially the same thing.)

After installing, I did a few simple benchmarks to see how big a difference it actually made (beyond the placebo effect). The first thing I did was eye ball the startup (not very scientific, I apologize). But Swiftweasel was noticeably faster (by about a few seconds). And these tests were done with Firefox already Preloaded so it really kicked Firefox's ass.

The net has plenty of rendering test (all times are in seconds).

http://rendertest.com/

Firefox_____ Swiftweasel_____

15.24 15.30

15.40 15.26

15.25 15.26

http://scragz.com/archived/mozilla/test-rendering-time

Firefox_____ Swiftweasel_____

14.97 10.32

14.80 10.61

14.31 10.28

http://www.howtocreate.co.uk/csstest.html

Firefox_____ Swiftweasel_____

0.87 0.40

0.81 0.46

0.81 0.40

While the first test didn't show any improvement at all the other 2 show some small improvements. I doubt there's any real world difference given that these are the timed loads of pages with tons of elements. Most sites won't show any noticeable speed increases with the processor optimizations.

So, switching over. This is the time consuming part. Thankfully Firefox has a few tools that make it easier.

First off, Collections. They let you package all your Add-ons together. Here's my collection. That takes care of my extensions.

For the rest of my "bookmarks, passwords, history, preferences and customizations" there's Weave (an experimental add-on included in my collection). It's like Xmarks (formerly FoxMarks) but better! (Well, it will be) Right now it only supports bookmark, password and history syncing. The rest of your settings you still have to sync by hand. Which isn't too hard if you document all the changes you've made (like I do, I'm S-M-R-T).