freeSoftwareHacker();

HP Pavilion Dv7 with Debian GNU/Linux

2012-12-22T17:39:00.001Z

I recently sent my HP Pavilion Dv7 laptop back to the HP repair service while it was still under warranty due to what I think was a loose connector or cable between the graphics chip and the LCD screen, causing flickering colors when the screen was moved. This would happen at the BIOS, in the bootloader, and in both Windows and GNU/Linux, so I'm confident it was a hardware problem. (This exact problem had happened before, and I had sent it back to be fixed; the problem started happening again several months later and had been getting steadily worse.) Ever helpful, HP again fixed the problem and this time additionally decided to wipe my hard drive to the factory state.

Luckily, I had backed up all my important files, so nothing was lost. It did, however, give me the opportunity to install Debian again, and try to work out some annoyances I had had before.

Beats Audio

On Windows, the Dv7 has a very nice sound (for laptop speakers) due to Beats Audio auxiliary speakers—a subwoofer in the back and extra speakers in the front that complement

In fact, it's quite easy to enable this on Debian (it's not enabled by default, because the default configuration uses the BIOS to detect what pin configuration to use, which erroneously reports the wrong one). Following the process in comment 8 on this thread on the Ubuntu Forums, you can easily turn the Beats Audio speakers on. That process is:

Open the file /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf.
Append the line options snd-hda-intel model=ref.
Reboot and test.

The subwoofer now automatically starts up. There will be a warning from ALSA during the system boot about trying to load the mixer properties from the old configuration; this is safe to ignore.

There is an additional problem, though: although the normal speakers turn off when headphones are plugged into the computer, the subwoofer stays on, defeating the purpose of the headphones. As was suggested in the thread, I tested with other models (I have the same codec, but I checked using the list in the ALSA distribution) to no avail.

The solution is a very ugly hack. If someone knows how to do this correctly, please alert me. Here's what I did.

Playing around with the ALSA HDA Analyzer, I found that pin 0x10 controls the Beats Audio speakers. Using the Python script output of the analyzer, I wrote a script and hooked it up to the acpid event handler. Whenever the headphones are plugged in or unplugged, the script is run. I've put the script and configuration file in a Git repository. To configure, put the headphones file in the /etc/acpi/events/ directory and put the headphones.py file in the /etc/acpi/ directory and make it executable.

The folder in the repository is here.

After a reboot, this should work. I've tested it with multiple headphones in at once, plugged in a and unplugged in different orders, with suspending and changing headphones while suspended, and it seems to work. The only problem is booting up with headphones in. To make it work, just unplug and replug the headphones.

I'm going to file a report to the ALSA Project, but their bug reporter appears to be down right now.

Wifi after Suspend-to-RAM

I also had difficulty getting my wifi driver, iwlwifi, to allow me to reconnect after Suspend-to-RAM. After being connected to a network and closing the lid of the laptop and causing the laptop to suspend, NetworkManager would loose the ability to connect to any network. It would detect the networks that were in the area, but when trying to connect, it would fail to authenticate and prompt me for different authentication information. After a reboot, NetworkManager would again connect correctly. I had figured this out before but forgot to write down how I did, so for future reference, these are the steps I followed (see comment 27 on this Launchpad bug):

Create a new file /etc/modprobe.d/iwlwifi.conf.
Enter the line options iwlwifi bt_coex_active=0 and save. (I recall this line disabling something with Bluetooth, which I don't use (I'm not sure if my model even has Bluetooth hardware), so research that further if you do use Bluetooth.)
Reboot and test.

Even after a suspend, I was able to connect to wireless networks.

Backlight Hotkeys

Out of the box, I wasn't able to change the LCD screen backlight via the hotkeys that share the same space as F2 and F3. This was another problem I had fixed and never written down. Luckily, though, the solution was only a few search results away, on comment 27 on this Launchpad bug:

Open your /etc/default/grub.
Add acpi_backlight=vendor to the GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT line.
Reboot and test.

An annoyance of mine is that there seems to be no way to have the backlight automatically change power when the AC cable is plugged in versus when it is not on GNOME 3. It seems that it's possible to do this with either pm-utils or with acpid (or with both). I'll post again if I get this to work.

"C" what I did there?

2012-01-13T22:06:00.005Z

void passing_argument(int *something) {
  *something = 200;
}

int main(int argc, char *argv[]) {
  BOOL just_visiting = FALSE;

  int dollars_collected = 0;

  int *go = NULL, *something_else = &dollars_collected;
  passing_argument(something_else);
  if (dollars_collected == 200)
    goto jail;

  jail:
    if (just_visiting)
      return 0;
    while (1);

  return 0;
}

This is no way to act on a development mailing list

2011-07-18T04:11:00.006+01:00

For those of you reading this now, this is not the original post. The email I had posted here was replied to, the author acknowledged his mistake, and politely asked that I take down his email. He's a well-meaning person, and I can't bash well meaning people. I've removed all references to him.

