Google Summer of Code 2010

My GSoC proposal was selected. Read more at my new blog: http://codeninja.in/2010/04/28/google-summer-of-code-2010/

This blog will have no more posts, most probably :|

And I'm wondering if I should export this blog to codeninja.in, hmm.

Yachiru

As mentioned in the previous blog post, I did buy a netbook. The Lenovo S10-2. Yachiru, I call her, after a lovable character from the anime series Bleach.

Here are some mandatory pics.




Yachiru with Yachiru.

FOSS.IN

I've been to FOSS.IN this year. 'Twas held at Bangalore, India, from December 1 to 5, 2009.

Nothing much to write home about, except that it was very very memorable. And yeah, this was my first time to Bangalore.

Here's a picture from a slide I loved in a presentation given by Dimitris Glezos.



I did not have a laptop, and it was difficult to get work done. So, I'm getting myself a netbook! :D Hoping to buy a Lenovo S10-2, but then, a friend tells me they have the Atom N270, instead of the N280 as the website says. That's a matter of concern.

I'll probably be buying it in a couple of weeks. Yes, pictures coming up!

Yahoo, you do have something Google needs to catch up to!

Today, I was surprised. By Yahoo. After a long time. And it's delightful. Maybe I'm late at this, but Yahoo, I've got to say, "Cool! Very cool!"

What is this noise all about? Well, it's about the Yahoo! Developer Network. More lovable is the Developer Resources page.

Scroll down to the bottom of the page, and you find "Libraries & Best Practices" and "Language Centers". I've obviously not gone through the entire content, but a browse-through was very eye-catching. And I think every Web Developer or anyone just interested in learning about performance on the Web should read the Exceptional Performance page.

And oh, the language centers. All of them have some tutorials on the language in general, but mostly focus on using the various Yahoo! APIs.

Only, oh poor Yahoo, its been so long since I've stopped your services, and I'm now very dependent on Google.

But to note, Google has to catch up quite a bit, in terms of API. (Okay all you Google fan boys, I am not saying Yahoo has a superior API, just certain things that Google lags behind in.)

Some thoughts:

- Yahoo! Media Player. At first sight, it might seem to be just a plain embedded music player, but the wiki along with the Yahoo! Music API makes it very cool.

- Google had a 'bookmark' feature, but later revamped it to a bookmark section in Google Notebook. Still, I find Delicious a better choice (Delicious was acquired by Yahoo, in 2005).

- Yahoo! Finance is much better than Google Finance, any day.

- Yahoo! Pipes is plain awesome. Really, I haven't found a parallel.

Frankly, after all this, I don't have a hope that Yahoo will rise from the ashes, nor anything as fairytale-ish, but the lost respect for Yahoo is back. It still has some awesome engineers.

I still respect you Yahoo! I still do.

install-info: No dir file specified; try --help for more information.

First, the problem.

I was trying to do sudo apt-get upgrade when it stopped on me giving this error

Setting up findutils (4.4.0-3) ...
install-info: No dir file specified; try --help for more information.
dpkg: error processing findutils (--configure):
subprocess post-installation script returned error exit status 1
Errors were encountered while processing:
findutils
W: No priority (or zero) specified for pin
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)

Well, I tried googling it up, without considerable success. Finally, I found this on Debian Bug report logs.

Apparently, there are packages named install-info. One, a GNU version, another, a Debian provided package.

The-Matrix% whereis install-info
install-info: /usr/sbin/install-info /usr/local/bin/install-info /usr/share/man/man8/install-info.8.gz
The-Matrix% /usr/sbin/install-info --version
Debian install-info version 1.14.25.

Copyright (C) 1994,1995 Ian Jackson.
This is free software; see the GNU General Public Licence version 2 or
later for copying conditions. There is NO warranty.
The-Matrix% /usr/local/bin/install-info --version
install-info (GNU texinfo) 4.13

Copyright (C) 2008 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later
This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it.
There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.

And they have problems. The idea of replacing the Debian's version with the GNU's has been forwarded, but I'm not sure of the progress. For all I care, the problem hasn't been solved.

As the link provided says, "It is not Debian's fault if someone has GNU's install-info in
$PATH before /usr/sbin/install-info - don't mess with the packaging system,
you'll just get in trouble."

Now, the solution.

Get the /usr/sbin into the $PATH variable before /usr/local/bin, or essentially, do something that would get dpkg to find the Debian's version of install-info. I did the latter, leaving $PATH as it was. Just renamed the GNU's version of install-info

The-Matrix% sudo mv /usr/local/bin/install-info /usr/local/bin/install-info-gnu

And it works. ;)

The 2.6.28 kernel and the missing NVIDIA module

Haha, a few days back, I tried installing the 2.6.28 kernel. It went well, except that the XServer wouldn't start up.

