Stray Notes

YouTube Tutorial - How To Make A Video

2012-01-25T19:39:00.002Z

Amateur Video

YouTube is great. With millions of videos available on any subject you want. Including entertainment, music, sport, keep-fit, education, religion, inspiration, motivation, business, cartoons and more.

Thousands of videos are uploaded each week, by entrepreneurs, enthusiasts, and amateurs. And it shows. In the poor presentation, format, production, direction and execution.

I'm no auteur, but I've watched enough poorly produced videos on YouTube, to offer some advice. You can tell right away if the video is a professional product.

In an effort to improve the experience on behalf of thousands of hapless viewers, here are some tips to improve your YouTube home made video.

1. Prepare a script

That's right, just like the big boys in Hollywood. The studios know how to do it. Learn from them. Listening to you um, errhh and ad-lib, while losing your way and your thought train, is no fun. Its distracting and a turn off. Prepare a tight script, that encapsulates what you wanna say, and say it. Use bullet points. Stay focused. Stay on topic.

2. Prepare Your Apps

Sitting watching you fumble around the menu for an application hi-lights how innept you can be. You can't find and launch an application? How do you expect me to follow you after that? Create a link / shortcut and put it on the desktop so you can locate it and hit it first time.

3. Mouse Movements

Want me to watch your mouse movements and follow you around the screen? Then stop jumping around like a cat walking on hot coals. Plan your mouse pointer movements in advance. Watching your mouse jump around is making me sick as a roller-coaster ride after 10 beers. Keep your mouse movements to a minimum. Make them precise. Keep unnecessary mouse movements to a minimum. Even better, eliminate them.

4. Clear Your Desktop

You love your desktop. Its the cooler that Justin Beiber. I know you just love the fancy graphics and thousands of folders and shortcuts you have sitting there, but they are a distraction. Make your desktop black, navy blue or white. Keep it to one color and keep it empty. Make it plain, so I can see what is happening. Camouflage is great for warfare, but not when I'm trying to follow your tutorial.

5. Clarify Your Message

Decide. Before you fire up that application your wanna show, decide what your gonna show and how your gonna show it. Following you and your mouse jumping around the screen while you vacillate indecisively, makes me want to hit the kill switch.

6. Sit Still

I know your nervous, but if you want to do a face to cam presentation, sit still while you convey your message. Watching you swing circles in your high-back leather chair is annoying. Sit still dammit. TV news readers sit still. Why do they do that? Think focus.

7. Cam Shake

Keep the camera still. Cam shake makes me want to throw up. I know its vogue to recreate the experience of the first person point-of-view. Camera shake sucks. If the camera is embedded in your laptop, place the laptop on a firm. stable surface such as a desk. It will bounce around on the bed and I will chuck.

8. Lighting

This is important. Don't sit in the dark. You want your face on cam? Use lighting. Don't put the light behind you. You'll be thrown into silhouette. Place the light source behind the camera or beside the camera. Light needs to flood your face so we can see you.

9. Dry Run

Whatever it is you wish to show, demonstrate, convey, enlighten, elucidate, do a dry run first. Review it critically to see how it fares. Do more than one take. In theatre, they practice and practice and practice. When almost there, they do a dress rehearsal, before the show begins. Don't assume the product in the 'can' is the finished product. It may not be.

10. Review Your Takes

Genius like Orsen Welles produce perfect cinema in one take. Us lesser folk must toil to reach their sublime and elevated levels of technical creativity. Until then, review your takes. Watch it "critically and objectively". I know its your work and it may hurt, but if the first take (or second or third, etc) is poor. Scrub it and do another.

11. Independent Input/Peer Review

We don't like to be criticised, but sometimes in producing your masterpiece, its essential. Get others to review your video. Best friend, girlfriend, mum, uncle, dad, grandma. These are good starting points, but they may not want to hurt your delicate sensibilities. Find someone more detached who does not mind trashing your efforts. Ask them to be cold, clinical, level headed, but fair. They dont have to understand the technical nuances of your work, but they may let you know if it sucks. If it does, ditch it and do another.

12. Learn From The Pros

Go to VideoJug. Watch some of their videos and get cues on lighting, camera angles, camera position, movement, and so on. These videos are produced by pros who know what they are doing. Learn from them. Aspire to match the quality of their product. Keep trying. Keep refining. Keep learning.

If you want me and others to come back and view your future efforts, please consider these minor points. Or I may not bother.

Done!

Emacs Shell

2012-01-21T16:29:00.000Z

Terminal

I used to run XTerm sessions for command-line work or house keeping. If you run Emacs, you can run 'Terminal Emulation' in a buffer.

Emacs has a number of different shells to choose from. There's 'Shell', 'Eshell' and 'Ansi-term'.

Emacs Ansi-Term behaves closely to a regular XTerm session.

To get started in Emacs do:

m-x ansi-term [enter]

Emacs will quiz ya if ya want to run /bin/bash. Hit enter to accept, and you have a fresh terminal up and running.

You can switch between buffers and terminal sessions without the mouse, along with all the other goodies Emacs has to offer.

Great.

New Calendar

2012-01-20T15:30:00.000Z

Bye Bye Gregorian

A new calendar has been developed by researchers at John Hopkins University, that eliminates the leap year. It does it in a very sly way. Instead of a leap year, we now have a mini-month (actually its a week) called 'Xtr', every 5 or 6 years.

The new calendar means ya never have to worry about which day Xmas or New Year falls on. Another benefit is planning each years holidays are simplified as they always fall on the same day. No more juggling who starts their vacation when.

Xmas Day and New Years Day will always fall on the same day.

Go take a look for more details and take a peek at the calendar in all its glory.

Done.

Emacs Recently Opened Files

2012-01-20T10:25:00.000Z

Deja Vu

Emacs has a nice add-on to show recently opened files. It's simple to set up and simple to use.

Add the following code to your Emacs init file (.emacs) which should reside in your home directory. ~/.emacs. Use ls -la to find it, or in Emacs use Ctrl-x Ctrl-f ~/.emacs.

; Recently Opened Files - use recentf
(require 'recentf)
; Enable recentf mode
(recentf-mode t)
; Show last 10 files
(setq recentf-max-menu-items 10)
; Reset C-x C-r to display recently opened files
(global-set-key "\C-x\ \C-r" 'recentf-open-files)

As you probably know, in Emacs init file, any line starting with a semi-colon (;) is a comment and ignored by Emacs.

Save the init file and restart Emacs.

Hit Ctrl-x Ctrl-r to get a list of recently opened files.

Scroll to the file you want open and hit enter.

Done.

Kodak's Demise

2012-01-19T19:23:00.000Z

Disruptive Technologies

I read today that Eastman Kodak has filed for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy. It's unbelievable the company that gave the world photography and produced so many innovations is almost bust.

A few years back I bought and read The Innovators Dilemma by Clayton M Christensen, a Harvard Professor. The book provided an insightful perspective on the impact new technology has on existing businesses.

In his book, Christensen explains how large companies sometimes develop new and revolutionary technologies, but are unable to profit from them. The marketing department test the new product on their existing customers to gauge feedback and decide how much development funding to sink into it. Often feedback is negative or poor. Think of the quality of traditional film against digital camera images when digicams first appeared. Even today, digital cameras cannot match the crisp sharp image of chemical film and photo. In time this will change.

The new product/technology may be ground breaking, but inferior to existing products. Management must decide how best to market the new product in view of the poor / negative response from its existing customers. This is the 'Innovators Dilemma'. Management base their decisions on their existing customer's expressed wants / needs and their existing product base.

Many times, the new technology is adopted by a smaller competitor to its advantage, taking market share, and leaving the innovator in their wake, to pick up crumbs.

At Kodak a young engineer was assigned the task of creating a camera that would capture a digital image, without the use of film. The engineer's name was Steve Sasson. In December 1975 he and his team produced the worlds first digital camera. It used a CCD for image capture and cassette tape for storage. The camera weighed 8lbs and was the size of a small briefcase.

Kodak were the world leader in chemical film products and had now developed a revolutionary new product, although it was the size of a small suitcase. The problem for Kodak, was how to develop this technology without cannibalizing their existing products profitability or market share.

This is the same problem all large companies face. How do you develop a new technology, a revolutionary technology without killing your cash cow? In 1991 Kodak brought to market a professional digital SLR camera, the DCS-100 at a price of $13,000. This was a high end product, definitely not for holiday snaps on the beach.

The Japanese were not sitting on their hands. 1996 saw the release of the Canon Powershot 600, Olympus D-200L, Casio QV-300. In 1997 more Japanese digicams hit the market. Olympus D-500L, Fuji DS-300, Canon Powershot 350, Nikon Coolpix 100 and Coolpix 300.

It was 1998 before Kodak brought their low-end consumer digital products to market. In that year, Sony, Agfa, Ricoh, Minolta, Toshiba, Leica and H.P. also released consumer products. Any lead Kodak hoped to have on their competitors had evaporated. It had been 23 years since their innovative breakthrough.

Kodak were too heavily reliant on their profitable old chemical film and photo business to take advantage of the emerging digital camera market.

The Japanese and Korean electronics industries were not slow to see the possibilities. The Asians have always been savvy mass marketeers. Getting products to market in record time, on the back of a continuous cycle of development, feedback and improvement, driven by consumer research.

In 2004 Kodak closed its factories in the UK and Australia. 2006 saw Canon, Nikon and Minolta end the manufacture of their film cameras. Only digital from here on. In 2007 Kodak closed their paper manufacturing plant in China. Kodak was too slow to see the future though it had a big hand in creating it. The writing was on the wall.

After filing for bankruptcy, Kodak negotiated a $950 million credit line in the hope it can turn its business around. Kodak is banking its future on printer and printer cartridge sales. You've probably seen their ads on TV for cheap printing. Watch out H.P. Not.

Done.

Emacs Default Directory

2012-01-19T17:21:00.001Z

Open Here

Sometimes you want Emacs to start up in a directory, other than your home dir. You may have a project you're working on or you want to work a set of files in special dir.

You can easily achieve this by adding an entry to Emacs config file which resides in your home dir.

/home/stray/.emacs

Open the dot.emacs file using any plain text file editor (emacs?) and add the following:

; Start emacs in project directory
(setq default-directory "/home/stray/projects/")

Save your .emacs file.

Close and restart Emacs for changes to take effect.

Here I used projects as the directory Emacs will open in. You give it any directory name you wish.

Done.

Liverpool Pain Continues

2012-01-05T15:30:00.002Z

Woeful Performance

This is a not a football blog, so I resisted the urge to post on Liverpool's recent poor performances. Liverpool were held to a 0 - 0 draw against Wigan who sat in the bottom three of the Premier League on the 21 December 2011. On the 26 December 2011, Blackburn who sat bottom of the league, held Liverpool to a 1 - 1 draw. On the 5 December 2011 Liverpool were beaten 1 - 0 by mid-table Fulham.

It's not a one-off. Liverpool have been consistently poor against lowly sides. If Liverpool cannot cane a team dwindling in the relegation zone (the bottom three), they have a mountain to climb. Any hopes of becoming a dominant force in English and European football are grossly misplaced. Delusional.

Yesterday, Manchester City thumped Liverpool 3 - 0. Liverpool's aspirations to be a top four side and get back into the European Champions League are at best pitiful.

The £35 Million purchase of Andy Carroll looks like a bad move as Carroll has underperformed and failed to score consistently. Carroll scored 5 goals in 29 appearances. Compare that with Sergio Aguero who moved to Man City, in July 2011. Aguero cost Man City £38 Million. Aguero has scored 17 goals in 27 games.

Liverpool lack a goal scorer, a poacher. The likes of Ian Rush, Robbie Fowler or Torres. Fowler scored 183 goals in 369 games. An average of a goal every two games. Rush scored 346 goals in 660 games. Again an average of a goal every two games.

Liverpool desperately need a goal scorer. They are badly lacking in that department. They cannot find the net. Defensively Liverpool appear tight. Midfield they have muscle, though they now miss Lucas since his awful injury.

Liverpool have no fire power up front. They are lame and ineffective. Before Liverpool played Man City and ??? a 3 - 0 thumping, Liverpool had conceded the least number of goals in the Premier League. That's quite a defensive achievement.

Man City have scored 56 goals. Man Utd have scored 49. Chelsea have scored 39. While Liverpool have scored a pitiful 24. Less than half Man City or Man Utd managed.

Liverpool miss Fernando Torres. At his peak Fernando was hitting 3 goals every 4 games. Even the legendary Ian Rush cannot match that statistic. Torres was on fire in the 07 - 08 and 09 - 10 seasons. Sadly in his last season at Liverpool Torres netted only 9 goals in 26 appearance.

Since his move to Chelsea, Torres has scored 5 goals in 30 appearances, making Andy Carrolls goal tally look almost acceptable. Liverpool miss Torres and Torres misses Liverpool.

This is an easy question that answers much. If you look at the top team in Europe, say Barcelona or Real Madrid, how many of the current Liverpool squad would make it into the Barca team? How many would make t into the Real Madrid team? This is a good gauge to measure the quality of your team.

In answer to the question, I guess only 3 or 4 of the current squad would make it into the Barca or Real teams.

Not wishing to be an I-Told-You-So, but I told you so. I earnestly believe Kenny Dalglish is not the right man for the job. He's past his sell-by-date. When you look at the achievements of Pepe Gardiola and Jose Marienho, you can only conclude that 'King Kenny' is no longer 'King'.

Liverpool have to stop looking to the past and start creating the future. They need a young, technically minded, continental, forward looking coach to rediscover their glory days. The game has moved on. Liverpool need to.

Easy Money

2012-01-01T21:13:00.000Z

Loan Sharks

Here in the UK there's been a recent proliferation of companies offering easy short term loans. These are frequently advertised as pay-day loans. The ads are full of slick young things sitting relaxed in the comfort of their smart homes checking out the loans on their brand new laptop computers.

In the advertising they push the fact you can get a 10 minute response if you apply online and the money's in your account the same day.

They bait the hook with a 10% discount if you include a discount code when you apply. Wow. That's a full 10% discount off the APR. What they don't push quite so openly are the interest rates charged on the loan. The rates are astronomical.

Some of the interest rates on offer for payday loans:

QuickQuid charges 359% per annum

Wonga charges 360% per annum

Paydayuk charges 348% per annum

What bargains. And you can get 10% off. Great. Sign me up.

Here are some of the big UK banks and their overdraft charges:

Barclays charges 19% per annum

Lloydstsb charges 24% per annum

Nationwide charges 19% per annum

Lets take a look at the cost of borrowing £400 for 30 days:

QuickQuid charge £117.70

Wonga charge £118.356

Paydayuk charge £114.41

Now the banks overdraft charges on £400 for 30 days:

Barclays charge £6.25

Lloydstsb charge £7.89

Nationwide charge £6.25

The banks may levy a charge for setting up the overdraft.

Bear in mind that banks are NOT cheap. Banks exist to fleece you of your money and let you think they are doing you a favour.

Possessed

2011-11-07T17:33:00.001Z

Voodoo

Following on from my previous post, and the events I experienced with my aunt. I couldn't help but notice the change in her character when she was upset. This got me thinking about the emotions that possess us.

She had a misplaced belief about her air purifiers, even though they did little or nothing to improve air quality. But her belief was steadfast. Immovable. Unshakable.

When we carry these "unshakable" beliefs, they become a part of "me". And if any body threatens these beliefs, they threaten "me". That's why people will sometimes kill for their beliefs. Its almost as though, "I am" my beliefs, and if you destroy them, you destroy me.

Therefore, I will kill you, or at least attack you, insofar as I need to, so I can defend my beliefs. Ultimately defending me.

This may seem crazy, but dig a little deeper. Fundamentalists of all persuasion, kill for their beliefs.

Examples:

Muslims suicide bombers kill innocents.
KKK kill innocent blacks.
Catholics kill protestants.
Communists kill Capitalists.
Capitalists kill Communists.
Fascists kill Jews.
Jews kill Arabs.

How else can you explain such attrocities?

The problem with beliefs is they change. They are slippery. Without foundation.

500 years ago, every one believed the earth was flat
If you sailed to the edge, you would fall off into space
The sun revolved around the earth
Heaven was just above earth

You can cling to those beliefs, but it creates a problem. Disharmony. You're out of tune with Nature and mankind.

The crazy thing is that many of us still do it. My crazy aunt still believes her air purifiers work and that when she dies she will go to heaven and sit at the right hand of god. She cant sit still for 5 minutes, without some distraction. How she's gonna sit at the right hand of god for eternity with no TV, no newspaper or any other form of distraction. I have no idea.

Its a crazy notion but thats what she believes.

I guess that's the problem with beliefs. Only the believer needs to believe in them.

Ad Man's Dream

2011-11-07T15:39:00.000Z

They Wouldn't Be Allowed To Advertise If It Wasn't True

Its interesting to watch how people behave at times. Its particularly interesting to observe them when they feel threatened. How they cling to petty notions and unfounded beliefs.

I was staying with a relative recently, an elderly female. A septuagenarian. Some time back, she had purchased several ionizers and placed them in each room. I switched off the unit in my room, as it produced a high-pitched whistle when working. My aunt, was going deaf and could not hear the whistle.

Each time she came into my room she would switch the unit back on. I could hear it whistling away and quickly hit the kill switch. My aunt asked my why I kept switching the unit off. I explained about the high-pitch it gave off. She responded: "I can't hear anything". Enough said.

A couple of days later, she showed me an advert for the same unit in a Sunday supplement magazine. I laughed and suggested the only thing they cleaned up was the amount of money they made. This irked her.

I suggested the units did nothing but burn electricity and you were better off opening a window to freshen the air. This inflamed her even more. I could see her getting more agitated by the minute.

I googled for: "Why ionizers dont work". Read through a few posts and found a couple that explained why they didn't work. Why they were a waste of money, and if you bought one, to return it and get your money back.

This infuriated her. I was attacking her heart-held belief. And that's not allowed.

Her: "Of course they work". She retorted.
Me: "Why do you say that?"
Her: "They must work, or they wouldn't be allowed to sell them".
Me: "What? Can't believe I'm hearing this"
Her: "They advertise them, so they must work".
Me: "Are you being serious?"
Her: "Yes. Look at the advert in the paper".
Me: "That proves nothing".
Her: "They wouldn't be allowed to advertise if it wasn't true".
Me: "Who's gonna stop them?"
Her: "What are you talking about?"
Me: "I'm talking about advertising and who polices the adverts."
Me: "Tell me who stops them printing what they like in an ad?"
Her: Silence
Me: "Come on. Tell me. Please explain who stops them?"
Her: Now fuming. Steam coming out of her ears
Me: "Well? Please elaborate".
Her: "You know nothing".

