Oxygen – you can’t live without it.

I realise that my blog is lacking a bit in variety, but i’m gonna continue down the same path. The Free Software path .

I’ve installed the new – unfinished(!) – icon theme called “Oxygen”. Oxygen is going to be the default icon theme of KDE4 .
From the beginning i’ve been criticizing the Oxygen icon set for looking too “dusty” and bland, but after giving it a closer look, i’m gonna have to admit that it’s immensely cool .

Here’s a screenie i did, of my desktop, sporting the Oxygen icon theme:

The Beryl Wall

I’ve been using the Beryl Window Manager for some time, and i’m currently very satisfied with it. As most of you probably know, Beryl incorporates a compositing manager, which enables it to deliver some cool “3D” effects.

One of the recently added features is the “Desktop Wall”. It hasn’t made it into the releases yet, but it’s available through the SVN (Development) code. The Desktop Wall plugin provides you with an overview of your virtual desktops, allowing you to interact normally with windows on all your desktops. The cube plugin also allows for switching between desktops in a much faster and less “work-interrupting” manner than what is known from the famous Cube Plugin.

Screenshot showing the “Expo” feature of the Wall plugin in action.

Lithp

I’ve jutht notithed that there are 21 full hourth of LITHP videoth and a text book available for download from MIT .
Okay, i’ll stop talking with a lisp .

The videos are recordings of a course that the Lisp pioneers Hal Abelson and Gerald Jay Sussman conducted at the MIT in the mid-eighties, and it looks very interesting indeed.
The book that accompanies the videos is the famous SICP book – Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs.

Note to self: Someday i should actually view one of those videos, instead of just using it as background noise while i work. It looks interesting enough.

Geekend

At last, another blog entry!

I’ve been quite busy lately, working on many different projects, and in particular: doing school work. Now, i guess that you’re not too interested in my school work. Neither am i. I’ve been working on an article for our soon-to-be-released IT magazine “Fri-IT” (roughly translated, that means “Free IT” or even “IT Libre”). I’m sure that it’s going to be interesting, and a lot of fun to write. You can track the develop status of “Fri-IT”, and even make suggestions at osblad.lifal.dk. I have to warn you, that it’s in Danish (although most, if not all of you, are probably Danish).

This weekend, my old friend Tobias “Tobizaz” Berg Therkelsen visited, and we had a great time. We coded a bit of Perl, watched some films (including Revolution OS and Pirates of Silicon Valley, both highly recommended by me. Revolution OS is the best of the two, in my opinion).

More details on Fri-IT will be posted later. I promise.

Kind regards Bjarke

Just wondering

Just wondering: the current theme is pretty ugly, isn’t it?

Can you WordPress regulars recommend any good WP themes?

Kind regards Bjerrk

Samba Introduction

I’m sorry that it’s been such a long time, i’ve been kind of busy.

I did a small talk on Samba at the Install Café last Sunday.

I promised to write a small article on Samba, which i’ve done. It’s called Samba – An Introduction – and it’s in Danish.

It’s just about 5 full size (A4 Standard) pages long, and covers basic use of Samba, and some of the theory behind it.
I really hope you’ll like it.

Kind Regards Bjerrk

Software Freedom Day

For a long time, the local Linux User Group, SFLUG (SydFyns Linux User Group) have been arranging the celebration of the annual Software Freedom Day here in Svendborg, Southern Funen. I have been writing some of the PR material, and helped arranging the event, in collaboration with Nis Wilson Nissen and Daniel “Cyberdoc” Frederiksen, our chairman. Alsp, let me endorse Daniel for being such a splendid chairman. He really knows how to combine cozy, social meetings with tchnical workshops, free software lectures and more. SFLUG is truly a great LUG, and i feel privileged in that i am a member of this LUG.
The event took place yesterday, starting at 9 ‘o clock AM. We had rented a large pavillion of 81 square metres, and we had access to both wired and wireless networks, electricity, coffee, cola and so on.
We had done made flyers and a quiz, which we passed on to pedestrians and people visiting the town market. They’d read the flyer, which explained the principles of open source end free software, and then, if they had read the flyer properly, they had learned a lot about free software, and would be able to answer the quiz correctly. Many did, some didn’t, of course.
It was possible to win a linux based linksys router, a cordless logitech desktop, a webcam, a gadget called IP-Talky (explanation follows) and some other things. It was a truly great day, and we had a great time all the day through. A lot of the people that i know showed up, including, of course, a lot of the SFLUG members, including Anders Karlsen, Nis Wilson Nissen, Daniel Frederiksen, Lars Peter Larsen (who programs in Comal80 and is damn good at it) and a lot of other SFLUG members.
Quite a lot of other people – who were not SFLUG members – participated in the event, including my two good friends Tobias Berg Therkelsen and Morten Juhl Johansen (mjjohansen). Yep, we had a great time. I guess that this is on of the best events i have ever attended.
Well, about 8:30 PM (thats 20:30 ), just after finishing the Software Freedom Day event, Daniel, Morten and i went for some dinner in Svendborg, and we chose to eat at Restaurant Arthur, a nice italian restaurant in Svendborg. We got a long talk on films, Free Software, programming and lots of other things. Again, we had a great time.