It crashed with the following report:


(EE) NVIDIA(0): Failed to load the NVIDIA kernel module!
(EE) NVIDIA(0): *** Aborting ***
(EE) Screen(s) found, but none have a usable configuration


But then, I noticed that the nvidia-kernel I installed was 2.6.26-1 and so, needed to update that. Well, a kernel installed _not_ from the repository would obviously need a nvidia-kernel install _not_ from the repo. ;)

A google search a couple of clicks later and some information from here, I landed at the-> NVIDIA's UNIX Drivers Portal

Grabbed the 180.22 version, the latest version for Linux AMD64/EM64. Follow instructions (essentially, chmod +x and run as root). It said my kernel was not new enough and tries to download the latest by ftp. In my case, I refused and it continued fine. Btw, you can't install the driver while you're running X.

Note: You should have the nvidia-xconfig program for the installation to go on smoothly, otherwise you'll end up with another problem

Installation and a reboot later, this is how it looks. :)

NVIDIA on Linux, an update

Another in the sequence of "update" posts.

I must say I was wrong when I said "bloody Nvidia drivers for Linux" here

Well, after three more Debian installations, I found out that the problem was not with the Nvidia drivers but with what they do when they are installed.

Err, let me clarify. On your first boot, Debian has a particular xorg.conf that it follows till you install, let's say nvidia-kernel-173.14.09. When you install this, the xorg.conf is replaced by an effectively blank xorg.conf

A way out, you ask? Well, install nvidia-xconfig and run it as superuser (as root, or use su) it will rewrite your xorg.conf. Reboot.

To further fine tune your control over your Nvidia graphics card/chipset, install nvidia-settings. Incase of Ubuntu, it will show up in Applications>System Tools, but somehow doesn't do so on Debian. Well, sudo nvidia-settings in the terminal does the job. So, no more complaints.

Sorry, Nvidia.

Pidgin for dummies, an update

I once wrote how to setup your Google Talk account on Pidgin, but that was on Windows.There are a few differences how to go about the same in Linux, and this post covers it.

If you have any doubts, please refer to the previous discussion here or leave a query in the comments section.

The only change is in the Advanced tab. You do not need to check the "Require SSL/TLS" but you need to check the "Allow plaintext auth over unencrypted streams"

Leave the connect port and connect server as they are.

Set the "Proxy Options" if you connect to the net through a proxy and want to specify a particular proxy, or leave it to "Use Gnome Proxy Settings" or "Use Environmental Settings".

Here is a screenshot.



Don't forget to click on Save!

[24/01/2009] Edit: You still have to check the "Require SSL/TLS" in case you are running Windows

Open Solaris

Today, Sun came down to our campus for hiring. As a Placement Committee volunteer, I got to talk to the officials who visited the campus.

Mr. Jo [;)] and I had some interesting talk about Sun, Open Solaris, ZFS, etc. I tried out OpenSolaris a long time back, from a live DVD (I was corrected on this, but that is not the point), it didn't boot. Sad.

Today, after this chat, I decided to give it a try again, with a new live CD in hand. This is OpenSolaris 2008.05.



Firstly, I loved the fact it detected all my hardware perfectly. My previous post contained a description of the horrors of having an Nvidia graphics subsystem, and getting a proper driver for it. Well, no problems here. It was detected and the application which corresponds to nvidia-settings package on Linux was shown. Check the screen shot, I love the "Solaris Nvidia" text. And a beautiful green background.


It has Firefox 2.0.0.14 (hmm, remember this is OpenSolaris 2008.05, the website says OpenSolaris 2008.11 has FF 3), sweet.

There is something called the Device Driver Utility (with a shortcut on the Desktop if you noticed).


The page at OpenSolaris.org says "Device Driver Utility provides information about the devices of your native system having OpenSolarisTM Operating System (OS) installed." The first thing you would notice is the "Driver Problems: 0" text on top. You also have a "Submit" button to report configurations to the OpenSolaris community.

A surprise was the inclusion of NmapFE in the applications that show up by default.


As I found out, detection of hardware doesn't imply you get audio/video without the necessary plugins. You still need to install those GStreamer plugins (or other alternatives).

Next up, the Package Manager.


Not very different from Ubuntu/Debian's Synaptic Package Manager, as far as looks go, except for the fact that the packages are more categorized as the left pane suggests. There is no manual page for apt, so probably OpenSolaris has a different way of handling applications.

It also has full-fledged compiz support. CompizConfigSettingsManager is present by default.



Visual Effects aren't turned on by default (Or OpenSolaris must think my computer wasn't good enough :( ). And Appearance Preferences has an extra option "Custom". I set my preference to "Extra" and I did not notice any slowdown.