I've just unsubscribed from the GNOME Shell mailing list. Now I know I've been saying I'd do for quite some time, but the mailing list has degraded into a location for petty insults and disrespectful behavior.

Have a look at the message he was replying to, and the entire thread. This is a development mailing list. Or rather, it is in name. But it has morphed into a hotbed for rants by users who dislike the Shell, who dislike design decisions, or even who don't appreciate how much work has gone into the software (regardless of whether you like it, show some respect for the people who have put in substantial amounts of time and effort to make it in the first place). There do still exist useful and informative threads. But they have been outnumbered by whining and hissy fits.

There are tons of cases of this behavior, and it's not limited to non-developers as well. Here's one such example.

The first person who does this on hummstrumm-dev is going to be plonked faster than they can type the phrase "completely unacceptable".

Privacy and Control in Social Networks (a.k.a, Why Andover would be smart to adopt DIASPORA*)

2011-07-09T03:29:00.006+01:00

DIASPORA* is a distributed social network built on Free/Open Source Software. (Image by Flickr user horiavarlan.)

For a week, I was away from Facebook, voluntarily deactivating my account. Did I miss it? I can say I missed a few contacts. Overall, though, not at all.

What's wrong with Facebook? Socially, I mean, most everyone is on it. But behold the Facebook terms of service (TOS). My favorite telling quote:

For content that is covered by intellectual property rights, like photos and videos ("IP content"), you specifically give us the following permission, subject to your privacy and application settings: you grant us a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, worldwide license to use any IP content that you post on or in connection with Facebook ("IP License"). This IP License ends when you delete your IP content or your account unless your content has been shared with others, and they have not deleted it.

To paraphrase, you are granting to Facebook the right to use (in any manner they desire) any data to which you have legal rights (in the United States and Europe, this means all data, because text is covered by copyright) without compensating you and to sell or give away the right to use your data to any third-party they desire in any manner they desire without copyrighting you. Are you writing a story, and did you post a chapter to Facebook? Well, Facebook has a license to use that chapter outside of your control. Did you post a video of your indie postrock band's song to Facebook? They don't have to pay you to use it if you happen to start selling albums. Due to the admittedly clever wording of this license, this isn't just exclusive to copyrighted data, such as the text, images, and videos you post to Facebook—it goes for the ideas within your posts, too. For any idea to which you hold a patent, were you to post it on Facebook, you are giving the Facebook corporation a free license to your patent, which they can then license to any third-party they want. The same goes for trademarks and trade secrets. If someone posted the recipe for Coca-Cola, even in a private message, Facebook has the right to use it without a fee. Do I mean to say that you could find a new brand of soda in your stores called Facebook Cola? Well, no, funny as that may be. But nothing could stop them from striking a deal with a large food corporation that was seeking to expand into the carbonated beverage industry.

Well, could nothing stop them? What about that last sentence? Sounds like you still maintain control over the license, right? Perhaps. If you have a post, and you delete it, the license does end. But what about private messages? A copy of the private message is available to both users. If you delete your copy, the other user still has it. As the license states, unless they delete it, the license is not terminated. And that person deleting it could be out of your control.

I'm not a lawyer, but those terms scare me.

Enter DIASPORA*. Created to counter these outrageous privacy and control issues. While this isn't the place to discuss its exact benefits (you can read up on them here and here), I do want to discuss a plan relating to DIASPORA*.

I'm a student at Phillips Academy, Andover, and head of the student-run Techmasters organization, a group that aims both to aid other students in diagnosing and fixing technology related problems, and to promote a greater usage and enjoyment of technologies.

At least, that's what I wrote on our mission statement this past year.

In an effort to revitalize the organization, I'm trying various plans to bring the organization back to prominence. One, which I will talk about in a later post, is to introduce the GameMaker software for easy game development. But the focus of this post (or perhaps, the rest of this post), will be on building a DIASPORA* pod at Andover. I still need permission from the administration, but here is the idea:

We have a nice, pretty, powerful, shiny server that currently sees very little usage. While I plan to revamp the website, it doesn't have much use yet. Basically, the server eats up power. Not the best thing it could be doing. So why not install DIASPORA* on it A DIASPORA* pod for students.

Most people aren't concerned with the privacy and control issues I mentioned above. Rather sad, but true. That said, why would anyone switch from Facebook? I mean, their contacts are more than just Andover students.

One of the greatest benefits comes from the idea of aspects. Do you have a picture that you want to share with your boy-/girlfriend but not with everyone else? Don't feel comfortable talking about the death of your grandmother with anyone but your closest friends? Do you absolutely despise this one creep you know, but don't want to reject the friend request? Well, you can just create aspects for all these people. You get to control to whom your posts are sent. Create an aspect for a school project. Separate messages in Esperanto that maybe two people can read from those in English. This not only gives you the benefit of being able to choose who you share things with, but also allows others to do so, as well, cutting down on the amount of worthless spam in your feed. You probably don't care about my choice of music, so I wouldn't put you in the Music aspect. It's that simple.

