Archive for December, 2005

A working copy of CCP

Thursday, December 29th, 2005

CCP (as I wrote about earlier) now has a project on savannah. It now works! It can be downloaded from the CVS repository.
However, it doesn’t use libconf yet, and thus only supports key = value files. It also doesn’t know how to create the templates by itself so those have to be written by hand for now (but this should be easy(ish) to implement I think).

Like i said it currently supports key = value files. Any format will do. It can for instance handle any of the following:

$Key = Value;
$Key=Value
$Key='Value'
$Key="Value"
$Key ="Value"
Key = Value
Key=Value
# Comment
: Comment
; Comment
[Section header that gets ignored]

It doesn’t support comments on the same line as a config option, but this can probably be added at some later time.
I haven’t written any documentation yet – but here’s the same usage sample I used before (edited to suit the way ccp now works).

/etc/example.conf:

# Example configuration file
SystemVersion = 0.1
Mode = public
Extensions = off

/etc/example.conf.rpmnew:

# Example configuration file
SystemVersion = 0.1
Mode = private
Extensions = on
AllowUsers = yes

/usr/share/example/config.ccptemplate:

# Example configuration file
SystemVersion = {CCP::CONFIG:SystemVersion}
Mode = {CCP::CONFIG::Mode}
Extensions = {CCP::CONFIG::Extensions}
AllowUsers = {CCP::CONFIG::AllowUsers}

Command:

$ ccp --template /usr/share/example/config.ccptemplate --oldfile /etc/example.conf --newfile /etc/example.conf.rpmnew
Merging changes between "/etc/example.conf" and "/etc/example.conf.rpmnew"...done

Resulting /etc/example.conf:

# Example configuration file
SystemVersion = 0.1
Mode = public
Extensions = off
AllowUsers = yes

A merry christmas..?

Friday, December 23rd, 2005

No, not for everyone. Some have a horrible christmas, be it problems within the family, war, illnesses or really anything.

Some people spend their christmas eve suffering.
Some are at the hospital, caring for, waiting, being afraid of one of their loved ones. My thoughts go to you.
Some are with their family, watching as they get drunk yet again, watching them not seem to care. My thoughts go to you aswell.
Some are suffering the effects of war in some camp, perhaps not knowing which day it is. My thoughts ofcourse lead to you too.
Some are sad and depressed, perhaps because of something, perhaps not knowing why. Know that someone cares!
Some are afraid, feeling the pressure of anxiety, scared, help. You too, have people caring for you. Do not forget that.

I am no christian, but I still celebrate christmas. And I cincerely wish you a christmas as merry as you can get, an as happy a holiday as you can, happy new year – better than this perhaps, or just plainly that your life will be as good as is possible – no matter who you are, what you do or what you believe or don’t believe in.

There are people out there that care… We all need someone.

The happy life of no-panel

Wednesday, December 21st, 2005

Okay, I decided to drop the panel completely.
It was hrm, a bit strange at first – but I’m used to it by now and I’m not missing it. Ah well :)

ssh tips and tricks

Monday, December 19th, 2005

I’ve written a document with a few ssh tips and tricks. Feel free to provide feedback in comments if you have any :)

I once dreamt of a useful panel

Saturday, December 17th, 2005

…or so I must have been.

Currently I’m using the XFce panel. It does what it does well, or at least what I currently use it for. It’s a clock, pager, wlan monitor and battery monitor. All which is fine, the thing is – the panel always displays a little bit, it’s never truly gone. I can always see it. That annoys me!
Also, it seems, it doesn’t do too much useful stuff. To really justify being constantly on my screen and constantly running it should honestly do more. I want my panel to do something useful!
What is that you ask? You tell me! What should a panel do?
I don’t want a list of windows the width of my screen – useless for me.
I don’t want a menu or pretty clickety icons – I don’t use them.

I know what I don’t know, can you tell me what useful stuff a panel should do – or better, can do?
I’m open for suggestions on switching panel, though keep in mind – if you say “kicker” or really any KDE panel I’ll just ignore it, I want a gtk2 one.

It all boils down to, should I drop the panel completely? Or should I switch to something better? Or can the xfce panel already do something more useful? I know about all the plugins included in Mandriva, none seem amazing – I’m currently playing with the weather one.

