Ubuntu self support

A very large part of my friends which I have convinced to move to Ubuntu evidently ask me several questions whenever something bad happens to their OS. I sometimes know what to do, but most of the time I know where to search for the answer, just as they know how to google for errors when they are in Windows, however this process seems to be forgotten when any new OS, phone, car, TV or general device is taken into account. While I am not really bothered by these questions (as i generally like to help, and they don't come very often), I feel the need to make a list of really good places to get help.

Websites

• Google of course, I should not have to mention this, but people seem to forget.
• Ubuntuforums if the question hasn't been asked here, than you're probably the first to experience the problem
• Ubuntuguide this is an amazing wiki with short guides for installing Ubuntu and a large array of common applications. Common applications range from some games, ebook readers, text editors, web browsers, IM clients to server applications, virtual machines, software development tools, web publishing and many others. It's mostly composed of links to the original program instalation guide, but it also has instructions for several of the apps described there. Great place to start when looking for something new.
• help.ubuntu.com is another large help database, but I've only used it when google links directed me here.

Local support

• Manuals. I mean really RTFM!!! Want to know how to copy folders? man cp... se what that -r does... it's not that hard people, well made manuals are the source of happiness, even 200 page ones. I'm not telling you to waste your time reading 200 page manuals, but they have a Table of Contents for goodness sake when they are that big. And usually come in HTML or RTF or some smart format when they are that big.
• Help / F1, same as manuals, sometimes that is the manual.

Live support

• IRC. People think it's outdated or something, but IRC's are still one of the best communicating tools out there. Freenode.net is probably the best server out there for computer related help ( irc.freenode.net/7000 ). There are channels for loads of common programs and OSes, but right now we are obviously interested in #ubuntu. For my Romanian pals out there, there's also #ubuntu-ro.
• Ask the forums. Even if you find a solution before someone answers, it might help someone else with the same problem.
• Ask people you know. You should do this after searching websites, local help and IRC's, because those places are dedicated to help you and the friend you're looking for might not be there.

What to do when all things fail?

• Well, there's a saying out there in IT support: "Have you tried turning it off and on again?". Like I mean it.

I hope someone finds this useful (especially the links up there) and most of it can be applied to a very large variety of problems. Like XKCD said, we don't know everything... this is what we usually do.

Enjoy, everyone.

Stuff I will use - LyX and LaTeX

A few hours ago, I discovered the future (and past...) of awesome document editing. Right now I'm in the process of saying goodbye to both Microsoft Office and Open Office.org for something which in my opinion is way better.

LaTeX

LaTeX is a document preparation system. It is a format whose purpose is to give the author a WYSIWYM (What you see is what you mean) way of doing things instead of WYSIWYG (What you see is what you get). Most document editors (like Ms Office and Open Office) go for the other method and require you actually format documents instead of writing them. LaTeX allows you to focus on writing the contents of your document and organize it with common items like images, chapters, sections, subsections, lists, tables, equations and loads more. These are then processed by the editor and are arranged at the end without disturbing the author in the process of his work.

LyX

LyX is the user friendly version of LaTeX. When writing LaTeX documents, you're pretty much writing code, because you have to add certain parameters before paragraphs and such. LyX is not quite LaTeX, there are few features that each system has that the other one doesn't, but they are almost identical in concept and internal format (as far as I know). LyX brings the power of LaTeX to a GUI and even with some differences in format, it also allows you to type LaTeX directives.

What is soooo cool about the system? This is what I find amazing until now, and I expect the list to grow:

• Chapter, Section, Subsection, Subsubsection, Paragraph, Subparagraph system is awesom. It automatically numbers them even if one part is deleted or moved, it automatically creates a Table of Contents which can be added in the document and so on. (You can also add unnumbered sections).
• Consistency in format. I am always bothered with choosing fonts and stuff in Office editors, here everything is simple and there are few common formats that make sense (Enchanced text, Code...).
• Labels and references. You can add a label to a section for example, and refer to it somewhere, where it will print the section number, the page on which it is and so on, even if these move. There are similar labels for Biographical references and so on.
• Notes. You can add notes, and these will not be printed and can be collapsed while editing
• Footnotes. These will be placed at the bottom of the page and can be collapsed like notes.
• Index entries. You know those large indexes at the end of the book? You just add an index entry somewhere in the text with a keyword and if an index is added at the end of the book it will contain this entry with a reference to the page.
• Designed for PDF and DVI formats which are both device independent (and way more professional that god forsaken .doc's - people... please never use .doc's, at least export the PDF).
• Math expressions. That's actually the best thing LaTeX is known for. I've seen several formulas online in LaTeX format and at first I thought that's all it does.