Want it put another way? If I have an embarrassing photo of Spongebob at the Christmas Party, I can post it to an aspect that doesn't contain Spongebob (the "Secret Box" aspect), and he'll never know.

With DIASPORA* being Free/Open Source Software, and with an API on the way, we have support for richer content streams than Facebook does. The Phillipian, the school newspaper, could send updates and polls to DIASPORA* through RSS or their website. Clubs could have pages with meeting updates. Dates for events could be scheduled right in the post, with times available for selection. With DIASPORA* applications, these would be simple and transparent to the user. And one doesn't have to leave Facebook to use it. Already here are connections with Facebook, Tumblr, and Twitter (does anyone actually use Twitter?), so your posts get sent off to these sites at the click of a button.

These ideas are still preliminary. I still need permission. But I'm hoping this may be beneficial to the students and the Academy at large.

Another Harmonica video with the Academy Jazz Band

2011-03-07T03:02:00.002Z

Just another solo with the Phillips Academy Jazz Band.

This piece is called Jada, and it's by Oliver Nelson. I have to say, the harp part didn't turn out nearly as bad as I had expected.

Christmas Eve

2010-12-24T07:53:00.001Z

For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.
(Luke 2:11)

For Christians, it means the birth of our Lord. For stores, it means up to 40% of their annual income. For people all over the world, it means a time to exchange gifts with loved ones, and to spend time with family.

Christmas is pervasive in American culture: from the iconic Santa Claus to the very real and packed malls. We tend to make this season the most frantic, stressful, and burdensome ritual we go through each year. We all should leave this stress behind, though, and give a moment of reflection to why we do this. What are the origins of the modern Christmas? Let us dive into a historical perspective of Christmas.

Christmas in the religious sense is the Christian celebration of the birth of the Savior, Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus is thought to have been born sometime during the early Roman Empire—the year 1, give or take a few dozen years. Christmas is the lesser of the two major Christian annual holidays, the foremost being Easter. Christmas in the secular sense has come to mean much more than this, but they both still share much in common.

Why December 25th? Do we truly know that Christ was born on the 25th of December, year 1? Not in the least. Our celebration at this time comes from the pagan rituals of Europe each year around the Winter Solstice, during which fires were burned to prevent the sun from disappearing completely. Foremost of these celebrations was the Roman celebration of Saturnalia. The Roman finished the sowing of his fields by the beginning of December, before the harsher climate of winter set in. Saturnus, Roman god of sowing fields, was praised so that a fruitful crop might be received come the following year's harvest. The official celebration of Saturnalia during the time of Cicero began on the 17th of December and lasted for seven days (to be limited by Cæsar Augustus to but three days during his rein). It was a time when no work was done, when no business was conducted, when slaves were treated as were treated their masters. With the spread of Christianity, the Roman pagan rite disappeared, but many still yearned for this celebration of freedom. Christmas was thus placed on December 25th, which was the Winter Solstice in the Julian calendar.

What about Santa Claus? What are his origins? Our modern view of the North-Pole dwelling man have been handed down to us from an earlier legend in Holland during the Middle Ages: Sinterklaas. This ultimately comes to us from tales of Saint Nikolaos of Myra, a 4th century bishop in Greece, patron saint of children and the city of Amsterdam. According to one legend, during a famine in the region, a butcher lured three children into his shop, only to slaughter them in order to sell them. Saint Nikolaos resurrected them with his prayers. Legends like these evolved as they spread through Europe; when they reached Holland, Saint Nikolaos morphed into Sinterklaas, who rides atop the roofs of Holland on a grey horse, delivering presents to local children. Father Christmas was born from this tradition.

Finally, with this time of year comes stress, yes? If you want a laugh before Christmas, here's a fun Christmas-computer joke to lighten your spirits.

To all a merry Christmas! Al ĉiuj estu feliĉa Kristnasko!

Calling *BSD Testers!

2010-12-21T06:48:00.002Z

The Humm and Strumm has recently gotten experimental *BSD support. So experimental, in fact, that it has yet to be tested! Neither Ricardo nor I have a BSD box on which to test it. Basically the new code (which is all contained in the system:: namespace) is written using the documentation I could find online (lots of it was nice POSIX calls). As such, the code is completely theoretical. We don't know whether it will even compile.

We are looking for testers who run a BSD system to test our new support. If you are interested, you can find information on how to check out the source code (check out from the PatrickNiedzielski branch) and how to build that source code. Currently, we only need to check for successful compiles, but soon, we will have unit tests for system::. We'd also love if you sign up for our mailing lists—the hummstrumm-dev and hummstrumm-updates mailing lists are a good way to keep up on the development.

Thanks!

Happy Zamenhof Day!

2010-12-16T02:31:00.001Z

Even though this post is about Zamenhof Day, a holiday of Esperantists, I'm going to write this post in English, so as to reach the non-Esperantists who have subscribed to my blog.

