BlaBlubbBlog - Computer

Intrepid Ibex and JabRef

nospam@example.com (Steffen) — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 00:10:00 +0100

sigh Never touch a running system.

However, should you touch it, here is the quick pain relief for Java applications under Intrepid Ibex (aka Ubuntu 8.10). To be honest, I don't know if that is for Java applications in general or just for the specific one I really do use: JabRef. After installing Xubuntu (or Ubuntu and the standard Java Runtime Environment) the program looks like this (click for the whole pain):

That sucks. It only took me 3 hours searching the web (with no real result, actually, seems like that is not a common problem) to finally fix this. This is how it is has to look like (click for the relief):

The difference? The upper one is with the openjdk-6-jre that seems to be the 'preferred' choice as the Java environment for Ibex. The correct, lower one is with sun-java6-jre. And the really annoying thing is: I installed the proper Sun Java stuff right after installing the system, operating under the illusions that it will actually get used.

*Bah*. I certainly have better things to do at the moment.

Break the system

nospam@example.com (Steffen) — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 23:59:00 +0200

This is a lesson in how to very subtly break your Ubuntu. I recently removed the Ubuntu TeX installation in favour of having a fresh texlive installation ins /usr/local. That is fairly easy to do and I am quite happy with it. However, when I applied the Ubuntu updates last Monday, two packages (gcc-4.2-doc and gfortran-4.2-doc) failed. I tried to remove and then reinstall them, but that didn't work, well, the removing didn't work in the first place, always a error that a

subprocess returned an error code (1).

Well, I didn't have the time or the inclination to start digging for the error there, the compiler docs are nothing I need regularly, certainly not for gfortran anyways. But then I wanted to install a couple of new packages today and that didn't work, because the messed up gcc-4.2-doc was hanging there in the process and there was no way to deselect it or ignore it.

So I started to look for the problem. You can find a few "don't know what that does, but it fixed it for me" gems out there of people hitting similar problems, albeit for different packages. The problem is actually in install-info, which fails with

install-info: No dir file specified; try --help for more information.

but, well, this gets called somehow in the process of the package management. And this is definitely nothing I want to understand.

At least I finally found the hint to edit the /var/lib/dpkg/info/[brokenpackage].{prerm,postinst} scripts to not call install-info to apply the updates without errors. After looking a bit more, I came across the interesting finding, that the install-info called in the packaging stage is not the install-info that is expected. In fact, the texlive installation put a new install-info in /usr/local/bin, which got executed instead of the one in /usr/sbin. Renaming the faulty one for a moment also solved the problems.

This is nasty. Really nasty. Now I need to check again what I did to the paths.

CGTalk Ausbeute, Teil 43

nospam@example.com (Steffen) — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 21:52:47 +0200

Soderele. Ist mal wieder eine Weile nicht auf der CGTalk-Front passiert hier. Zeit fÃ¼r die nÃ¤chste Ausbeute. Insgesamt gesichtet wurden 1100 Bilder (567 2D, 533 3D), wovon letztendlich 39 ausgefÃ¤llt wurden (21 2D, 18 3D). Ziemlich viel diesmal, ich weiss, aber ich war zu faul, da jetzt zwei Ausbeuten draus zu machen; sind diesmal dann halt ganz einfach mal mehr Sachen zu betrachten. Viel SpaÃŸ damit!
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Silo?

nospam@example.com (Steffen) — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 21:35:56 +0200

Silo is a "mesh and field I/O library and scientific database" which VisIt uses to read in data. As such it is an interesting thing for my data, especially for adaptive mesh refinement (AMR) data. I am torn between two options. Option one: Invent my own file format that does what I want and nothing more, though that will require me to write a plugin for VisIt to actually read the data then. Option two: Produce files that VisIt can read directly but hence enforcing a bunch of dependencies on my code.

In either case it is going to be a pain, so to estimate one side of the pain I was going to play around with Silo a bit. But I keep on not finding the sources, so once and for all (until they change the web site) here is the link: Silo.

Tab Completion...

nospam@example.com (Steffen) — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 16:33:00 +0200

...is a very useful thing. But it can drive me mad. Especially if it is not doing the same thing in different places. I am used to the standard tab completion of Bash, namely it completes as far as it is unique, then stops and shows after another tab (actually, two) a list of options. Vim, in its standard configuration, does something else, it completes to one of the possibles matches. And then every next tab completes to the next option. I guess it does make sense, as showing a list of options is not really that nice. But anyhow, I drives me mad, so here is how to change the behaviour (in your ~/.vimrc) to what I like:

set wildmode=longest,list

Skype. The orange symbol.

nospam@example.com (Steffen) — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 14:07:00 +0200

Skype can be really annoying. The protocol is not open, it is acting up quite often, it features unreliable file transfers, etc. However, at the moment it is only slightly annoying. What on earth is this funny orange symbol supposed to, well, symbolize?

After quite some looking around on the Skype page I could not find any information (besides that the symbols in version 4 for Windows are supposedly changed because the old one were too confusing...). So I asked Google. And found an article about the symbols of Skype at TheVOIPGirl which covers the icons I already guessed; the second part of the icon collection does not help either. But in the comments is the solution to my confusion, the strange orange icon apparently means that the user is offline but has a call divert activated. Okay. Good to know?

