Geeky | Dartarrow’s Technolodge

Worms Clone on Linux

June 9th, 2009 | by dartarrow | geeky

Jun
09

.. which is currently my fav game! Is Hedgewars

There’s a complete review written here, but in short : the gameplay is a lot like Worms Armegeddon, the sound effects are cool, and the controls are really intuative.

Plus the AI’s pretty good (dunno if that’s a good thing)

The other alternative is wormux which has a pretty good game engine, a lil more stable with lesser bugs, and nicer characters. But Hedgewars is without a doubt more addictive and more user-friendly and more intuative.

Plus hedgehogs are cute

Battery Capacity Details on a Linux Laptop

June 5th, 2009 | by dartarrow | geeky

Jun
05

All laptop batteries are created equal by Their Maker. But even so, some last longer than others despite coming out of the same production lines. Why? Because although it is manufactured to last (say) 5 hours, sometimes you only get 2 hours before it dies. Usually that means that your actual capacity is lower than what it was manufactured to be.

Here’s how you can figure out how useful your battery really is:

install acpi if it’s not yet available

sudo aptitude install acpi

Open a terminal / console and type:

acpi -V

See those details? Thats some minimal details available. Now for a more detailed view do this:

cat /proc/acpi/battery/BAT0/info

Look at the design capacity and last full capacity:

If you’re last full capacity is under the design capacity, then your battery cannot store as much power as it should and will therefore die faster than it should.

If the last full capacity is under 50% of the design capacity, I’d consider getting a new one.

How to install Swiftfox on K/Ubuntu

June 5th, 2009 | by dartarrow | geeky

Jun
05

0. Take note that I use aptitude, apt-get will serve the same function.

1. edit /etc/apt/sources. list and add the following lines:

deb http://getswiftfox.com/builds/debian unstable non-free

2. Go to a terminal and type:

sudo aptitude update
sudo aptitude install swiftfox-prescott

3. You’re done. Look below for instructions on how to setup Java on Swiftfox

Note: Your best place to look for swiftfox and .deb is still here

Java on Swiftfox 3.5beta

June 4th, 2009 | by dartarrow | geeky

Jun
04

0.1. Check if Java is installed. In a console type:

which java

0.2. If it is, check if Java is included on swiftfox as a plugin. In Swiftfox location bar type:

about:plugins

1. install java and swiftfox:

sudo aptitude install sun-java6-jre sun-java6-plugin sun-java6-fonts swiftfox-prescott

the sun-java6-plugin contains the plugins required for Firefox,
check for the plugin as in 0.2
but if Java in Swiftfox is still not including it by default, go to 2

2. link the plugin to swiftfox as such:

sudo ln -s /usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun-1.6.0.13/jre/plugin/i386/ns7/libjavaplugin_oji.so /usr/lib/swiftfox/plugins/

this will differ according to the location and version of the java installed so, check first.

3. Startup Swiftfox, you will need to confirm your installation (0.2 above) or check it manually: go somewhere that requires java. Yahoo Pool is one of those..

Symfony – Propel get random data from table

June 3rd, 2009 | by dartarrow | geeky

Jun
03

Somebody asked this on IRC so I figured I might as write it down.

Q: How do I get one random row from a table?

$cnt=MyTable::doCount(new Criteria());
$c = new Criteria();
$c->setOffset(rand(1,$cnt));
$mydata=MyTable::doSelectOne($c);

Alternative Browsers for linux

June 1st, 2009 | by dartarrow | geeky

Jun
01

These are 13 alternatives for Linux. If you google around you’ll find other similar lists, but the ones on my list are actually working, are in relatively active development as of June 1st 2009 and / or has a future. I’m not going to bother arranging this in any particular order, so here it is, all in one go.

