Archive Page 2
In case you haven’t already seen it. Very interesting to follow this.
http://bambuser.com/channel/Spectrial
Best of luck to him.
But as in all good movies, the heroes lose in the beginning but have an epic victory in the end anyhow. That’s the only thing hollywood ever taught us.
Filed under: Freedom, news | Leave a Comment
Tags: thepiratebay
do to my chronic fiddling i had to reinstall postgresql from scratch. here’s what i did. i wrote this after the fact, so hopefully i haven’t forgotten anything and it’s of some use.
1. install the postgresql packages via yum or the redhat gui. you may want to add some additional packages for a procedural language or whatever your situation dictates.
2. make the directory and set up db.
root# mkdir /usr/local/pgsql/data
root# chown postgres /usr/local/pgsql/data
root# su postgres
postgres$ initdb -D /usr/local/pgsql/data
3. i’m not really into the current default setup so we’re going to change it so everybody has to use a password.
i started the db using the nifty services gui but there’s other ways such as, postmaster -D /usr/local/pgsql/data.
open the interactive shell, psql, and give superuser a password.
alter role postgres with password ‘your_pass_here’;
see more info here:
http://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.3/static/app-psql.html
http://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/static/sql-alterrole.html
now stop the db, again i used the services gui.
4. now we will change the default authentication. go to /var/lib/pgsql/data and open pg_hba.conf with vi. in the column method change the current value to md5.
for more info see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vi
http://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Client_Authentication
start the db.
5. let’s test it out to make sure we haven’t screwed anything up. su to root. type ‘psql -U postgres’ without quotes at the prompt. it should ask you for the newly created password. this is a good thing.
6. we really don’t want to do everything as the superuser so lets create a limited user. in this case i’m doing it for a drupal install. i want him to be able to create databases but not users.
create user drupal0 with password ‘pass_here’ createdb;
to view users type ‘\du’.
i’ve learned a lot at my current job about using oracle’s pl/sql. feel really comfortable writing functions and procedures and i’m looking forward to playing with postgresql’s procedural languages. my next post will probably be about how many different ways i can not get drupal to work. ;)
Filed under: Linux | 1 Comment
Tags: centos, install, Linux, postgresql, RedHat
Linus at Google on Git
And why it’s better than everything else out there. The talk is a couple of years old but still very interesting. I’ve used CVS and Subversion but for my next project I want to try out Git.
Filed under: General | Leave a Comment
Tags: Git, Google, Linus Torvalds
Happy Ada Lovelace Day
Ada Lovelace, a 19th century British writer who is considered the world’s first computer programmer, will be honored by bloggers all over the world. In the spirit of providing young women with role models, more than 1500 bloggers participating in the first annual Ada Lovelace Day have pledged to write about a woman or women they admire working in technology on March 24th. You can read about Lovelace on Wikipedia.
Filed under: news | 1 Comment
Tags: ada, ada lovelace, programmer, women
Turning on the LAMP
For fun I’m playing around with building a new website and doing everything from scratch. To work on my terminal skills I’m also not having any GUI on the machine. Doing everything old school. I must admit, with the great tutorials available, it’s really not that hard. I logged in to the server via SSH (putty) installed IPTables (the virtual server I rented was an extremely controlled minimal install of CentOS), Apache, MySQL (yes I know PostgreSQL can do more tricks) and PHP (I still suck with Perl and Python).
I followed “Setting up a LAMP Stack“. When I got to the IPTables part I went to the “CentOS IPTables How To“. When I got to the database I followed some useful information found at “Installing and Configuring MySQL“.
There’s nothing particularly difficult in getting a basic LAMP box up and running. Whipping up the code for the site will be harder but a good learning experience.
Filed under: Linux | Leave a Comment
Tags: Apache, centos, IPTables, LAMP, MySQL, php, Putty, SSH
Intellectual Monopoly
I just came across this and thought I would share. Very interesting stuff by by Michele Boldrin and David K. Levine.
It is common to argue that intellectual property in the form of copyright and patent is necessary for the innovation and creation of ideas and inventions such as machines, drugs, computer software, books, music, literature and movies. In fact intellectual property is a government grant of a costly and dangerous private monopoly over ideas. We show through theory and example that intellectual monopoly is not necessary for innovation and as a practical matter is damaging to growth, prosperity and liberty.
You can get the book here in pdf format. I downloaded the individual chapters. Exported them as text from Adobe reader. Changed the file extension to HTML. Transferred the files to my telephone via bluetooth and can now read the book with my phone’s browser on the train. Makes commuting more enjoyable.
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Process Explorer
One thing I really love about Linux is that things make sense. Well at least to me. I understand run levels, the file system, terminal, the wealth of free applications available and so on. I really don’t like MS Windows because I often don’t understand what’s going on. With a lot of nonfree software they hide stuff from you on purpose and get mad if you tinker with it and share the info with others. Anyway, if you’re currently using XP (I’m playing some games on it, still developing on Linux of course) and want to see what the heck’s going on check out Process Explorer. I like to keep it minimized with the little graphs of CPU, I/O and memory. Similar to the Gnome applets. Here’s a quote:
Ever wondered which program has a particular file or directory open? Now you can find out. Process Explorer shows you information about which handles and DLLs processes have opened or loaded.
