beauty

Guess who bought a beautiful new shiny little black macbook? :)

Steve "Boom" Jobs

Quite a funny compilation of "Booms".

Al Gore loves screen

Image courtesy of TIME magazine

Electronic warfare running linux

Bionic linux warriors.

Imagine spoofing friendlies, launching DOS attacks on networked infrastructure, and infecting backpacks. Linux does seem like a natural fit though. It's amazing the different technology ecosystems Linux finds itself growing in.

You'd want a system like this to be modular though. You definitely wouldn't want or need every killer in your army to be wearing one or at least the full rig. If I had to run around a paddock dodging bullets I'm not sure I'd want all this information being thrown at me.

Makes me think back to various hybrid strategy-first person shooter games I used to play. I wonder how much of the advancement in communication and user interface there feeds back into real world decisions about this kind of gear?

What's the security like in these new "global battlefields"?

More info:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_Warrior

Apple bapple

I've been thinking the same kinds of things about Apple for a while.

Linus on git

git homepage

Enlightenment Foundation Libraries and Rage 0.2.0

For those of you who don't know, Enlightenment is a window manager for linux.

Ever since I watched Raster's presentation at linux.conf.au 2007 earlier this year I've been thinking about the enlightenment libraries, and particularly how they'd be suited to building a media center type application for linux. During his presentation, Raster had a lot of good things to say about performance and efficiency. For a programmer, that is pretty inspiring stuff to hear :)

So today I jumped into #e on chat.freenode.net and asked around about just this question. Raster was in there and quickly let me know about Rage, something he whipped together pretty quickly and had posted about a few months ago on his website (video here). I decided that this would be a perfect opportunity to get my hands dirty and learn a bit about the libraries.

To this end I've documented the process I went through to get the relevant libraries (and Rage of course) installed on my linux box. FYI - I have just upgraded to Feisty (last couple of weeks) and had no enlightenment libraries previously installed (in fact I haven't mucked around with enlightenment for probably close on 8 years). You'll see in the documented steps below that there were quite a few dependencies not met. I've deliberately left all these steps in there. If someone else has similar dependency problems, then By the Power of Google, this info might help :)

So without further ado, here are the steps I went through to get Rage built and working on Feisty. Forgive the verbosity, and enjoy! :)

0) Get rage from the enlightenment cvs with:

cvs -d :pserver:anonymous@anoncvs.enlightenment.org:/var/cvs/e login
cvs -z3 -d :pserver:anonymous@anoncvs.enlightenment.org:/var/cvs/e co misc

Find the rage source at misc/rage

1) Try running ./autogen.sh for rage

Running aclocal...
./autogen.sh: 8: aclocal: not found

2) 'automake' seems not to be installed so install it via Adept

3) Try to run ./autogen.sh again

Running aclocal...
configure.in:13: warning: macro `AM_ENABLE_SHARED' not found in library
configure.in:14: warning: macro `AM_PROG_LIBTOOL' not found in library

4) Looks like 'libtools' is not installed either, so install that via Adept too

5) Try running ./autogen.sh again

checking for EET... configure: error: Package requirements (eet) were not met:

No package 'eet' found

6) EET is an enlightenment foundation library (there's going to be a few of these dependencies), so get it from the enlightenment cvs with:

cvs -z3 -d :pserver:anonymous@anoncvs.enlightenment.org:/var/cvs/e co e17/libs/eet

7) run ./autogen.sh from the eet directory

configure: error: "Cannot find zlib.h. Make sure your CFLAGS environment variable contains include
lines for the location of this file"

8) install 'zlib1g-dev' using Adept

9) run ./autogen.sh again

configure: error: "Cannot find jpeglib.h. Make sure your CFLAGS environment variable contains include
lines for the location of this file"

10) install 'libjpeg62-dev using Adept

11) run 'make'

12) run 'sudo make install'

13) try running ./autogen.sh for rage again

checking for EVAS... configure: error: Package requirements (evas) were not met:

14) get evas from cvs with:

cvs -z3 -d :pserver:anonymous@anoncvs.enlightenment.org:/var/cvs/e co e17/libs/eet

15) run autogen.sh

checking for FREETYPE... configure: error: Package requirements (freetype2 >= 9.3.0) were not met:

16) install 'libfreetype6-dev' using Adept

17) run ./autogen.sh again

18) run 'make'

