You are here: CrunchBang → Archives → February '08
Friday, February 29th, 2008
Tonight I have mainly been browsing the new Ubuntu Brainstorm site. Congratulations to everyone involved in putting the site/service together, it's a great concept and hopefully it'll prove to be a valuable resource for the Ubuntu community.
It'll be interesting to see how the site develops over the coming months. I'm especially interested in how archiving of the ideas will work — how long each idea stays on the front page, and where they go once they've been actioned etc. I think the logistics of a service like this will be key in ensuring it succeeds, for both users and developers.
Regarding actual usage, I've submitted my own idea and found the submission form to be straightforward enough. It would have been good to see a better system for categorising ideas, the single "Category" menu was quite limited and didn't provide for selecting multiple categories. Apart from that, I have no complaints.
Anyhow, I'll finish this post with my idea, remember to vote it up if you think it's a goer!
GUI for easy remastering
As I understand it, many users have multiple systems on which they run Ubuntu. Due to the nature of Ubuntu/Linux and the way in which it is easily customisable, I think it would be a good idea to create a GUI application to easily remaster Ubuntu with user specific customisations.
An easy to use application designed to achieve this would save users, like myself, from having to customise each installation individually. The customisations could be made once, burned to disc and then installed on any number of machines. This would save users a huge amount of time and could also benefit organisations wanting to install their own customised version of Ubuntu.
Note: scripts [such as remastersys] already exist and they will help to achieve this; however, they can be quite buggy and require the user to have a good understanding of the scripting language and the inner workings of Ubuntu. I wouldn't consider them very user friendly.
Update: Just seconds after submitting my idea it was voted down to -1. Hmm, maybe I should have waited until all the Digg/Wired traffic had passed?! Either that, or it's just a terrible idea :|
Sunday, February 24th, 2008
Update: CrunchBang Linux 8.10.01 is out now!
See: http://crunchbanglinux.org/wiki/release-notes/8.10.01
I've released another version of CrunchBang Linux, my remastered version of Ubuntu featuring the lightweight Openbox window manager. Version 7.10.02 is the version that was never meant to be; however, as soon as people started downloading and using the original [I'm still finding it hard to believe that anyone would actually do that] I realised I'd better try to clean up the distribution and start to attempt to fix any issues/problems.
One of the biggest issues with the original release was the dark GTK theme. While the dark theme worked well with all the default applications, it would render some other applications, installed via the repositories, next to useless. Therefore, the dark theme has been replaced by a new more usable/reliable light theme. I know some users [including myself] are quite fond of the dark theme, don't worry, it's still available and I'll post information on the forums and wiki about how to get it back.
Also, before I get on to the list of changes, I'd like to thank all the brave pioneers who downloaded and tried CrunchBang Linux 7.10.01. I've been overwhelmed by all the support and positive feedback on the distro, you guys rock!
Changes to 7.10.02
Below is a list of changes I've made for the new version. I've compiled the list from my TODO file and so it's fairly complete, though I did make some adjustments on-the-fly and I'm sure to have missed out some stuff.
I've compiled a list of installed applications, it can be found on the wiki. See: CrunchBang Linux 7.10.02 Applications List
Download
The CrunchBang Linux ISO image is approximately 580MB. It can be downloaded from the following locations:
MD5: f59aa9ba1cca475762e115ffc95a8f8e
User forums
Don't forget to visit the forums, register and join in with discussions and feedback regarding CrunchBang Linux. All feedback is really appreciated and helps to improve CrunchBang Linux. Forums are located at: http//crunchbang.org/forums/
Screenshots
Some screenshots of CrunchBang Linux 7.10.02 in action, more screenshots are available on the wiki.
Disclaimer
CrunchBang Linux is not recommended for anyone needing a stable system or anyone who is not comfortable running into occasional, even frequent breakage. CrunchBang Linux could possibly make your computer go CRUNCH! BANG! Therefore CrunchBang Linux comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by applicable law.
Wednesday, February 20th, 2008
It's a rather silly name, I know; however, TwitterZoid is the chosen name of my PHP script for parsing Twitter RSS feeds. I've been using Twitter quite steadily for a couple of weeks now and I thought it might be nice to include my latest tweets on my blog, so I wrote TwitterZoid to do just that.
TwitterZoid differs to other PHP based Twitter RSS parsers, at least the ones I tried before I wrote it, in that it will automatically link both lexicons and URLs found within individual tweets. It also tries to mimic Twitter's timestamping, although this could be improved.