Today, i’ve been writing some python, and had a lot of trouble getting a PyQT application working. Nothing extraordinary there.

Morten posted this on his web page, just today (i translated it into english as well as i could):
“I strongly discourage Linux users from using the Nettips Forum (forum.nettips.dk). The people on nettips prematurely judges all linux uses as being manic Linux advocates, and Linux users are seen as people who can be flamed without any fear of the nettips admins intervening.
It is a place of such careless trolling and baiting, with the one goal, it seems, of making free software advocates look bad, that pne should better stay away from it. Don’t go there.”

I totally agree with what Morten says here. It seems that many Nettips users blindly provoke Linux users to such an extent that one simply has to tell them how wrong they are, which mostly end up with a “Look what i said, Linux users are sooo aggressive” kind of comment from one of the nettips users. Frustrating.

Allow me to link to Mortens splendid (Danish) blog.
Morten was also the winner of the IP-Talky in our free software quiz. What a gadget, huh?

The kindest regards Bjerrk.

Doing what i do best

Today i’ve been eating lots of cake, drinking cocoa, listening to music and reading python tutorials without producing… well, anything useful, really. In other words: i’ve been doing what i do best.
The cake eating and the cocoa drinking was due to today being my brother’s birthday. Congratulations to him!
I’ve been reading this tutorial for the last couple of days. It’s great for people wanting to learn som Python quickly. People who already know some of the basics of programming. Python for The Impatient, really.
Athas recommended this web page as a good resource for articles on writing operating systems. It seems that he’s right.

On another note, i’ve been listening a lot to “Black Night” by Deep Purple, Bruce Dickinsons cover version of “Perfect Strangers”. Truly great tracks.

Last but not least, i’m becoming increasingly convinced that religion is a very bad idea, I’ve felt that way for a number of years, but all this talk about extremist muslims strengthen that feeling. Of course, people must have the freedom to choose and practice any religion the like, as long as they don’t do any harm.
I’ve got no grudge against muslims or christians at all. It’s islam, christianity, among all the other religions, that i despise.

Of course, i am by no means entitled to decide whether religion is a useful thing, but it seems to me, that if you compare the good and the bad that religion has caused, the result does not turn out in favour of religion.
Above all other things, i love freedom. I’m quite interested in politics, but there isn’t a political party that fits me, really.
I guess i’m somewhat of a centrist, with my love of socialistic ideas such as solidarity and tolerance towards other people, but also some of the liberal ideas that everyone should be able to create and shape their own lives without too much governmental interference.

Wow, what a long entry.
Goodnight!

Kind regards Bjerrk

The Power to Serve

First, let me start by recommending this excellent (danish) blog: TuxHygge

Secondly, just yesterday, i got hold of a new server. It’s an 800mhz-thing, which is really quite a lot for a Linux powered “home server”.
I’m right ind the middle of downloading a Slackware CD image, ’cause i can’t use my regular DVD, as the servers hasn’t got a DVD-drive.
I know it sounds somewhat silly, but installing good ol’ Slackware on a new machine is always a nice experience. So don’t call me in the next hour or two, ’cause i’ll be installing Slackware, compiling kernels and configuring server software.

I’m not quite sure what i’m going to use this server for, but i imagine that it’ll be running proftpd, vsftpd or some other ftp service – i admit that proftpd and vsftpd are my favourites, so it’ll probably be one of those two.

Apart from that, i’m not sure what i’m gonna do with the machine, so if you’ve got any suggestions, please do comment.
I guess that it’ll mainly be doing some tasks that don’t need a fast internet connection, ’cause that one thing i can’t afford at the moment!

Kind regards Bjerrk

The Snake’s Domain

mjjohansen and i have been looking at the Python language in the last week or so.
It appears to be a language of great usefulness, but it annoys me on some points. Nothing serious.
One thing that doesn’t impress me is the way that you seperate blocks of code from each other in Python. In C, and lots of other languages, it’s done with curly brackets. Like this.

a piece of code
{
another block of code
someting…
}
back again

But Python likes to be different. Python seperates blocks of code purely by indentation. Like this:

a piece of code

another block of code
someting…

back again

That reduces the degree of freedom you have to choose your coding style, in my opinion.

By the way, mjjohansen recently registered the domain pythonin.dk – lets see what he comes up with.

Kind regards Bjerrk