Radiant

Just what I have been looking for, a simple, lightweight, rails based CMS that offers everything I need. Its called Radiant.

Andreas and Gnome…

The creation of gtk and metacity themes and engines is not as trivial as it appears to be. Someone who, in my opinion,  has made some great contribution to the look and feel of Gnome is 22 year old, Andreas Cimitan, who’s contribution to creating a unified looking gnome has been outstanding.  He is the creator of Murrine GTK+ Engine, The new author of the the Clearlooks GTK+ engine shipped in since Gnome’s 2.20 release and also the maintainer of gnome-theme-extras. His work on Murrine is particularily interesting as it will be the first RGBA GTK+ Engine. What does this mean? In a nutshell the ability to have transparent widgets/alpha capable windows etc.

I had a chat with him yesterday ( on IRC ), asked him if he could identify a font in a screenshot that I had been looking for, for quite some time. Not only was he able to identify the font, he could tell me what style of hinting was in the persons .fonts.conf.

Ubuntu Hardy Heron Ships with the Murrine engine and a Human-Murrine Theme by Default. Andreas has only published Screenhost of these new feautres as the source code has not been released yet. You can read more about his approach here. Keep up the awesome work Andreas.

Less interesting things you probably know about Hardy Heron

So we say good bye to 6.10 as it’s reached its end of life cycle but welcome yet another astonishing release of the worlds most popular distro. So whats new this time around? For this release the community looks to have focused more on fixing/extending current features as apposed to implementing new ones, making sure the release is robust. Some work has been done on Ubiquity, the ubuntu installer, that checks wheather there are exiting partitions and at minimum preserves permissions of /home, /srv, /root. Amoung others are X/AutodetectMonitorFrequency, HardyDesktopEffects, HardyFullDiskHandling, MultiMonitorConfig, Prefetch, HardyAppArmor, Firewall and probably the most notable the HardyTheme.

This release is shipping with Xorg 7.3, Gnome 2.22, Linux kernel 2.6.24, Firefox 3 beta, Transmission ( Bit Torrent Client ) , Vinagre ( New VNC client ), Brasero ( Which will replace Serpentine ), Pulse Audio and the World Clock Applet.

With less than a day to go I am looking forward to the new release.

vcdimager

I had some trouble with a non-standard VCD or KVCD and it had been given to me in .cue/.bin image files. Though Mplayer can play .cue/.bin files, KVCD is unsupported as far as I know (you’ll get video but no sound). Vcdxrip which ships with vcdimager helped me out quite a bit.

vcdxrip -p –nosegments –nofiles -o /dev/null -b bin-file

Presto.

DeVeDe

I wrote a mencoder script back when I was still running Ubuntu 6.06 Dapper to which I could pass various options in order to convert videos from avi to dvd. Three upgrades later, and I seem to have lost the script. I had two choices; one spend a considerable amount of time remembering and re-writing the script, or two look at at using a gui application. I chowse option two. The one that struck me most (other than the front-end to transcode) was DeVeDe. Its a nice simple application that can encode a number of different video formats to DVD, VCD, sVCD formats suitable for playback on your home dvd player (provided you have the dependencies which are mplayer, mencoder, vcdimager, dvdauthor, mkisofs). It has a really simple interface yet provides a fair amount of options for video conversion . You just tell it what you want it to do and it does the conversion and creates a ready to burn iso for you. I found it quite useful.

One thing to note:

“for Ubuntu Gutsy users: by default (as November 21, 2007) Gutsy comes with Mplayer/Mencoder buggy version 1.0RC1 (like Feisty); but fortunately there’s the version 1.0rc2 avaiblable in the backports repository, which fixes the sound bug.”

So had I found my script, I think I would have run into a problem anyways

Jumping into local Only.