TwitterZoid usage
I wanted to make TwitterZoid as simple to use as possible. Therefore I decided to write the script to be used as a simple include file which can be used on any PHP page. Basically, to use TwitterZoid all you need to do is set a couple of variables, include twitterzoid.php and then echo the main $TwitterZoid variable where you would like your list of tweets to appear.
Example set-up:
$twitter_username = "corenominal";
$twitter_feed = "http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/99713.rss";
require_once('twitterzoid.php');
Call on the main TwitterZoid variable to produce the list of tweets:
echo $TwitterZoid;
Don't worry if this reads like gibberish, I've included an example page within the download.
TwitterZoid examples
There are currently two demonstrations of TwitterZoid in action, see:
My official "What am I doing?" Twitter page:
http://crunchbang.org/what-am-i-doing/
A more stylised version of "What am I doing?", included within the download:
http://crunchbang.org/projects/twitterzoid/demo/
Download TwitterZoid
Location: http://crunchbang.org/projects/twitterzoid/twitterzoid-0.2.tar.gz
MD5: 7c437c2ea32f45dde66fc74f690ab361
TwitterZoid license
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/
Monday, February 18th, 2008
I'm torn on the idea of Conduit. I really like the concept of an all-in-one synchronisation tool for the desktop; however, whenever I've tried it I've found that I would typically use less than 10% of its features/data providers. Also, being fairly adept at scripting, I tend to Bash my way through my syncing needs.
Having said that, Conduit is still an interesting and impressive application and I'm glad to see that John Carr has set-up a PPA on Launchpad for Conduit releases. The PPA should make it much easier to test the most up to date versions with Ubuntu based Linux distributions.
Also, John Stowers has just released Conduit 0.3.8. If you've not done so already, go check it out.
URL: http://www.conduit-project.org/
Monday, February 18th, 2008
I've used this web based regular expression test tool a couple of times over the last day or so. While I don't normally struggle with regular expressions, this tool has still come in handy; it has saved me from the "code it and cross your fingers" approach I normally take.
This is a great tool for anyone who works with PHP, especially as the service uses PHP regular expression functions as a base for its operations.
URL: http://www.solmetra.lt/scripts/regex/
Sunday, February 17th, 2008
I've not read the book, but the Wicked Cool Shell Scripts site and its example shell scripts are, erm, wicked cool. The site offers a whole host of scripts, some of which could quite easily be adapted/hacked into useful tools. If you're remotely interested in Shell scripting, you should take a look, even people with scripting experience might learn a thing or two.
URL: http://www.intuitive.com/wicked/index.shtml
Download the script library: wicked-cool-shell-scripts.tgz
Tuesday, February 12th, 2008
Yesterday I permanently shut down the old family desktop. I say family, but in reality it was the desktop used by Becky and Emma before they got their laptops. Anyhow, before shutting the desktop down for the last time, Becky asked if I would transfer her music and photo collection to her laptop.
Becky's laptop is one of my old machines, it's an Acer Travelmate 240. I used it for a good few years before handing it over to Becky sometime last year. Being one of my old machines, it was set-up for dual booting with Ubuntu and Windows XP. Unfortunately I've yet to persuade Becky to migrate to Linux, so she always boots the system into Windows XP.
Anyway, before attempting to move Becky's data I performed a quick check on her system. Turns out that I'd partitioned her 30GB drive in favour of Ubuntu, no surprise there, and Windows XP had less than 2GB of free space to play with. I asked Becky what she would like me to do, her reply, "You can remove that second-rate operating system, I don't want your linucks shite on my laptop" — or something along those lines.
Not wanting to take her bait, and not being a Linux zealot, I agreed. So, I inserted my CrunchBang Linux CD and booted the machine. I then ran GParted and removed Ubuntu's swap and ext3 partitions, before resizing the fat32 partition to use the whole drive [GParted is a fantastic tool!] Once I'd finished adjusting the partitions, I attempted a reboot, only to be presented with a GRUB error. I forgot that this would happen, GRUB couldn't find its configuration file as I'd removed it when I edited the disk partitions.
To fix Becky's now useless system, I inserted my copy of the Super Grub Disk and within a couple of minutes I'd managed to restore the MBR and configure the system so that it would boot directly into Windows XP. I then transferred Becky's data and decommissioned the old family desktop. Easy.
Sunday, February 10th, 2008
Over the last couple of days I have mainly been playing with WikkaWiki, a flexible, standards-compliant and lightweight wiki engine written in PHP. I've toyed with the idea of creating a personal wiki for sometime, but, I've been reluctant to start one for fear of it becoming just another thing to update and maintain. Anyhow, I now seem to have conquered this fear and I've created my first wiki.