Now you might think "Hey, I want deeper control in the format of my documents". Well there's two very good answers to this:

1. No, you don't. There are so many different document types and formats here for articles, reports, books, letters, math articles, science reports and so on and all of them are standardized.
2. If you still don't like it, well everything is still customizable, so make it the way you want

This has been my best recent discovery and has changed my perspective of what a document editor is supposed to do. I still have to get around a bit with more advanced features but right now it seems Open Office.org is getting kicked out. LyX is also cross-platform and open source (big pluses here).

Enjoy everyone.

Stuff I use - Grooveshark

Before I start talking about Grooveshark, "Stuff I use" will be a category of posts where I intend to describe programs, websites, services... that I have used for some time now and have become an active part of my life.

Grooveshark


Grooveshark is by far the best music streaming service I know out there. Better than Last.fm, better than radio stations. Why?

• It's free (no account required).
• It's does not have geographical restrictions (at least not for Romania, never bothered to check if it works anywhere else).
• Library is updated by users (that means you can find basically ANY song... but sometimes the metadata is a bit off)
• You can play any song, anytime and even seek to any position in the song.
• You have a play queue which can have 200 (I'm not sure about the number, I might be WAY of, this I read in the FAQs and I'm not sure it related to this) which you can play in order, shuffled, repeat none, all or 1 song, and even add cross fade. It's your active playlist.
• You can go into Radio mode, which gives random songs that resemble what is currently in your play queue (like Last.fm does) or you can tune into preset genre radio stations.

Now I don't know details, but everyone there, every FAQ and every forum assures me it's legal even if users upload the music, which is awesome. But that feature list I said up there only scratches the surface. There are also free accounts which add even more great stuff.

• Personal library and Favorites section (5000 songs in library and 500 favorites for free accounts). This can be extended to 10 times the number for VIP accounts (3$ a month - 30$ a year).
• Keep track of user generated playlists. I have no idea how many one can have or how many songs can one contain, but the songs in those playlists don't have to be saved to the library.
• Create songs widgets that can be embedded on any website. (This could be available without an account, I'm not sure).
• Create playlist widgets the same way.
• Social features like friends and stuff.

The only thing I find it lacks is keyboard shortcuts. At least I don't know them. There are shortcuts for the downloadable app which runs on Adobe AIR (cross platform pluses : D) but it's for VIPs only : (.

The website is really too cool for music fans. Here's one of those widgets with a cool song I discovered last night.

Enjoy everyone, and have fun listening.

Thought computing

A few hours ago TED published a talk about a headset that can read your brainwaves and interpret them. At first I was VERY skeptical about the headset, but they've brought it on camera and showed a demonstration using a blank profile (everyone thinks a bit differently, and a profile has to be created for each user). The user was faced with a box and he has the job to move it around in space. It took 8 seconds for the system to learn each "command" the user was about to do. They first demonstrated pulling the box towards the screen and then a more difficult task of vanishing the box. They said this was more challenging because the user has no real life reference to imagine a box fading away.

After the demonstration ended, they showed a video with possible applications some of which where just awesome: levitating objects in games, changing game colors to fit your mood and enhance the experience, controlling your wheelchair and some simple applications like turning off the lights and closing the curtains.

This technology seems to be more like a proof of concept than a product. It works on a small number of commands, but as the pool grows it's bound to get buggy just like voice recognition does. Moreover, this project should be used as a centralized control system so that you can use it's input for basically any device in you own (computer, air conditioning, TV, lights, car, gaming consoles...).

If we already have such devices around it makes one wonder what will come out of the labs in 10 years time. I'll leave you with the video to enjoy the full talk.