19) run 'sudo make install'

20) try running ./autogen.sh for rage again

checking for EDJE... configure: error: Package requirements (edje) were not met:

No package 'edje' found

21) get edje from cvs with:

cvs -z3 -d :pserver:anonymous@anoncvs.enlightenment.org:/var/cvs/e co e17/libs/edje

22) run ./autogen.sh for edje

No package 'ecore-evas' found
No package 'ecore-job' found
No package 'embryo' found

23) get both the ecore and embryo libraries from cvs with:

cvs -z3 -d :pserver:anonymous@anoncvs.enlightenment.org:/var/cvs/e co e17/libs/ecore
cvs -z3 -d :pserver:anonymous@anoncvs.enlightenment.org:/var/cvs/e co e17/libs/embryo

24) run ./autogen.sh for ecore

25) run 'make' for ecore

26) run 'sudo make install' for ecore

27) run ./autogen.sh for embryo

28) run 'make' for embryo

29) run 'sudo make install' for embryo

30) try running ./autogen.sh for edje again

31) run 'make' for edje

32) run 'sudo make install' for edje

33) try running ./autogen.sh for rage again

checking for EMOTION... configure: error: Package requirements (emotion) were not met:

34) get emotion from cvs with:

cvs -z3 -d :pserver:anonymous@anoncvs.enlightenment.org:/var/cvs/e co e17/libs/emotion

35) run ./autogen.sh for emotion

checking for XINE... configure: error: Package requirements (libxine >= 1.1.1) were not met:

36) install 'libxine-dev' using Adept

37) run ./autogen.sh for emotion again

38) run 'make' for emotion

edje_cc: Error. unable to load image for image "tiles.png" part entry to ../data/theme.edj. Missing PNG or JPEG loader modules for
Evas or file does not exist, or is not readable.
make[2]: *** [theme.edj] Error 255
make[2]: Leaving directory `/home/adrian/development/e/e17/libs/emotion/data'
make[1]: *** [all-recursive] Error 1
make[1]: Leaving directory `/home/adrian/development/e/e17/libs/emotion'
make: *** [all] Error 2

39) install 'libpng12-dev' using Adept

40) rebuild evas (./autogen.sh, make, sudo make install)

N.B. this builds png image loader support into evas which is what make was trying to use above

41) run ./autogen.sh, make and 'sudo make install' for emotion

42) try running ./autogen.sh for rage again

43) run make for rage

In file included from main.h:1,
from main.c:1:
e.h:38:21: error: Ecore_X.h: No such file or directory
make[3]: *** [main.o] Error 1

45) Looks like Ecore_X.h wasn't installed. I discovered that this was an optional component that wasn't installed when I was building ecore, so after looking through ./configure in the ecore directory I discovered that I could probably fix it with:

run './autogen.sh --enable-ecore-x-xcb' for ecore

failed - dependency not met

46) To fix this problem I had to install 'libxcb-xlib0-dev'. So do that using Adept

47) try './autogen.sh --enable-ecore-x-xcb' for ecore again

dependency checking seemed to pass this time

48) run 'make' for ecore

lots of errors! (these were related to X development libraries)

49) install xorg-dev using Adept

50) run './autogen.sh --enable-ecore-x-xcb' and then 'make' for ecore

In file included from ecore_evas.c:4:
ecore_evas_private.h:37:40: error: Evas_Engine_Software_X11.h: No such file or directory
make[4]: *** [ecore_evas.lo] Error 1

51) Ok, so maybe when I installed evas the X11 software engine option wasn't installed, so rebuild and reinstall evas by running './autogen.sh' and 'make' and 'sudo make install' again

52) try running './autogen.sh --enable-ecore-x-xcb' and 'make' for ecore again

53) run 'sudo make install' for ecore

54) run './autogen.sh' for rage again

55) run 'make' for rage again

56) run 'sudo make install' for rage

The README for rage tells you how to get rage to scan your disk for media (that's currently the default way of importing or seeing your videos etc). It's fairly straightfoward.

After that just run ./rage and you'll have a working media centre based on the Enlightenment libraries :D

P.S. I was pretty impressed that it could play my phone videos, xvid anime, certain tv shows etc. Rage didn't hiccup once on any of the media I threw at it. Awesome! :D

Linux polish

Why doesn't linux look as sexy as Mac OS X? What is stopping it from achieving a far superior look and feel on the desktop? Is it X? Is it crappy fonts? Who's working on fixing this?