It didn't auto mount my hard disk, and neither do I plan to right now.

There was no gcc(nor any C compiler) on the live CD. How stupid, I could not compile and run a "Hello World" in C. So I did it in python :P

jack@opensolaris:~$python HelloWorld.py
Hello, World!
jack@opensolaris:~$


So long!

NVIDIA on Linux

:X or :@ I'm angry with the bloody Nvidia drivers for Linux. Anyway, this post is supposed to be helpful, not a rant.

I upgraded from Ubuntu 8.04 to Ubuntu 8.10 when it came out. Then, I installed nvidia-kernel-2.6.26 which was my default nvidia stuff on Hardy and lo, my X crashed. It tried restarting some n times, with no success. So well, what was the problem. I still dunno. But the solution was to install the package nvidia-kernel-173.14.09 The last two numbers will vary, though. Lucky that I found this while random browsing on a friend's computer.

That did it.

A few weeks later, I wanted to use Debian, so, well, I removed Intrepid and installed Etch (Debian 40r5). This time, I upgraded, and installed nvidia-kernel-173. And guess what, it crashed again. I tried removing it and installing nvidia-kernel-2.6.26 which worked on Ubuntu 8.04. Well, it did not work this time. The solution? nvidia-kernel-2.6.26-1-openvz-amd64

I have absolutely no idea what is going on. But this worked. It installed an additional kernel though. I now boot into a kernel which is identified by Debian GNU/Linux, kernel 2.6.26-1-openvz-amd64

Hope this will remain a note for me in the future, for further X crashes.

Update: Well, this was helpful, but a better realization was this

Internet hero!

Straight from the Statcounter blog, this one.

Aodhan Cullen(founder and CEO of StatCounter) has been chosen as this year's Internet Hero at the eircom Golden Spider Awards!. The award, sponsored by Business and Finance, was created to recognize an individual who has made a significant contribution to the development of the internet.


I'm delighted.

<Shameless>
Here is a comment by Aodhan Culler on my blog, a long long time back
</Shameless>

Google's GeoEye-1's First Picture

Google's GeoEye-1(wiki link) has taken it's first picture, and wow, the pic is so clear.

The pic taken is of Kutztown University, Pennsylvania.



Related Slashdot link. Well, first comment is informative, rest are all funny. Worth reading, for laughs.

urllib2 problems in python

Ever received this error while you were using urllib2. And you use proxies to connect to the internet?


urllib2.URLError: <urlopen error (111, 'Connection refused')>


Set the HTTP_PROXY environment variable and the problem is solved.


npower@The-Matrix~:$export HTTP_PROXY="http://144.16.192.245:8080"


In this case, 144.16.192.245 is the proxy I use, and on port 8080.

Wine, red for now.

For the past few days, I've been trying to run Windows applications on Wine. Failure rate has been high, but considering the type of applications that I tried, I'm not worrying much.

This craze started with my craving for Chrome and it's non-availability on Linux.

1) Google Chrome

This was the most unsuccessful of them all. The installation didn't even start.
I followed the procedure given here

And it died with the following error :(

npower@The-Matrix:~$ wine chrome_installer.exe
err:setupapi:detect_compression_type cannot open file L"H:\\-r"
err:setupapi:get_file_size cannot open file L"H:\\-r"
expand.exe: can't open input file H:\-r


2) Safari

Yup, one browser after another. Fail, again. Safari was up and running but I simply couldn't set the proxies. Browsing local sites was possible.



3) Multiproxy

Ah, the most useful of 'em all. Every time I boot, this is fired up, and keeps my browsing smooth.



4) Foobar2000

Yeay to me for trying this out in the first place. I love Amarok, yes, but memory. It uses up quite some memory. And systems like mine better do with something leaner. So, here comes in foobar2000. LastFM scrobbling also works. Rock on!



5) Google Talk

For some reason, this just doesn't work. :|

It gives this error first.


Just press Install, nothing happens, Google Talk starts up. Like this ,with a scrolling screen of warnings on the terminal, and, no text on Google Talk other than the text area. Hell with that, you just can't connect. It's the proxy problem I guess (since I use a university network), but you can't set that 'coz you can't see the "Settings" thingy, nor does blind guess-clicking work.



6) Paint

This is a small program and we always expected it to work. It does, but has its share of problems too. No support for any other file format other than Bitmaps. We can solve this I guess.

Anyway, it's good be back blogging. My exams are just done ;)

Briefly on Windows, and a lil' about Amarok.