Todays word of wisdom

Friday, December 16th, 2005

When the day is long and the night, the night is yours alone,
When you’re sure you’ve had enough of this life, well hang on
Don’t let yourself go, ’cause everybody cries and everybody hurts sometimes

- R.E.M, Everybody Hurts

(Oh, and record companies – yes I quoted a song by R.E.M. “So sue me”? :P)

Where is the madness police?!

Friday, December 16th, 2005

Okay, I was just made aware of the Brazillian Mandriva store by Claudio. The DARNED THING USES ASP! AFAIK it isn’t Mandriva that runs it (duh), but STILL!
For a little more clarification:

[0 zerodogg@drizzt html]$ HEAD mandrivastore.com.br
...junk...
Server: Microsoft-IIS/6.0
...junk...
X-Powered-By: ASP.NET

Someone tell me I’m dreaming! *cries*

I see a gnome on the horizon!

Friday, December 16th, 2005

If you haven’t heard about Linus’ little outbreak on the gnome ML yet then I think you should get out from that rock and back to the real world (either that or you’re one of the few non-geeks that happen to pass by my blog :).

I like GNOME, but I don’t use it. I use XFce. But the reason I don’t use gnome is because of a personal preference – not because I’m a TROLL! In my opinion KDE is full of bloat (NO! Do not reply to this post yet), but that is a personal opinion. I can see why people want to use it, and I encourage people to use it – but I would not want to use it. Gnome’s policy of clean interfaces with as little junk as possible is excellent if you ask me. Something that shows gnome’s interface policy versus kde’s interface policy very well is a blog post by Adam Williamson (I think it was him). It was about kat versus beagle iirc – will try to find the link later. He makes a few good points in it. I would use a gnome app over a KDE app any day, and merely telling everyone to go use KDE over Gnome is madness! Because I don’t use or like KDE the entire world should switch to XFce? Ofcourse not! Different people like different interfaces – duh. Why not just butt out of what people use and let them use the programs that they like best? That’s part of the joy of GNU/Linux, you can use what you want – not what someone else wants you to use. Why do people always think that “because I like it this way – the whole world should?”, why do people STILL seem to think we’re all identical? I’m at a loss here. It just goes on to confirm what I’ve been saying for ages, people are stupid and the whole world is mad (overgeneralization ofcourse).

My advice for you today is to use the software YOU want to use, and tell other people to shut up if they don’t have anything productive to say to you about it.

EFN

Friday, December 16th, 2005

EFN stands for “Elektronisk Forpost Norge”, or in English, “Electronic Frontier Norway”.
EFF’s cusin in Norway.
I’ve been voted (I think it was a vote) to become a member of the board of EFN as a representative for EFNU (EFN Youth). This will hopefully be fun, productive and interesting. One thing is certain, there’s a LOT to do. This world still surprises me with its madness. Only time will tell how much worse^Wbetter it will be after I’m done with it.

The joys of LaTeX

Tuesday, December 13th, 2005

A friend of mine suggested that I should try LaTeX.
In the begginning I was like naaw, meeh…Uhh, naah. But then, Saturday night I figured I should look at it. And now, well, I’m saved!
I should have done this WAY sooner! If you’re a geek, take my advice, dump OOo or any other software you’re using and use latex along with vim or [insert-favourite-programmers-text-editor-here].
Download the (not so) short introduction to LaTeX now. It might look a bit long, but unless you’re doing alot of mathematical stuff you can skip most of it. Download it now, you’ll thank me later (like I did with Jørgen :).

Todays word of wisdom

Friday, December 9th, 2005

“Gravity cannot be held responsible for people falling in love.”
– Albert Einstein

GFSGL 0.92.0 “White Teddybear”

Friday, December 9th, 2005

Finally! It is released (well, a week ago, but still).
Version 0.92.0 of my little child, GFSGL.
Now it has a GTK2, GTK1 and KDE GUI using xmsg, a module system that allows easy extension of it, and a handfull of modules included by default (such as AutoAddGames which automatically detects and adds native GNU/Linux games to GFSGL) in addition to various modules available for download.
GFSGL is a game manager, it makes it easier to install and run games under GNU/Linux and other *nix like operating systems. It does this by providing one unified interface that you can launch games that are native, wine, scummvm and so on from, and by allowing one-click installer launching. The module system makes it even easier to extend, and I’m hoping that someone will find the time to try to write some modules that they feel are needed.

More information can be found at the GFSGL website, in the release announcement and in the release notes/changelog. You can also look at some screenshots.