Feliĉan Zamenhofan Tagon! That's Esperanto for "Happy Zamenhof Day!" If you have never heard of Zamenhof Day, Zamenhof himself, or even the language Esperanto, don't worry. You're not alone. Esperanto is a constructed language, made in 1887 by Dr. Ludwig Lazarus Zamenhof, designed to ease communication between people of different language backgrounds. Since its creation, Esperanto has gained at least a million speakers, though that number is subject to debate. Perhaps it hasn't reached it's original goal.

Today, on December 15th, we celebrate Zamenhof Day, the anniversary of Zamenhof's birth. Zamenhof Day is the day Esperantists celebrate our language and our culture. Now is a great time to learn about the language. One of the best resources to do this is Lernu.net, an active community of Esperantists online. The tutorials are available in many languages, so even if English isn't your native tongue, you will be able to learn Esperanto though your mother language. You can talk with Esperantists there from around the world, and learn about different cultures and people.

Esperanto is a simple language, made to be as regular as possible. All nouns, for instance, end in the letter -o. So if you see words like knabo, tago, hundo, or amo, you can know that they are nouns. If you want to take that last word, amo, meaning "love", and make it the verb "to love", just change the -o to an -i. If you want to make it into an adjective, change the -o to an -a. And so on.

Esperanto is a great way to meet new people, learn about other places, and gain a greater understanding of language. Learning Esperanto can make it easier for you to learn other languages; because of its simplicity, you learn to think in a new way, but without having to memorize many irregularities. If you choose to learn another language, you already have the structure and understanding in place, now you just need to memorize the language's idiosyncrasies and thought-process.

So try Esperanto out! It's a nice language, and you'll undoubtedly meet many awesome people through it. Feliĉa lernado! Happy learning!

Kanto: Ĉu vi volas danci? / Song: Ĉu vi volas danci?

2010-11-28T19:01:00.000Z

En Esperanto kaj la angla / In Esperanto and English

Jen bonega kanto de JoMo, Esperanta traduko de „Do You Wanna Dance‟ de The Beach Boys.

Here's a great song by JoMo, an Esperanto translation of The Beach Boys' "Do You Wanna Dance".

Blues Harp with the Academy Jazz Band

2010-10-31T23:59:00.002Z

A quick clip of me soloing with the Academy Jazz Band today,

For those who are interested, I am playing a Marine Band Crossover, in the key of A that I customized myself. It's still rather new, and so I choked a little on that 6 overblow (still better than when it was right out of the box). The song's in Db major, so I played in fifth position.

Ĉu vi planas lanĉfeston por GNOME 3.0? / Are You Planning a GNOME 3.0 Launch Party?

2010-10-30T15:55:00.001+01:00

En Esperanto kaj la angla / In Esperanto and English

Laŭ Journal of an Open Sourcee,

Por porparoli la GNOME 3.0-an lanĉon kaj sterni la ideon interne de la GNOME-anoj, mi eldonas la mesaĝon postan! Bonvolu traduki kaj eldoni ĝin kun viaj amikoj, kaj nin helpu projekti la pli egan lanĉfeston eterne!

Saluton, GNOME-amikoj,

La GNOME.Azio anaro laboras fari lanĉfestegon (kiu inkluzivas kvin-tagan hakfeston) por celebri, porparoli, labori super la GNOME 3.0-a lanĉo, parto de nia peno de porparoli GNOME-on en Azio. Potencialhavaj lokoj estas Barate, Indonezie, kaj Honkonge.

Se ankaŭ vi plani ion por la GNOME 3.0-a lanĉo, ni povas interŝanĝi ideojn, kaj kune povas fari pli egan, multurban lanĉfeston kaj ankaŭ grandiozan merkatiksukceson en la tago de tiu versikreo!

Wikipaĝon kreis ĉe tie ĉi; ni alligu nia festpaĝoj tie. Ni benvolas iun, kiu interestas, aliĝi kaj helpi nin fari tiun okazon kaj tutmondan lanĉfeston okazi!

Ĝis la relego,

Pockey

From Journal of an Open Sourcee,

In order to promote the GNOME 3.0 launch and spread the idea amongst the GNOME community members, I’m sharing the following message! Please translate it and share it with your friends and help us organize the biggest GNOME Launch ever!

Dear GNOME friends,

The GNOME.Asia committee is working on making a big launch party (which includes a 5 days hackfest) to celebrate, promote and work on the GNOME 3.0 release as part of our effort to promote GNOME in Asia. Potential venues are in India, Indonesia or Hong Kong.

If you are also planning anything for the GNOME 3.0 launch, we can exchange ideas and make a bigger multi-cities launch party as well as a stronger marketing impact for the day of this big release together!

A wiki page was created at here, let’s link our GNOME 3.0 launch party page there. We welcome anybody who is interested to join and help us to make this event and global launch party happen!