Now, being a new wiki it naturally doesn't contain much of any content, but, at this moment that's not too important, the important thing is that I've started it, the content will come later. I'm planning on using the wiki to document my Ubuntu/CrunchBang Linux projects. I'll also be using it to privide supporting supporting material for my blog. For example, stuff like this crontab howto, and these GIMP brushes would be better suited to the wiki.
Regarding the WikkaWiki software, it's quite impressive and fairly easy to work with. I looked at several other PHP based wiki projects, but IMHO WikkaWiki was the best — apart from maybe MediaWiki, but then I considered that to be overkill for my needs. If you're starting a new wiki then I'd certainly recommend at least looking into the possibility of using WikkaWiki. It has many great features, some that I noticed include:
- a super easy installation process
- a nice default design and easy to customise CSS
- code base is very hackable, including actions/plugins
- RSS feeds for recently updated content, comments etc
- syntax highlighting of published code, courtesy of the GeSHi plugin
- it's super scary fast
All-in-all WikkaWiki has impressed me a lot; besides, if it's good enough for Puppy Linux, it's good enough for me ;)
Thursday, February 7th, 2008
So, when I released the initial CrunchBang Linux I really didn't think that anyone would actually download it. Turns out I was wrong, and this really surprised me. Initially I had no intention of working on another release of CrunchBang, see the quote below from the release notes:
It should be noted that my remastered version of Ubuntu is intended for my own personal use. I had no intention of releasing any disk images when I started this project; however, now that I've produced a working copy, I've decided to release the disk image under the premiss that someone may find it useful.
This is the first, and possibly last, release of CrunchBang Linux. Therefore you should expect to encounter numerous issues and a wide variety of erroneous bugs.
However, now that CrunchBang has been released and people have started using it [I'm truly shocked by this fact] I feel that it is only proper that I do my best to tidy it up and improve it. Therefore I have begun work on CrunchBang Linux 7.10.02. The new release should be considered a "spit & polish" release with fixes to the default theme and a few applications added which were missing in the first release. More news on this to come soon.
If you've got any suggestions for the next release then please feel free to post them in the Feedback & Suggestions forum. Now would be the ideal time to influence the next release.
Thursday, February 7th, 2008
Foreword: I have to admit that I was somewhat sceptical when Gouki introduced me to Tribal Wars. It's easy to dismiss such games as both frivolous and childish. Since experiencing the game for myself, I can now see the attraction. Tribal Wars has been my first introduction to a MMOG and while I may not be the best of players, I find the in-world politics and fight for survival fascinating. It's interesting to witness how the players, tribes and tactics evolve over time. This post is a short commentary on my Tribal Wars history to date.
As has become usual over the last few months, last night both Becky and I were sat with our laptops relaxing in the lounge. I was chatting and on IRC and Becky was playing Tribal Wars. Becky tends to chunter when she plays, it amuses me no end. Becky started playing in November last year, about the same time that I started. She's a far better player than I'll ever be and her points total is scary big.
When we started playing we both joined up as members of the Ubunteros tribe. It was a good tribe and we both gained points and made our way up the rankings. Becky, being the total megalomaniac that she is, managed to become one of the top players in the tribe [I forget her exact position, but I'm sure she'll fill me in.] Meanwhile, I languished around mid-table, this was mainly due to the fact that I wasn't aggressive enough, I just didn't expand into new territories with enough speed — I'm sure the Ubuntu Code of Conduct and Tribal Wars don't mix too well!
Anyhow, last month I was subjected to an unprovoked attack by a neighbouring player. It was a fairly even fight and neither of us emerged from it too well; I lost a large number of defensive troops and my aggressor lost all of his attack units. The battle left my small number of villages in vulnerable state and I looked for support from the UBU tribe. It was at this point that I realised the UBU tribe was not in any position to provide the support I needed. The tribe was far too scattered and the nearest tribe members were many hours away. Meanwhile I had several hostile tribes knocking on my door. Survival instinct took over and I had no option but to leave my beloved UBU tribe. I joined the Brotherhood Of BaD, the strongest and most powerful tribe on my continent.
Not long after my departure from UBU, Becky also defected and joined a stronger tribe. She is now joint leader of her new tribe and holds a baronial title no less! She continues to wreak havoc in World 9 and I truly pity any player unlucky enough to attract her attention. Through hard work and total dedication [is she an addict?] she has positioned herself well within the Tribal Wars food chain, it'll take a rather large predator to take her down.