She storms out the room.

A little while later when she had cooled down a I tried to explain to her that anybody can produce any ad they like and the papers will print it as long as you pay for the ad. She called me a liar. My aunt carries some incongruent belief that the "Ad Police" will stop you producing and advertising malevolent products or fraudulent claims. Little does she know.

Really I could not make this stuff up. Ad men love my aunt and the millions out there just like her, that truly believe that ALL adverts are true, honest and factual. Nothing could be further from the truth.

An ad-man's dream.

Done!

Trouble At Anfield

2011-11-06T22:30:00.002Z

Woe Woe And Thrice Woe

Liverpool have been dire in many games this season. At times, they've produced scintillating football. Other times, they've play like a Sunday pub team. Inconsistency has been the norm. Too many times, they have struggled against mediocre and lesser opposition .

Yesterday, Liverpool were held to a 0 - 0 draw against Swansea, who were promoted from the lower division last season. It should have been a walkover for the 'Reds". Instead, Swansea in white kit, stormed 'Fortress Anfield' and almost took 3 points. Swansea were only denied all three points, by a poor call from the referee. Liverpool struggled and could not unlock the Swansea defence. Liverpool hung on for a lucky draw. What does that tell ya?

Liverpool were held 1 - 1 by lowly Norwich few weeks ago. Again, Norwich were promoted from the lower division last season. On paper, Liverpool should have thumped them, but they didn't. Liverpool just scraped through and were lucky to get a point from the game.

At the beginning of September, Stoke, a middling premiership team, beat Liverpool 1 - 0. In the middle of August, Sunderland, another middling team, held Liverpool to a 1 - 1 draw at Anfield.

In mid September Spurs thumped Liverpool 4 - 0. Spurs like Liverpool are vying for a top four finish to qualify for the Champions League.

So what's happened. Where has it gone wrong?

From the online dictionary.reference.com:

regression - noun

1. the act of going back to a previous place or state; return or reversion.

2. retrogradation; retrogression.

3. Biology. reversion to an earlier or less advanced state or form or to a common or general type.

4. Psychoanalysis. the reversion to a chronologically earlier or less adapted pattern of behavior and feeling.

5. a subsidence of a disease or its manifestations: a regression of symptoms.

adjective

6. of, pertaining to, or determined by regression analysis: regression curve; regression equation.

How can this be? Considering the new American owners have spent £100 million on players?

Suarez was an inspired buy. The moment I saw him, in his first game for Liverpool, I knew he was magic. I labelled him "The Wizard". Carroll on the other hand, has been a poor buy. A disaster. An unknown quantity. Untried, untested. His performances this season have confirmed this. He's missed too many chances, and performed poorly when starting games. I'm confident he'll be the same for the rest of the season.

Downing and Jordan, have been poor to middling. Sometimes good, sometimes, forgettable. They may yet produce. Time will tell.

Charlie Adam has been great. He's performed peerlessly, scored goals, created chances, great vision, great crosses, and commanded the midfield. Adam has been an excellent buy.

I have views on why the Liverpool locomotive has been derailed.

Thats for my next footy post.

Don't Talk To Cops - Part 2

2011-11-03T12:36:00.000Z

Bite Your Lip

Following on from the previous post, here's the second part of Don't Talk to Cops. Appropriately titled: The Other Side of the Story.

In Part 2, George Buch a police officer with the Virginia Beach Police Department, gives his take on why you should NOT talk to the police or answer any questions, without your lawyer present. The second talk gives the police view of getting a statement or a confession.

After a brief intro, officer Buch opens his talk with a few questions;

"Are any of you guilty of anything? How many drive here today? Anybody go above 55 on the interstate? Hold your hands up."

People raise their hands.

Professor Duane off-screen, admonishes them for admitting guilt:

"Why are you holding your hands up. I told you about that."

Uproarious laughter.

Officer Buch continues: "And there you go. People are inherently honest, and that's the problem."

"When I was a police officer in uniform on patrol, I could follow a car however long I needed to and eventually they will do something illegal. And I can pull them over."

"When you get stopped for speeding. Everyone likes to be somewhat honest. First thing police officers asks you? Do you know how fast you were going? If the speed limit is 35, you say, oh 38 - 40. You wanna be kinda honest even though you were doing 50. You just said you were doing 38 - 40. You just admitted to breaking the law. You just confessed. They can go to court with that. That you confessed and get a conviction."

Its worth watching to get an insight into how the police view their work.

Officer Buch: "People are stupid. They do stupid things. They talk to the police." "I've dealt with a 1,000 felonies and 2,500 misdemeanors with a 98% conviction rate. 80% of those I don't even have to go to court. Why? Cos they confessed."

"People like to talk to the Police. They like to tell their story."

"My job is to get you to talk. To develop a great case. A great case is a case with a confession."

Later on in his talk officer Buch honestly states:

"The defence attorney's job is to get to his client and stop him talking to me."

Here's the link to the video: Don't Talk to Cops, Part 2

Done.

Don't Talk To Cops - Part 1

2011-11-03T11:38:00.000Z

Silence Is Golden

If you haven't watched it yet, take time to view an excellent video posted on YouTube, given by a Lawyer. His name is James Duane a Professor at Regent Law School.

Professor Duane starts by explaining the top ten reasons for not talking to the police (without your lawyer present), or helping police with their inquiries. No matter how trivial it may seem, or how innocent you may actually be. He goes on to give several examples of how your statements or your answers can be used against you, and in many instances may be the only grounds on which you are convicted, even if you are 100% innocent.

He also explains that police officers are human, and sometimes make errors when collecting or giving evidence.

Its funny and essential viewing, and may one day save you from being convicted of an offence you did not commit. (Or even one that ya did).

The video runs for 28 minutes, but its worth the time invested.

Here's a link to the video: Don't Talk to Cops, Part 1

Done.

Liverpool Woes Continue

2011-09-18T16:22:00.003+01:00

More Pain

Icheck the BBC website sports section to see Liverpool are playing Tottenham at White Hart Lane. I don't have Sky Sports. I have serious reservations about Liverpool's abilities to beat a middling team such as Tottenham. I read that Liverpool are trailing Tottenham 1 - 0.

Liverpool showed how inept they were when they hit Stoke City last week. I see more pain today. I follow Liverpool and feel with their pedigree, they should be at the top, near always.

The Liverpool dynasty was established by Bill Shankly, a tough, no-nonsense progressive scot with a big heart. He took Liverpool from the lower ranks and set the foundations for them to become a major force in English and European football. All feared and respected Liverpool fc.

When Shankly retired in 1974, he handed the reigns to what was to become Liverpool's and one of English football's most successful managers: Bob Paisley. Paisley brought unparalleled European glory to Liverpool. Paisley's time in charge was fruitful and glory-filled. Cup after cup. Title after title. Year after year. European cup, Eufa cup, FA cup, league cup, league title. Liverpool were untouchable. Paisley retired in 1983.

Joe Fagan took over from Paisley and continued the success and the Liverpool tradition. Fagan remained in charge till the Heysel Stadium incident. He retired in 1985 when King Kenny took over.

Kenny Dalglish inherited a powerful all-conquering team which continued Liverpool's success. Kenny stayed in charge till another major spectator incident occurred at Hillsborough. King Kenny retired in 1991.

Graeme Souness, a respected Liverpool player was appointed manager and oversaw the first stages of Liverpool's decline. He won the FA cup in the '92 season but nothing else.

Souness was dumped in 1994 and replaced with Roy Evans one of the Shankly Boot Room boys. Evans steered Liverpool to a single success, and was eventually replaced by Gerard Houllier in 1998.

Both Evans and his successor, Houllier oversaw the continued decline of a once awesome footballing force. Houllier won a few prizes, but nothing of real substance. Yes, Houllier won three cups, but in reality the football they played was scrappy. It must be acknowledged that Houllier upgraded, rebuilt the training regime, along with Melwood, Liverpool's famous training facility. Houllier being French brought with him continental training techniques and methods. English football still lived in the days of a bucket of cold water and sponge as being the most common treatment for most ailments.

Houllier was given marching orders in 2004. The search for a replacement begun. It was at the behest of Liverpool's bright young striker, Michael Owen. Liverpool played Spanish side Valencia in a European game and lost. Owen was overawed with their style of play and openly stated their manager should be the next Liverpool manager. It was how Liverpool should play.

The management heard the echoes and duly employed Valencia's manager Rafa Benitez to take the helms. Benitez arrived in 2004 and steered Liverpool to their 5th European cup. The city was ecstatic. The club was ecstatic. It seemed Liverpool had finally found someone to take them back to the top, where Liverpoolfc belonged.

Liverpool under Benitez was a rollercoaster ride. He brought some freshness to the team, but there were many problems on the pitch, off the pitch and in the boardroom. Benitez bought badly, as had some of his predecessors. The team did not gel. Of course this was not helped by Benitez constant player rotation, which unsettled so many players. Benitez was restrained by lack of funds. Given different circumstances, perhaps Benitez could have worked his magic at Liverpool, got them playing great football, and restored their former glory.

For years Liverpool's ownership had quietly contributed to their success. In 2007 Liverpool was sold to Americans Gillet and Hicks. Much has been written of how the 'Americans' milked Liverpool. I don't wholly agree with this view. But the coupling of 'American' ownership and Benitez petulance eventually saw his dismissal in 2010.

Roy Hodgeson was poached from Fulham FC to take charge in 2010. Roy inherited an unsettled squad and did not immediately stamp his authority. Roy was outspoken on some issues that alienated him from Liverpool supporters. Liverpool's efforts on the pitch were dire, leaving them dwindling in the drop zone. Liverpool fans chanted 'Hodgeson for England' suggesting his poor management skills would suit and continue the poor form of the English national team.

Hodgeson was given his P45 and replaced by 'King Kenny', for Kenny's second stint in charge. Kenny along with his new backroom staff took Liverpool out of the drop zone and took them into the top six. It looked like the 'King' was back and he had not lost his 'Midas' touch.

But that was not the case. 'Kenny Dalglish' came back to inherit a poor Liverpool team. A mediocre squad with little self belief. 'King Kenny' sold the unsettled 'Torres' for £50 million to Chelsea and bought two players in his place. The mercurial wizard Suarez and the pedestrian Carroll.

Suarez plays the continental style of football. Fast, sharp, passing and movement. This was how Liverpool played in their 'All conquering' hey day. Carroll, tall, slow, centre-forward in the traditional British mould. Think aerial. Think high-balls. Think long-balls. Think frequent punts. Liverpool are going backwards.

Whenever a new manager is brought in, the team, any team responds with good results. When 'King Kenny' came back it was the new manager syndrome re-visited. That has now worn off. The initial feel-good factor is gone. Its back to the daily grind and all the associated emotions.

This shows in some of Dalglish's selections and the poor results against mediocre opposition. Some media pundits were predicting that Liverpool would be a top 4 team this season. Bah. Humbug!

If Liverpool finish in the top 6, it will be a miracle. As I finish writing this post, I check the BBC sports page and see Liverpool were beaten 4-0 by Tottenham. Its downhill all the way.

Last week I posted the 'King Kenny' was not the man to take Liverpool back to the top.

Watch this space.

Liverpool Woes

2011-09-10T19:27:00.005+01:00

Here we go again...

Okay, its been a while since I last posted as I was travelling in Asia. I toured Japan, Hong Kong and Korea and had a great time. I felt I had to post on the situation at Liverpool.

If your not a football fan (Soccer to all you american dudes), switch off now. Much has been made of the return of 'King Kenny'. He came in last year and turned things around. Revived flagging fortunes. Picked things up after Roy Hodgson's disastrous tenure. Kenny did the right things to get the team back on track and get Liverpool out the drop zone. Okay that's the good part. Here's the rest.

King Kenny should go.

Why?

A few reasons. Allow me list them:

1. He quit Liverpool when things got tough last time round

2. He quit Blackburn after a difficult spell

3. He quit Celtic after a difficult spell

Well, err can anyone see a pattern here???

Don't go backwards unless you want to go backwards.

Question: Does that make sense? Maybe not.

I'll elaborate. How many bands reform after years apart to try and re-capture their glory years.

Answer: Too many

They get together after patching up their differences and personal hostilities. Try to recapture the 'love' they felt back then, and do one more gig for the management (and the bank balance).

What they soon discover is that you cannot recapture the magic and the glory of days gone past. The past glory was a result of actions and events rooted in that time and space/place. Trying to re-create the conditions that contributed to those events is just not possible.

So many external conditions contributed and supported those events, and those conditions cannot be re-created. Its just not possible. So forget it. Move on.

Have ya ever tried to get back with an old flame. Tried to re-capture the magic of your earlier relationship. You can't do it. Forget it. Move on.

Have ya ever met up with old school friends, tried to relive the past, and get shocked at how they changed. How fat they got. How old they got. How rigid/ingrained they become in their ways. Forget it. Bury it. Move on. Go find new pastures.

Ya see things are constantly evolving. Changing. New influences are impacting on situations. You can never recapture the past. You can never re-create those magic moments. They are gone dead. Buried.

So, where does that leave us, 'King Kenny' and Liverpool?

Right now, I'd say 'dead in the water'.

Here is my prediction for the coming season.

After much expenditure on the wrong players, Liverpool will fail spectacularly.
Carroll will fail and become marginal. He's a misfit in the Liverpool squad.
Liverpool will sack 'King Kenny' or 'Kenny' will leave by mutual consent, after a string of mediocre or poor results.
Liverpool will not make a top four finish. They will languish in 6, 7 , 8, or mid-table.

What the new owners need do is find a bright, young, innovative, energetic manager. Someone forward thinking. A young visionary. Some like Pepe Gardiola, perhaps. Forget about the past. Forget about the old. Time to move on.

Embrace the future. Embrace the new.

Remove Gnome Desktop Folder

2011-08-21T13:51:00.003+01:00

Permanent

If you run Gnome 2, by default Gnome will create a number of personal directories/folders for you. These include Videos, Music, Documents, Desktop.

You can easily remove Videos, Music, and so on. If you remove the 'Desktop' folder, Gnome will persist in recreating it, even against your wishes. This can create frustration and perhaps even a sense of helplessness.

Here's how to fix it so the deleted 'Desktop' folder is permanently removed.

Start gconf-editor and click:

apps/nautilus/preferences/show_desktop

Uncheck show_desktop

Exit gconf-editor.

Delete 'Desktop' folder.

Unfortunately, this removes your desktop contents such as Trash and any Icons or shortcuts you had.

Done!

Fedora Upgrade Using Yum

2011-08-07T06:02:00.002+01:00

System Upgrade With YUM

Upgrading your Fedora, or other RPM based system using YUM is fairly simple. Once you follow a few basic commands your system will automatically upgrade to the latest release.

1. Back up your system

Use rsync, an external drive, back up to the cloud or any other means you have available to protect your precious data.

2. Clean Stuff

Find unused config files
Merge and resolve the changes found by the following script: yum install rpmconf; rpmconf -a Now find and remove old config which nobody owns: find /etc /var -name '*.rpm?*'

Now is a good time to remove packages you don't use - especially non-standard packages.

3. Find and review "unused" packages

You can find packages not required by other packages with the tool package-cleanup from the yum-utils package: yum install yum-utils; package-cleanup --leaves. These packages could be candidates for removal, but check to see whether you use them directly or if they are used by applications not backed by rpm packages. Remove them with yum remove package-name-and-version.
Another useful tool for cleaning up unused packages is rpmreaper. It's an ncurses application that lets you view rpm dependency graph and mark packages for deletion. Marking one package can make other packages leaf, which you can see immediately, so you don't have to run the tool several times to get rid of whole sub-tree of unused packages. Install with: yum install rpmreaper.

Find and review "lost" packages
You can find orphaned packages (ie packages not in the repositories anymore) with: package-cleanup --orphans. This will also show packages which have been partially uninstalled but where the "%postun" script failed.

4. Start the upgrade

Go to a text console
ctrl + alt + F2

log in as root, and go into runlevel 3

init 3

Update yum to latest version available in your Fedora version
yum update yum

Clean the cache
Then remove all traces of the version you are leaving from the yum cache in /var/cache/yum.

yum clean all

Upgrade all packages

yum --releasever= distro-sync

5. Make sure Fedora is upgraded

Distro-sync will usually take care of upgrades for the third party repositories you have enabled as well. Confirm with
yum repolist

after the upgrade process is over. yum might complain about conflicts or requirements. That is probably because you have used non-standard repositories or installed non-standard packages manually. Try to guess which packages cause the problem (or at least is a part of the dependency chain) - uninstall them and try again. Remember to install the packages again if they are essential.
Ensure that all (new) essential packages from the new version are installed with

yum groupupdate Base

You might want to update other groups too, see

yum grouplist
For example

yum groupupdate "GNOME Desktop Environment" \
"Development Tools" "Server Configuration Tools" \
"Hardware Support" "Sound and Video" \
"Graphical Internet" "Fonts" \
"Games and Entertainment" "Printing Software" \
"Administration Tools" "Office/Productivity" "System Tools"

6. Preparing for reboot

Before booting you should usually install the bootloader from your new grub by running

/sbin/grub-install BOOTDEVICE
- where BOOTDEVICE is usually /dev/sda (If you get an error '/dev/sda does not have any corresponding BIOS drive' from that, then try /sbin/grub-install --recheck /dev/sda.)

Also, the order of init scripts could have changed from the previous version. A command to reset the order is:

cd /etc/rc.d/init.d; for f in *; do /sbin/chkconfig $f resetpriorities; done

Again, run package-cleanup --orphans to find packages that haven't been upgraded.

That's about it!

Chrome OS On Your Box

2011-08-07T05:25:00.002+01:00

Google Shines

Unless you've been travelling the vast expanses of Siberia, the Amazonian forests, the north African desert, or a similar wasteland, you have probably heard of Google's Chrome OS. Following hot on the heals of their Google Chrome browser, the ChromeOS is designed primarily for laptops, notebooks, netbooks and will probably work on a tablet PC

To ensure, compatibility, speed and stability, Google restricted access to their OS. Primarily making it available pre-installed on new machines, to ensure a fast, stable, product for the user.