The file transfer problem

I've been having file transfer problems ever since I've migrated to Linux because I generally have to send files to people I chat with and those idiots at Yahoo don't want to make a god damn client which works properly on this OS (Linux is not to blame for heaven's sake...).

Over the years I kept finding several web sites and services that helped deal with this situation. However imperfect some may be, I will list as many as I can remember here and further add new ones from comments (if any).

Text / Documents transfers

• Pastebin - Best thing ever.
• Allows unlimited and anonymous plain text sharing.
• Provides syntax highlighting.
• There's also a few more settings you can change like post expiration or visibility, but even without them it's the one and only service I need.
• There is also a Linux program pastebinit which allows sending text files to sites like pastebin (there are more than one obviously) from the command line.
• IdeOne - Similar to Pastebin, but it's made for code snippets.
• It actually compiles and runs the code besides letting you share it.
• It supports about 40 languages ranging from C, Java, Python, Ruby... to obscure languages like Brainf**k and whitespace. Doesn't work with LOLCODE : ( at least not yet.
• Google Docs - Document sharing.
• Keeps track of your documents and allows you to show them to anyone you wish.
• Allows collaboration editing. More than one person may edit the same document at one time.
• As far as I can remember, you can upload random files as well, but I think there's a 1 GB limit.

Image transfers

• Imgur - My personal favorite. 
• It allows unregistered uploads (and gives a deletion link for the first time the image is viewed so you can remove it). 
• You can make unregistered albums (but can only upload one image at a time), and I don't know if you can edit it later on. 
• You can make a free account which keeps track of your images and albums and allows bulk uploads as well.
• There is also a set of free tools and extensions for the site.
• Imageshack - Similar to Imgur, but as far as I know more restrictive for unregistered users. I don't like it that much though.
• Picasa - The Google variant.
• Gives you 1 GB of space for your image albums and gives several features for your albums.

Single files

• Jetbytes - Just select a file and it will generate a one time valid link. One must only send that link to anyone and he/she will start downloading. It's that simple.
• FilesOverMiles - Same as Jetbytes, but the link is valid for more than one download as long as the uploader keeps his browser open.
• [Edit] MegaUpload - Free 1GB uploads.
• I've just discovered how powerful this site can be when asking for pictures from people who have no idea that torrents are.
• It allows free uploads even without an account.
• Bugs you with ads and wait timers (but that's ok sometimes).
• Allows resuming interrupted downloads with a free account.
• Allows organizing files into folders for free accounts.
• Your files will be deleted if not downloaded for 3 months.

Multiple files

• Archive them! - I mean seriously, even when Pidgin transfer works I have to accept each file individually. That's what archiving is for dammit.
• Emails - Good ol' email never let me down.
• Emails are the most basic and brilliant way for sending data.
• The problem: size limits which differ from provider to provider, and is generally 10 or 25 MB.
• Drop.io - The 100 MB dream.
• You can upload any number of files of any type.
• You can preview several of them online.
• You can group, sort, search through and download any number of them.
• You can password drops and have administrator and guest passwords (no users involved).
• You can have any number of 100 MB drops.
• There is also a paid version for more space / drop, but I never bothered to get details.
• Torrents - the master of all file transfers.
• Everyone knows how torrents work, but few people realize how powerful they are and how they can be used for casual transfers. You can obviously send limitless data.
• Torrents require a tracker to work so this might appear as a problem at first, but a couple minutes of googling brought me to http://openbittorrent.com/ a free tracker perfect for casual transfers. Very simple instructions of how to use it are found on their site.

I hope this list might be useful to anyone having problems sending stuff by messenger (not a very reliable service...) and I will update this list as I find new or better ways of sending stuff.

LOLCODE

HAI everyone!
I've been stumbling this morning and found a really cool programming language called LOLCODE. I have no idea what compilers are out there, but the syntax is brilliant and I just had to show it to you guys. I will talk about some aspects in this post, but for full specs vizit http://lolcode.com/specs/1.2 .

LOLCODE FILZ !!1
All LOLCODE source files begin with HAI and end with KTHXBYE. = ))
All commands are placed on separate lines, or separated by a comma ",".

COMENTZ !!1
Single line comments are marked by the BTW keyword.
BTW this is a comment.