Summing in awk

nospam@example.com (Steffen) — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 14:22:00 +0200

That's about the n-th time (n large) that I need to search for how to quickly sum up a bunch of numbers on the command line. So here it goes, note to self:

grep -e 'cells' *log | awk '{sum+=$6} END {print sum}'

Maybe I will memorize it now.

CGTalk Ausbeute, Teil 42

nospam@example.com (Steffen) — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 20:49:00 +0200

Soderle, damit wÃ¤re wieder eine gewisse AktualitÃ¤t hergestellt. Nachdem ich so in 1000er Schritten durch die Bilder gehe, dauert es noch eine Weile, bis der nÃ¤chste Packen fertig ist. Allerdings Ã¼berlege ich schon, vielleicht eher in 500er Schritten zu sichten, das ist nicht ganz so anstrengen und es kommen auch kleinere Ausbeuten bei raus. Mal sehen. Also jetzt nochmal das Beste aus 1045 Bilder (527 2D, 529 3D)!
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CGTalk Ausbeute, Teil 41

nospam@example.com (Steffen) — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 18:21:00 +0200

Diesmal eine etwas lÃ¤ngere Ausbeute mit 13 Bilder in der gemalten und 14 Bildern in der gerenderten Sektion. Insgesamt begutachtet wurden 989 Bilder (516 3D, 473 2D). Nach dieser Ausbeute kommt noch eine, dann ist die Selektion wieder aktuell. Hui!
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CGTalk Ausbeute, Teil 40

nospam@example.com (Steffen) — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 20:33:00 +0200

Ich nÃ¤here mich mit groÃŸen Schritten der AktualitÃ¤t. FÃ¼r diese — bereits die vierzigste — Ausbeute wurden 979 Bilder gesichtet, davon 462 in der 3D- und 517 in der 2D-Sektion. Bei der endgÃ¼ltigen Auswahl von 20 Bildern Ã¼berwiegt allerdings der 3D-Anteil mit 13 Bildern doch recht deutlich. Aber was will man machen. Sind jedenfalls wieder sehr gute Sachen dabei!
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CGTalk Ausbeute, Teil 39

nospam@example.com (Steffen) — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 07:27:00 +0200

Bin gerade so in Fahrt. Hier die nÃ¤chste Ausbeute basierend auf 1049 Bilder (556 2D, 493 3D), von denen es 21 in die finale Ausbeute geschafft haben (11 2D und 10 3D). Mein Favorit ist gleich das erste der 3D-Sektion, die fesche Glasskulptur.
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Makefile Magic

nospam@example.com (Steffen) — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 16:13:00 +0200

It happens quite frequently, that I keep hopping around in my LaTeX file to find the correct label for the \ref I want to use. That is especially annoying if the figure/section/equation that ought to be referenced is far up. And yes, I normally try to use sensible names for the labels, but the 'guess-try-fix' way gets rather annoying if doing it more than once per hour. But since I anyway use a Makefile to do the latex/bibtexing for me, there should be fancy way to just add a new target that will show me the correct tag, right?
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CGTalk Ausbeute, Teil 38

nospam@example.com (Steffen) — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 08:00:00 +0200

In diese Ausbeute gehen 1055 Bilder ein (546 2D, 509 3D), von denen es 23 (11 2D, 12 3D) in die Auswahl geschafft haben. Ich habe mal angefangen, diese Statistik zu erfassen, und es ist halbwegs konsistent: Auf 50 Bilder kommt ein gutes. Wobei 'gut' natÃ¼rlich immer im Auge des Betrachters liegt...

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CGTalk Ausbeute, Teil 37

nospam@example.com (Steffen) — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 01:24:41 +0200

So. Mal wieder was Neues. FÃ¼r diese Ausbeute wurden 926 Bilder (481 in der 2D Abteilung und 445 in der 3D Sektion) gesichtet, 21 als tauglich markiert (9 2D, 12 3D) und im Endeffekt sind 17 Ã¼briggeblieben. In der Endauswertung fallen dann immer noch welche durch, wobei das zum Teil daran liegt, daÃŸ mir nichts Schlaues zu einfÃ¤llt. Wie dem auch sei, viel SpaÃŸ beim Betrachten!
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CGTalk Ausbeute, Teil 36

nospam@example.com (Steffen) — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 08:00:00 +0200

Und gleich weiter im CGTalk-Text. Heute mit Drachen, Schiffen auf See und... auf Bergen, futuristischen StÃ¤dten und Schlachtszenen. Ich habe mittlerweile alles gesichtet und bin wieder aktuell. Die nÃ¤chsten vier Ausbeuten sind auch schon vorbereitet, mal schauen, wie ich Zeit habe, die Endauswahl zu treffen. Manchmal ist es doch praktisch, wenn man eine Rechnung anwirft und dann erstmal zwanzig Minuten auf das Ergebnis warten muÃŸ, bevor es weitergehen kann.
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