While following this line of logic, unfortunately it precludes users with existing hardware.

Ya know the scene, the machine ya bought with Windows pre-installed, which you tore off soon as you got it home, then quietly proceeded to install a Linux distro. Maybe Debian, Ubuntu, Arch or Fedora if you happen to favour RPMs.

Having wiped the evil empires efforts from your machine, and installed Linux, then you hear how good ChromeOS is on a light machine. Now you want to run ChromeOS. Only problem. Google does not offer a download site for their cool operating system. What to do next?

There is a way. Its not guaranteed to work 100%. Its not guaranteed to be headache free. But its still available to those that want it.

Hexxeh has been making ChromeOS available for download to the general public, since ChromeOS hit the streets.

hexxeh offers a daily release of ChromeOS that appears stable, and will probably work with your hardware.

ChromeOS is light, fast and frugal.

If you want to try it on your laptop or netbook, go to hexxeh website and download a USB image. Copy the image to your usb pen, and reboot your machine.

Try it, you might like it!

Using Yum

2011-08-07T03:38:00.005+01:00

Yellowdog Updater Modified

Here's a quick simple howto for using YUM on a Fedora, Redhat, CentOS, or other RPM based system.

Update system
yum update

Search
yum search package-name

Info on package
yum info package-name

Install packages. Automatic resolution of dependencies
yum install package-name

Uninstall packages
yum remove package-name

List Packages
available yum list|less

List all installed packages
yum list installed|less

List all installed packages need updating
yum list updates|less

Cleaning of the system

Yum can leave a lot of chaff on the system. The files are stored in the /var/cache/yum/ directory. RPM packages can use up a lot of space.

Clean redundant RPM files
yum clean all

Group install
yum groupinstall "groupname"

Remember to include quotation marks

Search package names
yum list something

Find name of package containing file
yum provides filename

List packages recently added to repositories
yum list recent

List software groups
yum grouplist

Install a software group
yum groupinstall "groupname"

Update a group
yum groupupdate "groupname"

Include a yes switch in your request
Use -y for yes

Include a cashe switch in your request
Use -C for cache only

That's about it!

Fedora Add MS Core Fonts

2011-08-06T17:01:00.002+01:00

MS Fonts

To add MS Core Web fonts to Fedora, open a terminal and do:

yum localinstall http://fedora.missingbox.co.nz/core-fonts.rpm --nogpgcheck

Restart your browser!

Emacs Dired Commands

2011-08-05T05:18:00.009+01:00

Directory Editor

Dired is an extremely useful Emacs command set allowing you the ability to edit directories like files. Dired is invoked inside Emacs using C-x d, producing output similar to Bash 'ls -l' command. This allows file and subdirectory manipulation, which can be enacted immediately or marked for later execution.

Here's a list of useful Dired Commands:

C-x d -- start dired mode
M-x dired -- start dired mode

Once dired mode starts the following keys effect the actions. Notice character input is upper case not lower.

d -- Delete
o -- open file in other window
v -- view file

C -- Copy
G -- Change group
M -- Chmod
O -- Chown
P -- Print
U -- Undo
X -- Shell command
Z -- Compress

C-g -- Cancel action

That's enough to get ya going!

Enjoy Yourself.

CouchSurfing

2011-08-05T04:01:00.017+01:00

Free Bed By Any Other Name

In my efforts to find alternative means of travel accommodation I googled and checked out several forums with useful information for travellers. One site I came across was CouchSurfing.org. The idea behind CouchSurfing, being that if you need a floor or a sofa for one night, the good people making up the community of CouchSurfing will give you a bed down in a safe, warm, dry environment with no questions asked and no money demanded.

The site works hard to build a community spirit of fellow travellers, all willing to help and share. I feel its a grand, noble ideal that works sometimes.

I am sure you have been in a similar situation, where you hit a strange city, your only there one night, and wouldn't it be great to have a friendly host from the city, to offer you a free bed, coffee, breakfast, a chat, some site seeing, and other similar activities.

So like the good Netizen that I am I joined the site and paid my contribution of $25. Please note, this is not a "Joining Fee". This is a contribution. You can't join the site without a contribution, but its also not a fee. Err not sure how that one works, but it sure as hell looks like a joining fee to me. Oh Patrick you are the pessimist.

Of course if you are so moved you can "Contribute" more than $25, say $50, $100, or $200. There is no upper limit to how much you can throw into this communally spirited adventure.

Anyhow, I paid the minimum contribution and eagerly awaited verification. Ya see its a three stage process.

1. Join. Add your details and create a profile.

2. Make a contribution using a credit/debit card.

3. CouchSuring.org based in SF California, send a card to your home address, with a unique code. Enter the unique code and CouchSurfing knows you exist at that address.

After step 3 you are verified. Step 3 takes 4 - 6 weeks to complete, depending where you live in the world.

I joined and 2 weeks later I was jet-bound for Japan. I had already paid by credit/debit card, which is based at my home address. I am not going to hang around for another 2 - 4 weeks, rework my itinerary, just to get verified.

I am in Japan and I get an email from CouchSurfing asking if I have received my verification code. How do I know. I am spinning around the Nippon countryside. Anyhow, I don't let it get me down. I head out of Tokyo and aim for Kyoto, the ancient capital of Japan. I like Kyoto, its a wonderful place. So much to see. So many temples, monasteries, gardens, and an Imperial Palace too. Its a friendly place with a slower pace than Tokyo.

Allow me to digress for a moment. I will return to CouchSurfing soon. I stay a few nights at a Ryokan. This is a traditional Japanese Guest House. Tatami matting on the floor. Japanese bedding on the floor. Indoor Japanese garden. Low ceilings, Low doorways. Low Toilets. Low Showers. And plenty of banged heads. I have the cuts and scars on my scalp to prove it.

I am 6ft. 0in. Not overly tall for a Gaijin. But I can tell ya traditional Japanese homes are built with very short people in mind. The Japanese people are not particularly tall. Most Japanese, just about reach my shoulder. They can comfortable navigate a Ryokan with no great difficulty. I on the other hand, banged my head at least 6 - 8 times a day.

I love Japan. And I loved my time there, but I am just too tall for this place. Gimme dimensions that fit my frame. As I said earlier, I am not particularly tall. At School I was not the tallest kid in my class. Other kids towered above me. But I am just too damn tall for Nippon.

Back to CouchSurfing. I figure, look there are so many CouchSurfers willing to help, meet and host other CouchSufers, I should give it a try. I log into the CouchSurfing website, and do a search on CoachSurfers willing to host (ie allow total strangers to sleep in their home, on the floor or the sofa) in the Kyoto area. I find hundreds of members. Next I query who will allow me to stay for one night.

In CouchSufing, members can have 5 states:

1. Coffee Cup - They will meet for a chat, or a drink. No stay.

2. Aeroplane - They are on the road travelling. No stay.

3. Circle X - No stay. No matter what.

4. Couch ? - Maybe you can stay. Email me.

5. Couch - You can sleep on the floor or couch.

When I searched Kyoto hosts, I found hundreds and hundreds of 'Coffee Cup' hosts. ie they will meet you for a cup of tea, coffee, beer and a chat. Maybe even show you some of the local sites.

If you have lived on the road at any time and arrived in a strange city at 5am, just got off the bus. Had little sleep cos the bus driver insists on stopping at motorway service areas every 2 hours, the last you want at 5am is a cup of coffee or tea and a chat.

You want, a shower to remove the road grime and wake you a little.

You want to change those sweaty pants and 'T' shirt and put on a fresh clothes.

You want a little sleep. Maybe even 2 or 3 hours sleep. Anything will do.

Back to the search. Results come in and by the hundreds, I have lonely hosts that want to meet for coffee and a chat. I found 2 hosts willing to allow a Gaijin to crash on their floor for the night. I do not exaggerate or lie. I found 2 hosts.

I email them both, via the website requesting a couch for the night. One of them took the time to respond, but two days after I left Kyoto. The other host did not bother to respond.

I thought maybe its me and the fact I am not Japanese. You must remember, most Japanese are very cautious people. They feel unsafe, uncomfortable, and vulnerable with strangers, and particularly tall white skinned westerners.

I thought maybe its just me and the Japanese CouchSurfers dont get on.

I want to move on from Japan to another country and look at possibilities. I am not sure where I want to go next. I just search on various countries that I may visit in the near future.

I search on Korea.

I find 10 willing to host.

CouchSurfing appears to be particularly strong in Europe. So I guess I will get better results there.

I search on Holland.

Of the hundreds and hundreds of search results, I find, 1 host. A single host. And that had strings attached.

I search on my home city of London, England.

Again, I get hundreds and hundreds of results. Again I find only 4 willing to host.

CouchSurfing boasts having over 3,000,000 members world wide.

For your elucidation, 2,999,990 are all willing to meet, have a cup of coffee or tea and a chat. As for the remaining 10 members willing to give you a Couch for the night. You will have to email them and see when they are not busy, or not on the road themselves trying to find an empty couch for the night.

In closing I must add. I did meet a few people in the forums that were genuine and willing to help. Not with a Couch or bed, but with advice, help, shared experience and other useful info.

I will leave it there.

On The Road

2011-07-28T11:05:00.008+01:00

Gone Gone Gone

Ihaven't posted recently as I had a mountain of work to do throughout June and the beginning of July. Soon as the workload was finished, I hit the road for an extended break.

As anyone that has read the blog can guess I was living in England. I decided I needed to get away from my present life and do something way different.

I flew 6,000 miles to Japan, to spend time here travelling around, meeting people, sampling the culture, gawking at the amazing structures and struggling with the language.

I bought one of those Japanese Language Survival books. I spent quite a while in the book store browsing through the available English language books. Remember everything here is in Kanji - Chinese script.

I found one that looked useful. But I was wrong. Its turned out to be pretty awful.

All the road signs, railroad stations, buses, bus stops, maps, everything is written in Kanji.

Few people speak English. I read somewhere its only 10% of the population, and they are mostly located in the big cities like Tokyo, Osaka, Kyoto and so on. Once you move out the cities, you may as well use sign-language to communicate. You have a better chance.

After my first Japanese language book purchase, I heard about a second hand book store in a Tokyo suburb selling English language books. I made my way across town and hunted it. It was located on the second floor of a modern block. Took me close to an hour to find it, even with the help of natives.

I spent over two hours searching for the right book. Having learnt from my initial mistake, I eventually settled on three books that have turned out to be an excellent choice. In addition, when I got to Osaka, I realised I could not survive any longer without a Japanese/English - English/Japanese dictionary. I found a good one at KinoKunya, a modern bookstore with branches all over Japan. It has over eight floors of books.

One big problem with so many Japanese language books, is they promise, if you buy the book, you will be speaking the language in no time. Or maybe just a couple of hours. Yeah right.

What they don't tell you is even if you can get the question or statement out and pronounce it correctly, when the Japanese dude or lady you are talking too smiles and thinks you can understand Japanese. Then response at 10,000 miles an hour in a language you can barely grasp and I dialect you never heard before. You're gonna be baffled and grinning like an idiot. Nodding your head, pretending to have caught at least a little of what they said.

Another headache for Net and Web users are the keyboards. They are laid out real odd, with plenty of Kanji characters keeping the Latin alphabet company. If you're used to touch-typing on a western style keyboard, be prepared for some interesting surprises.

Anyhow its getting late and I have limited Internet access. Gone are the days of all day limitless Broadband.

So I gotta go.

I will try to post again soon on my adventures in the land of the rising sun.

Sayonara.

Fedora 15 Adding Repos

2011-06-26T21:32:00.003+01:00

RPM Fusion

Like Debian Linux, Fedora Linux comes with standard free software repos as a default.

If you want non-free software or something a little exotic, you need to add the essential repos.

You want RPM Fusion.

RPM Fusion is a merger of Dribble, Freshrpms, and Livna repos.

RPM Fusion offers software that Fedora and Red Hat don't offer.

RPM Fusion Non-Free repo requires some packages from the free repo, so both need to be added.

In your browser click the following two links to run install scripts to add both repos to your Fedora system:

RPM Fusion free for Fedora 13, 14 and 15

RPM Fusion nonfree for Fedora 13, 14 and 15

When the script runs, press yes to the questions to allow the install. You may have to give root password at one point.

After the install scripts finish, in an Xterm or similar, as root user run:

yum update

This updates the repo database.

Now you can search and install exotic packages not available from Fedora.

Done!

Google Chrome On Fedora 15

2011-06-26T20:19:00.005+01:00

Get Chrome

Installing Google Chrome on Fedora 15 64-bit is relatively simple, once you add the Chrome Repo to the Repos directory.

As root user, change directory to /etc/yum.repos.d.

Use Emacs, Vim, or any other editor and add the following:

[google64]
name=Google - x86_64
baseurl=http://dl.google.com/linux/rpm/stable/x86_64
enabled=1
gpgcheck=1
gpgkey=https://dl-ssl.google.com/linux/linux_signing_key.pub

Save the file as google.repo

This adds the 64-bit Chrome repo.

Next run the following yum command:

yum install google-chrome-stable

When quizzed, press 'y' to answer 'yes'.

Yum install will run to completion.

Click 'Activities' > 'Internet' > Google Chrome

You got Chrome.

If you want 32-bit add the following repo instead:

[google]
name=Google - i386
baseurl=http://dl.google.com/linux/rpm/stable/x86_64
enabled=1
gpgcheck=1
gpgkey=https://dl-ssl.google.com/linux/linux_signing_key.pub

Then run the yum command:

yum install google-chrome-stable

You have Chrome 32-bit installed.

Firefox Mouse Gestures

2011-06-20T23:07:00.003+01:00

That Means

Firefox has a cool add-on called Mouse Gestures. Its an easy way to manipulate the Firefox browser using your mouse instead of the keyboard, menu or toolbar.

Moving the mouse in a particular fashion, creates a gesture. Firefox interprets the gesture as a command action and responds accordingly. Mouse Gestures provide fast acces to common functions.

You can use gestures to:

Go Forward

Go Back

Switch Tabs

Open Links

Control Text

Image Size

And many other functions.

A cool fast way to manipulate Firefox. There's just one draw back at the present time. Mouse Gestures only works with Firefox versions up to 3.0.3

You can find Mouse Gestures at this URL:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/mouse-gestures-redox/

Try it. You might like it.

Done!

Using Cut With Date Command

2011-05-15T13:22:00.003+01:00

Cut Chop Dice

If you want to get the time without the other date info, use 'cut' command. You can cut fields to eliminate data you don't want displayed.

When you give the 'date' command it normally prints time and date. The output looks like this:

$ date
Sun May 15 13:15:36 BST 2011

If you only want to print the time, use 'cut' with -c.

$ date | cut -c 12-19
13:15:46

Here we pipe 'date' output to 'cut' and cut everything except columns 12 - 19.

We only get the time to display.

Try it on text strings.

Done!

Copy Home Directory

2011-05-15T13:08:00.005+01:00

Home Sweet Home

If you want a quick 'n' easy way to copy your home directory to another disk, or just to copy a bunch of files effortlessly, use the following command:

cp -avx /home /new/path

This will copy everything in your home directory including hidden files.

It will retain file ownership and creation data.

You can also use tar to copy /home

Use the following command:

(cd /home; tar cf - .)|(cd /new_home; tar pxvf -)

This does the same as cp -a

Preserving mode, time, ownership, and other data. It also copies symlinks, hidden files and subdirs.

Thats about it!

The Boot Process

2011-04-27T01:55:00.006+01:00

Bootstrappin'

The boot process is the magic that makes your hardware come alive. You may not dwell on it, the process by which your cold, static, inanimate box kicks in, is a wonder of modern science.

The process begins when you press the power button.

Here's how it works:

Booting is a multi-stage process:

Stage I

Read the BIOS ROM.

o Power Up

The first stage when switch on your machine is the surge of electricity to the power supply. This needs to be regulated so a steady stream can be pumped to the computer. Once the supply is regulated, a reset signal is sent to the CPU.

o BIOS ROM

Processor checks the end of system memory (the BIOS ROM) for a boot program it can load. This always resides at the same location in every BIOS: 0xF0000 to 0xFFFFF. The BIOS ROM always resides at the and of system memory.

o BIOS POST

Next the system runs POST to check all is healthy and A-OK. If it gets the all clear, it continues with the boot. If its a minor fault it beeps.

o Video BIOS

Next it reads and runs the video cards BIOS. This is located at: 0xC000 in memory.

o ATA BIOS

Next it looks for other BIOS on the system and reads them. This is normally the ATA disk drive BIOS located at: 0xC800.

o BIOS Display

The system then displays the familiar BIOS screen.

o Memory Check

BIOS now checks system memory and displays a total count.

System Check

Now BIOS performs system check to see what hardware is on the system.

o PnP Check

Now BIOS checks for Plug n Play devices on the system, and echos a message on screen for each one it finds

o BIOS Summary

BIOS displays a summary of system config. This includes serial ports and their I/O port addresses. The ports are:

0x3F8/IRQ4 (COM1)

0x2F8/IRQ3 (COM2)

0x3E8/IRQ4 (COM3)

0x2E8/IRQ3 (COM4)

Parallel ports, normally only one:

0x378/IRQ7 (LPT1)

0x278/IRQ5 (LPT2)

o Boot Device

The BIOS searches for a device to boot.

o Target Device

After identifying the target boot device, the BIOS now searches hard disk for cylinder 0, head 0, sector 1. (The first sector on the disk).

Stage II

o Bootable Device

If the BIOS finds a bootable device at cylinder 0, head 0, sector 1. It loads the code into memory to move to stage two of the boot sequence. This is boot0, a simple program it lists the available slices you can boot from, if you have multi-OS on your system. If not this jumps straight to boot1

Next it reads and executes boot1. Boot1 is only 512 bytes, and stores information about the slice to find and execute boot2.

Boot2 understands the filesystem enough to find files on it, and choose the kernel or loader to run.

At this point you can boot into single user mode (boot -s), load and unload kernel or modules, load config scripts.

o MBR

MBR layout always follow a standard format independent of the OS. The first 446 bytes are reserved for program code. The next 64 bytes hold space for a partition table up to four partitions. Without a partition table the disk could not be read. The last two bytes contain a special magic number (AA55).

o NoBootable Device

If it cannot find a bootable device, it diplays an error message and halts.

o Warm Boot, Cold Boot

The above process applies to a cold boot. A warm boot is the same except the POST is skipped and the boot process continues from step 8.

