Links
Archives
Random notes from yet another Finnish nerd. This blog reflects mostly my life with computers and stuff, rather than my real life.
August 29, 2005
European countries I've visited so far
create your personalized map of europe
or check out our Barcelona travel guide
create your personalized map of europe
or check out our Barcelona travel guide
April 06, 2005
March 08, 2005
Sad Day For Democracy In Europe
Today European Council totally un-democratically moved on legalising software patents, despite European Parlament, general public and the whole software industry strongly resisted the act. This directive is about to destroy a whole industry, making small software business and non-commercial development impossible.
Seriously, this case of software patentability has proved democracy in European Union is a joke. Large multinational corporations rule both EU and USA.
Seriously, this case of software patentability has proved democracy in European Union is a joke. Large multinational corporations rule both EU and USA.
March 07, 2005
TightVNC & SSH
Tried ssh tunneled TightVNC session from Win32 to Debian Linux server today. Getting it up and running was straight-forward:
I figured out some of these details after reading this article.
I also installed Debian package icewm and patched ~/.vnc/xstartup to start icewm. Desktop size can be forced by entering a $geometry entry in /etc/vnc.conf.
Biggest benefits of TightVNC over remove X sessions seem to be lower bandwith requirements and the ability to disconnect session.
- Install TightVNC Viewer from http://www.tightvnc.com/
- Install Debian package tightvncserver
- Set up ssh tunnel for port 5902
- Run tightvncserver from ssh prompt
- Connect TightVNC Viewer to localhost:5902
I figured out some of these details after reading this article.
I also installed Debian package icewm and patched ~/.vnc/xstartup to start icewm. Desktop size can be forced by entering a $geometry entry in /etc/vnc.conf.
Biggest benefits of TightVNC over remove X sessions seem to be lower bandwith requirements and the ability to disconnect session.
January 19, 2005
November 27, 2004
Sun JDK 1.5.0 on Debian
Now that Java2 5.0 is final, I decided to upgrade my Debian hosts to use it. The correct way of installing Sun Java on Debian is something like this:
The output of the last command should be something like
java version "1.5.0"
Java(TM) 2 Runtime Environment, Standard Edition (build 1.5.0-b64)
Now that Java2 5.0 is final, I decided to upgrade my Debian hosts to use it. The correct way of installing Sun Java on Debian is something like this:
# apt-get install java-common equivs
# ./jdk-1_5_0-linux-i586.bin
# mv jdk1.5.0 /usr/local/lib
# ln -s /usr/local/lib/jdk1.5.0 /usr/local/lib/jdk
# mkdir pkg
# cd pkg
# cp /usr/share/doc/java-common/dummy-packages/*.control .
# equivs-build java1-runtime-dummy.control
# equivs-build java-compiler-dummy.control
# equivs-build java2-compiler-dummy.control
# equivs-build java2-runtime-dummy.control
# equivs-build java-virtual-machine-dummy.control
# dpkg -i *.deb
# update-alternatives --verbose --install /usr/bin/java java /usr/local/lib/jdk/bin/java 500 --slave /usr/share/man/man1/java.1 java.1 /usr/local/lib/jdk/man/man1/java.1
# ln -s /usr/local/lib/jdk/jre/plugin/i386/ns7/libjavaplugin_oji.so /usr/lib/mozilla firefox/plugins/libjavaplugin_oji.so
# java -version
The output of the last command should be something like
java version "1.5.0"
Java(TM) 2 Runtime Environment, Standard Edition (build 1.5.0-b64)
November 04, 2004
Slashdot on Photoblogging
Photoblogging was discussed on Slashdot. Most people didn't seem to be too excited about this concept. However, some great links were posted:
and also some photoblogs:
Photoblogging was discussed on Slashdot. Most people didn't seem to be too excited about this concept. However, some great links were posted:
- photoblogs.org portal site
- Photo.net: No words forum
- GalleryAdd is a tool for importing files into Gallery
- Lake District Wallpapper Photos featutes a daily, full size scenery from UK
- Fotolog free hosting
- www.fotothing.com like fotolog.net
- deviantART digital artists' communit
- Lomography explained
and also some photoblogs:
September 25, 2004
Trying DirectX 9 SDK (Summer 2004) on Visual Studio 2005 Beta1
I decided to give the latest beta of Visual Studio 2005 a try. I even updated the toolset with Visual C++ 2005 Tools Refresh. After installing DirectX 9 SDK (Summer 2004) I tried to compile the samples. Visual Studio 2005 succesfully converted Visual Studio 2003 project files. In addition I had to do this to make 'em compile:
- Update include & library directories in VC++ directories options
- Add ignore type libraries: libcp.lib to project's linker settings
- Remove the manifest file from the project (otherwise mt.exe failed with errors)
July 17, 2004
June 05, 2004
After some web browsing, I concluded the following list on choosing a toolkit for cross platform desktop applications:
June 01, 2004
So. Besides Photoshop, photography is all science has ever contributed to art. Here's my first experiment in moblogging with a cell phone digital camera.
