Category: Uncategorized

WebGL

digitaleagle Chrome, Uncategorized Leave a comment

I just noticed in the release notes for Chrome the mention of Web GL .  So, I looked up some instructions to enable it.

I am running Ubuntu Linux, and I installed Chrome from the Deb package.  It created a shortcut in my Applications Menu.  So, I went to the menu editor, and edited the shortcut for Chrome.  I changed the shortcut from this:

/opt/google/chrome/google-chrome %U

to this:

/opt/google/chrome/google-chrome –enable-webgl %U

When I first started this post, the examples that I found didn’t work.  But, when I tried tonight, this example actually worked.

Resources

SuperTuxKart

digitaleagle SourceForge, Uncategorized 1 Comment

Ok, time for a quick break.  I saw SuperTuxKart had a new version, and I wanted to try it out a long time ago.   I never could get it to compile — there was a dependency that I only saw in Windows.  When I got the SourceForge newsletter recently, it reminded me to check again.  They have a Mac version for download, so maybe it will work.

Packages I installed for dependencies:

configure: error: cannot find useable OpenAL installation. You need to install OpenAL.

libopenal-dev

checking for library containing ov_open… noconfigure: error: cannot find useable Ogg Vorbis installation. You need to install libogg and libvorbis.

libogg-dev, libvorbis-dev

configure: error: Can’t find irrlicht installation in standard prefixes, use –with-irrlicht…

libirrlicht-dev, libirrlicht1.7

Finally, all the packages are installed.  Now, “./configure”. Next, run “make”.

Now, it tested fine with “./src/supertuxkart”.

Since, it worked, I did “sudo make install” to install it.

Tip: Uploading to Google Code

digitaleagle Google Code, Java, Uncategorized Leave a comment

I learned this the hard way: put a version number in your Google Code releases!

I kept receiving an error when I tried to upload my new Jar file.  It was the same 403 error as this person.  The problem is that you can’t overwrite files any more.  Each new download needs to have it’s own unique file name.

So, the easy fix is to include and incrementing version number in the file name.

From Ant, I was able to accomplish the version number is this manner:

  • I created a version.txt to hold a minor number and major number property — saves the version
  • In the destfile parameter of the Jar step, I use the ${major.number} and ${minor.number} properties in the file name.
  • In the release section, I use the propertyfile command to increment the version number

Here is the full Ant Build file:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="no"?><project default="all" name="Create Runnable Jar for Project ProjectShaphan">    <target name="all" depends="clean,compile,create_run_jar"/>
<target name="clean">       <delete dir="bin"/>    </target>
<target name="compile">       <mkdir dir="bin"/>       <javac destdir="bin">          <src path="src"/>          <classpath>             <pathelement path="/home/skp/app/workspaces/pscompare/ProjectJob/demo-bin"/>          	<fileset dir="lib">          		<include name="**/*.jar"/>          	</fileset>          </classpath>       </javac>    </target>
<target name="create_run_jar">    <!--this part was created by Eclipse Runnable JAR Export Wizard-->    <!--ANT 1.7 is required                                        -->        <property file="./version.txt"/>        <jar destfile="project-shaphan-${major.number}.${minor.number}.jar" filesetmanifest="mergewithoutmain">            <manifest>                <attribute name="Built-By" value="${user.name}"/>                <attribute name="Main-Class" value="com.skp.shaphan.ShaphanApp"/>                <attribute name="Class-Path" value="."/>            </manifest>            <fileset dir="bin"/>            <zipfileset excludes="META-INF/*.SF" src="lib/derby.jar"/>            <zipfileset excludes="META-INF/*.SF" src="lib/sqljdbc4.jar"/>            <zipfileset excludes="META-INF/*.SF" src="lib/ojdbc6.jar"/>            <zipfileset excludes="META-INF/*.SF" src="lib/grouplayout.jar"/>            <zipfileset excludes="META-INF/*.SF" src="lib/iText-2.1.7.jar"/>            <zipfileset excludes="META-INF/*.SF" src="lib/iText-rtf-2.1.7.jar"/>            <zipfileset excludes="META-INF/*.SF" src="lib/iText-rups-2.1.7.jar"/>            <zipfileset excludes="META-INF/*.SF" src="lib/mysql-connector-java-5.1.7-bin.jar"/>            <zipfileset excludes="META-INF/*.SF" src="lib/ProjectJob.jar"/>            <zipfileset excludes="META-INF/*.SF" src="lib/jtds-1.2.5.jar"/>        </jar>    </target>
<target name="release">         <taskdef classname="net.bluecow.googlecode.ant.GoogleCodeUploadTask" classpath="lib/ant-googlecode-0.0.2.jar" name="gcupload"/>        <property file="./version.txt"/><gcupload         username="${google.code.username}"         password="${google.code.password}"         projectname="project-shaphan"         filename="project-shaphan-${major.number}.${minor.number}.jar"         targetfilename="project-shaphan-${major.number}.${minor.number}.jar"         summary="Runnable Jar File"        labels="Featured, Jar, OpSys-All" />        <propertyfile file="./version.txt">	   <entry key="minor.number" type="int" operation="+" value="1" pattern="00"/>        </propertyfile>    </target></project>