Stage III

o Kernel

Once the kernel has finished booting, it passes control to init the last stage of the boot process, Init checks file systems for inconsistencies, if it finds any, it runs fsck to correct errors. If these are corrected the boot continues, if not it drops to single-use mode for sys admin to correct.

If the filesystems are found to be okay, the system enters multi-user mode, and runs resource configuration of the system. The system reads defaults from /etc/defaults/rc.conf and system specifics from /etc/rc.conf. It mounts the filesystems in /etc/fstab, starts networking services, various daemons, and finally the startup scripts of locally installed packages. See rc(8) for further reference.

o Shutdown

If the shutdown command is run, init will attempt to run /etc/rc.shutdown, and send all process the TERM signal, if they don't respond, it will issue KILL signal.

At this point the machine powers down and its systems off.

Done!

Permanently Delete Files From Hard Disk Drive

2011-04-18T12:34:00.002+01:00

Gone

You've probably read stories of someone getting an old computer and finding megabytes of sensitive or personal data stored on the hard disk drive. Simply deleting a file does not remove the data from the disk.

When you delete a file, the Operating System does not remove the data itself, it only deletes a reference to the data for that file. It erases details about the location of the data stored on disk. An table entry is deleted. The data itself is not touched. It continues to sit there on disk. Over time and with usage, some data is overwritten, as the Operating Systems uses more disk space. But this in itself is no guarantee that sensitive or personal data on disk, cannot be recovered.

There are stacks of free utilities to recover or undelete files. Google undelete utility and see how many free utils exist for download.

Even running a format will not delete the data residing on disk. A normal format (a high-level format) only lays out the disk with sectors and writes up a table for the new layout. Its still possible to recover old data after a format.

To permanently remove data from disk, you need to overwrite every binary digit (bit) of every sector on disk with zeros or random garbage.

There are a number of ways to achieve this:

Zero Fill Disk Drive

Zero filling a disk drive overwrites the existing data with a zero. All data on disk is represented by 1's and 0's. Overwriting every digit with a zero effectively fills the disk with... err zero. There will be nothing useful on disk.

To zero the first partition on an EIDE drive use the following command:

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda bs=1M

For a the second partition use:

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hdb bs=1M

For the third partition use:

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hdc bs=1M

As you can see you increment the letter (hda, hdb, hdc) for the next partition.

If its a SCSI disk or a SATA drive use:

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda bs=1M

For a the second partition use:

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdb bs=1M

Etc, etc, etc.

DBAN - Darik's Boot And Nuke

Download and burn a copy of DBAN - Darik's Boot And Nuke

This utility will permanently wipe any existing from your disk by overwriting it, so no data can be undeleted or recovered. DBAN overwrites the whole disk with zeros or randam garbage. DBAN also overwrites the partition table, making data recovery virtually impossible.

DBAN is fairly easy to use. After downloading, and burning to compact disk. Place CD in drive and reboot. (You may need to change the boot order in the BIOS). DBAN gets to work, re-arranging those bits. On older, slower hardware, it can take some time to wipe clean. Consider running overnight. DBAN runs unattended and is useful for wiping several disks.

DBAN is a Linux derived product.

Wipe Utility

A nice utility is Wipe. Its available in the main repository Debian or Ubuntu repositories for download.

aptitude install wipe

You have an easy to use utility to securely wipe and permanently erase data from your disk drives. From the man page:

wipe -rcf /home/bark/text/

Wipe every file under /home/bark/text/ including /home/bark/text/. Recursive wipe (-r) and don't ask for confirmation (-f). Files without correct permission will be chmod'd (-c).

wipe -kq /dev/sdb1

Wipes all data from the first partition on the second SCSI/SATA disk drive, using the quick option (-q). Before starting it will ask you to confirm.

On a fast multicore machine, an 18GB SCSI disk took 7 mins to wipe with four passes. A 72GB SCSI disk took 26 mins with four passes. For large size disks you probably want to run the Wipe utility overnight.

Done!

Firefox 4 In 4 Easy Steps - Debian

2011-04-17T13:06:00.008+01:00

Quick 'n' Easy

Due to a trademark dispute, Firefox under Debian is re-branded as Iceweasel.

If you try to upgrade to the latest version, Firefox 4, you may have some difficulty.

Here's a fast easy method to install Firefox 4 on Debian:

1. Step One

Add the following entry in /etc/apt/sources.list (or a new file in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/:)

deb http://mozilla.debian.net/ squeeze-backports-4.0 iceweasel

2. Step Two

Run update

apt-get update

3. Step Three

Install with apt-get

apt-get install-t squeeze-backports iceweasel

4. Step Four

Launch and enjoy.

Iceweasel

Done!

Mystique Of The Debian Swirl

2011-04-16T14:59:00.013+01:00

Magic Smoke

The Debian Swirl logo is known to many Linux users. Some have queried what it represents, with many theories offered for its symbolism.

In fact there are two Debian logos, the Swirl comprises the top part of a larger image, showing the smoke emanating from a bottle, as a magic genie would in a Hollywood animation.

The Debian Official Use Logo

The Debian Official Use Logo is the red swirl coming out the genie’s bottle and may only be used for ofﬁcial parts of the Debian project, or by Debian developers.

Debian Official Use Logo

The Debian Open Use Logo

The Debian OS may be referred to using just the swirl which is called The Debian Open Use Logo. The logos exist to protect Debian’s property from mis-use, which could harm its reputation.

Debian Open Use Logo

The logos were designed by Raul M. Silva in 1999, as part of a Debian logo contest. The designer, Raul Silva, never made any public statements about the logo's symbolism.

The logo's can be found on the Debian web site and are available for download.

Some of the theories for the logo's meaning:

The bottle represents the Debian community's collective effort, producing the magic swirl - the Debian OS.

Bruce Perens, famous advocate of free software and former Debian Project Leader suggests:

The swirl is “magic smoke”. Electrical engineer lore has it that when you burn out an electronic component, you cause the “magic smoke” that makes it work to be released. Once the magic smoke is gone, the component doesn’t work any longer. Debian is supposed to be the magic smoke that makes your computer work.

In Pixar’s 1995 animation Toy Story, Buzz Lightyear had a red swirl on his chin. The movie may have been an inspiration for the logo. Bruce Perens worked at Pixar for 12 years.

I guess nobody knows for sure, but I like Perens offering.

Yeah. I'll go with the "Magic Smoke".

ArchLinux Install Problem

2011-04-15T16:03:00.001+01:00

Won't Install

When attempting to do a Net install of Arch Linux on CD, I got the following error message:

"Error boot device didn't show up after 30 secsonds..."
"Falling back to interactive prompt"
"You can try to fix the problem manually, logout when you are finished"
ramfs #

If appears the problem is a symlink was not created. The symlink should point to /dev/archiso, from the device /dev/sr0. If you have SATA devices this can happen. It does not happen if you have ATA.

The fix is to create a symbolic link from /dev/sr0 (DVD ROM) to the ArchLinux ISO at /dev/archiso.

When you drop down to a prompt do:

ramfs # cd /dev
ramfs # ln -fs /dev/sr0 /dev/archiso
ramfs # exit

Another solution to the problem is to run the code that creates the symlink:

ramfs # udevadm trigger
ramfs # exit

That should fix it.

Done!

Aptosid - Debian Hot 'n' Spicy!

2011-04-15T02:56:00.004+01:00

Meet Sid

Debian's Sid repo is the place to find the latest, greatest and sometimes buggiest software. Alpha, Beta and anything after, is held in Sid until it is tested extensively and found not to break very often.

From there it travels to testing, where it lives until the Debian maintainers are satisfied about its stability and its security. Only then does it progress to the stable repository. But that journey can take a couple of years. In the meantime, if you run stable, you live with what feels like 'stale' software. Sure its rock solid and err... old.

If you want more up-to-date software options, you can go 'Testing', where things don't break that often, or if you want to live on the edge, you can go 'Sid', where things don't break that often. Was that an echo?

No. Its right. 'Sid' may have a reputation for buggy and untried post-alpha software, but that reputation is not wholly accurate. A lot of software in 'Sid' is stable and secure.

If you want to try 'Sid', take a look at 'Aptosid', a distro based on the Debian Sid repository. It doesn't bother with stable or testing. Go straight to Sid, if you pass go, collect $200.

Aptosid is a full-blown distro running KDE 4. Its lean, fast with the latest software. Aptosid comes as a LiveCD, so you can try before you buy.

I've been running Aptosid for a while now, and nothing has broken yet. Its usable, solid, light, fast and fun. What more could ya want?

If you want to try the Debian OS, but want an easy path into the Swirl, go download Aptosid and give it a shot.

Anamorphic Format Explained

2011-04-12T10:32:00.010+01:00

Size Matters

Anamorphic Video sounds complex, but its fairly simple to understand, once you grasp a few key ideas.

The anamorphic format is all about size. The Anamorphic problem is essentially about fitting a cinema sized image (which is wide and narrow. An oblong shape) on to a domestic sized TV screen (which is square and boxy) while maintaining the aspect ratio of the original image. Along with the cutting and cropping that ensues in order to achieve this.

Aspect ratio is the relationship between image width and image height

A little history first. Anamorphic was first introduced in 1955 by 20th Century Fox in an effort to counter the loss of cinema audiences to the new medium of television. People were staying home and watching TV instead of going to movie theatres. To spice things up and entice audiences back to movie theatres, 20th Century Fox introduced something novel CinemaScope, a wide screen format which replaced the existing format of 1.34 to 1.

CinemaScope produced an image that was much wider. Nearly twice as wide as the old studio format. CinemaScope had an aspect ratio of 2.55 to 1 compared to the old standard studio format of 1.34 to 1.

In order to capture a very wide image, when shooting a movie a special anamorphic lens was used. The anamorphic lens distorted, captured and squeezed a very wide image onto standard 35mm film. Using regular 35mm film meant they could keep costs down. No special film needed. The anamorphic process allowed far more data to be caught on 35mm film stock. To project the image in movie theatres, a reverse anamorphic lens was used to correct the distortion and create the wide screen effect.

Here's a dictionary entry for anamorphic:

anamorphic –adjective

1. Optics . having or producing unequal magnifications along two axes perpendicular to each other.

2. of, pertaining to, or created by anamorphosis or anamorphism.

The dictionary agrees that the image is unequal along its axis, width v height.

ie its wider than it is high.

An image captured with an Anamorphic lens, its image is almost 2.5 times wider than it is high. That's fine when the image is projected in a movie theatre where the screen's are huge and the dimensions are right for anamorphic film, but when you need to display the same film on a TV screen, which does not have the same correct dimensions, you have a problem.

Anamorphic on a 4x3 TV

Lets look at an anamorphic image on an old CRT TV set with 4x3 ratio. Some people still use these old TV sets. I'll use simple measurements so its easily grasped.

The old standard TV screen had a ratio of 4x3. That's 4 across and 3 down. If the TV was 40 inches across, its vertical edge would be 30 inches high. (See image). That's a 4x3 ratio.

4x3 Standard TV Dimensions

Anamorphic cinema screens have a ratio of 2.39 to 1. If we have a small cinema screen made for anamorphic movies and it was 40 inches wide, its height on the vertical edge would be 17 inches. That's the correct ratio of 2.39 to 1.

Punch it into your calculator and see. Multiply 17 by 2.39. The answer will be just under 40. Thats our correct ratio for watching anamorphic video.

Anamorphic TV Dimensions

As you can see the width for the two screens is the same at 40 inches, but the vertical height differs greatly. The anamorphic is about half the height of the old 4x3 standard TV screen.

Here's an anamorphic image displayed on a 4x3 TV with a standard 4x3 ratio. If your TV screen is 40 inches across with a vertical edge, 30 inches high. It will display an image like this.

4x3 Standard TV Dimensions

The image is vertically stretched.

Here's the same image displayed on an anamorphic screen with a ratio of 2.35:1.

Anamorphic TV Dimensions

The image appears correct, more natural. The 4x3 image appears squished.

The anamorphic image has a 'width' of 40 inches, and a 'height' of 17 inches.

Cinematic projectors have lenses allowing them to produce a wide image to fill the cinema screen. The anamorphic original movie's ratio 2.351 means it is 235 across and 100 down. Its dimensions are very different from those of a standard 4x3 TV.

When the image is transferred to DVD or for TV broadcast, the image has to be squeezed from its original large wide frame format into a much smaller square frame so it fits the TV screen.

If we place the anamorphic image on a standard 4x3 TV, it won't fit. Its just too big. If we make the anamorphic image 30 inches high to fill the vertical edge, it will have a horizontal width of 70.5 inches. (Do the math, 30 x 2.35 = 70.5). Its too wide for the standard 4x3 TV by 30.5 inches.

If we keep the anamorphic horizontal width to 40 inches, the 2.35 ratio will only create an image that's 17 inches high. The image will not fill the TV screen completely. Its too short, way too short. At 17 inches its just over half the height. To get around this problem, engineers place the image centrally on a 30 inch high TV screen, and leave a gap of 13 inches. 6.5 inches at the top and 6.5 inches at the bottom. You get what is known as a letterbox effect, with black bars top and bottom to fill the gap.

This what it looks like (keeping the same image and TV size: 40" wide and 30" high).

Anamorphic Image displayed on 4x3 TV Letterbox Effect

Cut Chop Dice

To fit an anamorphic image on a standard TV it will be 40" wide but only 17" high.

When the anamorphic image is displayed at 40" width, it has a height of 17". This leaves a gap at the top or bottom of the TV screen. The gap is normally filled with black bars.

If we want to display the full height of the anamorphic image on the TV, namely at 30" high, the anamophic image is too wide for the square TV and spills over on both sides.

If we set the width of the 16x9 to 30" high, its width is 50". That's 10" wider than our standard TV.

If we set the width of the anamorphic image to 30" (the height of the TV) the anamorphic image is 66" wide. Thats 26" wider than our standard TV.

Hopefully you now see the problem and understand the solution TV / Video engineers have come up with.

The solutions that have been worked in the past normally include reducing the height of the image so the width fits. This means you get black bars across the top and bottom of your TV screen.

Now lets look at the anamorphic image displayed on one the new generation widescreen TVs.

Anamorphic on a 16x9 TV

Digital HD TV has an aspect ration of 16x9 (1.78:1)

The latest/new generation widescreen TVs have a ratio of 16x9. That's 16 across and 9 down.

To fit a 16x9 TV image into a standard 4x3 40" TV, the image when centered on screen will be 40 " wide and 22.5" high. (40 inches x 1.78 = 22.5 inches).

Here's the anamorphic image displayed at 16:9 (ratio 1.78 to 1) to fill the 16:9 screen. The image is vertically stretched.

16x9 Widescreen TV - Vertical Stretch

Here the same anamorphic image displayed on 40 inch widescreen TV 16:9 (ratio 1.78 to 1), with no vertical stretch. But we have the letterbox effect. The image appears more natural with the correct dimensions. The face does not appear distorted.

16x9 Widescreen TV - No Vertical Stretch

As the image is only 22.5 inches high it creates a letterbox effect once more. We end up with a total gap of 7.5 inches. 3.25 inches top and 3.25 inches bottom. Its not as bad as the old 4x3 TVs.

Hopefully you now understand of anamorphic video and why you get the letterbox effect.

Done!

Debian Gnome Minimal Install

2011-04-12T05:11:00.009+01:00

Elf Like

Aminimal install of Debian with Gnome for the desktop.

First, download a copy of latest Debian testing Net Install ISO for AMD64.

Burn the image to disk using Brasero, K3B or similar burning application.

Reboot your machine using the CD. If your machine won't boot off CD you'll need to go into your BIOS and change the boot settings to make the CD/DVD the first boot device.

After booting, hit enter to load Debian and start the install.

1. Select your language
2. Select country
3. Select keyboard
4. Enter machine hostname
5. Enter domain name
6. Partition disk/s
7. Enter root password
8. Create user account
9. Enter user password
10. Select base install. Deselect desktop option. We don't want it
11. Select country mirror
12. Say yes to participate in popularity contest
13. Select GRUB boot loader
14. Install finished. Remove CD and reboot

You now have a minimal install of Debian without Gnome.

Lets go graphical and add X.

# aptitude install xorg

After Xorg completes we run

Xorg -configure

To generate our xorg.conf file

Using Debian, I tend to run the testing release. I find its more up-to-date than stable. Although stable is well... stable, the apps are a little out-of-date. Running testing, you get software more in-line with current releases.

I use emacs for most editing work, but as its not installed yet use 'vi'.

Now edit /etc/apt/sources.list and add following:

# emacs /etc/apt/sources.list

# Debian Repository Sources List

# Debian Main Repository
deb http://ftp.uk.debian.org/debian/ testing main contrib non-free
deb-src http://ftp.uk.debian.org/debian/ testing main contrib non-free

# Debian Security Repository
deb http://security.debian.org/ testing/updates main
deb-src http://security.debian.org/ testing/updates main

# Google Chrome Repository
deb http://dl.google.com/linux/deb/ stable main non-free
deb http://dl.google.com/linux/deb/ testing main non-free

# Christian Marillats Unofficial Debian Repository
deb http://www.debian-multimedia.org testing main non-free

Save amended sources.list file, and run update.

Time to update

# aptitude update

After aptitude finishes, lets install Gnome. We don't want the full-blown Gnome and all it entails, so lets have Gnome-Core, a cut-down version.

# aptitude install gnome-core

Add christian merrilats gpg-key to our keyring

# aptitude install debian-archive-keyring
# gpg --keyserver hkp://wwwkeys.eu.pgp.net --recv-keys 07DC563D1F41B907

We have Xorg and a desktop. We need some apps and things to play with:

Emacs
Screen
Copy across dot.emacs config file
Copy dot.bashrc
Copy dot.xmodmap
Copy dot.bash_profile
Copy dot.Xresources
Copy dot.xinitrc
Chrome-Stable
Install Adblock-Plus
Install Flashbock
MS-TT-Corefonts
Copy extra fonts to ~/.fonts dir
Install evince - pdf reader
Transmission - Bit Torrent Client
Xmms - Audio Player
Gimp - Graphic Editor

If you have any fancy fonts you can easily add them to the hidden ./fonts directory in your home dir. By doing so, they will be detected automatically.