Regards,

Pockey

Zeitgeist/Emacs integration

2010-09-05T02:07:00.000+01:00

A shout out to all you Emacs users out there...

I promised I would post here when I completed my mini-project of integrating Emacs and Zeitgeist into an unstoppable power team. Well, here it is: a development release with Emacs support! I committed the code a while ago, but it's finally been released to the public. Do test it; I will fix any bugs with the current functionality, and maybe in the future I will add more.

Back from a Long Hiatus

2010-09-04T14:29:00.002+01:00

Hi all! I want you to know that I haven't abandoned this blog. I have been very busy this summer, between personal things, Humm and Strumm, troubleshooting two new distros, and so on. I want to start back up posting here, as often as I can. Seeing as a broke the last promise, I will not make another this time regarding posting frequency. I will say, though, that I do like the schedule in that post, and I will try to make Wednesdays updates on my development in Humm and Strumm (or angry rants about some aspect about it that would not be suitable as official news).

First and foremost, I am now running three operating systems. In addition to my beloved Debian Sid and the necessary Windows, I now have a Fedora system to aid in the testing of Humm and Strumm. Having this will make packaging for Red Hat systems quite easy. I don't use it often, but one thing I have noticed is that the GNOME Shell in the Fedora repos seems a bit more up-to-date than the GNOME Shell in Debian Sid. I'm too lazy to compile GNOME myself, though, so I can live with an older version of GNOME Shell on my main system.

If any of you are keeping up with the development of my project, Humm and Strumm, you will have noticed that we've a new web design, one which I believe to be final. The color scheme seems fine, the design is usable, and over all, the website looks quite nice. I hope this new image will help give off a more professional image, while still maintaining the image that we are a lighthearted game.

Code-wise, Humm and Strumm has been coming along, too. I hope to get a release out very soon, and with two people waiting on me, there is definitely pressure to do so! I have just finished implementing a UTF-8 implementation for strings and characters; this gives the engine the ability to support any script in Unicode (I suppose some of the characters, like code point U+262D or code point U+1F03D, will not be of much use to us...), allowing easy translation into almost every one of the world's languages! Check back soon at our i18n wiki page for more information.

I've also finally completed the switch from my Twitter to a new, Free Software based Identi.ca account. I will continue to syndicate to this Twitter, but i will no longer actively check it. If you wish to contact me, please use Identi.ca. I will actively check my Identi.ca. The service is amazing; I encourage you to check it out.

Speaking of Free Software social networks, how many of you have heard of the upcoming Diaspora Project, created in response to the lack of privacy options and the centralization of Facebook. It looks like an amazing project, and best yet, it will go completely open source on September 15. Do you plan on joining Diaspora when it comes out?

Harmonica Player's Dream

2010-06-30T07:01:00.000+01:00

An analysis on the Bilski case has taken a little longer than I expected, so I will put that off until Wednesday. An update on Humm and Strumm will come sometime in the morning.

So instead, I am just going to share an awesome link I found on the Hohner website. As you may know, I am a harmonica player, specifically, a player of Hohner harps. So this obviously caught my attention. I introduce to you the Hohner and Bob Dylan Collection! The descriptions on the website (emphasis mine):

Bob Dylan Collection

The first item in the collection consists of a complete set of seven Marine Band harmonicas in the natural keys of C, G, D, F, A, B, and E, which have been played and hand-signed by Bob Dylan. The harmonicas are displayed in an inlaid ebony presentation box, handcrafted exclusively for Bob Dylan with his distinctive “Eye” logo on the lid. An internationally renowned photgraph of Bob Dylan by Daniel Kramer is framed in the box lid. A letter from the President of Hohner, Inc., is included, confirming authenticity. Twenty-five sets of these exist worldwide.

Signature Series

Hohner’s collaboration with Bob Dylan naturally lead to the development of a next-generation harmonica. “This new harmonica has an enhanced sonic versatility and produces both uncharacteristically warm tones while also achieving a brilliance or ‘brightness’ that allows musicians to more freely express themselves,” stated Scott Emmerman, Director of Marketing and Sales for Hohner, Inc., “It was not easy to achieve the standard that Bob Dylan represents. Among other things, we gold-plated the reed plate in order to achieve the specific sonic requirements.” The new harmonica is appropriately named the Bob Dylan Signature Series. It features custom cover-plates bearing Dylan’s signature, a carrying case embossed with Dylan’s “Eye” logo, and an outer gift box featuring an exclusive picture of Dylan in the inside cover.

Now look at the prices.

Yo dawg...I heard you're concerned with efficiency in your linked lists...

2010-06-29T08:06:00.001+01:00

...so I put a linked list in your linked list, so you don't have to iterate while you iterate.

I call the idea Service Centre linked lists. In essence, we have a linked list that links to every tenth node of the list, and allows the list to be iterated even more quickly. This has great implications in making a list act like a vector. We can cut the number of iterations by at most 90%! This idea will be implemented in Humm and Strumm.