Arora – Small, lightweight, buggy
Swiftfox – Big, Bloated, but faster then it’s siblings. Has a cooler logo
Flock – Social stuff which can be cool when you’re surfing youtube or facebook
Chromium – Fast. Buggy. Google.
Opera – Not open source but Free (as in beer), innovative, fast, killer looks
Konqueror – neah~ fits in nicely with kde
Epiphany – neah~ fits in nicely with gnome
Galeon – neah~ fits in nicely with gnome. Pretty light.
Seamonkey – Big Bloated web stuff. Not just a browser
Kazehakase – lightweight, buggy, JS sucks, keeps segfaulting…. but I see hope.
Amaya – The best tool I’ve found for debugging xhtml pages / and XML. I wouldn’t actually browse with this unless I’m debugging something.
elinks – OH YEAH!!
wget – Don’t gimme that crap about it not being a browser. Just try recursive mode, and THEN browse.

My Top Linux IDE’s and Development Editors

May 31st, 2009 | by dartarrow | geeky

May
31

There are a few good programs to write programs / scripts. These are editors / IDE’s that can be used for scripting or writing programs in linux.

These are listed in no particular order

Quanta plus
Environment: Kde
Languages: PHP, Perl, Python, XML, C
KDevelop
Environment: Kde
Languages: PHP, Perl, Python, XML, C, Ruby, Rails
Anjuta
Environment: gnome
Languages: C
Kate
Environment: KDE
Languages: Anything. Has Syntax Highlight
Gedit
Environment: gnome
Languages: Anything. Has Syntax Highlight. Basic lightweight editor
Screem
Environment: gnome
Languages: Web based, HTML, XML, some PHP
Eclipse with PHPeclipse and DLTK
Environment: Anything – JAVA
Languages: Anything. Plugins for all possible languages
[heavy weight editor. But one size fits all for most open source projects and languages]
gPHPedit
Environment: gnome
Languages: HTML, CSS, PHP – Simple, lightweight, Syntax highlight
jEdit
Environment: Anything – Java
Languages: Anything. Has plugins for any possible language. Customizable
Netbeans
Environment: Anything – Java
Languages: Anything. Has plugins for any possible language. Customizable
[has a cool debugger, no need to switch to Browser for debugging]
glimmer
[refer to Eclipse]
[not ready for production use. Unless you're looking for a challenge]
geany
Environment – gnome
Languages – PHP, C, and many more.
[My personal favorite, lightweight, has some critical items that basic editors like kate / gedit doesn't]
Bluefish and KompoZer (forked from nvu) deservers a mention.Although it’s popular enough to not need it..

Swiftfox 3.5 beta with Firebug

May 21st, 2009 | by dartarrow | geeky

May
21

..Does not work.
I will assume that Firebug does not work with Firefox 3.5beta either.
I’m using Swiftfox 3.5b4.

And while we’re at it, Swiftfox 3.5 Does not work with Tamper Data, iMacros, YSlow, and Gears.

BUT on the bright side:

my delicious plugin works (version 2.1.041)
the issue with it killing my desktop effects mentioned here seems to have been solved!

I guess it’s back to Firefox 3.0 for me (for now).

Firefox kills Plasma!

May 20th, 2009 | by dartarrow | geeky

May
20

OK Fine, it’s really Swiftfox, but the problem is really inherent to Firefox.

My Swiftfox 3.0 kills my KDE4 Desktop Effects. Which pisses me off because I love my shinny objects.

Everytime I accidentally drag select some text and then accidentally attempt to move the selected text, everything hangs up and poof. There goes effects.

I solved this by disabling the drag-drop feature in firefox but I’m still not happy.

Workaround: Read full story

K/Ubuntu for Developers

May 18th, 2009 | by dartarrow | geeky

May
18

There are important packages that don’t come default with kubuntu which I would need for development. So after setting up a new installation of Kubuntu this is what I’d do:

sudo aptitude install openssh-server build-essential vim kdesvn mysql-server-5.0

These are needed as of kubuntu 9.04 – Jaunty and as you can see installs:

openssh-server – which will immediately listen on port 22
build-essential – compilers, etc
vim – because I don’t like using vi
kdesvn – Cuz can be easier to diff my devels
mysql-server – well… i need it and Mysql 5.1 does not have great reviews.

Even if you don’t want kdesvn, I’d take kompare any day. The best diff front end for KDE. Although kdiff3 (sudo aptitude install kdiff3) isn’t too bad.