After reading Stefano Rivera’s (tumbleweed) post about local only ADSL accounts I had decided to implement the idea on my home network, which has an overworked 400mhz celeron box, running debian between my router and switch doing masquerading.
I fired up my favourite terminal and started off my creating another provider script for the new IS account. I modified Stefano’s source routing script and created a script in /etc/ppp/ip-up.d/ to setup the routing accordingly.

root@hopkin:/etc/ppp/ip-up.d# cat setuprouting
#!/bin/sh
# based on tumbleweed’s split routes script
PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin
export PATH
ROUTES=/etc/routes/localroutes

# Is this our internal ppp session?
if [ "$PPP_IFACE" = "ppp0" ]; then
peer=`ip addr show dev $PPP_IFACE | sed -n ‘/inet/ s#.* peer \([0-9.]*\)/.*#\1# p’`
address=`ip addr show dev $PPP_IFACE | sed -n ‘/inet/ s/.* inet \([0-9.]*\) .*/\1/ p’`

ip route add “$peer” dev “$PPP_IFACE” src “$address” table 1
ip route add default via “$peer” table 1
ip rule add from “$address” table 1
fi

# Is this our local ppp session?
if [ "$PPP_IFACE" = "ppp1" ]; then
cat “$ROUTES” | while read route; do
ip route add “$route” dev “$PPP_IFACE”
done

peer=`ip addr show dev $PPP_IFACE | sed -n ‘/inet/ s#.* peer \([0-9.]*\)/.*#\1# p’`
address=`ip addr show dev $PPP_IFACE | sed -n ‘/inet/ s/.* inet \([0-9.]*\) .*/\1/ p’`

ip route add “$peer” dev “$PPP_IFACE” src “$address” table 1
ip route add default via “$peer” table 2
ip rule add from “$address” table 2
fi

That was it! I lie. It would of been if not for me forgetting to modify the firewall rules. So technically that was it after 3mins of pondering about the ridiculously obvious.

Less Interesting things you probably already know about Ubuntu 7.10 Gutsy Gibbon (beta).

I thought I’d share some of the more less interesting things about Ubuntu 7.10 Gutsy and Features that everyone probably knows about. Most of these new features are not Ubuntu specific but more so new features of Gnome 2.20.0 release.

I have been running Ubuntu 7.10 Gutsy (beta) for little over a week now. The first thing I noticed was the built-in stock icons were updated so Rhythmbox does not look as ugly as it used to. The lyrics plugin in the new release of Rhythmbox, the default Music Player in Ubuntu, also now allows you to choose where you get you lyrics from which is awesome due to leoslyrics problems recently.

Quite a few extra shortcuts have also been placed under the places menu, such as Video, Music and Pictures have been added.

Tomboy a note taking application in Gnome now allows for synchronization of notes between workstations via ssh or WebDAV, which I think is pretty cool.

Tracker is a deskbar search applet which appears to be lighter and faster than beagle was added to the desktop as well.

Sudo now has a sudo tag infront of sudo’s password request:

me@somehwere:~$ sudo apt-cache show syslinux
[sudo] password for me:

As we all know Gaim has been renamed to Pidgin and newer features such as support for even more IM’s have been added.
We also now have a graphical configuration tool for X which for some reason does not work well with my setup.

The control panels in Gnome have been trimmed down. Compiz-Fusion is available by default in Gutsy. The ‘compizconfig-settings-manager’ package, which is located in the ‘universe’ repository is quite usefull too if you dont want to go about messin round with gconf-editor to tweak your desktop effects.

Amongst other things such as the stock kernel featuring dynticks, the fully automatic printer detection, Profile based authentication configuration, The fast user switching utillity which also alows you to leave a message for users who’ve locked their screens. Users will then be notified upon unlocking. Allot of software was updated such as OpenOffice to 2.3 and GIMP to 2.4. Even Firefox 3 (beta) is available in the repositorie:

me@somehere:~$ sudo apt-cache search firefox-granparadiso-gnome-support firefox-granparadiso
firefox-granparadiso-gnome-support – dummy upgrade package for firefox-granparadiso -> firefox-3.0

I think Gutsy has overcome allot of new user barriers. Only 2 more days left till the release of Ubuntu 7.10 Gutsy Gibbon!