Why would we want to make a list act as a vector? How exactly does this work? Read here on our wiki for the idea in full.

Also, In re: Bilski was released today...the Supreme Court decided to do nothing on the issue of software patents, and if anything, made the landscape for patents more treacherous. I have not read the full briefing yet, but I will have an entry on what this could mean tomorrow (Tuesday/Wednesday). That is the reason for this morning's short post, not an article.

A Rant on Zeitgeist, Emacs, DBus, and Documentation...(mostly that last one)

2010-06-25T08:13:00.000+01:00

Another blog entry very early in the morning...

<rant>

As you may know, I am a heavy GNU/Emacs user. I often find myself hitting instinctively C-x C-s to save in any program. It doesn't so much work in Chromium when I am blogging, but I besides a web browser, I probably spend most of my time in this editor. It is not, however, well integrated with anything except itself. Not exactly an official GNOME editor.

So, I've been trying to make a simple script for GNU/Emacs to integrate it with the new Zeitgeist Project from some GNOME developers, which aims to track the documents opened and closed on your computer, then later intelligently relate these data points to allow you to more efficiently use your computer. Now, it's pretty much only good for tracking documents by times, because of the lack of documentation and UI. This project does look very promising, and may be in GNOME soon enough.

Zeitgeist works its magic through freedesktop.org's DBus specification and software package, which facilitates interprocess communication. Software programs contact Zeitgeist, and through a special protocol using DBus's framework, they tell Zeitgeist about an event that it should know about ("Hey! I just made a new document!"). Zeitgeist records this, and sends back an ID and success flag ("What, do you want a cookie?"). This ID can be used for more advanced things, like editing entry.

The problem comes down to documentation.

Documentation for the protocol is not lacking in Zeitgeist—especially with sample plugins in a variety of languages (I found this one in C especially useful.). The people on the mailing list and IRC channel are great people and quite patient.

The lack of documentation comes down to the so-called, "self-documenting editor". New with GNU/Emacs 23 was support for DBus. This adds a great new dimension for desktop integration for Emacs, one that I hope will be explored. Indeed, integrating Emacs with Zeitgeist is only one step. I'd love to have Emacs integrate with so many other applications I use (and I will think of a way to integrate the GIMP with Emacs. Just you wait). In my opinion, DBus support is the best thing to happen to Emacs since X/Windows support.

But, of course, I don't know how to use it.

Oh, sure there are blog entries describing simple things with it, like on Emacs-fu. But there is nothing about that in the online Emacs manual, except this small mention in the acknowledgements:

Michael Albinus wrote dbus.el, a package that implements the D-Bus message bus protocol; zeroconf.el, a mode for browsing Avahi services; and xesam.el, a Xesam-based search engine interface. He and Kai Großjohann wrote the Tramp package, which provides transparent remote file editing using rcp, ssh, ftp, and other network protocols. He and Daniel Pittman wrote tramp-cache.el.

Very helpful.

So I looked in the info pages. Oh, wait, that's right. Debian doesn't give them to me, because it doesn't consider them free enough! (Don't get me wrong, I agree. Not a huge fan of the GFDL's restrictions.) I went searching only. Finally, it came to the CVS repo, in which I found the Texinfo file. After building it myself, I finally found the right place...maybe two pages on this awesome new feature? I got the gist of DBus integration, but I still had one nagging error, either brought on by my inexperience with DBus or elisp. My array of strings (required for the Zeitgeist DBus API) was failing. From the manual, it appears that All you have to do is make a list, and have the first item be :array. That seems not to work so well. But I'm stuck here, because I have exhausted almost all of my documentation sources. Tomorrow, I will ask on some Emacs mailing list or forum, but tonight, I go to bed annoyed.

If any of you out there use Emacs and know a little about its DBus integration, I would love to hear from you. Hopefully, I am just failing to notice something simple.

</rant>

Humm and Strumm Update: 2010-06-24

2010-06-24T07:47:00.000+01:00

Update on the development of the Humm and Strumm video game:

Linked List: The linked list is only in its infancy (it doesn't have an iterator yet, nor the optimisations I would like. However, this follows nicely before the work on the String, which will use an iterator concept to access Characters.
Logging features: I've begun working on a simple XSLT stylesheet for making the XML output into an easy-to-read HTML webpage. Soon there will also be timestamps in each log entry.

My main work this past week has been on concept art. A nice announcement: I've received an email from an artist interested in contributing some low-res models. The concept art will help him create models for our game. Though we are still in engine development, any models to use even for testing are useful. Watch on the development blog for an official announcement, still pending as of now.

From me, expect to see some concept art out before next week, some data container classes (List and probably something else simple), and a clear-cut release date for 0.3. There will be more updates to follow.

(Yeah, technically it's 06:45Z...that's 02:45-04:00 here. But I'm still up. So it's still the same day.)

