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Weak and Powerless

Posts tagged with "Programming"

New photos added, and a big THANK YOU!

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This is just a 'thank you' post to Michel Xhaard for his effort in writing (ALONE!!!) the drivers for around 260 webcams for the Linux Operating System!

http://mxhaard.free.fr/download.html

Read more...

Desktop for Dummies

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GNOME users are idiots. Not my words... not words of anyone in particular, but resemble (and are based on) Linus Torvalds's words in THE flamewar of GNOME vs. KDE.

For those not knowing I left behind the GNOME environment for a much better KDE, and in the process I found that there has been a bit heated debate about GNOME's flexibility (the reason I left it). I just read the WHOLE thing! and it was quite amazing... really can't believe I did that (^o^) . Anyway, the point is that Linus advocates for a more customizable desktop environment, which he compares to a game: each time should be more challenging; and the challenge, in this context, is to be able to change the desktop so I can do what I want to do, and not what other might think I would like to do because he/she feels is better at something just by studying one of those undetermined fields of design... The GNOME designers and developers, think that the average user they are aiming at are those who start up things by reading the "... For Dummies" series, then (may be) followed by some fast Wikipedia search and then, done. KDE users, on the other hand, like to explore things around, but also have tools to mimic the behaviour of other desktops, and by those things, KDE targets a lot more users, in the sense that, if you like simplicity, you can just start using KDE with the default configurations, but if you want more complex customization, you can still use KDE to modify a lot of stuff, all at once, or one by one.

It is, however, worrying that some people inside GNOME, do think ``users are idiots'':

Originally posted by Rodney Dawes from bugzilla 408898:


Comment #13 from Rodney Dawes (developer, points: 20)
2007-02-18 17:45 UTC
A Novice/Expert setting has been tried before in Nautilus, and it failed.
Everyone is just going to set the setting to Expert anyway, because people like
to make themselves feel like they are better at something than they actually
are.



It shows how people seem to love taking decisions for other people they do not even know. Things like this made me drop Windows altogether, and really, really, keep me a little bit away from MacOS (It is annoying to use the stupid mouse all the time and with no way to use the keyboard whenever I want it)

The question is, then, does your desktop enables you to change things about it? No... let's put it more general: Does your software enables you to customize it the way you want? Opera does... and that is one more reason to love it!

Note to self - VMware installation

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Being a little bit egoist here, I found that I forget quite easily some details of the things I do in Linux. The last one was related with the VMware Workstation installation.

To install VMware, follow the steps (grealty resumed into a few lines):

  1. Check that kernel-source, gcc (and/or gcc-c++) and make are installed. I think I will never forget to install those, as I use them a lot. The kernel-source packages must match the installed kernel! running YOU will find the proper packages.

  2. Download the latest vmware-any-any patch. (Probably available at cvut). This is needed because it's higly probable that compilation errors might appear when running the vmware-config.pl script. The last error I got was from a confligting defined variable in the kernel source against the vmware client code

  3. Be sure to have the vmware rpm ready and anxious to get installed

  4. Prepare the kernel to recive new modules: remember the
    make mrproper
    (for cleanup),
    make cloneconfig
    (for cloning the kernel and configuring it to the current version) and
    make modules_prepare
    (well... it's self explanatory)

  5. With a prepared and happy kernel, the rpm installation can be done by the typical
    rpm -ivh PACKAGE
    where the package here it's, of course, the vmware file.

  6. After this, I normally do a step I think it's not really necessary. I like to run
    ldconfig; SuSEconfig
    sequence, just to see how happily my PC works :wink:

  7. Now the update. I've seen it tarred and gzipped, so a
    tar -xz -f vmware-any-any-update.tar.gz
    will do the work. Changing to the vmware-any-any-update directory (I wonder... that any-any name), and executing
    ./runme.pl
    will do the rest, even call vmware-config.pl for me. When this is done, answering a few questions it's all it's needed for completing the procedure. The default options are fine for my SuSE 10.1 so if any compilation error occurs, be sure to check this and the vmware-any-any-update version.

  8. Configure the three network devices (bridged, NAT and host-only); that it's normally just accepting the default options.

  9. Mount the USB system to access those devices from the Virtual Machine. As root:
    mount -t usbfs /dev/bus/usb /proc/bus/usb



And that's it... at least as I remember. I'm not sure where did I get this "any-any-update" info, but I'm sure it's not that difficult to get. Wait... I found it in my history (I love opera :wink:)


I decided that when I see it fit (and achievable or worthly), I should translate some of what I write in english to spanish, or viceversa. This is one of those cases.

