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Spotify, Aargh

24 Mar, 2012
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So,
I go back in the day, there's a post around here on OiNK going down due to copyright courts.

Recently, I'm in an office where I don't have access to my own music library, meaning no downloads, only streaming services. Since Google Music ( Or whatever they call it this week, Google Play Music I think?) is unavailable in my country, thanks-a-lot, and WiMP requires the discontinued Adobe Air leaving me with Spotify for my daily needs.

And some days it is a complete act of frustration.

To start with, something simple, the lack of music. Artists such as "Godspeed You! Black Emperor" are nowhere to be found. Along with a lot of others.

Then there comes the ephemeral feeling of things. I had a "Grawwl" playlist, featuring Novembre and Eluveitie. Now, what happens? Both the albums I had in this playlist has disappeared. Not _all_ the albums by the bands, just some.

What sense this makes? No clue.

Even more annoying, when you search for them, and the albums you had in lists, are there. It's just managed to disappear from your playlists.

Next up, we have the completely -broken- metadata. Deep Purple's "Burn" Is appearantly from 2005. And the anniversary edition from 2004. Oh, right, three songs are missing from the first of those. Their first album ( "Shades of Deep Purple", 1968 ) came out in 2003, a year without any re-release of that album according to Discogs.com

Then we have the Live pollution. There is absolutely no separation of live albums from studio albums, and while I guess some live recordings really are better than a bands studio albums, I generally try to separate the two. Especially when I'm looking for a certain song.

Then we can complain further on how _utterly horrible_ it is to hit artist collisions. Things like ISIS get a horrible mixture of things. Click around a bit on spotify and find a mix or R'n'B/Hip Hop artists with the Post Rock that I was looking for. Jarring and disturbing for all the wrong reasons.

Then we come to the classical music. Oh my fucking god, Is Beethoven an artist or a composer? What, you can't search for composers? Oh right, which orchestra/Director/Solist was it on that Bach sonata? Azerbaijan symphonic tincan orchestra?

No separation, improper tagging, no way of following it up, and a bad selection.

Then we can add certain things like "no-gap recordings" and audio quality. Well, they simply don't deal with no-gap recordings properly at all, Dream Theater - Awakeis a typical example. The Mirror that turns into Lie? Right, it's missing the beats.

So. Poor selection, worse tags than even the _pirates_ have, and an annoying UI where you can't even copy an artist's name and put into a chat message?

Right, of course. I forgot to mention. Low quality album art.

So, overall. It's a frustrating thing. It feels ephemeral, you can't trust it.

Converting Fedora 16 from i686 to x86_64

22 Mar, 2012
1 Comment

So,
After a piece of hardware melting down on me, it turned out to be time to upgrade to 64bit distribution on one of my machines that had previously been on 32bit.

Crazy that I am, I decided to try and do it on the fly rather than get a USB stick and sorting it out. These are some of my notes from that.

First, it's time to clean out your machine. Make sure that
yum check
as well as
yum distro-sync
are clean and working satisfyingly, this should have your machine up to the same set that the official mirrors are.
( Also, clean out any packages you don't use, the less you have to work with, the easier the next steps are)

After this, grab a current kernel from the upgrades repo of the x86_64 branch.
A check of `/etc/yum.repos.d/fedora-updates.repo` and you'll see :
#baseurl=http://download.fedoraproject.org/pub/fedora/linux/updates/$releasever/$basearch/
download the kernel, and install it: `rpm -Uvh --ignorearch kernel*.x86_64*rpm`

Now reboot into your new kernel and see that things work. Yey.

Time to get a list of installed programs, and sort things out a bit more.
install the `yum-downloadonly plugin` for yum.
Then run `rpm -qa --qf '%{name}.%{arch}\n' |grep -E '\.i.86' |sed s/i.86/x86_64/g >rpmlist.txt`

then it's time to download the packages (this will take some time)
yum --downloadonly --downloaddir=$SOMEPLACEWITHSPACE install $(cat rpmlist.txt)

After this, it's a huge slew of rpm upgrade packages to be done:
rpm -Uvh *rpm --replacepkgs --replacefiles --ignorearch

This churned on for a while, then hung with a db4 compat issue. removing the __db.00* files in /var/lib/rpm and doing an rpm --rebuilddb seems to have fixed that database without complications.
After this, I tested, went down into runlevel 1 ( Probably should have done this before doing the mass upgrade. It seems like a saner thing to do ) and started some commands, verified that things looked okay. Then rebooted it all to make sure.

Success.

Medieval Faire / Bohus Fästning

28 Jul, 2011
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So, This last weekend was a bit of a stressed out mess for me, life does that sometimes. This time, I was traveling to visit the Medevial Days in Bohus Fästning which turned out to be a lovely affair, really.

Now, not all was sunshine and roses. One of the first exhibits you see is something that's so far from Medieval as it can be, and I'm not talking about the modern stage with lights and sound equipment, I'll gladly give that a pass. No, I'm talking about a Russian nunnery ( of one of the Orthodox schools ) selling icons of the virgin, wooden painted pictures of Jesus (Without the Mary Chain, too), Matryoshka dolls and so on. Pity, but it's not my sake to say they can't be there.