Sword Bible on Android

digitaleagle Google Code, Google Phone, Software to Watch, Uncategorized 1 Comment

I have been using the Sword Bible project for years, and so, it was only natural for me to ask if it exists on Android for my phone.  The short story is that a project exists at Google Code, but it doesn’t quite look like it is ready for prime time.

First, if you want to know a little more about the Sword project, you can read up on it at this Wikipedia article.  I think I first started with it when I bought a Bible program from our college bookstore.  Now, in Linux, I use a program called Xiphos, which is a Linux/Gnome frontend for the Sword Project.  The program used to be called Gnome Sword.  You can also find more information from the main Sword Website including a small list of sofware.

My first find was this post on Werx Limited.  The post mentions a project named Bishop, but that project is more of a tech test than an actual application for use.  So, I read through the whole conversation thread discussing Bishop and the development of an application.  To my delight, I hit Martin Denham’s message about his And-Bible project.

I haven’t had a chance to install it or anything.  For now, I just wanted to capture these links, but I hope to mess with it some more.  For now, I am just using Virtue Bible FE.  I will keep you updated.

Thanks CyanogenMod — My G1 Isn’t That Out of Date!

digitaleagle Google Phone, Uncategorized 1 Comment

Yea!  I have Froyo finally!  Several Co-workers had rooted their phones and were talking about it, and I thought I would take a look.  I was skeptical, but the instructions I found weren’t too bad.  It was a little scary working around all of the warnings, but the end result was a version of Android 2.2 on my HTC G1 phone.

I didn’t keep good notes of exactly what I did.  I was more concern with getting it done rather than blogging it, but basically, I started with the instructions at The Unlocker.  The AndRoot application didn’t work for me, so I ended up going to Cyanogen’s Website for the directions.  I could have probably just used the original instructions at The Unlocker even though it said they were outdated.

I did just have one issue yesterday that I noticed.  My battery was draining much faster than normal.  Ever since my battery went bad and I replaced it with a 2200mah battery, I haven’t had to worry about conserving power.  My phone could easily last two full days with no charging.  Yesterday, it died after one day of use, and I didn’t hardly do anything special.

I found this post, and it seems to have fixed the problem!  All I did was disable the notifications on the Downloads screen of the Market application.

The two new big features that I gained through all of this were the Wireless Tether and the Chrome to Phone.  Both of those features were things I had admired from Google IO.  The Wireless Tether worked with no problem.  I tested with my laptop the other night, and it worked pretty fast.  I had to configure the wireless settings like the SID and the security key.  Then, I could connect to it with Network Manager the same way I connect to my home router.  The Chrome to Phone tool worked pretty good too, but I haven’t played with it much.

In the process of reinstalling, I had to download a few new applications.  One of the areas that I found new programs was for my Guitar.  I decided to try out ChordBoard.  It is a great program, but I think I am going to have to find something else because it doesn’t have sharps or flats.  The other application is gStrings, which is a tuner that works great.  You can play a string, and it will tell you if it is in tune.

F-Spot to Shotwell

digitaleagle Photo Management, Uncategorized 3 Comments

I still haven’t upgraded to Ubuntu 10.10 yet.  I have been procrastinating, but I have been reading about the new Shotwell.  Since I have been having issues with uploading to Facebook directly from F-Spot, I thought I would give it a shot.

To, upgrade, I basically followed the directions on the Shotwell website.  It is important to use the ppa:yorba/ppa repository because that will give you the new 0.7 version with the import from F-Spot tool.

First, I was excited to see that the Facebook upload worked with no problems.  Now, it time to get our vacation pictures uploaded!

I did notice that the tag features were not near as robust in Shotwell.  I didn’t see Event tags, People tags, etc.  Most importantly, I missed the feature of F-Spot where I could drag and drop tags to search on multiple tags.   F-Spot’s searching features far surpassed Shotwell’s.

That is just a first impression.  I need to spend some more time with it to get a better feel.

Shutter Upgraded

digitaleagle Shutter, Uncategorized 1 Comment

I have been using Shutter a lot recently.  It is a great tool for sending screenshots — a picture is worth a thousand words!

