Nuudelisoppa

Tag: open source

  • Some notes about podcasting in WordPress

    • Theoretically, publishing a podcast feed in WordPress should take nothing more than a link to the episode file, using an absolute URL. This should prompt WordPress to generate the appropriate enclosure tag in the feed.
    • However, WordPress generates the enclosure only upon initial generation of a post, not on subsequent edits. So if the podcast URL is added after the entry is created, during an edit, the enclosure isn’t generated.
    • For some reason, WordPress doesn’t generate the enclosure for me even when I post the link straight up. It doesn’t do so either, when I use the ‘Add media’ function, although I’m not sure if it’s even supposed to.
    • Luckily, it’s possible to hand-craft the enclosure for a post for which no enclosure has been created. Though laborious, it works. The “enclosure” field’s value should consist of three lines:
      • Full URL to the file
      • Length of the file in bytes
      • Content-Type of the file (like “audio/x-vorbis+ogg”)

  • How do I learned new language?

    I’m surprised that Wikimedia Foundation hasn’t yet expanded into providing language learning material, apart from Wiktionary, of course. I reckon that basic, “101”-type course material for self-teaching always follows an easily applicable template, no matter what the language, and that there would be plenty of multilingual Wikipedians eager to contribute to such courses.

    There doesn’t seem to be too much open source software for such self-teaching either, for that matter. I see a couple of drilling utilities in the repositories, but not much beyond that. What I’d love to see is a generic ‘lang-teacher’ package with a bunch of optional ‘lang-teacher-en-101’, ‘lang-teacher-ja-101’ and so on, packages to choose from.

    I can hear it already: Sounds like a nice idea. So what are you waiting for, why don’t you start coding? But it’s so much easier just to toss these ideas around than to actually do anything about them…

    Many seem to think that the best route to learning a new language is to just get the basics straight and then dive in with people who speak it, but for someone like me that would be impossible. I lead a life which you couldn’t even begin to describe using the word ‘introvert’. Apart from not being able to learn by speaking, this means that I’m not that interested in spoken language; my purpose for learning any new language at this point would be primarily to gain access to the vast amount of written knowledge available (online and in books) in languages other than my own and in English.

    Even if I didn’t lead such a secluded life, there really just aren’t enough, say, Japanese people around where I live, to strike a conversation with. And even if there were, there’s still that ‘basics’ part which I’d somehow have to get a grip on, and for that I’d love to have some free (as in freedom) tools, either online or on my desktop.

  • SourceForge.net 2008 Community Choice Awards

    Just voted in the SourceForge.net 2008 Community Choice Awards. Skipped a couple of categories for lack of knowledge, mostly (either didn’t know any of the participants, didn’t know enough of them, or felt that the few that I did know probably shouldn’t win in that category).

    Here are my choices:

    Best Project
    KeePass Password Safe — Now it seems almost unbelievable I used to use text files for storing my passwords in the past. I’m using the Linux port, obviously.
    Best Project for the Enterprise
    OpenOffice.org — duh.
    Best Project for Educators
    OpenOffice.org — ditto.
    Most Likely to Be the Next $1B Acquisition
    Did not vote.
    Best Project for Multimedia
    VLC — I picked it over Audacity just because it’s more versatile and hence better suited to win under a ‘Multimedia’ title.
    Best Project for Gamers
    Did not vote.
    Most Likely to Change the World
    Ubuntu — You better believe it.
    Best New Project
    Did not vote.
    Most Likely to Be Ambiguously Accused of Patent Violation
    Wine Is Not an Emulator — Don’t use it that much myself, but still hope I’m wrong about this…
    Most Likely to Get Users Sued
    Azureus — Unfortunate as it may be…
    Best Tool or Utility for SysAdmins
    phpMyAdmin — I would have wanted to give love to 7-zip in some category. This one came closest to be it, but then I thought it’s really the best utility for a regular user; sysadmins are probably still better off using something more traditional.
    Best Tool or Utility for Developers
    Notepad++ — Even though I haven’t used it myself for some time now (since ditching Windows altogether), I’m still very fond of this excellent editor.

  • Googlen favicon

    Juuri kun aloin tottua Googlen uuteen ikoniin, törmäsin Greasemonkey-skriptiin, joka palauttaa sen vanhan faviconin. Vielä viikko sitten olisin ollut innoissani ja ottanut tuon heti käyttöön, mutta nyt hämääntyisin siitä vanhasta luultavasti vain uudestaan samalla lailla kuin tuosta uudesta sen ilmestyttyä.