Humm and Strumm Update: 2010-06-17

2010-06-17T05:05:00.000+01:00

Update on the development of the Humm and Strumm video game:

Unicode support: I've finished a fully featured Unicode character that supports all UTF-8 characters. This will integrate with the String through iterators. Additional methods allow it to convert to native types and to UTF-32 codepoints, which will help integrating with Freetype and other libraries.
Additional profiler features: After a little discussion, we've decided to expand the functionality of the profiler. By adding a PROFILE_ITERATION() method, we can allow for a loop of the same code, and take statistical analyses of the resulting times.

Geometry classes: Ricardo the beginning of a AABB class done. This will be very helpful in the creation of collision checks. Further classes will provide similar functionality.

I've also made progress on the creation of the Design Document, but this project is still lacking in sufficient documentation, in my opinion. The same is true with test cases. By next week, I should have more documentation up, a complete rewrite of the String class to give more Unicode support via Character and libiconv, and maybe some more test cases.

Don't hold me to it.

An Unbreakable Substitution Cypher?

2010-06-16T05:13:00.001+01:00

Mohammad Gaith Bin Mahah Al Mazroui (pictured left) has created a substitution cypher of such complexity that he says it is "almost impossible to decrypt any document" encrypted with it.

Sounds unreasonable to you too? A simple substitution cypher being unbreakable? Not just that, but this Abu Dhabi cypher is supposedly able to work for any language. Ever.

<sarcasm>Of course.</sarcasm> There are several problems that lead me to believe this is an ignorant attempt at creating a cypher. Of course, I could be wrong, but these claims seem far fetched.

It's a substitution cypher. A substitution cypher substitutes letters for other letters or symbols, which Al Mozroui has said himself: "In his cipher, Al Mazroui said every letter was replaced by a symbol that he designed." Any substitution cypher is inherently insecure. They can be brute force solved, by checking all possibilities. With a little knowledge of linguistics, you can simplify this process to a logic game.
It can work with any language. There are two ways I can think of this working: create a new key for every new script or use phonology for symbols. The first goes against his claim that it works for any language...it's just creating a new script, not using the same cypher. The second is also hard to believe, as there are scores of phonemes in all known languages. Has he really accounted for all of them?
We don't have any evidence that it isn't just garbage. Sorry. I'm a skeptic. Until you show me that your cypher is actually a cypher, then I can't trust you. I can throw random symbols at you, too.

An awesome effort to break it has been going on at the CONLANGS mailing list, under the topic, Why do so many crackpots go for "crypto"?, and if you are interested. A sample of the cypher can be found here.

And yes...I forgot to blog yesterday...I'll be more punctual.

Daily Posts

2010-06-13T18:11:00.000+01:00

You may have noticed that the blog is finally done its major facelift. With this new look is going to come a new policy in my posting.

First off, there will be a new post everyday. That's right, every day for the summer. Come back, or better yet, subscribe to my feed for updates as each post comes out.

Second, here are the plans for each entry:

Mondays and Fridays are article days. These articles will always deal with the topics of this blog: Free Software/development, United States law, and music. The topics will vary, but expect them to be substantially longer than a normal post.

Wednesdays are development updates for Humm and Strumm. Every week, I will write an update on my end of the development of Humm and Strumm. Of course, for official updates, you should subscribe to the project development blog. These updates will be weekly, though, and more down to the coding level. Maybe frustrations, successes, just what has been accomplished in the past week. All these thoughts are my own; they do not in any way represent the official views/direction of the project.

All other days are shorter posts. Basically, on whatever I want. They may be recent news items, responses to other blogs, or mini-articles. Some could be reviews. Some could be links to sites that have interested me.

Redesign

2010-04-26T03:52:00.000+01:00

A quick update: You may have noticed that I have been redesigning this site with a more palatable color palette (no pun intended). Currently it is not quite done yet, but when I do finish it, it should be a bit more legible and perhaps even easier to use.

Don't worry; it will be done by next week.

And a little fun...

2010-04-21T23:26:00.000+01:00

Try it. Thanks to Seif Lotfy for posting the link.

Full ACTA Text available

2010-04-21T21:31:00.000+01:00

A quick follow up to yesterday's post on the ACTA treaty: the text has been made public and is available as a PDF here.

Most of the problems with ACTA remain in this official version. Notably, however, the United States has retracted its provisions for holding ISPs liable for copyright infringement on their user's part, provided they disconnect copyright offenders.

While this transparency is obviously better, it still doesn't target the fundamental flaws in the treaty. Most of the provisions remain, and negotiations will proceed without any input from elected representatives as before. Furthermore, the treaty is still under "executive agreement" status. Executive agreements, are not laws, per se, as they do not override existing federal law or treaties, but they do override state laws and federal regulations. Because they are executive agreements, the United States Senate does not get to vote on the treaty. Something similar is happening in the European Union.

Just because the ACTA is now released does not been we can forget about it. It still has fundamental flaws which need to be fixed.

