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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!
Continue reading "CGTalk Ausbeute, Teil 43"

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.

A new book

nospam@example.com (Steffen) — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 20:46:35 +0200

Soon. Indeed, indeed:

Continue reading "A new book"

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

Not so lazy day

nospam@example.com (Steffen) — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 17:37:00 +0200

Well. I had planned to get some coding done today. But then, after a hearty breakfast at half past eight (don't ask), I got stuck on finally figuring out that orange Skype symbol that bothered me already the whole week. And in the end I really wasn't feeling like coding anyways this morning. Instead I was planning ahead for a proper tea time this afternoon. And for this I need short bread. One could buy the Walkers things, which are actually quite nice, but somehow they are really expensive. Fear no more, as with the right substances, it is actually easy to make your own:

620 g flour
290 g sugar
290 g starch
500 g (soft) butter
salt (quantity depending on your taste)

Put everything together and knead it until you have a smooth dough. Spread it on a baking tray with baking paper. Now use a fork to make holes in it and then bake it for 30-40 minutes at something like 150 Â°C. This yields:

Continue reading "Not so lazy day"

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)!
Continue reading "CGTalk Ausbeute, Teil 42"

Senseless numbers

nospam@example.com (Steffen) — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 14:33:00 +0200

That actually hurts: longest road networks (via Spiegel Online). The US (~6.4 Gm) has longest road network, the only European countries in the Top Ten (that's where you want to be, right?) are France and Spain. Germany is somewhere between place 11 and 20 (they don't say) with pitiful 0.23 Gm. But hey, we own countries like Tuvalu (8 km) or the Cocos Islands (22 km). Normalizing anyone? Tomorrow, the Top Ten of trees per country with shocking results.

Kezboard Annozance

nospam@example.com (Steffen) — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 22:09:00 +0200

This drives me nuts... since the new laptop, dee, also has an American keyboard layout, as does the machine in the institute, I spent 95% of my computer time using the American layout. While jane (the old laptop) was still in use, it was more like 50/50 and switching between the German and the American layout was more or less easy. Well, not really. But much easier than I get along with the German layout of the keyboard attached to the desktop at the moment. Especially when programming. Hmpf. Maybe I should completely abandon the German layout, it doesn't do much anyways besides giving easier access to the special characters in the seldom events that I have to enter text in something else than Vim (side note: the spell checker complained about 'vim', it wants 'Vim'). sigh But what would a day be without the small, however persistent, annoyances of modern life.

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!
Continue reading "CGTalk Ausbeute, Teil 41"

BjÃ¶rk GuÃ°mundsdÃ³ttir & TrÃÃ³ GuÃ°mundar IngÃ³lfssonar: Gling-GlÃ³ (1990)

nospam@example.com (Steffen) — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 06:10:00 +0200

One of the last evenings I could not fall asleep and instead of turning around from side to side for a few hours, I grabbed the laptop and looked around a bit on lyricwiki. Specifically I was looking for lyrics of VÃ¶kurÃ³ (a track from the 2004 album MedÃºlla of BjÃ¶rk). Found it, they have a decent selection there actually. But what caught my eye was an earlier album then the Debut from 1993, namely Gling-GlÃ³. I must admit that I am not such a huge aficionado that I would have her bio-/discography memorised. So I read up at Wikipedia and the description sounded very interesting: Jazz. BjÃ¶rk? Alright. Need that. Now.
Continue reading "BjÃ¶rk GuÃ°mundsdÃ³ttir & TrÃÃ³ GuÃ°mundar IngÃ³lfssonar: Gling-GlÃ³ (1990)"

Groundwork

nospam@example.com (Steffen) — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 18:46:00 +0200

And so it begins...