May 29, 2004
Did a bit of Perl hacking today. Encrypting/decrypting a file with Blowfish cipher goes like this:
use Crypt::CBC;
use Crypt::Blowfish;
open(IN, "secret.txt") or die "Unable to open for reading, $!\n";
open(OUT, ">message.txt") or die "Unable to open for writing, $!\n";
binmode IN; # for win32
binmode OUT;
my $cipher = Crypt::CBC->new($key, 'Blowfish');
$cipher->start('decrypting');
my $buff;
while (read(IN, $buff, 1024)) {
my $block = $cipher->crypt($buff);
print OUT $block;
}
close IN;
close OUT;
$cipher->finish();
May 25, 2004
gtk2-perl for win32
Decided to try gtk2-perl on win32 today. There were some rough edges but it went something like this:
- Upgraded to ActiveState Perl 5.8 (gtk2-perl doesn't support 5.6 releases)
- Downloaded binary installers for Glib and Gtk+ 2 Perl modules
- I had already installed GTK+ 2 for Windows. I also happened to have an older version of iconv.dll somewhere else in the PATH. Had to remove it to make gtk2-perl work.
- Verified the thing works by hacking together the following simple image viewer utility:
#!/usr/bin/perl
#
# Simple image browser.
# Directory containing images given as command line argument.
use strict;
use warnings;
use Glib qw(FALSE TRUE);
use Gtk2 -init;
use Gtk2::SimpleList;
use File::Spec;
use constant TRUE => 1;
use constant FALSE => 0;
die "Usage: $0 directory\n" unless @ARGV;
my $dir_base = $ARGV[0];
opendir(DIR, $dir_base) or die("Directory open error: $!");
my $window = Gtk2::Window->new;
my $image = Gtk2::Image->new;
my $list = Gtk2::SimpleList->new('Image name' => 'text');
foreach(readdir(DIR)) {
my $file = $_;
if($file =~ /\.jpe?g$/i) {
push @{$list->{data}}, [ $file ];
}
}
$list->set_rules_hint (TRUE);
#$list->signal_connect (row_activated => \&row_clicked); # double click event
$list->signal_connect (cursor_changed => \&row_clicked); # focus change event
my $scroll = Gtk2::ScrolledWindow->new(undef, undef);
$scroll->add($list);
$scroll->set_policy('never','automatic');
my $hbox = Gtk2::HBox->new;
$hbox->pack_start($scroll,FALSE,FALSE,0);
$hbox->pack_start($image,TRUE,TRUE,0);
$window->add ($hbox);
$window->set_default_size(800,600);
$window->show_all;
$window->signal_connect (delete_event => \&delete_event);
$window->signal_connect (destroy => sub {Gtk2->main_quit;});
Gtk2->main;
sub row_clicked {
my ($model,$iter) = $list->get_selection->get_selected;
my $filename = $model->get ($iter, 0);
my $pixbuf = Gtk2::Gdk::Pixbuf->new_from_file (File::Spec->catdir($dir_base, $filename));
$image->set_from_pixbuf($pixbuf);
$window->set_title ($filename);
}
sub delete_event
{
return FALSE;
} - Some of the examples and gtk2-demo in gtk2-perl source archive failed to work out of the box. There was also a lot of warnings about TRUE & FALSE being undefined. I simply ignored them or defined constants called TRUE & FALSE.