This post is a little old, but it had a lot of great information in it.  After seeing it and looking on the Shutter website, I thought I should write another post on Shutter.

 

I just checked, and I have version 0.85.1 installed.  I just have the version installed from the 10.04 repository.  On 9/12/2010, they released version 0.86.4 according to this post.

So, I decided to try to upgrade.  The website has a nice instruction page to show you how.

Basically, I just ran the following commands:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:shutter/ppa
sudo apt-get update

Then, update manager popped up and offered to update Shutter.

Here are the new features or changes that this gives me:

 

The coolest part is that I learned that I can drag a screenshot from shutter and drop it into GMail.  Before, I would have to copy the filename, and then I would have to insert an image in GMail, browse, and paste the path in the browse dialog.

 

Worship Software

digitaleagle Church Software, Ubuntu, Uncategorized, Virtualization 3 Comments

I am working on coming up with an option for our church to run for their services.  We are currently using MediaShout on a Windows Laptop, but I want to try to migrate to Linux.

I thought about using Wine, but that idea doesn’t bode well with their Garbage Rating.  Another option is to run a Virtualized Machine.  VMWare has a converter that we could possibly use to move everything from the laptop to a virtual.  This post shows how to use that with Virtual Box too.  The only thing I am not sure of is about using multiple screens with it.

I found forum post with a list of other software.  AlternativeTo echos these suggestions:

I looked into OpenSong some.  One problem is that they don’t have a x64 version.  This post might have one.   Their page says it is written in RealBasic.

Lyricue was actually in the Ubuntu Repository, and I was able to install it easily.  I was able to install it, but I haven’t played with it at all.  From launchpad, it looks like it is written in C.  When I started it, it ask for a MySQL login, so it must use MySQL database.

The OpenLP looks pretty good, too.  They have a PPA archive that I could install.  I see it is written in Python and QT4.

Then, I found another option that isn’t as well publicised: ChangingSong.  It looks like it is written in Python.

Here is another called “Church Presentations“.  It is written in Java, which sounds cool to me.  They don’t have any released files though.

Here is the rest of my search on SourceForge:

Explorations in Ubuntu Unity Desktop Environment

digitaleagle Great Links, Interesting Articles, Software to Watch, Ubuntu, Uncategorized 1 Comment

I finally got my desktop in my living room working, and I thought I would try the Unity Desktop on it.  Here is a nice little article that gives you some information about it:

First Look at the Ubuntu Unity Desktop Environment

My computer is rather old, and I mistakenly thought it would be a good fit.  These descriptions threw me off: “Ubuntu Light”, “simpler Unity desktop”, and “stripped down Ubuntu”.  What I found instead is that the Light and simpler interface is designed to make it easier to work with in smaller screen environments, not necessarily light on the hardware.

Unity uses the Mutter Window Manager, which is a compositing Window Manager.  According to this article, the name comes from combining Metacity and Clutter together.  This article mentions the hardware issue: “Interesting as the new directions may be, some people fear that Mutter will not run on older hardware.”  I agree with the reasoning: “Almost any desktop or standard laptop built within the last 5 years has sufficiently good graphics.”, but that just means that it isn’t what I originally thought it was.

Now, Clutter caught my attention on a totally different angle.  “Creating fast, compelling, portable, and dynamic graphical user interfaces” sounds great to me.  Unfortunately, I didn’t see Java bindings.  On the wiki page, I only see Python, Perl, C#, C++, Vala, and Ruby.  The javascript option looked pretty interesting also.  I may have to do some experimentation with Seed.  For Java support, I found some references to jClutter, and I found someone else working on something.

Concatenating PDFs

digitaleagle Great Links, How To, Interesting Articles, Uncategorized Leave a comment

I found a great article to help me with creating the newsletter for our Sparks/AWANA club this month:

Easy way to concatenate PDF files in Ubuntu Linux

First, I had to trim off the last page of the newsletter.  I opened the PDF in Evince and printed it to a file, PDF format, pages 1-3 (not page 4).  That gave me a PDF with just the first 3 pages.

Next, I opened the orginal PDF with Gimp and imported only page 4.  That gave me a graphic of the last page, and I saved that as a PNG file.  Then, I created a new Open Office Drawing and inserted that PNG file as the background in the drawing.  (The last page of the newsletter is just an outline for you to add your own club-specific content.)  I added the news items for a our club and saved the last page as a PDF.

Finally, I used this command to build the final PDF:

gs -q -sPAPERSIZE=letter -dNOPAUSE -dBATCH -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -sOutputFile=Oct-Complete.pdf Oct-Part.pdf Oct.pdf

That was it!  Please comment if you know better ways to do this sort of thing.