f*#$@ Eve#$@#$

It saddens me , more than it angers me to write about this. My girlfriend was on her usual route to work this morning when she was inappropriately approached by the Police. She was at her usual bus stop awaiting her bus. Unfortunately there was no one around at this time of the morning. When a police van had stopped not too far from where she was standing. A Police Officer then got out of the van and approached her. They Police Officer then asked where she was going. My girlfriend, then informed him that she had been waiting for her bus, whilst not too far away was a lady on her way to that very bus stop. The Police Officer then says to my girlfriend that she’s not safe here and starts getting very graphic with the descriptions of what the potential dangers are and makes her a little nervous so she backs away from him. He then grabs her arm and says “Get in the van, you’re going with us…”. My girlfriend says that her bus will be here any second and that he should let go of her. The officer refuses to let go and tells her she *must* get in the van. Physically hurting her arm, the Police Officer tries to shove her into the van. The Police Officer tells my girlfriend to “shut up” and just get in. At this point my girlfriend is being forced against her will and pleads for the officer to let go but he simply would not listen. The approaching lady witnesses what is happening and walks up to the Police Officer and tells him to let go of her. The Police Officer, refusing to let go, still does not listen and says “Just get the hell in…”. The lady then tries to fend the Police Officer off but he would not leave her alone. The lady starts screaming at the Police Officer, desperately battling with him to let go of my girlfriend as the bus arrives. The bus driver who, knows my girlfriend sees what is happening and stops the bus. The Police Officer then sees the bus driver and simply lets go mumbling things to himself as he walks away, jumps into the the van and drives off in a hurry. It was unfortunate that no one got a number plate of the vehicle.

How can we rely on these people to keep our  neighborhood safe? Its fucking ridiculous.

Telkom… need I say more?

Its 11:30 and I get a call from telkom informing me that I can, at my earliest convenience, fetch my ADSL self installation kit at one of their Customer Service Center’s. Finally! I have been three weeks after having gone through the horror of moving the telephone line from my fathers name to mine. Off to the the nearest Customer Service Center it was,only to get told that their out of modems. The sales consultant then recommends I go to their Kenilworth Branch. So I then ask her to confirm that they have stock available to as I do not want to travel all the way to Kenilworth and waste my time. She then confirms that they do. So I make my way down to the Kenilworth branch where they refuse to help because the telephone line is not registered under my name.

I then explained that I have already been through the transfer and have been charged with numerous Service fees to have the line moved to my name(I had the proof with me). At about 3:20 after I had my dad call the branch and fax is ID to them and give me permission to collect the router they decided to help me out. It was quite frustrating. So I get home at about 5:15 and set the DSL up, whilst waiting on hold with their (telkom) Service Desk to receive my DSL account credentials. By then I had the DSL account working with the telkom guest account. After wating an hour and fifteen minutes (I recorded the amount of time took to to have my call answered) I finally get to a support guy who is even less helpfull. He tells me that an account has not yet been created for me and that I have to call back later this week for those details as he is not able to create one.

awesome.

I hate wallets and thieves…

So Its was a Monday morning,my day off from work…and I get a call at 6:30 in the morning from my girlfriend. She says that she’s standing on my doorstep and claims to have missed the bus. So I go to the front door and let her in and realised that I had left my wallet in my brother’s car. I grab the car keys and head out front only to realise the car was already open. This did not strike me as odd at first as everyone was up and about getting ready for work. I just assumed that he had made his way to the car earlier that morning. So I start searching the car for my wallet and notice everything is scattered across the car seats,things such as tools,the cars ashtrays and this also did not strike me as odd. I then gave up the search but was certain I left it in there. I then went back to the kitchen to make a cup of coffee and asked if anyone removed the wallet from the car earlier and placed it somewhere. Everyone I asked said no. So I walk back out to the car but this time, I look through the passenger window only to find that the entire bottom of the steering wheel had been ripped up. I then walked over to the drivers side door and saw that the door handle had been completely removed and was laying on the the drivers seat. It struck me then that his car had been broken into and my wallet stolen. Who ever broke into the car had left some of their tools in the car such as their screw driver, which was still laying on the drivers seat. Great start to a day off.

I hate wallets for the fact that people keep everything in them…and for the fact that I lost everything. Im talking about bank cards, access cards, video cards, identity document etc etc. I spent the rest of my day off running around cancelling things and because my ID and stuff was also in the wallet means that I cant get new cards and things until reply for my ID and get a temp one which means a trip to home affairs. I hate home affairs too. I then  went to work,the last place you’d expect to be on your day off to get a new access card as I the first one in during the morning and start at 6.

argh. Wallets…people. gah.