Blogger software on Slashdot
There was another story on on MovableType 3 licensing changes. Seems like a lot of the open source folk are gonna move on to open source blogger software, such as WordPress, Blosxom, Drupal and LiveJournal.
May 18, 2004
Today I checked GhostScript out of CVS and compiled from source on win32, using Visual Studio .Net 2003. It went like this:
- Get module 'gs' from GhostScript CVS
- Download jpegsr6.zip, lpng125.zip, zlib121.zip & jbig2dec-0.6.zip and extract them into subdirectories jpeg, libpng, zlib & jbig2dec under the gs directory.
- run from DOS box:'nmake -f src\msvc32.mak MSVC_VERSION=7 DEVSTUDIO="C:\Program File
s\Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2003" - Directories bin, lib, Resource, examples and doc are ready to be copied into the installation directory.
- Create registry keys GS_DLL and GS_LIB under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\AFPL Ghostscript\8.30 to finish the installation.
May 14, 2004
In seek of the ultimate archiving system for my digital photos I went through a bunch of image viewer/archiving software.
Many of these applications provided support for email and online printing / album hosting services, such as ShutterFly. While I don't find these features interesting, they might be of great value for some users.
- Adobe Photoshop Album 2.0 seems to be the one best software available. However, it's most usefull features such as calendar view, collections (i.e. virtual albums) and backup to CD are only available in the purchased version ($50).
- ACDSee 6.0, the long time image viewer champion keeps getting better and better. New features of version 6 are backup to CD, browse by calendar or categories and rating. $50.
- Paint Shop Photo Album 5. Jasc Software has a long history on Windows image viewer / editor business. Their album application's features include: CD burn, import from cell phone and panorama stitch.
- Picasa. Feature highlight is Blogger image upload.
- Canon ZoomBrowser EX. The user interface has some nice effects on dynamically zooming the thumb nail size according to the number of images in the folder. This package also includes PhotoStictch software for making panoramo pictures out of multiple shots. Otherwise the software seems buggy, slow and limited in features. Notable shortcomings are lack of backup and no browsing by calendar.
- digikam. This one's only for KDE/Linux but contains a lot of the same features as bleeding edge windows counterparts.
Many of these applications provided support for email and online printing / album hosting services, such as ShutterFly. While I don't find these features interesting, they might be of great value for some users.
May 13, 2004
Did some more fooling around with Suse 9.1 and my K7N420 nforce based mother board. The network interface aws automagically detected and configured using the forcedeth driver. However, there was no way I could make the onboard sound work with ALSA drivers (snd_intel8x0). NForce audio was properly detected, modules loaded and mixer set up, but there was simply no sound from the speakers (and no, the mixer wasn't muted). This seems to be a known problem with Suse 9.1.
May 10, 2004
Today I dowloaded and tried Suse 9.1 Live CD. Some highlights of its contents are kernel 2.6.4, KDE 3.2.1, OpenOffice.org 1.1.1, Gimp 2.0, Java 1.4.2_03, Acrobat Reader 5.0, xmms, Kaffeine (Xine based player). All and all, it really feels the most polished and consistent KDE Linux setup I've tied (at least when comparing to Knoppix 3.4).
When testing on VMWAre 4.5, the system hung during boot (something PCMCIA related) unless I selected verbose mode from the boot options. Go figure....
When testing on VMWAre 4.5, the system hung during boot (something PCMCIA related) unless I selected verbose mode from the boot options. Go figure....