ACTA Draft to be Released

2010-04-20T22:58:00.002+01:00

The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative has released its intentions of making public the full text of the controversial international treaty known as Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement. Thus far, negotiations have proceeded behind closed doors. There have already been several leaks, but none have been either full or official. This release by the Office of U.S. Trade Representative will be available tomorrow.

The treaty is currently under negotiations by the following nations: the United States, the European Commission, Switzerland, Japan, Australia, Canada, Jordan, Mexico, Morocco, New Zealand, Republic of Korea, Singapore, and United Arab Emirates. This treaty is not under control of any international body or organisation, such as WIPO. In short, the treaty imposes stricter limits on the enforcement of legal transmission of copyrighted works.

What's wrong with ACTA?

Authorities can, in certain cases, seize evidence without hearing both sides.
The right holders do not need to know about infringement for legal action to be taken by authorities.
ISPs are, in some cases, held accountable for any illegal materials transmitted through their service.
Postal services can be held accountable for illegal materials mailed using their service.
Net Neutrality will be lost, because ISPs are legally obligated to filter their services from such online uses as P2P sharing.
Users and their families can be "thrown off the internet" for a copyright accusation. (Irish Times)
Websites such as Youtube and Flickr would need to patrol every single one of the uploaded media for potential copyright infringement at risk of lawsuit themselves.
Digital Rights Management and similar systems could not be broken even if you own the copyright yourself.
As in the United States, any work needs to be taken down at the claim of a copyright, without any evidence, providing an easy method of censorship.

For more key points, please see here, here, and here.

Responses to ACTA

In an <sarcasm>extremely surprising move</sarcasm>, the Motion Picture Association of America has fully supported the treaty and its stricter regulation on copyrighted works. In a letter to Chairman Patrick J. Leahy of the United States Senate, the MPAA stated that "for the ACTA to meet its full potential, it must include robust online protections." It is only one of the many organisations lobbying in support of ACTA.

Many other people take the opposite view: websites such as Stop ACTA! and La Quadrature du Net actively oppose it. I personally agree with these organisations. ACTA takes away too many rights of the people in order to enforce intellectual property laws.

What you can do

First and foremost, read the document tomorrow when it is made public. You should be aware of the actual text of the document. It may have changed between the source leaks and the current version.
Sign the Wellington Declaration online. You can find a copy of this declaration here.
Blog about the ACTA. By actively spreading the word, you can help raise awareness about its problems. Be sure to reference other websites and positions on the issue and allow your readers to form their own judgement. Facilitate discussion. If you blog about this, I would love to know. You can Traceback to this entry or directly contact me with your response.
Place an ACTA alert box on your website. The alert box, found here, takes a few seconds to add to your website, but raises awareness about the cause. I, in fact, found out about this treaty through one of these alert boxes on the OpenDotDotDot blog. These alert boxes give a simple overview of the problems with ACTA and a link to the Stop ACTA! website.
If you live in one of the nations which are negotiating ACTA, contact an elected official about this treaty. Assume they do not know of the document, and explain the treaty's repercussions. Persuade your representatives to oppose this document.
If you live in the European Union, convince Members of the European Parliament to sign the Written Declaration 12. This document objects to the secrecy of the proceedings of the negotiations of ACTA. If more than half of the Parliament signs this Declaration, it will become the official position of the European Union. This declaration (which at the moment has about 130 signatures) is available on the European Parliament website. More information is available here.
If you live in New Zealand, check out the ACTA website for New Zealand. This website provides information concerning the ACTA agreement and its effects on New Zealand citizens.

Please comment: What is your view on the ACTA treaty?

Tea. Earl Grey. Hot.

2010-04-19T21:22:00.001+01:00

So, I haven't posted here in a month. Am I giving this up? Not at all! I've been busy recently, but I shall find time to post here.

Development of Humm and Strumm has been progressing really nicely. (It's been the main thing keeping me from this blog.) I've several ideas for the design of the engine, which I shall be posting here for comments. I've been working on the basic types, and Ricardo on the math types that form the basis of the 3D engine.

As for the ECMAScript series...well, I need to get the code to the stage where it is understandable before I continue the series. Sometime after either the 0.2 release or the 0.3 release, the ECMAScript system will be created, and then I will begin to document its design and implementation here.

If you dislike the look of this website (it's a bit hard to read), I will be redesigning it with higher contrast and a new, Web 2.0 look. Hopefully, this will help with the complaints about the readability of the page.

I also will start to write more about music—specifically blues harp playing. For those of you who don't know, a blues harp is just a standard harmonica, just like those toy ones you used to play. This wonderful instrument is far more than a toy. It is one of the most versatile and potable instruments invented. It goes along nicely with acoustic music, but can be amped up for rock, metal, and pop. Listen to artists like John Lennon, Tom Johnson of the Doobie Brothers, or Rick Davies of Supertramp. The blues harp is easy to pick up and play but difficult to master.

So, subscribe, and I'll be back later this week for a full post on one of my ideas for Humm and Strumm.