Oracology.NET

New Keyboard

administratador — Tue, 30 Aug 2011 23:33:23 +0000

Having had such a long hiatus, I decided to wait until I had something really important to talk about. Well, after a few days of deliberation and research, I finally purchased my first mechanical keyboard, the Steelseries 6GV2. What is a mechanical keyboard? A normal keyboard contains a membrane made out of rubber or some other malleable material, on which there are contact points corresponding to each key. When the contact point is pressed against the circuit board below it, a key press is registered. The plastic keys are then mounted on top Show me more →

Updated: MagicJack, Ubuntu Natty Narwhal, VMWare Guide and a Rant

administratador — Wed, 20 Jul 2011 12:48:45 +0000

Edit: I've received a couple of very helpful comments recently, so I'm making minor edits to this post to serve it on the front page of the site. Thanks to Troy and Grip for answering a couple of questions for me. I would be happy to join Grip and anyone else interested in providing proper GNU/Linux support for this wonderful device. That way, we can bypass MagicJack tech support and virtual machines altogether. Wow, it's been far too long since I've posted. Apologies for the delay; hopefully this post will be useful for you. I recently got myself Show me more →

“Social Networking” is an Incorrect Phrase

administratador — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 11:07:40 +0000

The phrase "social networking" is a little misleading. Think about it: if you are networking and talking to people, does that not involve being social? If you are predisposed to being social, would you not perhaps enjoy networking and making new acquaintances? Can one be countersocial and still network properly? Can one network and become countersocial? This all seems very unlikely to me. Aside: I (like to believe I) coined the phrase "countersocial" in the 8th grade when I learnt that "antisocial" had psychopathic connotations to it..."countersocial" seems far less threatening. I Show me more →

Allergies to Clouds and a Meeting with RMS

administratador — Thu, 07 Apr 2011 16:41:13 +0000

It's that season for a lot of people to feel allergic about a lot of things. Sure, the weather has improved, and with that, a drive and desire to achieve something that shines like the Sun. This season, being in a new city, I have left my old allergies behind and have instead developed a violent reaction to clouds. Recently, I had the chance to sit down and have dinner with Richard Stallman of the Free Software Foundation. We were joined by Richard's Show me more →

A Few Projects

administratador — Tue, 05 Apr 2011 15:07:37 +0000

I've got a few projects that I absolutely need to invest some time and energy in over the next few months to see them lift off the ground. 1) My game. I've got my developers almost on board with the technologies they need to access and alter the code base. It's now a matter of design and engineering. Having moved over to a new web host, I need to get the mailing list up and running as well. 2) My Django project. I've started studying Show me more →

Hi Dreamhost!

administratador — Fri, 01 Apr 2011 18:31:52 +0000

That's right. At long last, I have switched over to an external host, and so far, Dreamhost has been excellent! Big article coming soon.

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Short Thoughts on the Road

administratador — Wed, 22 Dec 2010 08:12:48 +0000

Here are some thoughts I've always wanted to put down on paper, especially whilst travelling. I never get around to it and then I forget about it till the next trip. Finally I sat down to record these musings: Luggage Amnesia - Ever notice how you never know which bags are yours as they come down the conveyor belts in the arrival lounges of your destination? I can't tell if it's the jetlag or whether it's a plain example of taking one's belongings for granted, but it is a common sight to see people Show me more →

Sander Kleinenberg’s 5K

administratador — Fri, 12 Nov 2010 15:06:37 +0000

I just listened to the online stream of Sander Kleinenberg's new album, 5K, available here. I was initially taken aback because it's nothing like what I had expected. The artist behind "This is Ibiza" was supposed to release an album that was just as hard-hitting, right? It only made sense... However, Sander has taken this one on a complete different course. The music starts off much more mellow and thought-provoking. It is a subtle blend of trip hop, 1980s pop (and theme Show me more →

Do YOUR autotools and linkers have problems with libpqxx?

administratador — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 12:55:36 +0000

If you've compiled libpqxx from source, chances are, your autoconf/automake projects that look for libpqxx through PKG_CHECK_MODULES() will fail miserably. Here is my configure.ac at the root of my project:

configure.ac

AC_INIT([xml-diamond], [0.1]) 
AM_INIT_AUTOMAKE([-Wall -Werror]) 
 
AC_CONFIG_HEADERS([config.h]) 
AC_PROG_CXX 
 
PKG_CHECK_MODULES([XML], [libxml-2.0 >= 2.4]) 
PKG_CHECK_MODULES([PQXX], [libpqxx >= 2.6.9]) 
 
AC_CONFIG_FILES([Makefile src/Makefile]) 
 
AC_OUTPUT

Note that PKG_CHECK_MODULES() on line 8 looks for (and finds) libpqxx if you compiled libpqxx from source. I should point out here that I downloaded libpqxx from its SVN repository and compiled using the standard ./configure, make, make Show me more →

Coming Soon…

administratador — Tue, 09 Nov 2010 10:04:51 +0000

In response to the successful poll on UbuntuForums, and judging from comments on the Angry Birds post on this site, I have decided to build a slingshooter that will be free and open source software. It is primarily aimed at GNU/Linux users, but one is free to port it to proprietary operating systems. We are working on a back story for the game and on the website. When it goes live, this will be the first place to find out about it. I'm expecting it to happen in a few days, so stay tuned! Show me more →