The Process Explorer display consists of two sub-windows. The top window always shows a list of the currently active processes, including the names of their owning accounts, whereas the information displayed in the bottom window depends on the mode that Process Explorer is in: if it is in handle mode you’ll see the handles that the process selected in the top window has opened; if Process Explorer is in DLL mode you’ll see the DLLs and memory-mapped files that the process has loaded. Process Explorer also has a powerful search capability that will quickly show you which processes have particular handles opened or DLLs loaded.
The unique capabilities of Process Explorer make it useful for tracking down DLL-version problems or handle leaks, and provide insight into the way Windows and applications work.
Filed under: General | Leave a Comment
Tags: Process Explorer, windows, XP
Burnout Paradise
I wanted a simple racing game for the PC and really couldn’t find anything that was interesting. Then yesterday I stumbled across Burnout Paradise: the ultimate box set. It’s pretty much what a non-serious race gamer would want. Good graphics (easy money on the highest settings for an nvidia 9800gt), fast game play, easy to advance with plenty of levels (events). The racing takes place in Paradise City (with the song from Guns & Roses playing, with lot’s of other songs from my high school days which makes me think a) this crap is still cool or b) they know only nerds my age are going to drop $40.) Anyhow, it’s a pretty damn well made game. Oddly they didn’t get permission to use actual product names ( Ford Mustang, etc) so every vehicle has some weird made up name. But it doesn’t really hurt game play. The city is large with all sorts of stuff to do. The on-line racing isn’t all that great and is second to the local game. It won’t occupy your mind like GNU Chess (which I find quite difficult to beat) or a mmorpg but you’ll love it for 20 minutes blowing off steam after work. Nice work by Criterion Games.
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Tags: burnout, Criterion games, not free software, paradise
Games Take Over My Brain!
It’s the holiday season and instead of doing something useful with my spare time I’ve been playing games. Video games are how I first got interested in computers and I’ve decided to take a visit to that fun old place. I was seriously contemplating a PS3, particularly because it can run Yellow Dog Linux. These guys are doing some fun stuff with the Power architecture but in the end it seemed making the hardware I already own do the work made more sense.
1. Install a copy of Windows XP Media Center I have laying around. It’s evil and covered with dust but it still works.
2. Update my HP m7334n with a new graphics card. I didn’t go crazy. Just grabbed something with a half decent price at BestBuy. A BFG NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GT.
3. Get a power supply. My little old 300W ps wasn’t going to handle the new card. So I picked up a 450W VisionTek to carry the card. It’s pretty cool in that you don’t have to replace your existing, and perfectly functional, power supply. Just pop the VisionTek into an extra bay and off you go.
4. Find some games!
I poked around the net and picked a couple that had good reviews. I purchased Brothers in Arms: Hell’s Highway. I have to say, this game kind of sucks. Great story, great graphics but average game. I’ve played GPL’ed games that are more fun. Definitely not worth $50. Damn Ubisoft, what happened? This sure is no Ghost Recon.
Somebody gave me Madden NFL 2008. As a friend at work would say, “Meh”.
Then Sunday night I was about 9 beers in, shopping with my grandmother and my brother at Walmart (it should be pronounced without the ‘r’ as in Wallmaaat) and picked up Crysis Warhead. Jackpot! Finally. This is a well rounded, well thought out, deep environment. The Crytek group are most impressive. This is some well made software. Kudos. This game is worth paying for. Not only is the mainline game itselft fabulous, but the online game Crysis Wars (an included additional DVD) is awesome as well. This is a game that you can spend hundreds of hours on. I’ve also stopped by the developers blog and they are quite active. For the holiday season they’ve released some new maps. Quite nice of them. If you don’t have this game, get it.
I downloaded StarCraft for nostalgia. But really I’m waiting for StarCraft 2 to come out…
Anyway my religion tells me that proprietary software is evil (Church of Emacs). And it is, but damn it, a geek needs his games once every couple of years.
Now I better go shopping for the family! Happy holidays everyone. :-)
Filed under: General | 4 Comments
Tags: Brothers in Arms, Crysis, game, Madden, nvidia, starcraft, VisionTek, windows, yellow dog linux
Fedora Linux 10
Fedora 10 has been released today. Even though I have a perfectly functioning computer (CentOS) and everything is set up as I like, I just can’t resist downloading the latest version of Fedora and checking it out. Not sure if I’ll just set up a virtual instance or do a fresh install. The torrent is humming along nicely with plenty of seeds and peers. Check out the bittorrent tracker page and the release notes.
Filed under: Linux | Leave a Comment
Tags: fedora 10, Linux
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