  • Second Life jumiuttaa työpöydän

    Lähtökohta
    Näytönohjaimeni on Connect 3D:n valmistama, AGP-väylässä kiinni oleva Radeon 9600 -piirisarjalla varustettu All In Wonder. Olen valinnut näytönohjaimelle avoimen lähdekoodin ajurin (ati) käyttöön. Olen määritellyt ikkunointiympäristön asetuksissa EXA-kiihdytysmenetelmän käyttöönotetuksi.
    Olen asentanut Second Life -pelin asentamalla secondlife-install -paketin getdeb-sivustolta. Minulla on Second Life -tili, ja olen käynnistänyt pelin ja kirjautunut onnistuneesti sisään.
    Ongelma
    Liikuttuani jonkin aikaa pelin virtuaalimaailmassa työpöytä lakkaa vastaamasta näppäinten painalluksiin, ja jumiutuu lukuunottamatta hiiren osoitinta, joka reagoi normaalisti hiiren liikkeisiin. Työpöydän alapaneeliin lisäämäni Järjestelmän tila -sovelma, joka näyttää suoritinkäyttöä, paljastaa, että hetkeä ennen jumiutumista suoritinkäyttö on kohonnut sataan prosenttiin.
    Koska ikkunointiympäristö ei reagoi näppäimistöön, en voi käynnistää sitä uudestaan Control + Alt + Backspace -näppäinyhdistelmällä.
    Ongelman syy
    Toimiakseen kunnolla Second Life vaatii ATIn toimittaman suljetun lähdekoodin näytönohjainajurin.
    Ratkaisu
    ATIn näytönohjainajureiden asentaminen saattaisi ratkaista ongelman, mutta en ole testannut sitä. ATIn ajurit rakentuvat vielä toistaiseksi suljetulle lähdekoodille, ja haluan pitäytyä avoimelle lähdekoodille pohjautuvissa ajureissa periaatteesta. Lisäksi työpöytätehosteet vaativat toimiakseen avoimen lähdekoodin ajurit. Avoimen lähdekoodin näytönohjainajureiden kanssa toimivaa ratkaisua ei vielä ole.
    Huomautuksia
    • Työpöydän jumiuduttua järjestelmän alasajoon voi käyttää Linux-ytimen tunnistamaa näppäinyhdistelmää Alt + SysRq + R E I S U B. Ikkunointiympäristön uudelleenkäynnistys etäyhteyden kautta saattaisi myös tehota, mutta tätä en ole testannut.
    • Second Lifen pelaaminen avoimen lähdekoodin ajureilla saattaa olla mahdollista tulevaisuudessa sikäli kuin AMD tulee lunastamaan lupauksensa avoimen lähdekoodin ajureiden toimittamisesta.

  • X.org, i740 and blank console after startx

    I ran into this problem while testing X with OpenBSD 4.3: the console went completely blank after firing startx — that is, switching back to other virtual terminals while X was running would only display a black screen. And that was all I got after hitting Ctrl+Alt+Backspace from X, too: nothing but black. The command-line was still there alright, as I could blindly startx again and get X to show up, but the console terminals remained invisible until the next reboot.

    The display adapter I was using was an Intel i740 with the driver set accordingly in xorg.conf. I didn’t manage to get the video BIOS upgrading soft (Vflash.exe) from Intel to work, and never found the root cause of this problem. It was probably either the card itself or the i740 driver. I suspect that because once I swapped the card with an extra Radeon 8500LE I had laying around, and the switched to the ati driver, console VTs worked like a charm. Also, with the i740 in place they did work by using the basic vga driver, so my best bet as for the culprit would be the i740 driver.

  • Mirroring a WordPress blog for offline viewing

    I’m making a note of this for my own future reference.

    As a premise, you need the blog to have pretty permalinks. There might be a way to make wget handle those http://site.com/blog/?p=123 -type URLs so that they can be viewed offline, but for me the easiest way around this was to simply switch to the Day and name option in Settings → Permalinks. That way individual posts will have URLs ending in slashes, resulting in the content being saved to a good old index.html inside a subdirectory, in the local copy.

    So obviously, if you’re mirroring someone else’s blog, whose settings you don’t have access to, and which doesn’t use pretty permalinks, you’ll have to find another way to make the downloaded filenames work.

    Otherwise, you’re good to go: fire up wget like this:
    wget --convert-links --mirror --no-parent --no-host-directories http://site.com/blog/

  • [Solved] WordPress: Cannot update permalink structure

    I ran into this strange problem, where the changes I made on the Customize Permalink Structure page of a WordPress 2.5.1 installation wouldn’t get saved, no matter how many times I pressed the Save changes button.

    Well, it turns out, for some reason you need to have JavaScript enabled for it to work.

  • WordPress: Get permalink outside the loop

    $ID = $wp_query->post->ID;
$permalink = get_permalink($ID);

    Adapted from Skippy.

  • Blubuntu GRUB Splash (the blue 'ubuntu – linux for human beings' one)

    I really liked the example GRUB splash image in Tuxams297’s post, but he neglected to mention where the background had come from. I found it on GNOME-look.org and thought I’d make a note of it here.

    Edit: It looks like the one I’m looking for isn’t there either. The only living link is the first one (Blubuntu), and it’s not one of the splashes pictured in the preview thumbs, but a plain blue one.