Author: johnnydecode

qWordNotify 0.3.0-dev

johnnydecode, , ,

New update of my application.

Some improvements from the last release:

  • Adding user defined dictionaries; [Implemented]
  • Editing user defined dictionaries; [Implemented]
  • Removing user defined dictionaries; [Implemented]
  • Selecting application language; [Work in progress]
  • Using external libnotify on GNU/Linux systems. [Implemented]

This time no binaries. Source code available at Github HERE.

qword

qWordNotify 0.3.0-dev

Relocating Firefox profile and cache to tmpfs

johnnydecode, ,

To reduce disk IO I’m mount Firefox profile to tmpfs.

.mozilla/firefox/dj8vbpx8.default


But some time ago Mozilla developer splitted cache and profile.

.cache/mozilla/firefox/dj8vbpx8.default


So here is modified script for running Firefox:

cat bin/firefox-sync
#!/bin/sh

static=main
link=dj8vbpx8.default
volatile=/dev/shm/firefox-$USER
cache=/dev/shm/firefox-cache-$USER

IFS=
set -efu

cd ~/.mozilla/firefox

if [ ! -r $volatile ]; then
mkdir -m0700 $volatile
fi

if [ "$(readlink $link)" != "$volatile" ]; then
mv $link $static
ln -s $volatile $link
fi

if [ -e $link/.unpacked ]; then
rsync -av --delete --exclude .unpacked ./$link/ ./$static/
else
rsync -av ./$static/ ./$link/
touch $link/.unpacked
fi

cd ~/.cache/mozilla/firefox

if [ ! -r $cache ]; then
mkdir -m0700 $cache
fi

if [ "$(readlink $link)" != "$cache" ]; then
mv $link $static
ln -s $cache $link
fi

if [ -e $link/.unpacked ]; then
rsync -av --delete --exclude .unpacked ./$link/ ./$static/
else
rsync -av ./$static/ ./$link/
touch $link/.unpacked
fi


Enjoy!

Relocating Firefox profile and cache to tmpfs

Debian, radeon and vdpau

johnnydecode, , ,

Recently I encountered some warning message in terminal while playing video:

Failed to open VDPAU backend libvdpau_r600.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
[vdpau] Error when calling vdp_device_create_x11: 1


I’m use open source vide driver radeon with such videocard:

lspci | grep VGA
00:01.0 VGA compatible controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Wrestler [Radeon HD 6310]


So to fix this I downloaded from Arch Linux repos this files:

ls tmp/vdpau/ | grep pkg
ati-dri-10.2.5-1-i686.pkg.tar.xz
llvm-libs-3.4.2-1-i686.pkg.tar.xz


And extracted all libraried to lib directory:

ls tmp/vdpau/lib/
libLLVM-3.4.2.so libvdpau_r600.so libvdpau_r600.so.1.0.0
libLLVM-3.4.so libvdpau_r600.so.1


Create script with something like this:

export VDPAU_DRIVER=r600
export LIBVA_DRIVER_NAME=vdpau
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH="/home/max/tmp/vdpau/lib"


After this you will achieve working vdpau:

Starting playback...
VIDEO: 1280x720 25.000 fps 1739.2 kbps (217.4 kB/s)
VO: [vdpau] 1280x720 => 1280x720 Planar YV12
[vdpau] Got display refresh rate 59.973 Hz.
[vdpau] If that value looks wrong give the -vo vdpau:fps=X suboption manually.


Enjoy!

vdpau

Debian, radeon and vdpau

qWordNotify demo

johnnydecode

Time to show the world  my new project qWordNotify. This is improved version of wordnotify coded in Python 2.7 with Qt 4.8. In qWordNotify you can select dictionary which is just a custom written list of words, set delay between messages and start the timer so you will see popup notification messages from your list.

Features:

  • Showing messages in system tray;
  • Selecting of needed dictionary;
  • Selecting message timeout* (May be overrided by operation system settings);
  • Selecting message delay;
  • Hiding of main window to system tray;
  • Operating from icon in system tray.

To do:

  • Adding user defined dictionaries;
  • Editing user defined dictionaries;
  • Removing user defined dictionaries;
  • Selecting application language;
  • Using external libnotify on GNU/Linux systems.

Source code is open source and available on GitHub and work on Windows, GNU/Linux, Mac OSX (not tested) and FreeBSD (not tested).download
Precompiled binary package in ZIP archive can be downloaded HERE.

 

Some screenshot comparison among the platforms:

winxp_appwinxp_tray

 

 

 

 Windows XP preview

 

 

 

win7_appwin7_tray

 

 

 

 

Windows 7 preview

 

 

linux_applinux_tray

 

 

 

Ubuntu 14.04 preview

qWordNotify demo

VGA Boot modes to set screen resolution

johnnydecode, ,

A simple way to set your screen resolution and color depth for most Live Linux distro’s is via the use of the vga=parameter boot option. For example at boot you might type: Live vga=795. This would set your system to boot using the Live label with a screen resolution to 24bit 1280X1024. Here are some more examples of common vga boot values.

VGA Resolution and Color Depth reference Chart:

Depth 800×600 1024×768 1152×864 1280×1024 1600×1200
8 bit vga=771 vga=773 vga=353 vga=775 vga=796
16 bit vga=788 vga=791 vga=355 vga=794 vga=798
24 bit vga=789 vga=792 vga=795 vga=799
VGA Boot modes to set screen resolution

Solving problems with running Nethack

johnnydecode, ,

Recently I decided to play some Nethack and instead of using default repositories I downloaded package from official Nethack website.

First of all you need to unpack package to desired directory. I used my local Games:

max@vault:~$ tar xvf nethack-343-linux-X11.tgz

Then edit path to distribution in running shell script nethack:

max@vault:~/Games/nethack$ vim nethack

Change option HACKDIR:

HACKDIR=/home/max/Games/nethack/lib/nethackdir

And after all this manipulations you may run and play the game. But I encountered with an error:

max@vault:~/Games/nethack$ ./nethack
Unknown terminal type: xterm.

Solution is pretty simple:

sudo apt-get install ncurses-term
sudo ln -s /lib/terminfo/x/xterm /usr/share/terminfo/x/xterm

For me, ncurses-term was already installed and configured, so creating a symbolic link for xterm in second line does the trick.

Now time  to enjoy a bit of dungeon crawling!

hethack

Solving problems with running Nethack

Borderless windows for xfwm4

johnnydecode, , ,

I’m still planning to use Awesome WM with my XFCE environment, but I have to spend a lot of time to configure it for my needs.
So, as a temporary solution, I installed pytyle to achieve accepting tiling. And the best way to get rid of the unneeded anymore window borders is to follow this instructions:

mkdir -p /usr/share/themes/empty/xfwm4/
touch /usr/share/themes/empty/xfwm4/themerc

You can see result below:

tile[1]

Borderless windows for xfwm4