HackNBlog @ Salamanteri Server

I have always (that is since I wrote my first lines of QBASIC code under MS-DOS 5.0) had interest to learn new programming languages, just out of interest towards programming as a hobby. Lately I have grown more and more interested on learning to program Common Lisp, a language highly praised by those using it but also one of those that has always looked way too cryptic for me (considering that I do know various different languages and rarely bump into one that I’m totally baffled about when looking at it :) ).

Now I have decided to find out what all the fuss is about and learn at least the basics of Common Lisp - however I’m having hard time finding a tutorial that is both good for someone who knows nothing about Lisp and does not stop after “Hello World” and couple simple examples of mathematical functions :)

So far I have found that GNU programs include a Lisp compiler and interpreter called ‘gcl‘ (GNU Common Lisp) and one simple tutorial on very basics of Common Lisp.

What I’m hoping as I’m writing about this is that maybe someone with knowledge is reading this and could post a comment with link(s) to a good tutorial for me to start working with :) Whether it will happen or not I will certainly be posting about my future experiments with Lisp here - I would like to gain at least enough knowledge to produce a Lisp version of my ‘tree.sh‘ (shell script to output directory tree structure nicely) as it is a good short program to write for getting overall picture of how a language feels write with compared to others - in fact I might write it with multiple languages for comparison of them (just for the fun of it).

Advanced users (and some regular desktop users too) have a need for process viewer (for those who don’t know what I mean, it’s equivalent of process lister that you get with ctrl-alt-del in windows) - and while some are happy or even insist on using nothing but graphical application for this (’gnome-system-monitor‘ in Gnome), some of us prefer to use one that is console based or prefer having both depending on situation so there is a big demand for a good console based process viewer for *nix systems.

The old ‘top’ and way more advanced alternative

Many people know ‘top‘ to be such tool - unfortunately many don’t know other interactive ones - there is non-interactive ‘ps‘ for getting process list, but it just prints process list (with information and formatting according to parameters) while interactive process lister lets you view the list, send signals to processes (ie. to kill a process) or to change their priority (’nice’ value). There however is much more advanced application than ‘top‘, yet very much like ‘top‘ in having all that is good in ‘top‘, but replacing many UI parts with better functionality. The app is called ‘htop‘.

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I have the first poll on my site: about “year of desktop linux”. Please vote for your opinion!

There has been numerous blogs and other articles writing of “This is/was the year of desktop Linux” - naturally also with loads of criticism about it. I have my own opinion about year of desktop Linux, but that will be written about in another blog entry. All I say is that for me Year of the linux desktop already was - I leave you wondering what it was

So there, go on and wote!

I believe most here have already read about Google starting up an operating system of their own, Chrome OS to compete with Windows as their next project. I’ll share some of my feelings about good, bad and the futile related to this hopefully neat project.

Google Chrome OS is an open source, lightweight operating system that will initially be targeted at netbooks. Google want’s to provide users with an OS that boots up lightning fast and ready for web in seconds from switching power on. They want the system not to clutter up but always run as fast as anew. They want to provide an OS where there is no fuss and fighting with new hardware, configuring the system (that usually needs knowledge below the average) and no updates that break things or change&confuse the user interface. This all sounds good - and it also already sound familiar.

Gathered not from Chrome OS official blog but from a zdnet blog entry, let’s check some known facts:

• It runs on top of Linux kernel.
• It will boot directly into the Chrome Web browser
• It will be aimed primarily at netbooks
• It will run on both x86 and ARM processors
• It will not be designed to have local storage; all data will be stored in the cloud
• Google will not entice developers to build software to run on the Chrome OS; instead, they want them to build Web apps that will run on any standards-based browser
• The three most important features will be “speed, simplicity and security”, according to Google
• Google will release the software to the open source community before the end of 2009
• Announced Chrome OS hardware partners: Acer, Adobe, ASUS, Freescale, Hewlett-Packard, Lenovo, Qualcomm, Texas Instruments, and Toshiba.
• Netbooks running Chrome OS will be available in the second half of 2010

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You have a DVB card (Digital Video Broadcasting, for digital TV that is)? You want to use your computer as a telly for watching and recording? Yet MythTV is a bit of a too much bloat, too hard to set up, sumtin like that?

Me-TV offers a light and easy solution providing automatical scanning of the available channels, watching telly, EPG (Electronic Program Guide) and on top of everything, allows you to scedule programs to record on hard disk.