Multi line comments are marked between OBTW and TLDR (which i just found out means Too Long, Don't Read).
OBTW this is a very long
and boooooring comment
so skip it 
TLDR


VARIABLZ !!1
Variables must start with a letter and are case sensitive, though most people make everything capitalized just for fun. Variables are declared with I HAZ A, initialized with ITZ and assigned with R.
I HAZ A VAR        BTW VAR is null and untyped (or NOOB)
I HAZ A DOG ITZ 4  BTW DOG is 4 and of type NUMBR
VAR R "THREE"      BTW now VAR is "THREE" and of type YARN
VAR R 4.3          BTW now VAR is 4.3 and of type NUMBAR


VARIABL TAIPZ !!1
As you probably figured, untyped variables are NOOB (can ony be interpreted as a boolean false), integers are NUMBR, floats are NUMBAR and strings are YARN. There's also a boolean type called TROOF and can be WIN (true) or FAIL (false).


INPUTZ/OUTPUTZ !!1
Printing is done with the keyword VISIBLE, INVISIBLE prints to stderr (errors...) and input is handled with GIMMEH.

IFZ !!1
The if keyword O RLY? is placed after the expression checked and than you have YA RLY for the true part and NO WAI for the false part. YA RLY is closed by the NO WAI block, and the NO WAI block is cloed by OIC.
BOTH SAEM ANIMAL AN "CAT", O RLY?    BTW WIN if ANIMAL == "CAT"
    YA RLY, VISIBLE "JOO HAZ A CAT"
    NO WAI, VISIBLE "JOO SUX"
OIC


LUPZ !!1
Loops are started by IM IN YR <label> keyword and ended by IM OUTTA YR <label> keyword. This is by default an infinite loop and has to be ended by GTFO keyword = )). There is a more complex way to write a loop. See their site details. The <label> has to be the same for a loop, but i'm not sure if it's used any other way.

FUNCTIONZ !!1
Functions are defined with HOW DUZ I <function name> [YR <argument1> AN YR <argument2> AN YR <argument3> ...] and ended with IF U SAY SO. If the function returns something it can return a variable with the FOUND UR keyword or a NOOB with the obvious GTFO keyword.


Well that about all I planed to say about LOLCODE. Hope you had fun reading this and if you ever try coding in this language and make some trivial code that looks funny you're free to leave a comment with it.


Enjoy everyone!
KTHXBYE
         

Yes, we're getting cool games on Linux

Valve has announced they will be releasing a Linux version of their Steam content delivery platform and Source Engine. That's epic news for every Linux gamer out there, and every windows user not giving up because of games. There's not really much to discus about the subject, but here's the original post for those interested: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=valve_steam_announcement&num=1

Have a nice day!

Portal is coming back!

Although most of you guys probably know this, not long ago Portal 2 was announced.


Portal was one of my favorite puzzle games but it felt like a small test being a short game and not that difficult. Portal 2 however took it's time to grow and is going to be 4 times as long as the first one with 2 campaigns, one for single player and one for co-op both being twice the length of the original game.


Portal 2 starts just where Portal left us, but dozens or maybe even hundreds of years in the future. Gladis (the big robot you blew up last game) is now rebuilding the facility and you are trying to escape. You will have friends along the road who are trying as well to run from Gladis, but that is just about everything we know about the story.


The game has several new elements to play with besides boxes, portals, switches and whatever else was in the previous game. They've added "Excursion vents" which negate gravity and slowly push you in a direction, they also travel through portals of course, "Faith plates", pieces of floor which push you around, "Thermal discouragement beams" which are like the energy spheres from Portal 1, but are continuous beams of energy which can be bent with some mirror cubes and "Pneumatic diversity vents" which suck everything from area A and transport it through a big pipe to area B. There might be other game elements of which I don't know about.


The game will be launching in 2011. As far as I know it's almost finished, but the team wants to test it over and over and over and over again to maximize the gameplay experience.


I'll leave you now with this amazing teaser and for anyone who wants to see more: http://media.pc.ign.com/media/142/14237322/vids_1.html here's a bunch of really nice videos about the game. Just remember, THE CAKE IS A LIE!