--- Versión en español ---

Para instalar VMWare, seguir los siguientes pasos de la receta (resumida en pocas líneas):

  1. Verificar que los paquetes de kernel-source, gcc (y gcc-c++) y make están instalados, pero creo que no hay problema con eso pues los uso mucho y no creo que los olvide. Los paquetes del kernel source deben encajar con la versión del kernel instalado! Correr YOU sería una buena idea en este momento para asegurarse.

  2. Bajar la última versión del vmware-any-any-update (Probablemente disponible en cvut). Esto lo necesito para evitar algunos errores de compilación en el proceso. La última vez salió un error de una variable en conflicto por estar definida tanto en el kernel como en el cliente

  3. No olvidar tener listo el rpm de vmware (hihihi)

  4. Preparar el kernel para recibir nuevos módulos: No olvidar:
    make mrproper
    (para limpiar, o eso me dijeron),
    make cloneconfig
    (para clonar el kernel, configurándolo a la versión correcta) y
    make modules_prepare
    (para preparar en sí la utilización de los módulos)

  5. Con un kernel listo y felíz, la instalación del rpm es cosa de niños:
    rpm -ivh PACKAGE
    donde PACKAGE es obviamente el archivo del VMware.

  6. Después, lo que hago no es realmente necesario... solo me gusta hacerlo por poner el pc a hacer algo:
    ldconfig; SuSEconfig
    . En teoría eso actualiza las variables del sistema, entre otras cosas.

  7. Ahora la actualización. Como viene en tar.gz, ya se sabe que está comprimido y unificado, pero tar nos ayuda fácilmente con ese trabajo.
    tar -xz -f vmware-any-any-update.tar.gz
    hace todo el trabajo. El resto se hace cambiando al directorio creado por tar para vmware y ejecutando
    ./runme.pl
    . Esto inclusive llama vmware-config.pl por mi. Cuando todo haya pasado, solo falta responder unas preguntas. Las opciones preseleccionadas que trae el script funcionan perfecto en mi SuSE 10.1, así que si algo falla (como errores de compilación, yo supongo), este es el primer sitio a revisar, junto con la versión del any-any-update.

  8. Configurar los tres dispositivos de redes (es otro módulo montado en el kernel), bridged, NAT y host-only. En general es al estilo windows: yes, yes, yes, yes P:

  9. Montar el sistema USB para tener acceso a estos dispositivos en la máquina virtual: como root:
    mount -t usbfs /dev/bus/usb /proc/bus/usb




Y listo... ahí la instalación correcta del vmware... antes que se me olvide.

Projects

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I'm working now in some projects that have been keeping me very busy. The two most important are a controlling software for mobile phones using AT commands. I'm planning to use python for this project, and maybe for the other one too. The second project it's easier: simplifying calculations for most of the basic formulas in finance management (calculating interest rates, present and future values of money, etc).

The first project it's one of the most complicated I have started, so I think about start applying some of the extreme programming disciplines (but I'm not an expert at all). I'm just starting to reading the characteristics of the problem, but will be posting my progress here.

For the second project I thought about applying some those "tenets" from the Gancarsz book, The Linux and Unix Philosophy, specially the "Small is beautiful" one. It's going to be a perfect first excercise for learning python.


First Update 6.5.2006: I'm a little behind schedule P: Well... ok, ok, not "a little". WAY behind schedule. I realized the first project is not very difficult, but has a lot of little details that have been keeping me busy for a lot of time. I noticed that one of my main weak points is that I lack of that capacity for designing the system and keeping the structure. I have changed twice the main design, the first time because the original design had a terrible flaw with the communications logic. The second time because my classmates told me that the teacher (who is a VB fan) likes those fancy but useless GUI, yet all the program is designed to work as a command line program. I hope I find a way to communicate the programs via stdIO, creating the GUI with Visual Basic; Tkinter has not a very nice appeareance.

The second project has been declared completely stalled. Unfortunately my time has been reduced and my sparetime is not enough for that.... I will continue after all classes are finished.

I'm also beginning to understand why building a prototype as soon as possible is very important! There is nothing good in analysis paralysis.

Programatón...

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¡Hola! Qué lindo día el de hoy. Las ocho de la mañanita y alistándome para salir a la programatón de hoy sábado. Ya estoy preparado: listo el biker, la bandita elástica para el sudor y las medias tobilleras. Lo único que queda por hacer es tomarme el huevo crudo cual Rocky Balboa. Es que hay que estar listo para la jornada... de 9 a 17 son siempre 7 u 8 horas de estar sentado en un PC haciendo ejercicio. Hoy es además el día en que mi mejor amigo viaja a estudiar a otro país... lo voy a extrañar, pero le deseo el mejor de los viajes.
editado por pura precariedad
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