Coding My Thoughts

December 2008
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11 11 08

$entry->title('Book meme');

$entry->categorize('General, Ubuntu'); | $entry->author('mariano.iglesias'); | $post->words(66);

Picking up the meme from jono and matthew, here's my meme:

"a state of emergency became the rule" - The Dachau Concentration Camp, 1933 to 1945

Grab the nearest book.
Open it to page 56.
Find the fifth sentence.
Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.
Don’t dig for your favorite book, the cool book, or the intellectual one: pick the CLOSEST.

$post->read(); | $feedbacks->show(1); | $post->views(6433);

08 29 08

$entry->title('MySQL update puts my box to test');

$entry->categorize('Programming, Ubuntu'); | $entry->author('mariano.iglesias'); | $post->words(32);

Wanna test your box performance, both its hard disk and memory? Try setting up a +370 table database, and then build a huge MySQL update file. Run it and get something like this:

$post->read(); | $feedbacks->show(7); | $post->views(26539);

08 11 08

$entry->title('Firefox is a hungry mother!');

$entry->categorize('Linux, Ubuntu'); | $entry->author('mariano.iglesias'); | $post->words(145);

Here I'm working with my humble Dual Processor, 2 GB RAM running Ubuntu 8.04.1, AMD64 edition. I was talking to a colleague / friend of mine and he told me that he (with his 7 GB RAM on a Mac OS) has his firefox eating some 750 MB. So I decided to see how much memory was firefox eating on my box. I run this command:

Code:

ps -C "firefox" -o pid=,vsz=,rss= | awk '{ printf "PID: %d, Virtual: %-.2f MB, Resources: %-.2f MB\n", $1, $2 / 1024, $3 / 1024 }'

And I got:

Code:

PID: 6223, Virtual: 778.06 MB, Resources: 403.70 MB

And I had just a couple of tabs open. So I said, ok, let's start fresh. Here's the same command with a firefox with just an about:blank, having just started up:

Code:

PID: 9139, Virtual: 462.02 MB, Resources: 56.34 MB

Nice to see resources drop, but Virtual is still at over 450 MB. Why oh why are you so hungry, dear firefox?

$post->read(); | $feedbacks->show(7); | $post->views(9089);

07 16 08

$entry->title('My top 10 commands for July, 2008');

$entry->categorize('Ubuntu'); | $entry->author('mariano.iglesias'); | $post->words(103);

Taking inspiration from earobinson's top commands, I've decided to publish my own list of top 10 commands. Running the following command:

Code:

history | awk '{a[$2]++ } END{for(i in a){print a[i] " " i}}' | sort -rn | head

Brings the following list of top 10 commands:

Code:

ls
sudo
cd
httperf
exit
svn
mysql
ssh
chmod
./amreg-vpn.sh

Only custom script there is amreg-vpn.sh, which looks like the following:

Code:

if [ "$1" == "" ]
then
  echo "Usage: $0 <start | stop>"
else
  case $1 in
  start)
    echo "Starting VPN..."
    sudo vpnc /etc/vpnc/amreg.conf --natt-mode natt --dpd-idle 0
  ;;
  stop)
    echo "Stopping VPN..."
    sudo vpnc-disconnect
  ;;
  *)
    echo "Usage: $0 <start | stop>"
  ;;
  esac
fi

$post->read(); | $feedbacks->add(); | $post->views(1299);

07 07 08

$entry->title('Wine rocks my world');

$entry->categorize('Ubuntu'); | $entry->author('mariano.iglesias'); | $post->words(116);

Ubuntu is probably the best Linux distribution out there, but sometimes you need to use software that's only available on Windows. What do you do? Give Wine a chance. As its website states, Wine is a free implementation of Windows on Unix. Installation on Ubuntu is pretty straight forward, so you should not have problems installing it.

The above screenshot shows Wincachegrind working through Wine. Eventhough there's a KDE version (haven't looked for GNOME, which I run), I really needed the Windows version as it offers far more information than its Linux counterparts. With Wine, I installed the package with no problems, and I'm now using it as if it was a native Linux application. Awesome!

$post->read(); | $feedbacks->show(3); | $post->views(2786);

07 01 08

$entry->title('Transparent Pidgin chat windows');

$entry->categorize('Ubuntu'); | $entry->author('mariano.iglesias'); | $post->words(202);

If you have Ubuntu with the Compiz effects enabled, it's pretty easy to control which application windows you want with some transparency. On this post I'll show you how to set your Pidgin windows with a 90% opacity. Go to the Compiz settings manager by clicking System -> Preferences -> Advanced Desktop Effects Settings. On the window that shows up, click on the General category at the left category list, and then click on the General Options button at the right. Select the Opacity Settings tab. A screen similar to the following will appear:

We will create an Opacity setting for windows that match a certain condition. Click on the button New shown right below the Window Opacities list, and enter the following details for each shown field, and then click the Close button:

Opacity windows: class=Pidgin & !title=Buddy List
Opacity window values: 90

We've just specified that we want 90% opacity for all windows that have "Pidgin" at its class, but do not have "Buddy List" as a title. As you see, this procedure is not limited to Pidgin windows, so you can learn from the windows matching rules to apply different settings to different windows.

Thanks to Ryan for this post.

$post->read(); | $feedbacks->add(); | $post->views(2986);

06 30 08

$entry->title('Show what music you are playing on Pidgin');

$entry->categorize('Ubuntu'); | $entry->author('mariano.iglesias'); | $post->words(143);

So you want the world to know what cool tunes you are currently listening to on your Ubuntu? Well, perhaps not the whole world, but at least your IM contacts. First thing you need is to be using Pidgin, and your favorite music player (I use Rhythmbox), since we will install a plugin to link our music player to our messenger. Open the Synaptic Package Manager (System -> Administration -> Synaptic Package Manager), click the button Search, and enter "pidgin-musictracker". Right click on the available package (it should be just one), and select "Mark for Installation". Click Apply.

If you are already running Pidgin, restart it. Once it has started, click on the Tools menu, option Plugins. Look for "MusicTracker". Enable it by clicking on the checkbox. You can optionally select it and click on Configure Plugin to have more fun. That's it!

$post->read(); | $feedbacks->add(); | $post->views(1777);

06 27 08

$entry->title('My desktop: Windows XP on Ubuntu through VMWare');

$entry->categorize('Linux, Ubuntu'); | $entry->author('mariano.iglesias'); | $post->words(82);

Since I normally need to test different applications (almost all of them built with CakePHP) to make sure they work on different browsers (including IE7), I've recently installed VMWare over my Ubuntu Hardy to use Windows XP. This is how my desktop looks like when running it (click on the image to get the larger version):

You can see the excellent htop command showing that for some reason at that precise moment my Processor #1 was at 100% while Processor #2 was resting at a 15% :)

$post->read(); | $feedbacks->show(4); | $post->views(2248);

	`66 ls`
	`40 sudo`
	`37 cd`
	`36 httperf`
	`36 exit`
	`31 svn`
	`18 mysql`
	`17 ssh`
	`17 chmod`
	`15 ./amreg-vpn.sh`

	`if [ "$1" == "" ]`
	`then`
	`echo "Usage: $0 <start \| stop>"`
	`else`
	`case $1 in`
	`start)`
	`echo "Starting VPN..."`
	`sudo vpnc /etc/vpnc/amreg.conf --natt-mode natt --dpd-idle 0`
	`;;`
	`stop)`
	`echo "Stopping VPN..."`
	`sudo vpnc-disconnect`
	`;;`
	`*)`
	`echo "Usage: $0 <start \| stop>"`
	`;;`
	`esac`
	`fi`