Anyway, last night while discussing the game with my Baroness [Becky, have I told you lately how much you rock!] I learned that the UBU tribe have joined forces with the Brotherhood Of BaD. They are now known as UBUBAD. Obviously I was delighted to hear this and would like to take this opportunity to welcome the Ubunteros into the Brotherhood. I feel it was a wise decision to join forces, it places UBUBAD within a strong family of tribes; one that is evolving into a serious contender for World 9 domination.
As it stands now, I'm witnessing other tribes joining forces to overcome the 100 players per tribe game limitation. This means there now exists super-tribes with members numbering in the thousands. It'll be fascinating to see how this develops. I'm sure my player will be long dead before a conclusion is reached [if there is a conclusion], but I know I can count on my Baroness to keep me informed, chuntering as she goes :)
Wednesday, February 6th, 2008
It was suggested on IRC that it might be useful to set-up some forums for CrunchBang Linux. So, I've set-up some forums for CrunchBang Linux. This wasn't an easy decision to make and personally I'm still not sure that the forums are needed; however, I do agree that it might be nice to have somewhere other than this blog for people to leave feedback and suggestions.
Please feel free to visit the forums and register, get in quick before all the good usernames disappear :P There isn't much in the way of content yet, but hopefully the posts will start trickling in.
Regarding the forum software, it's bbPress. I did toy with the idea of using Cruciforum; however, while I really like the Cruciforum concept, I'm not convinced it's quite ready — and I don't have the time to help out and do any coding on the project :| Anyhow, I'm really quite impressed with bbPress. It reminds me of how Wordpress used to be, before it went all Web two point zero. It's simple and lightweight, just the way I like things. Looking back at how Wordpress developed, maybe now would be a good time grab a copy of this GPL'd forum software?!
Tuesday, February 5th, 2008
Twitter, I guess it's one of those web applications where you either "get" it or you don't. For a long time I stood firmly in the don't "get" it camp. My history with Twitter is somewhat scattered, I posted my first couple of tweets on December 21, 2006. It was a while until I tweeted again, when I did it took the following form:
Testing twitter on my Nokia N95 06:15 AM January 22, 2008 from web
And then 7 days later I tweeted again:
Once again playing with twitter, still not sure that I "get" it! Hmm. 02:52 PM January 29, 2008 from web
And then just a few hours later:
Testing gTwitter on Ubuntu. Looks good but uses mono and therefore comes in at a rather large 20MB+, hmm. 07:52 PM January 29, 2008 from web
And then today I tweeted this:
Testing Twitux twitter client, looks good and doesn't use mono like gtwitter. This I could use, will leave it running. about 14 hours ago from web
By George, I think I'm beginning to "get" it!
It's only taken me a couple of years, but I think I'm beginning to understand what Twitter is all about. Twitter is a simple little application, at least from a user's standpoint, where you input up-to 140 character messages. These messages can then be viewed by anyone who wishes to follow along. It's quite simple really and I'm now confused by why it took me so long to come to terms with such a simple concept. Why didn't I get the hint from Twitter's front page?
Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?
Anyhow, as you might have read, I've now started using Twitux. The application was introduced to me by Gabriel D. W. Wollenburg. I've only had it running for day, but I like it, and it beats having to keep another tab open in Epiphany. Unfortunately the application isn't available in the Ubuntu repositories, but you can grab a copy from getdeb.net. It's a small download at about 66.8 KB and only takes seconds to install using gdebi.
Regarding gTwitter, it crashed on first use, this didn't leave a good first impression. Secondly, it uses Mono. I have nothing against Mono, but so far CrunchBang Linux remains a Mono free system, at least it does for me. So, installing gTwitter, which is available from the Ubuntu repositories, gave me an apt-get output something along the lines of:
corenominal@misspiggy:~$ sudo apt-get install gtwitter
[sudo] password for corenominal:
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
The following extra packages will be installed:
libart2.0-cil libgconf2.0-cil libglade2.0-cil libglib2.0-cil
libgnome-vfs2.0-cil libgnome2.0-cil libgtk2.0-cil libgtkhtml2.0-cil
libgtkhtml3.8-15 libmono-cairo1.0-cil libmono-corlib1.0-cil
libmono-data-tds1.0-cil libmono-security1.0-cil libmono-sharpzip0.84-cil
libmono-system-data1.0-cil libmono-system-web1.0-cil libmono-system1.0-cil
libmono0 libmono1.0-cil librsvg2.0-cil mono-common mono-gac mono-jit
mono-runtime
Suggested packages:
libgtkhtml3.8-dbg libgda2-3 libgdiplus
Recommended packages:
binfmt-support cli-common
The following NEW packages will be installed
gtwitter libart2.0-cil libgconf2.0-cil libglade2.0-cil libglib2.0-cil
libgnome-vfs2.0-cil libgnome2.0-cil libgtk2.0-cil libgtkhtml2.0-cil
libgtkhtml3.8-15 libmono-cairo1.0-cil libmono-corlib1.0-cil
libmono-data-tds1.0-cil libmono-security1.0-cil libmono-sharpzip0.84-cil
libmono-system-data1.0-cil libmono-system-web1.0-cil libmono-system1.0-cil
libmono0 libmono1.0-cil librsvg2.0-cil mono-common mono-gac mono-jit
mono-runtime
0 upgraded, 25 newly installed, 0 to remove and 37 not upgraded.