Time to tidy and smarten things up a little.

Change Desktop Background

Black solid colour

Customise Theme

Controls: Clearlooks
Colours: Default
Window Border: Clearlooks2-squared
Icons: Gion
Pointer: DMZ Black

Change gnome fonts settings

Application font; Tahoma 10
Document font: Tahoma 10
Desktop font: Tahoma 10
Window title font: Trebuchet MS Bold 10
Fixed width font: Courier New 10

Google Chrome Flash Plugin

Google Chrome now comes with in-built Flash Player, so you don't need to install a plug-in. Previously you had to do a manual install, which included the following steps.

Download Flash Player 10 64-bit Plugin from Adobe
Unzip tar file. Extract libflashplayer.so
Make Chrome Plugins directory
# mkdir /opt/google/chrome/plugins
cp libflashplayer.so /opt/google/chrome/plugins

Restart Chrome

Visit YouTube.com to test Flash Player is working

But you shouldn't need to do anything if you use Chrome. Flash Player should just work out-of-the-box!

Time to install more toys:

- Screen
# aptitude install screen

- SBCL lisp
# aptitude install cl-clx-sbcl sbcl sbcl-doc sbcl-fasl-loader-78

- Gnu Clisp
# aptitude install clisp

- fortune
# aptitude install fortune

- mplayer media player
# aptitude install mplayer

- Irssi chat client
# aptitude install irssi

- Install gedit
# aptitude install gedit

- Install StumpWM
# apt-get install sbcl sbcl-doc cl-clx-sbcl cl-ppcre autoconf

- Install Conkeror
# aptitude install conkeror conkeror-spawn-process-helper

- Brasero
# aptitude install brasero

If you want a mail client or Open Office, for word processor, spreadsheet, etc, install as needed. There's enough here to get you going.

Installing software in Debian is childs play, as you can see.

If there's anything else you need, use aptitude.

First go search the package name, then use aptitude install. Its that easy.

If you don't find the app your looking for or don't know the package-name, try:

# aptitude search package-name

You can search for packages on Debian's website or try:

google package-name debian

See what you get.

Done!

Xorg Config

2011-04-11T12:51:00.000+01:00

The Beauty Of X

Running X is fairly painless now, compared to a few years back. If you had to manually edit xorg.conf and get it wrong. Aaaaaargh.

Anyhow, when you install X today, it auto-configures itself.

Sometimes you find you have no xorg.conf file. It normally resides in /etc/X11/xorg.conf.

If your xorg.conf file has disappeared, here's how to generate another.

First you need to kill X. Switch to the console by pressing Ctrl-Alt-F1 or Ctrl-Alt-F2 or Ctrl-Alt-F3.

As root user, stop your display manager, if your using one.

# /etc/init.d/kdm stop
# /etc/init.d/gdm stop
# /etc/init.d/xdm stop

Next change to X11 directory

# cd /etc/X11

Reconfigure Xorg

# Xorg -configure

Follow the on-screen instructions, which create your new xorg.conf.

On completion, restart X.

# startx

Done!

VX 1000 No Sound

2011-04-11T12:16:00.003+01:00

Quiet

If you have a MS VX 1000 Webcam running under Linux/Debian you may experience 'no sound'.

The problem is down to the way the driver assigns bandwidth to the video, which ultimately hogs all that's available and sound gets none.

I read the developers have a patch thats been applied and included in all drivers included in kernel from 2.6.38 onwards.

If you are running a kernel version older than 2.6.36, upgrade your kernel.

This should fix your sound problems.

Done!

Conkeror Keys

2011-04-11T12:07:00.000+01:00

Winner

Here are a few key bindings for Conkeror Web browser

Conkeror is case sensitive.

Command	Binding
Go to url or Webjump	g
Follow link	f
Forward	F
Back	b (or) l
Reload page	r
Reload page, bypass cach	C-u r
Reload image	i r
Edit url	C-x C-v (or) G
Copy current url	c 0
Copy link url	c
Copy image url	i c
Copy url for anchor	# c
Copy text of any DOM node	* * T c
Save link	s
Save image	i s
Save media (heuristic search video/audio)	e s
Focus link	n ;
Focus DOM node	* * ;
Next Page (heuristic)	] ]
Previous Page (heuristic)	[ [
Submit Form	C-c C-c
Zoom In	+
Zoom Out	-
Zoom Reset	=
Text Enlarge	C-+
Text Reduce	C--
Text Reset	C-=

That's about it!

Debian Module-Assistant

2011-04-11T11:27:00.003+01:00

Module Easy

Module Assistant is a powerful Debian package for the download and installation of kernal modules. It makes using modules less painful.

Here's a quick run through for Module Assistant.

The Module Assistant package is normally abbreviated to m-a.

First check 'contrib non-free' have been added to /etc/apt/sources.list

cat /etc/apt/sources.list

If not, add them. Your sources list needs to look like this:

# Debian Main Repository
deb http://ftp.uk.debian.org/debian/ wheezy main contrib non-free
deb-src http://ftp.uk.debian.org/debian/ wheezy main contrib non-free

I'm running Wheezy, which is the current testing release. You may be running a different release. Just add 'contrib non-free' to the end of your repository URLs.

Update our sources list, then install Module Assistant.

# aptitude update

# aptitude install module-assistant

Now use Module Assistant to download headers for the kernel

# m-a prepare

Update list of kernel modules

# m-a update

Lets see what we got

# m-a list

We want the nvidia module, so lets build it

# m-a a-i nvidia-kernel-source

a-i is short for auto-install

Check the module is installed

# modprobe nvidia

Check it was loaded

# lsmod | grep nvidia

To auto-load the module at boot, add 'nvidia' entry in /etc/modules

Module Assistant has an interactive mode you can use. To start interactive mode, do:

m-a

Interactive mode is self explanatory.

Your done!

Drop Cap First Letter

2011-04-11T10:46:00.001+01:00

Big Alpha

If you blog or add content to your website, you may want to spice things up a bit with a big first letter. Its quite easy. All you need is a little html. Have a look at these. Use it if you like.

Here's the letter in a dark color...

W

Here's the code for a dark color...

W

Here's the letter in a another dark color...

W

Here's the code for a dark color...

W

Here's the letter in a light color...

W

Here's the code for a light color...

W

Here's the letter in a dark red...

W

Here's the code for a dark red...

W

Hirens BootCD

2011-04-11T10:23:00.003+01:00

Problem Solver

If you have problems with your computer, and the machine is reluctant to co-operate, where do you turn for first help? Google. Okay. Whats your next stop? Try Hirens BootCD. Its completely free and packed with utils to check out various problems of the kind that brings your machine to its knees.

If you haven't had a problem yet, be grateful, then go download and burn yourself a copy. Just like insurance, you never know when you need it. When you do, you sure are glad you got it.

Keep a copy with your favourite books, CDs, DVDs.

Hirens BootCD contains:

Partition Tools
Backup and Recovery
Antivirus Tools
Testing Tools
Password Tools
Mini Windows XP

All useful utils for checking and reviving that dead machine.

When the gremlins strike, make it your second call.

http://www.hirensbootcd.org/download/

Done!

Flash Player Plug-in - Firefox On Debian

2011-04-11T09:38:00.005+01:00

Easy Install

To install the Flash Player plug-in for Firefox on Debian Linux is really so easy. Its a matter of running aptitude install as root user.

Here's how to.

Ensure you have the non-free repositories added to your apt-get sources list.

# cat /etc/apt/sources.list

# Debian Main Repository
deb http://ftp.uk.debian.org/debian/ wheezy main contrib non-free
deb-src http://ftp.uk.debian.org/debian/ wheezy main contrib non-free

I run wheezy, which is the current testing release

Notice I added 'contrib non-free' to the repository.

First run a search to find the Flash Player Plug-in and get the name:

# aptitude search flashplugin
p flashplugin-nonfree - Adobe Flash Player - browser plugin

Now aptitude will install:

# aptitude install flashplugin-nonfree

Launch Firefox/Iceweasel. If its already running, then close and restart.

Your done.

Background Hisssss

2011-02-26T01:59:00.006Z

Snake Sounds

I was getting background hiss from time to time and instinctively knew there was a problem. Where was the hiss coming from?

I checked obvious inputs, and nothing was connected, so where was the hissing source?

I just knew it had to be on the input side, cos it was not there a few days ago.

I fired up Alsa Volume Control Manager and systematically worked through the inputs. I killed each in sequence.

Eureka.

Microphone and Mic Boost Input was set at 100%.

I muted both and silence prevailed.

Excellent.

Gnome Nautilus Location Bar

2011-02-23T11:46:00.006Z

Stupid Pathbar

If you ever use Gnome Nautilus, it has an annoying 'Pathbar' utilising buttons to show your present location and to aid navigation. It feels a dumbed down effort to move around using a mouse, instead of the keyboard.

You can switch from the 'Pathbar' to Gnome's 'Location Bar' by hitting Ctrl-L. But it if you hit 'Esc' or open another Nautilus window, Nautilus switches back to the default 'Pathbar'.

The 'Location Bar' allows you to copy your location entry and dump it to an XTerm or another Nautilus window. The 'Pathbar' does not. You can type the full path to a location rather than mouse click there.

If you want to convince Nautilus to retain the 'Location Bar', you make a change in gconf-editor, Gnome's Configuration Editor. Fire up gconf-editor by clicking:

Applications > System Tools > Configuration Editor

Next click on:

Apps > Nautilus > Preferences

In the right hand pane find always_use_location_entry

Click to put a check in the box adjacent. Nautilus will retain the 'Location Bar'.

You can fire up from an XTerm by typing:

gconf-editor

If you find you don't have gconf-editor installed, as root user do:

aptitude install gconf-editor

It will automagically appear in minutes.

Done!

Create ISO Image

2011-02-21T22:30:00.000Z

Image Files

Creating an ISO image from a DVD or CD is a pretty simple process. Stick the DVD disc in your DVD drive. Most modern distros will automount a disc when placed in a CD or DVD drive. If it spins up and automounts, you need to unmount it.

Check using the mount command:

$ mount
/dev/sda1 on / type ext4 (rw,errors=remount-ro
/dev/sdb1 on /store type ext3 (rw)
/dev/sr0 on /media/cdrom0 type udf (ro,noexec,nosuid,nodev,user=patrick)

My drive mounts /dev/sr0 on /media/cdrom0. To unmount it, use the umount command and pass its mount point:

umount /media/cdrom0

To create the ISO, do:

dd if=/dev/sr0 of=newfile.iso

Creating an ISO from files on disk is similiar. Create a directory containing all the files:

mkdir ~/isodir/

genisoimage -o new.iso ~/isodir

The ISO image must comply with ISO9660 filesystem.

To create with Rock Ridge extensions use:

genisoimage -o new.iso -R ~/isodir

Done!

DeVeDe

2011-02-19T07:59:00.006Z

Not Mis-Spelt

DeVeDe is a pretty cool app for creating DVD videos ready for burning to disk, in Linux/Debian. You can create CDs too, if you want. The interface is clearly laid out, and simple to use.

Many default will work to build an .iso file ready to burn.

For such a simple application, its really powerful.

To install:

aptitude install devede

Click Video DVD to create a DVD for home players

Under Titles, click Properties to change DVD Title. Click OK.

Under Files, click Add to add the files that make up your DVD.

Select Disc Size: 1.4 GB, 4.7 GB or 8.5 GB

Select PAL or NTSC

Click Forward

Go grab coffee, tea or beer while it finishes.

Dead easy to use.

Highly recommended.

Done.

.img Files

2011-02-18T13:20:00.004Z

Not An Image

If you find yourself with a .img file on your hands and your not sure what it is or what to do with it, here's a quick overview.

The .img files are similar to .iso files. They come from the Apple computing world, and contain a disk image, similar to an .iso. They can be mounted as you would a .iso file and the contents accessed as a mounted file system.

In theory you can burn these files as you would any iso. Theoretically, you can rename the .img extension to .iso and use them as an .iso.

That's the theory, anyhow. In practice you may have problems burning the file, dependent on how it was configured, and the settings used when it was created.

Many DVD and CD burning software, particularly in the Windows world, can deal with .img files. Some Linux burning software can burn the .img file to disc without problems.

You can mount an .img using the mount command:

mount -o loop file.img /mnt/newmount

If the img contains video content, it can be converted using software such as Mencoder or FFMPEG.

That's about it.

StumpWM - The Stump Window Manager

2011-02-12T00:34:00.039Z

Commands and Keybindings

I previously wrote a couple of posts on StumpWM, the Rodent-Free Window Manager. It does take some getting used to. The key bindings seem so natural if you use Emacs.

Otherwise it might seem unusable if your life is mouse-centric.
I must add, once you break your rodent habit, you will feel an amazing sense of liberation. Well, that's my take on it.

One problem I hit repeatedly was inconsistent application behaviour. I'm sure this will be ironed out in time. I have to say when it is finally cleaned up, this will be one awesome application.

Another problem was using Google-Chrome/Firefox/Opera/Or-The-Other-One-That-I-Never-Use Browser. Browsers are designed around the mouse.

StumpWM is designed to exclude the mouse. Here you have a clash of cultures. Watch the fragments fly.

If you run StumpWM, and I would recommend it to any living hominid, you will not be able to use Google-Chrome/Firefox/Opera/The-Other-One.

That leaves few alternatives.

Top of the tree is Conkeror - The most awesome Keyboard-Centric Web Browser ever devised.

The problem you will encounter is...

You now have to learn lots of key-combos and commands.

If you use StumpWM, and you would be criminally insane not to, you also have to learn and use Conkeror.

That's a steep hill to climb, a challenging learning curve. You may find it too much to tackle both.

Anyhow, lets concentrate on 'The Stump' for now and I'll get back to the 'Conkeror' another day.

Windows
C-g Cancel current command. Use if you hit C-t
C-t C-g Cancel current command. Use if you hit C-t

C-t ! Shell command. All output discarded

C-t c Open Xterminal in new window
C-t C-c Open Xterminal in new window

C-t e Open Emacs in new window
C-t C-e Open Emacs in new window

C-t n Go to next window in list
C-t C-n Go to next window in list
C-t Spc Go to next window in list

C-t p Go to previous window in list
C-t C-p Go to previous window in list

C-t C-t Go to last window with focus in current frame

C-t " Go to listed window and take focus

C-t ' Go to window by name

C-t w List all windows
C-t C-w List all windows

C-t num Go to window number
C-t C-numOpen window number in current frame

C-t I Display current window info

C-t Up C-t Dn Shift focus to adjacent frame in specified direction
C-t Lt C-t Rt C-t Up shifts up. C-t Down shifts down, etc

C-t # Toggle mark on current window
C-t l Refresh current window and maximize
C-t C-l Refresh current window and maximize

Frames
C-t s Split frame vertically

C-t S Split frame horizontally

C-t R Undo split. If single split, maximize frame take focus
C-t Q Maximize frame take focus

C-t o Cycle through multiple frames, focus shifts to next frame
C-t Tab Cycles to right, then down. Similar to C-x o in Emacs.

C-t f Go to frame number
C-t F Display "Current Frame" in frame which has focus

C-t - Hide frames and display root window

C-t + Make frames same height or width in current frame subtree

C-t k Send kill message to current frame and running program
C-t C-k Kill current frame and running program. Like kill -9
C-t K Kill current frame and running program. Like kill -9

Commands
C-t C-g Cancel current command. Useful if you hit C-t
C-t ! Shell command. All output discarded

C-t t Send C-t to frame. Opens tab in browser. Similar to GNU screen C-a a

C-t b Banish mouse pointer to screen lower right corner
C-t C-b Banish mouse pointer to screen lower right corner

C-t a Display time and date. Unix date command
C-t C-a Display time and date. Unix date command

Groups
C-t g g Show group list

C-t g n Go to next listed group
C-t g C-n Go to next listed group
C-t g Spc Go to next listed group
C-t g C-Spc Go to next listed group

C-t g p Go to previous listed group
C-t g C-p Go to previous listed group

C-t g N Go to next listed group, take current window
C-t g P Go to previous listed group, take current window

C-t G Display groups and windows in group
C-t g Cnum Go to group number. C-t F1 to group 1, C-t F2 to group 2 etc

C-t g c Create a new group
C-t g k Kill current groups. Windows merge into next group

C-t g ' Select group by name or number
C-t g " Select and go to listed group

C-t g m Move current window to group

C-t g A Rename group
C-t g r Rename group

C-t g num Go to group number. C-t g 1 to group 1. C-t g 2 to group 2

Info Operations
C-t C-h Help
C-t ? Help
C-t v Print version number

C-t m Display last message. Cycle through previous messages
C-t C-m Display last message. Cycle through previous messages

C-t h k Describe key binding
C-t h f Describe function
C-t h v Describe variable
C-t h c Describe command

C-t h w List key sequences bound to command

Lisp
C-t ; Input box run StumpWM commands. Cycle through input history.
C-t : Input box to Common Lisp interpreter. Enter valid Common Lisp

About StumpWM
Groups Groups contain Frames
Frames Frames contain windows. All windows exist within frames

C-t v Print version number
C-t m Display last message. Cycle through previous messages
C-t C-m Display last message. Cycle through previous messages

Here's the StumpWM Manual

End!

Debian Nvidia Driver

2011-02-11T11:28:00.000Z

Proprietary

Nvidia Corp developed a Graphics driver for Linux. Its been out for a while, if you feel the urge to try it, here's a quick install howto.

Reboot to runlevel 3. No X Windows running. As root do:

# /sbin/init 3

If you cannot because of your display manager, login as normal, then kill running X. Normally use 'Ctrl-Alt-Backspace'. If that key-combo has been disabled, switch to a Console.

Ctrl-Alt-F2

Login and give password then, switch to root user.

Next, install Module-Assistant

# aptitude install module-assistant

Setup Module Assistant

# m-a prepare

Install Nvidia driver using Module Assistant

# m-a auto-install nvidia

When quizzed on installing additional software, 'Y' for yes.

Reboot system.

Done!

Chrome 64-Bit Flashplayer Plug-in

2011-02-11T01:55:00.000Z

A Pain

After installing Google Chrome 64-Bit Browser on Debian, as normally happens, Flash refused to work. Go to YouTube and read the error message.

