Moved

This blog has moved here:
http://www.neaveru.com

Blogger is letting me down

I'm getting very frustrated that I can't upload files to Blogger. I'm going to start looking into other blogging websites so this page will probably move soon.

I'm writing this blog just for my own notes and as a developer my 'notes' generally include a lot of source code. Having to paste code into a blog post seems somewhat ridiculous to me.

If anyone has some suggestions, feel free to post them.

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Update: I'm going to be setting up a web server for a friend of mine who is willing to share the IP space with me. So, I'll, hopefully, be heading up to the colocation facility sometime this weekend. I've been meaning to play with ubuntu server edition, so this will be my chance. I probably won't be updating this blog until it is set up.

Screenlets, non-3D

Just a quick post about something that's been bothering me for a while.
For anyone who uses screenlets, ever notice that if you use Beryl (at least 2.*, dunno about newer versions) and have the 3d effects plugin, the screenlets act like they're regular 3d windows? That bothers me so much.

So I updated the screenlets code. It's just a quick hack. Just find your installed screenlets __init__.py file (Mine was at /usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/screenlets/__init__.py)
Find where it says the following (around line 740):

            self.window.window.set_type_hint(
                gtk.gdk.WINDOW_TYPE_HINT_UTILITY)

and then change it to:

            self.window.window.set_type_hint(
                gtk.gdk.WINDOW_TYPE_HINT_DOCK)

Then, just set all the screenlets as widgets (Right click -> window -> widget) and restart the screenlets daemon or the beryl 3d effects plugin. (Yeah that's annoying, but it's only got to be done once).
Simple huh? Be careful not to add any extra spacing or anything like that. Python is pretty sensitive with that.

OK, I'll respond to comments/emails tomorrow, I promise.

Instructions to get fullscreen, background wine applications in beryl

Assumptions:
1) You have wine and know how to use it (Running programs, winecfg, etc)
2) You have beryl running.
3) You have some amazing application that you want to run in fullscreen and in the background. (And possibly with different opacity, brightness, etc). I would recommend Dream Aquarium. thedarkmaskter has a tutorial on his blog on how to set it up. (Note, some setting will change from his instructions)
4) You have download the source code to Beryl Window Property Setter. It's a small application I wrote to get this to work. Should just download the file on the home page, then run make.

Instructions:
1) Run winecfg. Go to the graphics tab and check "Emulate a virtual desktop". Set "Desktop Size" to your desktop size. (I have mine set at 1400x900 and it runs smoothly). All other settings shouldn't make a difference. Although, I have "Allow the window manager to control the windows" unchecked. Hit OK.
2) Run the program through wine. ie: wine "C:\\Program Files\\Dream Aquarium\\Dream_Aquarium.scr". Now you should have the screensaver running in a window that is the size of your desktop. Make all settings (Number of fish, etc) you want now, because you won't be able to change them afterwards.
3) run bwpropset as follows: ./bwpropset -fs -s -sp -st -nf -ni -b -op .8
Then you'll see a crosshair. Select the wine window. If all goes well, you should have the window in the background of your desktop, much like xwinwrap.

Some more details:
-fs = fullscreen
-s = sticky
-sp = skip pager
-st = no focus
-ni = no input
-b = background
-op .8 = opacity at 80%

Play around with it until you find settings you like. Use the --help option for other features and possibilities.

Dream Aquarium Come True

Just to add to my previous post, here's a a small snippet I made using the vidcap plugin in beryl:



As you can see, there are still some issues to work out, but it works pretty well.

Swimming in Wine

I finally got a chance to play with editing beryl source code today. I read up on thedarkmaster's blog, a tutorial about how to setup Dream Aquarium on Beryl. Only problem is, it takes up the entire screen and nothing can run above it. So, I've played with the state plugin within beryl to edit the attributes of the window so I can put it on the bottom of all the windows, full screened, and sticky. Here's what I got so far:

Vista Black Screen of Death

Got a nice taste of the wonderful world of Vista today. I tried to install it on my Raid 0 (hpt374). I was excited that it let me load the drivers from a CD instead of a floppy disk. Progress! All goes well except once I reboot it tells me the install is corrupt. Can't seem to find the winload.exe file. Of course it can't, it hasn't loaded the drivers for the raid yet! Went to the recovery console and I was right. No drivers were copied over. How does that make sense? So, I don't know too much about how windows works and definitely not a lot about how Vista works, so I said forget it, I'll install it on my regular old ATA drive.

Of course, I need to partition it. So I use ntfsresize (in linux) and fdisk (quick tutorial coming next post). Pop in the vista CD and... nothing. Sweet sweet blackness. OK, maybe more than nothing, it says its loading, I see the word "Microsoft" and a status bar, and then that disappears and then nothing. How convenient. Maybe I was supposed to just sit around and wait for a while, but I didn't hear anything spinning around so I figured it was dead. Must have been the ntfsresize. I know I'm supposed to run chkdsk on the drive after I use ntfsresize, but I didn't expect this kind of result.

So, to fix it, I pop in the Windows XP cd (thanksfully I had it around). Go into the command line, run chkdsk on the drive. Reboot using the Vista disk and voila, now it works. Finally got it working. All 7.5GBs of it.

Progress indeed.