Yeah, I needed Adobe Acrobat Professional. So I just rebooted into Windows. I've neglected Windows for too long, and it is all dysfunctional (uh?) now. Need to remove many applications or re-install them, my MS PowerPoint refuses to save any presentations, and neither is Daemon Tools working properly.

Anyway, I took this opportunity to install Chrome and checkout what the buzz is all about. Well, I like it. It is sleek and very very responsive. Something I _demand_ in applications (and people).

I was checking out all the web apps on Chrome, and while on Google Reader, found a post that talks about music players on Linux. I love Amarok, somehow the other players never scanned whole of my collection. However, few of the users complain that Amarok is slow. Well, yes, if you leave the collection to be maintained on a SQLite database. So, simply put, the suggestion is to use MySQL. How? Hers is the link, very simply explained. How to: set up MySQL Database in Amarok

If you are using Fedora or a Redhat based distribution, replace sudo apt-get install by sudo yum install

Incase you are a PostgreSQL fanboy, or a MySQL hater (frankly, I never used PostgreSQL, or have problems with MySQL, but statements like "mysql sucks, postgresql rules :)" with smileys make me consider PostgreSQL ;)), then check this out http://amarok.kde.org/wiki/PostgreSQL_HowTo

Note: PostgreSQL will be deprecated in Amarok 2.

Prince of Persia: Warrior Within OST

Download links for Prince of Persia Warrior Within album. And related information.

Title    : Prince Of Persia Warrior Within (OST)
Artist  : Stuart Chatwood
Genre  : Game
Date     : Mar-12-2006
Songs   : 32 / 62:27 min
Size      : 96,2 MB
Quality : VBRkbps 44,1kHz / Joint-Stereo / CDDA

Download the complete album

Individual track listing and download
===========================

01 Welcome Within
02 Attack At Sea
03 Conflict At The Entrance
04 Tower Encounter
05 Confrontation In The Mechanical Tower
06 Military Aggression
07 Clash In The Catacombs
08 Struggle In The Library
09 Rooftop Engagement
10 An Unsafe Sanctuary
11 The Mystic Caves
12 Mystic Sanctuary
13 Desolation Of The Tower
14 Avoid The Guards
15 Explore The Catacombs
16 Divine Sacrifice
17 Dark Gardens
18 Shadows Of The Tower
19 The Guard Tower Past
20 Worried In The Catacombs
21 The Mask Sanctuary
22 The Chase Of Time
23 The Prophecy
24 Escape In The Temple
25 Despair And Hope
26 The Mask
27 Dahaka's Revenge
28 Back To Babylon
29 Escape The Dahaka
30 At War With Kaileena
31 Battle The Dahaka
32 Conflict Of The Griffins

PS: Please report(comment) if you find that the links are wrong or/and you have any other complaints.

Link: Prince of Persia Sands of Time OST

Converting .mkv to .avi

Damn, getting a software for this job was hell. A free software I meant. Finally the search paid results when I found AlltoAVI at SourceForge.

Get it here: http://sourceforge.net/projects/alltoavi/

Credits to genesis_kiith for the software, and spinner's_end for bugging me enough to find this gem.

Other links:
Project Home Page

Tutorial

PS: This software should be described as "Any format to AVI converter" . Bad post title. :)

Google Talk formatting/effects : Bold and Italics

This is yet another one of those short posts for the sake of posting.

Before you cry out that these are very well known, I can promise you that I discovered these in my experiments. Well, proceed.

Are you bored with the plain text in GTalk? Try these, you can add bold and italics effects to your text.

To give a word/phrase a bold effect, just enclose it within asterisks (Example: *me* would produce me ).
To give a word/phrase a italics effect, enclose it within underscores (Example: _me_ would produce me ).

Comix : "Could not find unrar executable. Please install it if you wish to open RAR achives"

Comix is the software used to open *.cbr and *.cbz files on Linux.

In Windows Comic Reader was my favorite but now that I have completely moved on to Linux, installation of Comix was deemed necessary.

Comix by default can open *.cbz files.

To open *.cbr files using Comix, you need to install the unrar executable by the following procedure.

$sudo apt-get install unrar

Done. :)

A Brief History of Gravity

A Brief History of Gravity

It filled Gallileo with mirth
To watch his two stones fall to Earth
"Their rates are the same,"
He gladly proclaimed,
"And quite independent of girth!"

Then Newton declared in due course
His own law of Gravity's force,
"It goes, I declare,
As the inverted square
Of the distance from object to source."

Next Einstein revealed his equation
Which succeeds to describe gravitation
As spacetime that's curved
And it's this that will serve
As the planets' unique motivation.

But the end of the story's not written,
By a new way of thinking we're smitten.
We twist and we turn
Attempting to learn
The Superstring Theory of Witten.

Taken from: http://limerickdb.com/?380