When you visit Adobe's Flashplugin website, you're advised that if you run 32-bit or 64-bit Chrome browser, Flashplugin is already installed in the browser. All you need do is enable it.

Enter:

about:plugins

Only its not there. Its not installed by default.

Instead, go to Flash download and pull down the latest version plugin.

Unzip it the tar file. Once you get the libflashplayer.so plugin, some manual work is necessary.

Open an XTerm or similar, and create Chrome plugins directory

# mkdir /opt/google/chrome/plugins

Copy libflashplayer.so to chrome plugins directory you just created.

# cp libflashplayer.so /opt/google/chrome/plugins

Kill and restart Chrome.

Type:

about:plugins

You will see:

Shockwave Flash (2 files)
Shockwave Flash 10.3 d162

Go to YouTube and enjoy watching some crappy vids.

Done!

SBCL & CLISP

2011-02-11T01:43:00.000Z

List Processing

There are a number of Common Lisp implementations available, but two that frequently show up are are, Steel Bank Common Lisp and Gnu Clisp. I have used both and often install and switch usage between them.

Lisp is quite an old programming language compared to many newer in-vogue prog-lang.

Installing SBCL is pretty easy if you run Debian. As root open an XTerm and do:

# aptitude search sbcl
p cl-clx-sbcl - X11 CLisp client library for SBCL
p sbcl - A CLisp compiler and dev system
p sbcl-doc - Docs for Steel Bank Common Lisp
v sbcl-fasl-loader-78 -
p sbcl-source - Source code files for SBCL
# aptitude install cl-clx-sbcl sbcl sbcl-doc

Moments later you have SBCL installed and running.

Installing GNU Clisp is just as easy.

# aptitude search clisp
p clisp - GNU CLISP, CLisp implementation
p clisp-dev - GNU CLISP, CLisp implementation (dev)
p clisp-doc - GNU CLISP, CLisp implementation (docs)
v clisp-fasl-loader-20080430
# aptitude install clisp
$ clisp

  i i i i i i i ooooo o ooooooo ooooo ooooo
  I I I I I I I 8 8 8 8 8 o 8 8
  I \ `+' / I 8 8 8 8 8 8
   \ `-+-' / 8 8 8 ooooo 8oooo
   `-__|__-' 8 8 8 8 8
   | 8 o 8 8 o 8 8
  ------+------ ooooo 8oooooo ooo8ooo ooooo 8

Welcome to GNU CLISP 2.48 (2009-07-28)
(c) Bruno Haible, Michael Stoll 1992, 1993
(c) Bruno Haible, Marcus Daniels 1994-1997
(c) Bruno Haible, P.Bernardi S.Steingold 1998
(c) Bruno Haible, Sam Steingold 1999-2000
(c) Bruno Haible, Sam Steingold 2001-2009
Type :h and hit Enter for context help.

[1] >

You are now the proud owner of GNU Clisp!

Done.

Debian Backports

2011-02-07T22:28:00.000Z

Anachronism

If you run a stock install of Debian you're guaranteed rock-solid stability, tight-security, software that's been tested, peer-reviewed and guaranteed to be fairly dated.

That's fine for a server, as servers don't need cutting edge software with all its fresh bugs and coding hacks.

If you're running Debian on the desktop, you may want something circa, 2010?

Backports is the answer. Using Debian backports allows you to run a mostly current stable distro, and add the newest coolest elements as you need them.

Getting started with Backports, first add the backports repository to /etc/apt/sources.list.

# deb http://backports.debian.org/debian-backports lenny-backports main

Next, run update

# aptitude update

To install a package from backports, do:

# aptitude -t lenny-backports install amarok

Packages installed from backports will NOT be upgraded automatically. If you want automatic updates, create /etc/apt/preferences and add the following:

Package: *
Pin: release a=lenny-backports
Pin-Priority: 200

If you don't add this, you won't get any security updates. Not a good idea.

Done!

Domains And Hosting

2011-02-04T12:06:00.000Z

Free Advice

Domain Names

When purchasing domain names find the cheapest reseller you can. Expensive does not necessarily mean good service.

Check the domain reseller terms before buying, to ensure you are not committed to hosting with them, or any other clause that restrict usage.

If the domain name looks incredibly cheap, there's probably a catch. Read terms and conditions.

If its an intro offer at a special price, email customer support and ask how much they charge for domain name renewal, before you commit. A year or two down the road you may regret that temptingly cheap price they hooked you with.

Trust me. Read the small print before you pull the credit card from your wallet.

Hosting

When it comes to hosting your domain, DO NOT host with your domain reseller.

Why?

If you have a problem with billing or charges and it results in a dispute, they can hold your domain hostage, lock the account, delete your domain files and put an advert place holder up instead. They earn money from ads on your domain. You get zero.

A domain name billing or charges dispute, your looking at $10 or $20. You can easily pay that to settle things.

If you have a billing dispute of 100, $250 or more for hosting, you may not wish to pay till matters are resolved. If you continue to contest it, and lose? Consider the worst that can happen.

Always keep your domain and hosting separate.

Make a back up of ALL your site content, and store it on your home or work computer. Try to keep a current copy, if you can.

If the dispute escalates and the hosting company locks you out and deletes all your files / site content. Do you really fancy rebuilding that website from scratch?

In a previous post I suggested doing some research before you commit to a hosting company. Don't just accept the marketing hog-wash. Check other peoples experience. Look at real feedback. Not marketing hype.

Always read the bad experiences people had, and how the hosting company dealt with it. Read the worst cases and see how the hosting company handled the problems. It says a lot about the company and its ethos.

Done!

Blekko Search Engine

2011-02-01T15:06:00.000Z

New Kid In Town

If you have not heard yet, another search engine has muscled its way onto the Web. Its called Blekko, a young contender vying with Google for the search engine crown.

Blekko's stated objective is to provide better search results than Google or Bing. Blekko is headed up by Rich Skrenta.

Blekko intends to differentiate itself from Google and Bing by including people to help improve search results. Blekko also uses what it calls slashtags to further refine and improve your search.

Blekko also intends to filter out spam, SEO garbage, content farms, and other undesirables that pollute search results.

Some info taken from Blekko site:

Blekko - Slash the web!

blekko is a better way to search the web by using slashtags. slashtags search only the sites you want and cut out the spam sites. use friends, experts, community or your own slashtags to slash in what you want and slash out what you don't.

Blekko - Web search bill of rights
1. Search shall be open
2. Search results shall involve people
3. Ranking data shall not be kept secret
4. Web data shall be readily available
5. There is no one-size-fits-all for search
6. Advanced search shall be accessible
7. Search engine tools shall be open to all
8. Search & community go hand-in-hand
9. Spam does not belong in search results
10. Privacy of searchers shall not be violated

I've been using Blekko alongside Google and the returns are different. Run a few searches on both Blekko and Google. You'll see there is difference with the returned results.

Give Blekko a shot and see how you get on.

Done!

Debian Aptitude Search

2011-01-30T13:09:00.000Z

The Results

If you've used Debian aptitude to search for packages, you'll have seen the character entries that are returned along with your search results.

Something like:

# aptitude search emacs
p acl2-emacs - A Computational Logic
i emacs - The GNU Emacs editor (metapackage)
id emacs-chess - a client for playing Chess
i A emacs23 - The GNU Emacs editor (with GTK+)
p emacs23-el - GNU Emacs LISP (.el) files
v A emacs23-gtk -
ppA emacs23-nox - The GNU Emacs editor (without X)
v emacsen -

What do the characters mean?

The first character of each line indicates the current state of the package. The most common states are:

p no trace of the package exists on the system
c the package was deleted its config files remain
i the package is installed
v the package is virtual

The second character indicates the stored action to be performed on the package. The most common actions are:

i the package will be installed
d the package will be deleted, and
p the package and config files will be removed
[Blank space] no action to be performed

The third character if shown, indicates:

A the package was automatically installed

Hope this helps interpret your search results.

Done!

Timex Watch Rip Off

2011-01-07T14:30:00.000Z

Lost Time And Money

I had a Timex Ironman watch for around 5 years, till the battery died. I looked at other makes / brands and decided I wanted to go with the same watch. Nothing fancy. A practical and functional watch is all I need.

A watch that's waterproof or at least splashproof. Something with an alarm, timer and most importantly, it must have a countdown timer. I use that function alot.

I check out Argos here in the UK, they stock a limited range of Timex Ironman. I check Amazon.co.uk and find a selection of models similar to my old watch. I dig further and finally locate my old watch on Amazon along with a couple of other sites.

Argos have a Timex Ironman at £35. Amazon have my old watch at £46. Thats a lot of money for a plastic watch with no jewellery, no gold, stainless steel and no moving parts. They churn these out by the million and make big profits.

Out of curiosity, I check Amazon US site to see they have my old watch available. They do and I can have it for the sum of $30.99 includes free shipping.

At the current exchange rate of £1 UK pound = $1.5432 U.S. dollars. The watch in the US costs £20.08 in UK money.

The same watch here in London costs £46.18 + 2.99 shipping = £49.17

That is 2.45 times more expensive. How come the same watch is almost 2.5 times more?

Does shipping costs that much?

The watches are probably made in China, Vietnam, India or some other country with low labour costs. They ship the watch to the US from China. Does shipping them from China to the UK costs so much more?

Either Amazon or Timex or both are ripping off the European consumer.

Someone will probably read this, follow the hyper-links and point out that both watches are not sold directly by Amazon. In the UK instance its a third party using Amazon market.

So here's another example. A Timex Ironman watch for around the same money. And the same watch from Amazon UK. The same thing happens. The Europeans end up paying almost double.

Once again. Here's Timex US site where the watch is $55. And Timex UK site where the watch is £59.99.

Why?

Profit.

A few years back I worked for an IT company here in London, that imported US software. Their pricing policy, along with many others, was to replace the dollar sign with a pound sign for products.

For example if a piece of software cost $500 in the US, the company charged £500 here in the UK.

Now that's inflation.

Done!

Finding Duplicate Files With fdupes

2011-01-03T16:49:00.000Z

Doppelganger

Finding duplicate files spread over your hard disk can be a time consuming matter. A quick way of doing it is to use the util 'fdupes'.

fdupes scans your filesystem for duplicates and uses a hash to check for any duplicate files even if they have different filenames.

Its easy to use, and runs on the command line.

fdupes -r /home/dir

You can redirect output to a file, check the file entries before deciding on any action.

Its in the main Debian repository, so go get it and check your files for duplicates.

Done!

LXDE Remap Keyboard Shortcuts

2011-01-02T05:33:00.000Z

Press It

LXDE has no GUI method for changing keyboard settings. You need to do it by editing an XML file located in your home directory.

To find the file:

cd /home/yourname/.config/openbox/

Open the file 'lxde-rc.xml' in a text editor:

emacs lxde-rc.xml

Scroll down to the section for keyboard and find keybind. Then add the following to remap XTerm, emacs, google-chrome to F9, F10, F12:

<keybind key="F9">
 <action name="Execute">
 <command>/usr/bin/xterm</command>
 </action>
 </keybind>
 
 <keybind key="F10">
 <action name="Execute">
 <command>/usr/bin/emacs</command>
 </action>
 </keybind>
 
 <keybind key="F12">
 <action name="Execute">
 <command>/usr/bin/google-chrome</command>
 </action>
 </keybind>

Save the file.

Next time you log your short cut keys will launch your apps.

You can choose any combination or keys.

Check the file for previous key assignments before finalising your choices.

You can also check out the Openbox Wiki Page.

Done!

GnuPG In 10 Minutes

2010-12-31T09:18:00.000Z

Encrypted

If you need to secure communication or encrypt personal / sensitive data, GnuPG is the tool. Its free, and available for download from Gnu's Website or install from Debian repositories.

GnuPG is a free clone of PGP (PrettyGoodPrivacy), cryptographic software.

To find it on Debian, do:

aptitude search gnupg

To install:

aptitude install gnupg

To use GnuPG first, you generate your key:

gpg --gen-key

Please select what kind of key you want:
   (1) RSA and RSA (default)
   (2) DSA and Elgamal
   (3) DSA (sign only)
   (4) RSA (sign only)
Your selection?

Select # 1

RSA keys may be between 1024 and 4096 bits long.
What keysize do you want? (2048)

Accept and press [ Enter ]

Please specify how long the key should be valid.
   0 = key does not expire
   = key expires in n days
   w = key expires in n weeks
   m = key expires in n months
   y = key expires in n years
Key is valid for? (0)
Key does not expire at all
Is this correct? (y/N)

Press Y

You need a user ID to identify your key; the software constructs the user ID
from the Real Name, Comment and Email Address in this form:
   "Heinrich Heine (Der Dichter) "

Real name: [ Enter your name here ]
Email address: [ Enter your email address here ]
Comment: [ Enter a comment or leave blank ]
You selected this USER-ID:
   "Your Name "

Change (N)ame, (C)omment, (E)mail or (O)kay/(Q)uit?

[ Press 'O' to accept settings ]

You need a Passphrase to protect your secret key.

[ Type a memorable phrase. You will need it later. ]

GnuPG will generate and display your key. Something like:

pub 2048R/8E6D74A2 2010-12-31
uid Your Name
sub 2048R/AD17E388 2010-12-31

The first line displays my key: 8E6D74A2.

First entry identifies my public key: pub.

I used 2048 bits to generate the key: 2048R/

The date my key was created: 2010-12-31

You can see my key is 8E6D74A2.

To encrypt a file:

gpg --output myfile.gpg --encrypt --recipient myfile.txt

GnuPG creates an output file called myfile.gpg which is encrypted and is generated for recipient using myfile.txt as input file.

To decrypt a file:

gpg --output myfile --decrypt myfile.gpg

You will need to give your memorable passphrase to decrypt the file.

To generate your public key:

gpg --armor --export myemail@address > mypubkey

-----BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----

Version: GnuPG v1.4.10 (GNU/Linux)

mQENBE0dNWMBCACZtfh/236A9Gul+e8LcQEgXLr/XWiDdhcEwK/i1m5Z9KVWVcYP

+ai79SGQQ+tQWCdqXX9DZsRvBW+Ftq4Iv2pnpDIdN8fsj7TgPHYo02vkPwoHghQZ

hpz/MtItHzJGZn6jqhqldp3zB/1K3IZ4d+rl/ER1PdmYvFcAfNqGVgALa56dO+0g

hshHYhke5fryVGFa9PReybkJHtqah8r8PXdR+G1MywN8SzTPdt3hohVAzirDWfsK

S6I3e/xiASbop5vaXekAFh4xWrFf8WG2197wF+arDAQO1BZFXWzCz7Vcretj1kCw

LsChl29kE62RPZRxeKqCdASQDdXHYYq3gn0BABEBAAG0KVBhdHJpY2sgV2Fsc2gg

PHBhdHJpY2t3YWxzaC5pc0BnbWFpbC5jb20+iQE4BBMBAgAiBQJNHTVjAhsDBgsJ

CAcDAgYVCAIJCgsEFgIDAQIeAQIXgAAKCRB4Lwybjm10ogHdB/4xhJslafp/4kvm

0lAtVYoW5zigawP7mwn5Zg+5nFXBNtEgEA7N+ty6L/SJjZirZemqWLaBrYqzGzrw

Srk4KMetoZBdOXAd8T509jI6viX3/wjAYyJukpO7JjHCJLSqQftXGU8AknCDsYIU

zRRD5TE2LZm7mwPDfdEaBcdeAjhV3sNpXa+n4IV1c+z4pq3R1UE5hl5D+DpzfB78

WjgGZ4sflEo8uuAigyPDlZRJfRO90e3Knr99tDLLcpVEEQ2Qq9dlxHSw4KrVRVzz

7IqrYKDZqdiZqjaMWfJtLz3OOXnTwQVk4HFWvxQGl8WDMcpAzaBFSAFwNTgxz91k

UxJscJvHuQENBE0dNWMBCACkSS12IQDZ/p5oDStrE2do4fwQt0J84DrqEfBPxlSt

Jhjv2nDOq4h7uRkoobRPjNtx8n6J+ddL01W9S9KHJpkMU0+O7pVZDEAAs2moDgIG

siu2A2If2ep4U36lXLzibKi/HgGCWHkVFLAXepKYhXlZLlRUBxeo5rGipgPIMKPV

dTaPy3ky+DTjU5ItIj3QFenw4bu0VwY6saEEtnmrancEjNpYGJURweDZnIF9UFTk

9ZlgnFKVBCRliMZ0QSrypcYaVc6Co8X1x4Xx+ls69f/8pxDW3sXpEgkBEIIO+F0+

1tVoarnz/tzcnPHG1sr4XltSA/KLlxsHf1vt/0XdRSHXABEBAAGJAR8EGAECAAkF

Ak0dNWMCGwwACgkQeC8Mm45tdKJtwAf+LbHF4AbHA0pBvSPqawl0YnFaKfj/wJIp

Tu3noYh/n7uSCswtBF9UvJrN5+rHmr/H7aEP47OOxphkQtUhaDT0pFiRhqXKt8YW

A9a+0ubHzQWfxOX+kQ/O9RdM9/hVNdjYMO9MsT6AjP/FHtsMU478bUf3Yd8rdcQI

kkg4T1OluqHTrvCZQn/yPwH08B/Que9NFZTTVtpOetkZXSprOUjIcGK60YI8ysGm

RnqkTASpFMNwTk2EyApIChfoUWn0lBO1JLIXqweTzTsVA2JkJm6hTQgq8wvRHpYH

0eE+IIJEnR/hSFvCwpCWtb2uzGwM5inXeDImc7r4t7lWz09c2VqWkQ===7WdN

-----END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK----

GnuPG generates my public key. I can display the key on my website, or send it via email to people I know and trust who wish to send me secure messages or files.

That covers some uses of GnuPG. Its worth reading the online GnuPG Handbook.

Another Sacking For Benitez

2010-12-25T00:49:00.000Z

San Siro Exit

I read ex-Livepool manager Rafa Benitez has been acrimoniously sacked by Inter Milan, after only six months in the job. Apparently El-President is a little unhappy that Inter lie 7th in the league. Why is that so bad? The season's not over yet.

Last year Inter finished top in Italian Seria A under 'The Special One' Jose Mourinho. Inter also picked up the Coppa Italia and to round the season off, they won the Champions League Cup. Quite a feat. Beating the best Europe can throw at them. It was the first time they have done the 'Treble'. Whether you like Mourinho or not, he gets results.