What we still don't know

Nothing really new here - but still thought provoking and inspiring.

What we still don't know 1
What we still don't know 2<sup>1

1</sup>Look for the person cycling backwards in the second film.

Patent idea #1

I want to be able hum at my computer and have it return the song in my music collection which most closely matches.

Chris calls it "Hum Search". I think it's not a bad name.

The Unix Legacy

Just read The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: The Unix Legacy by Rob Pike. Great read.

The Hunt

Blink blink.

Dewy grass clutches hidden easter egg
and half chewed puree apple.
The bold red of the Shiraz is disembodied
against this overcast sky.

Gum boot kids feign sprinter postures
and we shout..
"Ready...
Setty...
Goooooo!"
Tiny water drops alight fly-away
blonde hair as they race down hill.
"Comeon girls, beat the boooys!"

So they scurry in their little bodies,
plodding short stepped curves,
legs moving fast to keep upright,
bumping into each other in their excitement.
Nappy bottoms crouch and small hands grab at grass.
Whole tufts are brought up with pink and blue,
green and glittering gold.

She returns first, panting and proudly
showing us her tiny, shivering outstretched fingers.
Her colourful foil prizes!
Her pale blue eyes.

Our laughter rattles the window panes.
The fog swirls in the valley below us.
You smile.

Blink blink.

Flash advertising with sound on smh.com.au?!

My God!

This is so annoying. smh.com.au has started using a flash ad which plays an intrusive "glass breaking" sound.

The shockwave file is played in a loop, so you could be busy trying to concentrate on a Java implementation of Dijkstra's algorithm listening to some soothing music by Nick Drake, with a smh page open in a Firefox tab somewhere and you'd be constantly bombarded by a low quality sound byte of shattering glass. What the hell? Are these guys serious?

My God - it drives me mad. Who decided it would be a great idea to draw people's attention to some advertising by placing sound in a flash ad? Who do they think they are - a GeoCities site circa 1997?

This is the offending flash file in question. Thank god for ad blocking Firefox extensions.

Dearth of Music?

No! That's no typo!

Interesting critique of RIAA strong-arming from an ex record store owner.

the sound of curl

imagine the curl of a flower
and the way its brief shadow strikes
at its feet.

60 minutes of Earth

Why not televise Earth Hour?

Welcome to a new blind sense of community. I won't know if everyone is participating will I? I can travel into the city and watch the lights go out, but I'm hardly going to do that.

Linux Boy

I like this ad. I also find it interesting that IBM paints a picture where Linux is learning from "The Big Players". I particularly like that the opposite is more than likely closer to the truth. Still - cool concept and clean execution.

Google themes

are pretty purty/nice :)



Update: and the themes change with time of day (and apparently weather). It's a very nice little touch. The pic above was taken while it was late afternoon/dusk here. Now it's night and here's what my google page looks like now.



Another update: Oh, and another pic :) I'm so easily amused I guess. Check out the little fox who's decided to start star gazing. Lol.

Bush Leaguer - Pearl Jam

How does he do it? How do they do it? Uncanny and immutable.
This is such a happening tailpipe of a party.
Like sugar, the guests are so refined, (look like melting mice)

A confidence man, but why so beleaguered?
He's not a leader, he's a Texas leaguer
Swinging for the fence, got lucky with a strike
Drilling for fear, makes the job simple
Born on third, thinks he got a triple

Blackout weaves its way through the cities
Blackout weaves its way through the cities
Blackout weaves its way,...

I remember when you sang
That song about today
Now it's tomorrow and
Everything has changed

A think tank of aloof multiplication
A nicotine wish and a columbus decanter
Retrenchment and hoggishness
The aristocrat choir sings
"What's the ruckus?"
The haves have not a clue
The immenseness of suffering
And the odd negotiation, a rarity
With onionskin plausibility of life,
And a keyboard reaffirmation

Blackout weaves its way through the cities
Blackout weaves its way through the cities
Blackout weaves its way,...

I remember when you sang
That song about today
Now it's tomorrow and
Everything has changed

Myths, Lies, and Truths about the Linux kernel

Have a gander at Myths, Lies, and Truths about the Linux kernel. Good read.