Need to get 6173kB of archives.
After unpacking 22.0MB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue [Y/n]?
While I'm not short of disk space, 22MB for a Twitter client is somewhat extreme. Besides, I prefer Twitux.
Finally, I'd just like to publicly thank Gouki for encouraging me to explore Twitter some more. Gouki is without a doubt the main cause of all my time wasting experiences. BTW Gouki, I've still not forgiven you for this ;)
You can follow along with my pointless twittering at: http://twitter.com/corenominal
Sunday, February 3rd, 2008
A Serbian translation of the random Ubuntu advocacy images is now available. The translation comes courtesy of Milos Jakovljevic and the Serbian Ubuntu LoCo team. Thank you Milos.
The complete Serbian set can be viewed on this demo page. The code to display the images is below, simply copy & paste into your HTML/blog template where you would like the random image placement to occur:
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://crunchbang.net/advocacy/rs/ubuntu_199_164.js">
</script>
<noscript>
<a href="http://ubuntu.com/getubuntu" title="Get Ubuntu!">
<img src="http://crunchbang.net/advocacy/rs/199_164_ubuntu.png" alt="Get Ubuntu."></a>
</noscript>
Sunday, February 3rd, 2008
CrunchBang Linux now has its own IRC channel on freenode. Thanks to Space Aviator for setting this up and mailing me with the details. You can connect to the CrunchBang IRC channel using an IRC client such as XChat, point your client to the freenode network (irc.freenode.net:6667) and join the #crunchbang channel.
I use IRC most evenings and I'll add #crunchbang to my channel list. I'll try to log in whenever I can. Please say "hi" if you see me about, I'm always up for a chat with fellow Linux users. My nick is corenominal.
Saturday, February 2nd, 2008
The Ubuntu advocacy images are now available in 12 different languages. Alexander Telenga has done a fantastic job converting the images into Russian. These new Russian images are some of my favourites to date, I love the Russian character set. Thank you Alexander :)
The complete Russian set can be viewed on this demo page. The code to display the images is below, simply copy & paste into your HTML/blog template where you would like the random image placement to occur:
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://crunchbang.net/advocacy/ru/ubuntu_199_164.js">
</script>
<noscript>
<a href="http://ubuntu.ru/get" title="Get Ubuntu!">
<img src="http://crunchbang.net/advocacy/ru/199_164_ubuntu.png" alt="Get Ubuntu."></a>
</noscript>
Friday, February 1st, 2008
So, Andy Loughran, AKA Eärendur of Dorthonion, has been busy translating these images into Elvish. Not wanting to upset our pointy eared friends, or the Elvish Linguistic Fellowship [I hear the E.L.F are BIG on Ubuntu!], I've uploaded Andy's translations and made them available from my file server. Thank you Andy, I think!?
The complete Elvish set can be viewed on this demo page. You can help spread the word of Ubuntu to the oldest of all common races by copying and pasting the code below into your HTML/blog template:
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://crunchbang.net/advocacy/ev/ubuntu_199_164.js">
</script>
<noscript>
<a href="http://ubuntu.com/getubuntu" title="Kaer Ubuntu!">
<img src="http://crunchbang.net/advocacy/ev/199_164_ubuntu.png" alt="Kaer Ubuntu."></a>
</noscript>
Can of worms anyone?
Friday, February 1st, 2008
Another translation of the Random Ubuntu Advocacy images. Ali Servet Dönmez has done a fantastic job translating the images into Turkish. This translation takes the language count into double figures, at this rate we're going to break the record for the most translated web advert!?
The full turkish set can be seen on this random rotation demo. As with all the translations I've made the images available from my file server, simply copy & paste the code below into your HTML/blog template where you would like the random image placement to occur:
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://crunchbang.net/advocacy/tr/ubuntu_199_164.js">
</script>
<noscript>
<a href="http://ubuntu.com/getubuntu" title="Get Ubuntu!">
<img src="http://crunchbang.net/advocacy/tr/199_164_ubuntu.png" alt="Get Ubuntu."></a>
</noscript>
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