Benitez inherited a treble winning team, and has slowly squandered the winning momentum and mentality to sink to a lowly 7th place. Add to the mix, Benitez belligerent abrasive style, and you can understand why the Inter board were pleased to dump him.

In a way, its a re-run of what happened at Liverpool. Benitez inherited a good squad. He spent close to £300 Million and left behind a collection of mediocre players, that deserve Liverpool's current position of 9th place in the Premier League.

I watched incredulously and horror last season when, week after week Benitez wrestled with indecision on formation and team selection. After an outstanding performance one week, Benitez would drop key players for the next. Players whose game sparkled with flair, improvisation, commitment and work rate. Next game they warm the bench.

Game after game Benitez would switch formation. Change winning team selection. Move Gerrard out left or wide on the right wing. He would split partnerships that worked well, built a quiet understanding of each others game and support play.

Benitez laboured with zonal marking year after year, when it was obvious it did not work. Any one with a modicum of intelligence could see it was Liverpool's achilles heal. They leaked goals every week. Liverpool conceded more goals from set pieces (corners, and free kicks), than open play.

The news emanating from Italy, suggests Inter have suffered a similar fate.

Some online news sites suggest Premiere League vacancies will open to Benitez. They must be crazy. Has this guy's track record not spoken loudly enough? At best, he is mediocre, other times poor.

One part of Benitez game has remained consistently high. The Blame Game. It was something he played well. Throughout his time at Liverpool he always looked to blame others for a poor performance. Always looking for scape goats.

He argued the case for total control on team matters, player purchase, player sales, the youth team, and more. When he finally got the controll he yearned for, Liverpool bombed. He guaranteed a top 4 finish for Liverpool last season, but could only manage 7th place and effectively sealed his fate. Benitez blamed it on the owners lack of funds. He left behind him a Liverpool team in a desperately poor state, from which they have not recovered.

I'm pleased he's gone. Looks like the Italians feel the same way.

Aplay: Device Or Resource Busy

2010-12-25T00:04:00.000Z

In Use

Went to check the sound setup on a Debian box and the sound app would not play. I kept getting the following error message:

aplay: audio open error: Device or resource busy

To extract info on the application hogging the sound device, do:

lsof | grep snd

This displayed:

xmms2d 31732 patrick 7u CHR 116,9 0t0 3885 /dev/snd/controlC0

I could see evidence of the app that was blocking access. I had nothing obvious running, so I killed the process.

killall xmms2d

Then checked again.

lsof | grep snd

Nothing. Its clear.

Done.

Chrome Flashplayer 64-Bit Plug-In

2010-12-24T17:28:00.000Z

Get Working

At the end of November, Adobe Labs announced the long awaited release of 64-bit flashplayer plug-in for Linux. I checked around and there are numerous HowTo's providing guidance on installing the new, improved plug-in on a Linux System. Most are wrong.

Advice includes downloading the Flashplayer-plug-in tarball and adding it to /usr/lib/. Ignore the advice. If you run Google's Chrome browser, here's how to install the new 64-bit flashplayer plug-in. I run Debian Linux.

Check /etc/apt/sources.list. You should have contrib non-free added:

$ cat /etc/apt/souces.list

If not, as root add contrib non-free to your repository. Here's my sources.list:

deb http://ftp.uk.debian.org/debian/ squeeze main contrib non-free
deb-src http://ftp.uk.debian.org/debian/ squeeze main contrib non-free

Yours should look similar. I run squeeze. After you confirm your repository has non-free added, close and save the file.

Type:

# aptitude update

Next run:

aptitude install flashplugin-nonfree

Debian will download and auto install the flashplayer plug-in. Close and restart Chrome.

Go to Youtube.com and check it works.

Mine worked first time.

Done!

Add Slime To Emacs

2010-12-23T19:46:00.000Z

Viscous Liquid Matter

SLime. Superior Lisp Interactive Mode for Emacs. Slime is an Emacs mode for editing and working with Common LISP. Setting up Slime is a breeze. Download the CVS file, gunzip it, move the directory and add the directory path to your dot.emacs file.

Slime recommends pulling down the latest CVS version.

After download, gunzip the file:

tar zvxf slime-current.tgz

Delete the tar file and move the unzipped directory.

rm slime-current.tgz

mv slime-2010-12-23 ~/prog/slime

Open dot.emacs file and add the following:

emacs ~/.emacs

(add-to-list 'load-path "~/prog/slime" ) ; slime directory
(require 'slime)
(slime-setup)

Close, restart Emacs, then start Slime mode:

M-x slime

You'll have the CLISP prompt:

CL-USER>

Have a read of the Slime Online Manual. Its worth a look.

Done!

Gnu Screen

2010-12-22T15:24:00.000Z

Multi Display

Gnu Screen is a faily low key application that is quite awesome in usage. Its functionality is grossly underrated, for such a powerful utility.

Taken from User Manual:

Screen is a full-screen window manager that multiplexes a physical terminal between several processes, typically interactive shells. There is a scrollback history buffer for each virtual terminal and a copy-and-paste mechanism that allows the user to move text regions between windows.

When screen is called, it creates a single window with a shell in it and then gets out of your way so that you can use the program as you normally would. Then, at any time, you can create new full-screen windows with other programs in them including more shells, kill the current window, view a list of the active windows, turn output logging on and off, copy text between windows, view the scrollback history, switch between windows, etc. All windows run their programs completely independent of each other. Programs continue to run when their window is currently not visible and even when the whole screen session is detached from the user's terminal.

When a program terminates, screen kills the window that contained it. If this window was in the foreground, the display switches to the previously displayed window; if none are left, screen exits.

If you have used Emacs, its very similar in user interaction, though functionality is very different.

Here are a few commands to get you going. You can find the rest and plenty of info at Gnu Screen Documents.

Start screen in an XTerm:

xterm screen

Auto start screen with XTerm:

xterm -e screen

Kill screen:

C-a C-\

Create a new window:

C-a C-c

Kill current window:

C-a C-k

Switch to next window:

C-a C-n

Switch to previous window:

C-a C-p

Toggle between windows:

C-a C-a

Name a window:

C-a A

Display screen list:

C-a C-w

Display interactive screen list:

C-a C-"

Clear the screen of text:

C-a C

That's all for now.

Microsoft Loves Linux

2010-12-21T16:53:00.000Z

MS ♥ Linux

Out of curiosity, I wandered over to Netcraft.com and ran a check on what servers Microsoft runs for its Hotmail.com mail service. I queried Netcraft's database and ran a What's That Site Running? search. If you have never used it, give it a shot it turns up interesting results at times.

Anyhow, it seems Microsoft loves Linux so much, 18 of its 24 Hotmail servers run flavours of Linux OS. Only 6 of the 24 use Microsoft's own Windows Server 2003. Either MS can't afford the licence fees (they are very expensive) or Server 2003 can't handle the workload.

Microsoft's previous server offering, NT was prone to going zombie and a re-boot was the only way to bring it back to life.

Here's a capture a screen capture of the web page.

Would Ford Motor Company use GM vehicles for its operations?

It must be Linux love.

Ext4 File System

2010-12-21T16:09:00.000Z

No More fsck

Recently did a clean install of Debian on a box and went with Ext4 file system on '/'. I read a while back that Fedora was shipping with Ext4 as default. Ubuntu being more conservative, stayed with Ext3.

I've had a few bad experiences in the past with exotic and novel technologies, I now take a more cautious path. Sometimes.

When I read Google was upgrading to Ext4, and hired the guy who played a main role in the development of Ext4, that was enough to persuade me. If it was good enough for big 'G', it was good enough for me.

One immediate benefit of Ext4; no more fsck. Those times when you reboot your machine and get the message:

/dev/sda1 been mounted 28 times without being checked, check forced.

Sit around twiddling your thumbs while fsck goes to work.

Ext4 is reputed to be faster than Ext3. Read the paragraph on the bitmap allocator.

In the meantime, check out the Ext4 Wiki page, which is packed with useful and meaningful info on the topic.

Done!

GRUB Multi Disk Multi Boot HowTo

2010-12-17T20:19:00.000Z

Boot It

Recently installed Debian Linux on a new disk drive. I still had my old drive with all my settings, data, files and so on. I want access to the old drive partitions while I worked on the new larger disk.

I could mount the old drive and access files from the mount, but I still wanted access to some applications and settings on the old disk. The easiest way to do this, was to Multi Boot from GRUB. I want the option to boot the old drive or the new.

If I need file access, I can do a temporary mount. The multi-boot set up allows me to work on the new disk at my leisure, till I'm ready to transfer files and wipe the old disk.

There's a lot of info on GRUB Multi Boot and a lot of HowTo's kicking around. Most are out of date. Many are misleading. Some refer to editing menu.lst or editing grub.conf. Both files no longer exist in GRUB. They have been replaced by grub.cfg, which is not to be manually edited. It states in grub.cfg.

Here's an excerpt:

$ cat /boot/grub/grub.cfg
#
# DO NOT EDIT THIS FILE
#
# It is automatically generated by grub-mkconfig using templates
# from /etc/grub.d and settings from /etc/default/grub
#

After installing Debian Linux on a new disk, including GRUB, here's the method for advising GRUB of your other disk and OS:

1. Shut down your system
2. Disconnect power from machine
3. Attach old disk
4. Connect power to your box
5. Boot system
6. Press del key to enter BIOS set up
7. Go to Boot section > Boot order
8. Ensure new disk is select as first boot device
9. Check old disk is recognized.
10. Save settings and exit
11. System reboots into your new disk
12. Fire up XTerm or other Terminal emulator
13. Become root user
14. dmesg | grep sd

This will display all your disks.
Your first boot device will be sda1 (your new disk).
Your old disk will be sdb1. This is for SATA disks.
IDEs disks will be labelled hda1 and hdb1.

15. Run the update grub command and pass your old disk as argument

# update-grub /dev/sdb1

Grub will run off and do its thing

16. Reboot system

On system reboot, you should see your old disk lower down the menu boot. Select it and hit enter to boot off your old disk.

That's about it.

P.S. If you want to boot your new disk and need access to your files, you can do a temporary mount of your old disk. To create a mount point and mount your old disk, become root and do:

# mkdir /mnt/olddisk
# mount -t ext3 /dev/sdb1 /mnt/olddisk

If your not running ext3 on the old disk, replace with ext2 or fat, or whatever is there. If you run XP on the old disk it will have NTFS file system. You will need ntfs-3g utils to access NTFS files.

Do aptitude search ntfs for options and aptitude show for more info.

Done!

Identify Linux Hardware

2010-12-16T01:42:00.000Z

What Is It?

Trying to identify the hardware in your box, when you run Linux, can be a wasted effort. Sure there are a few utils to identify some parts of your hardware setup, but its not comprehensive.

Apart from opening the case up and eye balling, how do you find out what you got under the 'hood?

lshw to the rescue. Its not installed as part of the Debian core, but it is available for download from Debian repositories.

You know the routine:

# aptitude install lshw

Once installed, run lshw as root user, to get a complete listing of your hardware setup.

The listing is comprehensive. I got 459 lines output when I ran it on my primary box. So I suggest piping it to a file where you can peruse it at your leisure, or just grep the hell out of it.

# lshw > hardware.list

That's about it.

* * *

StumpWM MPlayer Crash

2010-12-15T14:38:00.000Z

Wreckage

I have been running StumpWM the keyboard oriented Window Manager for the last few days. It takes a little getting used to, but not much if you have used Emacs. It is very similar in usage to Emacs and Screen.

I like the concept and execution. Though as a finished product, some things are left for you to sort out. There are many key bindings left undone and documentation is not extensive. You have to roll your sleeves up and set the bindings yourself in .stumpwmrc config file.

MPlayer crashes if you play a movie. I googled and discovered this was down to the way MPlayer defaults aspect ratio which, if not defined, results in a divide by zero error in CLISP.

I guess if you bypass default and pass an aspect ratio to MPlayer, that should get around the problem. I haven't tried this since stumpwm crashed last night I fired up and used XFCE4. I will try later and post an update.

To pass MPlayer an aspect ratio, do:

mplayer -aspect 2.4:1 nameofmovie.mpg

Here's the page I found describing the error.

MPlayer refuses to run under StumpWM

It looks like the developers are on the case and a fix may appear soon.

Done!

SSH Login No Password

2010-12-14T18:15:00.000Z

Logos

To enable ssh login to other hosts on your network is pretty simple to set up. Generate a public key using ssh-keygen and copy the key to the hosts you want to access without a password. It that simple.

Here's how to do it:

1. Generate a public/private rsa key pair

ssh-keygen -t rsa

2. Give file location to save key. Accept default.

Press [enter]

3. Enter password for the key
Press [enter]

4. Enter same password:
Press [enter]

Your identification has been saved in /home/patrick/.ssh/id_rsa
Your public key has been saved in /home/patrick/.ssh/id_rsa.pub.

5. Copy your public key.

Caution. Make sure you copy the right key. When ssh-keygen runs, it creates two keys: id_rsa.pub and id_rsa.

Id_rsa.pub is the public key. The one you share. The second key, id_rsa (no .pub extension) is your private key. If you copy the wrong key to the remote host, connection without password will not work.

cp ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub

6. Copy public key to hosts on your network.

cat id_rsa.pub >> ~/.ssh/authorized_keys

7. Add your public key after any existing entries in authorized. Don't overwrite any.

8. Test it by logging in to one of the hosts on the network

ssh host

You're in with no password. If not, you carried out one of the steps wrong. Go back and check the id_rsa.pub matches the copy. Check the file is in the correct location: ~/.ssh. Check the file is correctly named: authorized_keys.

Added Bonus

Aside from being able to log in with no password, you can also copy files without needing to authenticate yourself.

* * *

Disable Root Login

2010-12-13T21:39:00.000Z

More Secure

If you wanted to break into a system, one of the first ways to try is to find an account on the system. You could spend time guessing at users on the system or go for the one user on every Linux/Unix system. Root.

You know root exists on every system. It has to. All you need now is the password and your in. You're half way there.

To increase security, its best to disable root log in. Here's how.

As root open /etc/ssh/sshd_config and find the line PermitRootLogin.

emacs /etc/ssh/sshd_config
PermitRootLogin yes

Change 'yes' at the end of line to 'no', so it looks like this:

PermitRootLogin no

If the line has a hash mark '#' at start of line. Delete the '#' hash mark.

Save the file. Exit and restart sshd daemon.

/etc/init.d/ssh restart

Test it by trying to log in as root user. Log in should fail.

Done!

Using SSH And SCP

2010-12-13T18:24:00.000Z

Secure

SSH and SCP command line tools are very similar in usage. Both utilise a secure connection. Data is encrypted to ensure secure transit. Passwords and other sensitive data is safe.

Using SSH

You must have a user account and password on the remote host or connection will fail. The remote host must be running ssh server. You can check for sshd using ps and grep.

ps -e | grep sshd
1493 ? 00:00:00 sshd

Another consideration is a firewall that blocks connections to port 22. If you cannot connect to the remote host, check firewall settings.

To log into a remote host using ssh, do:

ssh remotehost
myname@remotehost password:

Enter the password for the account on the remote host to gain access.

Using SCP

Using scp is similar to using ssh, in how you log in to the remote host. Once your in, the similarity ends.

To copy files from a remote host into the current directory do:

scp myname@remotehost:/filetocopy .

Notice the colon after the host name. Its important. Followed by the path to the file you want to copy. Finally at the end the dot '.' or period. That tells Linux to place the copied file in this directory. The dot is short hand for 'the current directory'.

Copying files from my box to a remote host is pretty much the same command, rehashed.

scp filetocopy myname@remotehost:/directory/to/copy/to

Give it a shot. See how ya go.

That's about it.

Done!

X Windows Lock Up

2010-12-13T13:49:00.000Z

Kill It

Occasionally I've had X Windows lock up solid that no keyboard or mouse input has any effect.
So what do ya do, when X is totally unresponsive? How do ya free your machine?

You have a few options.

Remote ssh Login

If you have ssh installed and have access to another Linux box, you can remote login and kill X. When you ssh into yourbox, it will ask for your password. After entering correct password, do a ps -e| grep X to find Xorg process and kill the process id or run killall Xorg.

ssh yourbox
you@yourbox's password:

ps -e |grep X
6408 tty8 00:08:42 Xorg

killall Xorg

That should do it.

Use Magic SysRq Key

You can use Magic SysRq Key to do a System Request and pass keyboard control to the console. Then switch to console and kill X from there. The SysRq key is sometimes marked PrntScn. You have to press

Alt+PrntScn+r

This should allow you to switch to the console by pressing

Ctrl+Alt+F1

Once on the console, kill the X Server

killall Xorg

Warm Reboot

If that fails, you have to do a warm reboot then fsck. If you have a current distro and ext3 or equivalent filesystem, you should be okay. Press the reset button and wait for the system to reboot.

Check your X log under /var/log/Xorg.0.log to see what caused the lock up.

# less /var/log/Xorg.0.log

Done!

Emacs Web Jump

2010-12-13T12:40:00.000Z

From Here To There

Use Emacs. Can't be bothered to fumble the mouse, launch a browser, enter URL and maybe a search term? Then try Web Jump. Its part of Emacs and works like this:

M-x webjump
WebJump to site: google
Google query: Linux

Emacs fires up Firefox, Google and passes your query to Google ready to for your enjoyment.

You may find it useful.

Done!

StumpWM Install

2010-12-13T03:15:00.000Z

The Right Way

Installed StumpWM last week and have been running it as my Window Manager for a few days. I like it. It's very different to many mainstream Window Managers or Desktop Environments.

StumpWM is keyboard centric. Usable without a mouse. In fact that was the primary design principle. Once StumpWM is running, there is nothing to click. No icons. No buttons. Nothing for the mouse to do.

Documentation is not extensive, and it takes some getting used to keyboard only usage. Once you start to get the feel, its great.

I hit a problem using StumpWm. Sometimes it hangs. Kill Xorg and log back in is the only solution.