The rest of the fair was the usual crowds, mixture of spectator sports, musicians, bands, peddlers and dressup party. However, due to a slight issue with the Swedish climate, most of it was lightly enjoyed in the falling rain. Not just falling, but rather "sky torn apart" style. Decimeters of water flooding the area, pools appearing where none are supposed to be. The usual, really.

But, wool keeps you warm, and there's always a lovely underground area. So, the fair went on and was enjoyed. And I heard that the other days had more luck with the weather.

I'm not quite surprised.


And yes, I spent hours listening to music in a damp underground cellar of a Medieval castle. What did you do?

Hatred, Rage and Politics

25 Jul, 2011
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So far I have had my share of both hatred and blind, overpowering rage throughout my life.

I'll be the first to admit that on many mornings, evenings and days, I've longed for the destruction of all bipedal life on the planet. Innocence be damned, nothing be spared.

This anger has been directed towards the state of the world in general, what we are doing as a species, and the way we treat everything around us, from items to animals and people. However, my anger and rage is undefined. There isn't a political target, there isn't any opponent, there isn't a fear of losing my way of life due to intrusion into my privacy by the existence of people who do not think like me.

I do not fear a person in a veil, nor do I fear their hair colour or the fact that I do not understand their language or culture. However, I fear others, because of their anger and fear. I'm afraid of the people who are hiding, who feel so uncertain that they must stand up and fight against something. I fear the people who want to chase others away, because they in themselves are afraid. I fear the people who wish to deny others peace, because their peace of body intrudes on someones peace of mind.

I fear the people who wish to bear arms because their lack of knowledge and acceptance is questioned. I fear the people who urge _others_ to kill those who think differently. I fear the state of mind that seclusion brings, the way it renders it acceptable to use violence to prove a point. I fear those people who are so uncertain of themselves, that they cannot tolerate someone who speaks against them to live.

This level of ignorance makes me rage, a blind, consuming hatred of the people who enable this, of the people who refuse to sit down and breathe, who turn inwards into circles that only strengthen their own fear. It makes me fear for myself, my own safety and privacy, it makes me wish to bear arms against them.

It risks turning me into them.

I hate the people who preach such things, be they politicians who do it for the sake of the children or the old, or preachers of a religion, preachers that teach fear because they are in unknown territory, fleeing from Terror only to bring it to others.

I abhor this behavior in people, this blind, consuming stupidity that makes think that acting out on this fear will bring success.

It will only bring retaliation and fear, it will only sow distrust amongst others, and it will not make them join you. It will make them step aside, be separate and afraid, seek to like minded, scared people for comfort. It will make them want to bear arms against the other, secular and inhibited, fearful and angry people.

I hate them all.

And I'm one of them.

This is why I'm so upset right now, that even more are stepping into the comfortable circles of fear, distrust and anger. That more people want to bring retaliation and anger.

And this is why I'm so relieved that there are voices of sanity and compassion speaking up around this situation in Norway. That people are taking a marked step not to be consumed by Terror and rage, not to step into the circles drawn out before them. That they are taking the moment to breathe and point at the social trap in front of them, the knowledge that the seemingly senseless violence amongst them was in fact, not Senseless.

It was carefully planned, it was bait. Horrible bait, for people to step into a trap of anger and distrust. To step into the line of aggressors and prosecutors. To bring their own fear and anger towards others. To lead a nation, and a continent, into the tight circles of fearful terror, of seething rage and distrust.

Now, I just hope that they will find their way out of this horrible trap, without causing themselves more suffering.

An experiment in Vertical Hydroponics

12 Jun, 2011
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So,
Some time ago I found a video about Hydroponic systems again, this time it was about small-scale "for window" installations of horizontal sets of pipes, with a tank, regulator and pump system. This got me thinking about space and my balcony, and I started researching into Horizontal systems, rather than vertical.

There's a few out there, most are really rudimentary (plastic bottles) or rather large scale, but I didn't find much documenting if they work or not, and how well they work and not. So I set a budget, and started to plan the project proper.

First my idea was to use a single, 2m tall, 100mm diameter PVC pipe, and drill holes into it, inserting small pots for the plants. After checking the basic math that told me that I'd have approximately 160 litres of volume in such a pipe, along with how much work I'd have to be doing to cut the holes, I went another route.

A bit more expensive route, with Y-shaped 75mm pipes ( and 45mm outliers) of gray PVC. I bought nine of those, and a 1m long 75mm pipe, to go with that, I got a barrel (60 litres) and a lid.

In the bottom of the barrel, I put some thoroughly cleaned ( and boiled) stones, in order to make it a bit heavier.

For the water flow, I went with a very simple pentry-pump for boats/freshwater tanks (7.5 litres/minute, 12Volt, 2 ampere, meaning around 24watt).

Filling: I used a mix of Leca ( for the main pipe) and Perlite (for the small outliers). From the beginning I was going to use coconut shreds, but I couldn't find any locally, so Leca it was.