I used to watch TV via xine. I had to manually scan channels from the command line before that worked, xine supports DVB but no electronic program guide and other nice features. One of the main reasons to get jiggy with Me-TV was of course the possibility to schedule programs to record (which I have already used couple times and I only installed it like three days ago).

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Ok, first off I don’t usually write about Windows OS specifically and do not use it, nor have I even tested Windows 7 myself. That being said I decided that since this is a big issue for some I should make one of my exceptions.

If you are using Windows 7 beta then you know (at least you should) that it expires tomorrow (July 1, 2009) and after that it will annoyingly shut down your computer every two hours. Other than that it will function untill August 1, 2009 when the beta will expire completely.

Next step is to either return to your old Windows version or install upgrade to RC. Unfortunately Microsoft does not officially support upgrading from beta to RC (they recommend clean install) - however browsing the web I bumped into this guide at tomshardware.com that tells you how to do the upgrade (and if nothing goes wrong save you from the trouble of re-installing everything): Windows 7 Beta Begins to Expire July 1, 2009.
If you don’t want to read what tomshardware has to say about this, to just skip right into upgrade procedure guide go straight to Microsofts own document, “Delivering a quality upgrade experience” on their Engineering Windows 7 blog.

I just thought that it might be polite to post this here, just in case that some reader is in this particular situation, pondering how to upgrade his expiring Windows 7 beta (even if it’s just running on top of Linux+VirtualBox ;) ), so there.

P.S. Don’t expect that I will take a habit of writing about Windows, because I rarely will. Sometimes but rarely, as I see it this is mostly *nix (and specifically Linux) use and programming related blog :)

Well, guys (and girls <3 )… I haven’t written anything for some while because I decided to take a vacation. Now I feel bad about it because this is not my job, this is my hobby and I don’t really understand why I haven’t just kept on blogging. Well, anyway, expect some new writings here again :)

On another subject, this very server (named salamanteri) was under attack. Surprisingly though it was not an attack through the internet - it was a very physical attack. What can I tell about it? Well, it was me and my friends having a laugh, drinking way too much beer. My friend got in an argument with my other friend, one thing led to another and in the end I was in fight with my friend and he was attacking my computer very physically. Thank goodness nothing on my server was broken (but my desktop system is another case - although weird, nobody remembers anything happening to it, might be just a normal hardware problem). In the end I can only quote Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (and ask you to consider alcohol just another drug, and not exactly a mild one): “One of the things you learn from years of dealing with drug people, is that you can turn your back on a person, but never turn your back on a drug. Especially when it’s waving a razor-sharp hunting knife in your eye“.

Well, that’s about it… I will return soon, probably writing about Linux and gamers. A very popular subject I might claim.

Ok, I dont know how long (actually only 2 days according to stats) this site was down. The reasons:

1. I don’t live alone and sometimes my roommate likes to take pills. I got nothing against that, but then he comes to my room, brings some of his stuff here and takes some of mine away… Actioning irrationally he sometimes does other things too - this time he plugged off the power from my switch where my server is linked into. So that caused first problem.
2. My friend restarted computer. Before I had my httpd start automatically at boot but now that it also keeps https server it asks password when starting… Obviously it thus has to be hand started by me right after booting (there was, btw, no need for reboot anyway, that was all my friends stupidity).

Well, I just restarted apache and everything should be working fine again…

I just got some new video files but instead of divx packed inside .avi they came in .mvb files unknown to me. Trying to view them with xine I was surprised that I did not have a correct codec installed and revealed that the format was RealVideo (RV40).

I was so blinded by the thought that I should have almost any possible commonly known codec installed that I spent several apt-cache searches by looking for something else and completely missing on packet - which I then spotted and was humbled by the fact I had forgotten to install it. The command I needed to get it work was simply:
apt-get install w32codecs So never fool yourself, even though your guru mind should know all the switches and gears to make a steampunk computer tick, you might still miss the most obvious package for whatever problem you bump into :)

Most of the image manipulation guides on internet are made for photoshop so I’m always thrilled to find a interesting guide for GIMP.

From blog of Locutus I found an entry 3D Chuck. The Gimp script way.. I have never even thought of this idea - the guide describes how to turn regular image into 3d-image for viewing with red and green or blue and yellow 3d-glasses.

Not only does it tell how to do it manually but also a script-fu code (script language to add effects, etc. to GIMP) that adds “3D Convert” function under filters menu to automatically do the conversion.

Note that you should read also the comments of the entry to get the script function correctly as there are some problems with entering code in blog of locutus and comments provide some minor corrections to code and how to get it show on GIMP.

I have no glasses to try and test this stuff but I thought it might interest people :)