StumpWM requires you to install LISP before you install Stump. I installed CLISP - an ANSI Common Lisp Implementation from Gnu.org. After the recurring hangs, I searched for a fix and found this:

Multi-threading is available in SBCL, though not in CLISP. Running Swank (or any other command that doesn’t fork or exit) on a single-threaded StumpWM will hang StumpWM. You’ll be able to move the mouse, but the prefix key won’t react anymore. You’ll have to Ctrl+Alt+Backspace to start a new session.

And there's the rub...

I uninstall CLISP and StumpWM and start afresh.

I'm running Debian. Here' s how I did it:

1. Install SBCL

# aptitude install sbcl

2. Install CL-CLX-SBCL. An X11 Common Lisp client library for SBCL

# aptitude install cl-clx-sbcl

3. Install CL-PPCRE. Portable Regular Express Library for Common Lisp

# aptitude install cl-ppcre

4. Install StumpWM. Common Lisp window manager

# aptitude install stumpwm

Check StumpWM is in the path

# ls /usr/bin/stumpwm
/usr/bin/stumpwm

On Debian the default install is under /usr/bin/stumpwm. I have seen references to /usr/local/bin/stumwm on some systems. Check the location to ensure its correct.

Ensure X launches StumpWM by adding a line to .xinitrc

$ echo "exec stumpwm >> ~.xinitrc

Create symlink from .~/xsession to ~/.xinitrc

$ ln -s /home/myname/.xinitrc /home/myname/.xsession

Kill and restart Xorg.

I kept my other Window Manager in case there were further problems to resolve.

You can add StumpWM as an entry to GDM sessions menu using Emacs or another editor

emacs /usr/share/xsessions/stumpwm.desktop

[Desktop Entry]
Encoding=UTF-8
Name=StumpWM
Comment=Tiling Window Manager
Exec=/usr/bin/stumpwm
Icon=
Type=Application

Save file. Restart X server.

Normally hit Ctrl-Alt-Del to kill and restart X server. If that fails, as root user, open XTerm and do:

# ps -e | grep X
6408 tty8 00:06:43 Xorg

# killall Xorg

X server will die and restart.

Done!

Debian Aptitude Too Big

2010-12-12T19:51:00.000Z

Getting Fat

Using aptitude since last clean install, I recently observed how big /var had grown. Starting around 100 Megabytes, it now stood at a whopping 2.5 Gigabytes. I suspected it was caused by aptitude's cache archive. Running du -sh /var confirmed it.

Deb files are stored in /var/cache/apt/archives. Aptitude's cache was now 2.3 Gigabytes in size. Time to trim.

I ran aptitude autoclean:

# aptitude autoclean

It took around 1 minute and reduced the cache by 1.4 Gigabytes. Still too much. I ran aptitude clean:

# aptitude clean

This purges pretty much everything. Check again and it was down to a manageable 263 Megabytes. Okay.

Keep an eye on aptitude. Its a disk space hog.

Done!

Linux Firewall

2010-12-12T03:55:00.000Z

Protection

If your looking for a free firewall (free as in liberty and in beer), then go check out Firestarter.

Its an Open Source easy to use firewall with GUI setup and admin.

Its simple to use and has many options. It even has Internet Connection Sharing similar to Windows XP.

If you don't feel comfortable reworking those IPTables rules, go download and install Firestarter.

Its great for laptops, desktops or servers.

Done!

Fujitsu Amilo Laptop

2010-12-09T02:52:00.000Z

Portable

I bought a Fujitsu Amilo budget notebook for occasional use when away from home. Overall the laptop is pretty good, my only complaint is that battery life is dismal. You get around one hour usage, before it shuts down. Stay close to a power outlet at all times.

It came with Vista Home Edition installed. That was buggy and slow. But that was gone a short while later. Grabbed the Debian Net Install Disk, and completed a laptop install. Now it purrs along.

Its a nice notebook, with decent graphics, a large disk, and plenty of RAM. Three USB ports, inbuilt card reader, wireless and lan connections.

Aside from the poor battery performance, I'm pleased with the machine.

Here's the full specification:

Fujitsu-Siemens Amilo Pi 2515 Notebook specifications

Processor
Intel Core 2 Duo T7100 1.8 GHz

Mainboard
Intel GM965

Memory
2048 MB, DDR2 PC5300 667MHz. 2x1024MB

Graphics adapter
Intel Graphics Media Accelerator (GMA) X3100, up to 384MB video RAM

Display
15.4 inch 16:10, 1280x800 pixel, WXGA BrightView, TFT

Harddisk
160 GB - 5400 rpm, WD Scorpio WD1600BEVS

Soundcard
Motorola Si3054

Connections
1 Express Card 54mm, 3 USB 2.0, 1 VGA, 56k V.92 Modem

Audio Connections
Microphone, Earphones,

Card Reader
4in1 Cardreader

Networking
Realtek RTL8101 (10/100MBit),
Intel PRO/Wireless 3945ABG 802.11 a/b/g

Optical drive
Optiarc DVD RW AD-7540A
8x (DVD-R/+R/+R DL/-RW/+RW/-ROM)

Size
length x width x height (mm): 355 x 255 x 40

Weight: 2.71 kg
Power Supply: 0.3 kg

Battery
44.4 Wh Lithium-Ion, 11.1V 4000mAh

MPlayer Audio Track

2010-12-05T00:49:00.000Z

Identify And Select

Using MPlayer on the command line, sometimes a movie defaults to, and plays the wrong audio track. How do you identify the correct track? How do you select the correct audio track?

First check the audio tracks available on your movie. This one is in matroska (mkv) format.

$ mplayer -identify greatmovie.mkv
[matroska,webm @ 0x374eae0] max_analyze_duration reached
[matroska,webm @ 0x374eae0] Estimating duration from bitrate, this may be inaccurate
ID_VIDEO_ID=0
ID_AUDIO_ID=0
ID_AID_0_LANG=eng <-- Here's the audio we want!
ID_AID_0_NAME=English
ID_AUDIO_ID=1
ID_AID_1_LANG=eng
ID_AID_1_NAME=Commentary actor, director
ID_SUBTITLE_ID=0
ID_SID_0_LANG=eng
ID_SID_0_NAME=English
ID_SUBTITLE_ID=1
ID_SID_1_LANG=eng
ID_SID_1_NAME=English (SDH)
ID_SUBTITLE_ID=2
ID_SID_2_LANG=fre
ID_SID_2_NAME=French
ID_SUBTITLE_ID=3
ID_SID_3_LANG=spa
ID_SID_3_NAME=Spanish
ID_CLIP_INFO_NAME0=title
ID_CLIP_INFO_VALUE0=gr
ID_CLIP_INFO_N=1
ID_FILENAME=greatmovie.mkv
ID_DEMUXER=lavfpref
ID_VIDEO_FORMAT=H264
ID_VIDEO_BITRATE=0
ID_VIDEO_WIDTH=1280
ID_VIDEO_HEIGHT=528
ID_VIDEO_FPS=23.976
ID_VIDEO_ASPECT=2.4242
ID_AUDIO_FORMAT=22127
ID_AUDIO_BITRATE=0
ID_AUDIO_RATE=48000
ID_AUDIO_NCH=2
ID_START_TIME=0.00
ID_LENGTH=6162.19
ID_SEEKABLE=1
ID_CHAPTERS=0
ID_VIDEO_CODEC=ffh264
ID_AUDIO_BITRATE=0
ID_AUDIO_RATE=48000
ID_AUDIO_NCH=2
ID_AUDIO_CODEC=ffvorbis
ID_VIDEO_ASPECT=2.4242 <-- Here's the aspect ratio!
ID_PAUSED
ID_EXIT=QUIT

Now we have the audio track details, we can pass that value to MPlayer when we start the movie:

mplayer -aspect 2.42:1 -aid 0 greatmovie.mkv

MPlayer will now play the audio track we want.

Done!

Using Linux Find

2010-12-03T23:13:00.000Z

Searching...

Linux find utility is a great tool for digging out files buried in the vast depths of your disk platters. Not quite as good as Google, but a lot smaller and already built into your Linux OS.

If you have an inkling of your file details, find can locate it. I misplaced some files a couple of months ago. I knew I had worked on them on another machine and was pretty sure, a copy resided on my disk, somewhere.

I found a date reference to the files. It was all I needed. find did the rest.

I knew I had last worked on the files on 19 July. I calculated the number of days, using fingers and toes, and passed the number to 'find'.

It was 137 days since I last modified or accessed the file. Here's the find command.

find . -mtime 137 -print

Explanation:

find - the find command
'.' - start search in the current directory
-mtime - look at files last modified
137 - days ago
-print - print out results

Minutes later, I had my files.

You can search for files by name, using -name instead of -mtime.

Add wildcards:

find . -name *.gif

Searches for all gif files in current directory and sub-directories.

Done!

DVD VOB To AVI

2010-12-02T15:05:00.000Z

Convert DVD VOB Video Files To AVI Format

A friend has some home videos as DVD. He wants to convert the DVD files to AVI so he can edit them with a movie editor.

This is how to do it.

N.B. This is for DVD home movies which are NOT encrypted. This will not work for DVD Videos such as those produced by the Hollywood studios. The movie industry has worked to prevent back up copies of DVDs by encrypting content.

This is for the Windows platform. You can achieve the same using Debian/Linux. I'll leave that for another day.

Download and install the following software:

DVDFab HD Decrypter

Avidemux Video Editor

DVDFab

Fireup DVDFab HD Decrypter. Place your DVD video disc in the drive. When it spins up, DVDFab should detect it and start to scan the disc. DVDFab will ask you to specify the region code. Western Europe for us.

The DVD video will be identified in the field at top marked 'Source'. Click field underneath marked 'Target' and select a drive and a folder / directory to output the ripped DVD data. Make a note of the directory/folder the ripped data is in. You will need to know that a little later.

Click start. Go grab a coffee or watch wrestling. When its finished close DVDFab. Its done its work for today.

Avidemux

Fire up Avidemux. We want to convert the file to AVI.

Left hand panel. Click drop down arrow button under Video. Select MPEG-4 ASP (Xvid)
Left hand panel. Click drop down arrow button under Audio. Select MP3 (lame)
Left hand panel. Click drop down arrow button under Format. Select AVI

Click folder on toolbar go to the location where DVDFab put the ripped files. You do remember the folder location, dont you?

Click it and open the folder makred VIDEO_TS.

Ignore .BUP, .IFO, .idx files.

Select the first VOB file. Should be something like VTS_01_0.VOB. Click 'Open'

Avidemux confirms its opened the file.

Back at main screen, click Save. Second button from left on toolbar. Image of floppy disk.

Give the file a name, including '.avi. extionsion. Avidemux will not add the extension for you.

Avidemux starts conversion.

Go grab a coffee or watch some more wrestling. This could take a couple of hours.

For large files, run it over night.

Done!

ASCII Codes

2010-12-02T12:39:00.002Z

ASCII Character Set

The ASCII character set defines 128 characters.
0 to 127 dec. 0 to FF hex. 0 to 177 oct.

ASCII is an acronym for American Standard Code for Information Interchange.

The standard set consists of 128 decimal numbers from zero to 127. These are assigned to letters, numbers, punctuation marks, and special characters.

Control Characters

The first 32 values are non-printing control characters, such as Return and Line feed. Generated by pressing Control and another key. Bell is value 7, Control plus G, shown as ^G.

Notice that Bell decimal value is 7. G decimal value is 71. The Control key subtracts 64 from the value of the key it modifies. So Bell is 64 less than the value of G.

ie 71 - 64 = 7

Here's a jpg with 128 ASCII codes, 0 to 127.

Done!

GStreamer unable to detect any sound devices

2010-12-01T22:51:00.000Z

No Sound

GStreamer was unable to detect any sound devices. Some sound system specific GStreamer packages may be missing. It may also be a permissions problem.

The error messageI was getting. I installed a few things for testing. Something broke. I googled for a solution without luck.

XFCE4 mixer was greyed out. I couldn't use it. I could use AlsaMixer. I could get sound using MPlayer. I could get sound using Audacious.

I tried to remove gstreamer using aptitude without luck. As root I deleted gstreamer files and directories:

rm -rf /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10

I tried aptitude again:

aptitude remove gstreamer0.10-alsa

This time it worked. I got:

root# aptitude remove gstreamer0.10-alsa
The following packages will be REMOVED:
gstreamer0.10-alsa
0 packages upgraded, 0 newly installed, 1 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 0 B of archives. After unpacking 578 kB will be freed.
(Reading database ... 91754 files and directories currently installed.)
Removing gstreamer0.10-alsa ...

I purged gstreamer0.10-alsa and installed it again. It worked. This time audacious didn't complain when I fired it up. XFCE4 mixer was stilled grayed out. I removed it from XFCE4 panel and added a new XFCE4 mixer.

Done!

Mount ISO Files

2010-11-30T18:41:00.000Z

Loop De Loop

Someone recently asked me about reading ISO files and how to go about it. In Debian or any flavour of Linux it's easy.

The command is in three parts.

1. The mount command.
2. The location of the ISO file.
3. The location of the mount point.

ISO file is called homevideo.iso. Locate the ISO image in your home directory. Create a directory to mount it.

mkdir isomnt

We mount the ISO in our home directory mount point:

mount -o loop /home/myname/homevideo.iso /home/myname/isomnt

You can cd into /home/myname/isomnt to check the contents.

When your done you need to unmount the ISO file. Do:

umount /home/myname/isomnt

That's about it.

Done!

XFCE4 Xmodmap Problem

2010-11-30T14:22:00.000Z

Broken

Running X commands in XFCE4 at start up works, in theory. In practice, not. I had this problem for a while and searched for a solution, without success. Today I was reading through documents on XFCE website and found this entry.

Is it possible to use Media keys in the Shortcut Editor?

Use xmodmap to assign keycodes to your Media keys to make them available for the Xfce shortcut editor:

To determine keycodes of the multimedia keys use the program xev. Create a .Xmodmap file in your $HOME directory containing those keycodes and assign keysyms to them. All possible keysyms can be found in /usr/lib/X11/XKeysymDB or /usr/share/X11/XKeysymDB.

To ensure that the .Xmodmap file is loaded when you start Xfce add /usr/bin/xmodmap $HOME/.Xmodmap to your .xinitrc or .xprofile file. When you start the shortcut editor the assigned keysyms should show up when you press one of your multimedia keys. Now it is possible to assign a command to them.

Note: Several problems with auto-loading of .Xmodmap files at xfce startup have been reported (also when issued as autostart command). Search the xfce bugzilla sites for current problems. As a workaround, run xmodmap ~/.Xmodmap by hand every time, or try out editing the somewhat less straightforward xkb configuration files.

There you have it.

Done!

Web Cam Setup In Debian

2010-11-30T02:03:00.000Z

Moving Pictures

I set up a Web cam running Debian Squeeze in around 10 minutes. The Web Cam itself was an 'el cheapo' model made by Microsoft.

Its a LifeCam VX-1000 color Web Cam with 640x480 resolution for video and still images. It has a built-in microphone and a USB type A connector. More importantly, its supported in Debian Linux.

I plugged the camera in and ran 'lsusb'.

lsusb
Bus 003 Device 004: ID 045e:00f7 Microsoft Corp. LifeCam VX-1000

The device was recognized immediately. Great. I'm running Debian 2.6.32 kernal, I guess the device driver is already in the kernel.

I installed an app to see the Web Cam in action. I pulled down Camorama. Its a simple application with limited abilities, but it will do fine for testing.

aptitude install camorama

Two minutes later, it was installed. I fired up the program and had Web Cam images onscreen. Camorama can capture stills or display images as they happen. It has no streaming capabilities.

I installed Cheese from the Debian repository:

aptitude install cheese

On completion, I fired it up and could capture still images or record video. Its slightly more versatile than Camorama.

I also got the Web Cam to display images in mplayer. I did:

mplayer -fps 30 tv://

I googled but results were thin on the ground for what I wanted. I read briefly you can use Mencoder to save the stream to disk or similar. I guess I will have to dive into the MPlayer / Mencoder documents to find what I need.

I will look into that over the next couple of weeks, and post on results.

Anyhow, its a positive start. It works.

Done!

Disable Annoying TouchPad In XFCE4

2010-11-30T00:13:00.000Z

Veritable Irritant No More

If you have a laptop running Debian Linux or another Linux flavour, touchpad tapping is enabled by default.

This causes the cursor to hop around if your typing or if your hand touches / brushes the touchpad.

Its annoying and time consuming, to go back and correct typing errors caused this way.

If you run GNOME or KDE desktops its easily fixed. If you run XFCE4 the method is not so obvious. There are no settings to disable this activity.

Disable the mouse touchpad on the command line with the following:

syndaemon -d

This causes syndaemon to delay response before activating again after a key press.

Done!

Memory In Linux

2010-11-29T22:29:00.000Z

Recall

To check memory usage in Linux do:

cat /proc/meminfo

You'll get a long listing of all memory usage.

Use free to show memory usage in megabytes:

free -m

You can use -k for kilobytes or -G for gigabytes.

There is vmstat too:

vmstat 2 5

vmstat displays output every 2 seconds 5 times.

Done!

DVD Backup Revisited

2010-11-29T20:58:00.000Z

Burn Some More

After digging a little further, I unearthed a couple of other DVD Backup apps, to secure your important data.

K9Copy is a small utility which allows DVD backup on Linux. The DVD video stream is compressed by the program Vamps. Options include:

Copy without menus :
DVDAuthor creates a new structure for the DVD. It is possible to arbitrarily set the order of the videos.

Copy with menus :
As dvdauthor can't copy the original menus, K9Copy recreates the original DVD structure. The menus as well as IFO files are modified to point to the compressed MPEG2 stream.

K9Copy features include:
The video stream is compressed to make the video fiton a 4.7GB recordable DVD
DVD Burning
Creation of ISO images
Choosing which audio and subtitle tracks are copied.
Title preview (video only)
The ability to preserve the original menus.

Prerequisites
DVDAuthor
libdvdread
growisofs
mencoder
mplayer
libhal
libdbus
libdbus-qt

OGMRip a Gnome centric app which looks useful. OGMRip is an application and a set of libraries for ripping and encoding DVD into AVI, OGM, MP4, or Matroska files using a wide variety of codecs. It relies on mplayer, mencoder, ogmtools, mkvtoolnix, mp4box, oggenc, lame, and faac to perform its tasks.

The GUI features a clean GNOME 2 interface and tries to minimize esoteric settings for the end user. A CLI client is also available, it's called shRip.

Done!