Note here, that the Leca I got I had to rinse quite a few times in order to get the dust off. Much of it was quite messy, and would have killed my little pump in no-time. I'm still not sure how long that pump will live, but that is something for the future to tell.

So, after fitting the hole of the 1m pipe into the lid, I sealed it with silicone (for aquarium use, not wetroom use. )

In the bottom of the pipe, I cut a few openings in order to let water flow through. It turns out that these were not wide enough in practice, and when I turned on the pump, water would fill the pipe up to the middle, and overflow. This was solved by taking the whole thing apart, pulling it up and drilling holes into the bottom pipe to let more water through. Not a fun thing, and no pictures were taken then, as I was already getting very wet.

The water flow turned out to be too much anyhow (7.5 litres/minute is a lot, it turns out) so instead of driving it at 12V, I'm running it at 5-7 volts of power, causing a much more manageable water flow. Also, it turns out that the layer of perlite I was using for the small pipes flowed down into the main pipe, expanded in the water, and made water throughput low enough that I had water running everywhere when I was pumping full speed.

Right now, the hose from the bottom to the top is fastened with rubber-bands and tape, I figure something more long term may be needed. I also added a cloth filter to the top to avoid too much junk to fall in there.

Currently, the system is running on a timer to stimulate ebb/flow control, but I have yet to figure out how to do it, so right now its 2 hours on, 1 off during the day, and 15 minutes on/ 2 off during the night. If this turns out to be wrong, well, shan't be too hard to fix.

Now? My seedlings aren't quite done yet, so I have a hard time planting anything in this, until then, I'll have to see how this goes. The plan is to use easy herbs/salad this year, and maybe strawberries in the future.

Oh. And I need to get PH Measurements as well. yey.

Vattenkrig - Water War

08 Jun, 2011
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So,
Out of the blue I'm reminded ( On Facebook of all places ) that there's an attempt to break the world record in Water Warfare in Linköping this afternoon.

As is my habit, I didn't have much photography equipment with me, and my camera sure isn't either waterproof nor environmentally sealed like the more expensive ones are. So, off to the kitchen with me, grabbing a few freezer bags, some rubber bands and wrapping my camera in a layer of plastic.

Unfortunately, plastic freezer bags aren't quite the best if you want to _see_ the pictures, so most of the images turned out to be randomly bad, over/under exposed or just generally bland.

However, I picked out around a hundred decent-ish pictures of the water war, not all elected because they are great pictures, but more because they capture the mood. Most of them are soft and slightly out of focus, however a few turned out to be quite wonderful.

And did I need the plastic? Yes.. Yes I did.

Software updates..

05 Jun, 2011
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Well, new version of Habari installed, and now for a kernel upgrade and reboot. Everything appears to be dandy though. This is mostly a test post to verify that everything still works.

Quck Gnome-shell replies

31 May, 2011
1 Comment

Just a reply to Alex Deucher since his comments section is disabled and there's no contact info on his page:
( Hint, if you need to register with his wordpress to leave comments, and he has registration turned off, but comments enabled, that means it sucks and I really dislike it. Please stop that kind of thing, it's really annoying.)

1: Multiple instances. ctrl-click to launch a new instance.

2: Restart/shutdown/hibernate: Either alt-click the menu, or use the Gnome Shell Exensions to bring it back:

3: Suspend on lid events: Gnome Tweak Tool has that, in "Shell" section.

4: Minimize controls: either use gconftool-2 -s -t string /desktop/gnome/shell/windows/button_layout ":minimize,maximize,close" or similar, or use Gnome Tweak Tool to do it in a ui.

5: Fastest way is to use type-ahead find. It works on parts of words, works on application names as well as binary names. Super-na-return will give you a nautilus instance, for example.

6: No. Top bar is in gnome-shell reserved for that. You could write an extension for it, but most just pin them to the left hand launchbar.

8: Solved with a : gconftool-2 --type string --set /apps/metacity/general/focus_mode sloppy .

10: a simple javascript can solve that. not shipped by default, but Here is one, for example

11: to be announced. Simply not implemented yet. Saw a few but they were a tad too buggy for release.

Gnome 3.0, finally released

07 Apr, 2011
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So, there are lots of things to be said about Gnome 3.0. A lot of cruft was removed everywhere inthe stack, several applications gained massive UI changes, (Still not sold on the navigation arrows placement in the file manager, but that's me).
The most "in your face" change is the shell, which will polarise a lot of discussion, opinion and people. Looking forwards to it. It does rehaul something that has been static and comfortable for a long long time, in the process of changing that, several things went missing or were not reimplemented in the same way.
Both for good and for worse, I'd say.

I'm looking forwards to seeing where this goes. It's a change, and change is never all easy.

I am GNOME

Some (Software Related) reading

19 Mar, 2011
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Some weeks ago A guy asked me about books on twitter, what followed was some hours digging through memory lanes of books I'd read, enjoyed, used in school and on libraries, and turned into a list of books that I want to restock shelves with:
These aren't the "Become a better C programmer" books out there, but deal with generic and generally applicable themes of the craft, art and science of programming.

Amazon Wishlist for these

Design





Programming

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