This is going to be wow. I hope Wikipedia will melt phone systems in Washington on Wednesday. Tell everyone you know!

January 16, 2012 1:15 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@jimmy_wales

Jimmy Wales

The Internet is going to be turning black on Jan. 19th because of the copyright legislation currently going through the two houses of Congress. SOPA in the House of Representatives and PIPA in the Senate both threaten the wonderful community of creation that is the Internet.

If either of these bills are passed the major and minor sites (such as this one) could be taken down just for linking to a site that may or may not support piracy. Youtube could be taken down for one copyright infringing video. Same thing for Facebook, Wikipedia, or Etsy. That is why this site and many others will be going black on Wednesday.

Sites That I Know Are Going Black:

• Reddit
• Wikipedia (you better write your essays ahead of time)
• Mojang
• Major League Gaming
• Cheezburger Sites

If you operate a website I suggest putting up a stop SOPA banner to increase awareness. It’s the only way we can keep the Internet as it is.

You are probably wondering what all the fuss is about the newest prerelease versions of Emacs 24. Well, the best way to see them is to install the newest version.Here’s how you can do that on Debian.

This tutorial is based upon this official (more expert friendly) tutorial. If you want some challenge you can just try to install from there without reading the rest of this blog post. First you must install git if you don’t have git:

sudo apt-get install git

This will allow you to pull the newest release from the repository. Using this command:

git clone --depth 1 git://git.sv.gnu.org/emacs.git

Wait for your computer to download all of the files it might take a while. Now you need to install a  bunch of dependencies. You can try compiling without them and see which ones you absolutely need. But you at least need:

• build-essential
• xorg-dev
• libgtk2.0-dev

All of these can be installed through “sudo apt-get install “.  Now you must compile the source by running “cd ~/emacs” then:

./autogen.sh
./configure
make bootstrap (this will take a while)
sudo make install

This should leave you with a working Emacs 24 install. It might take a long time but it is totally worth it

I stumbled upon this program called “GrindCraft“. It plays songs from the Minecraft soundtrack at random times while you are at your computer. However, it only works for Macs, well easily anyways. Today I ported it to Windows with Audiere. I own the Minecraft album so I just used that. But if you want you can probably get the songs from the minecraft game jar. (you need to go to:
“C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\.minecraft\resources” to find the .mp3 files. From there you can stick them in a separate folder.)

Keep in mind I wrote this as to make my experience as painless as possible. This probably means your experience will be very painful when you try to set this program up. But I figured someone might want to use it. So, here it is:

PCgrindcraft

PCgrindcraftv2

In the grindcraft.config file all you need is either “show” or “noshow” so say whether or not you want to know how long until the next song is played. And then the directory where all of your minecraft .mp3s are.

Here’s a preview of the sourcecode:

import audiere
import time
import random
import string
import os
f = open('grindcraft.conf','r')
read = f.read()
conf = []
conf = string.split(read)
d = audiere.open_device()
go = True
files = []
files = os.listdir(conf[1])
while(go == True):
    numb = random.randint(1,24)
    full = conf[1] + files[numb]
    f = d.open_file(full,1)
    f.play()
    rand_sleep = 600+(random.randint(-3,7)*60)
    while(rand_sleep > 0):
        time.sleep(5)
        rand_sleep = rand_sleep - 5
        if(conf[0] != 'noshow'):
            os.system("cls")
            print rand_sleep/60 , 'More minutes until music || Playing:', files[numb]

CrunchBang Linux (aka #!) is an openbox distro with a simple and efficient setup. Generally the procedure for installing Linux from a flash drive is to open up Unetbootin and let it do its work on the .iso file. However, this process does not work on Crunchbang. Fortunately there is another way to install it from a flash drive.

First, download ImageWrite.exe, it is an Opensuse branded program that basically acts like the UNIX utility dd. Then download the Crunchbang ISO file. Once that is downloaded open up ImageWriter, but you will soon realize that it only accepts .raw files.

But there is an easy workaround. Find the .iso file and rename it so that its file type is “.raw”. Reopen ImageWriter, insert a flashdrive, find the .raw file and press “copy”.

Now that the drive is copied, you can reboot and boot into a live environment (you’ll have to enter into your BIOS and select “boot from flashdrive” or something like that). You can stop there, but you probably want to install it. So go back into Windows and download a program called “EASEUS Partition Master 9.0.0 Home Edition”. It’s free and legal and is a better replacement for PartitionMagic. Once you have that running you need to resize your windows partition and create one for Linux. You probably only need 8 or so gigabytes of space, one for Linux and the rest for files. You have to be very careful during this step as not to kill your windows install. Just make sure you are resizing the correct partition (it should be the largest one where your files reside in my case it is labeled as “C”.

Now that your Linux partition is set up, you can install CrunchBang. Boot your flash drive and select graphical install. Then enter all your region specific details. Finally you will reach the partition screen. Select the manual partition entry. You DO NOT want guided partition. This will erase your whole drive and use it for Linux. Select the eight gig partition and tell the program to use it as the main install disk. Make sure it is not altering your main partition with windows on it and tell it to proceed. Just follow the rest of the installer and it will finally allow you to login to your user account. Now reboot and it should show GRUB2 when you first startup. It should show your Windows bootloader and Crunchbang Linux. If it only shows CrunchBang do not freak out. It can be fixed.

If the Windows entry is missing boot into Crunchbang, right click and open a terminal. Run the command “update-grub” this should fix your grub and make a window entry. Reboot and make sure Windows runs okay.

Note: I do not take any responsibility for any damage incurred from this tutorial. Use this guide responsibly and don’t do anything stupid.

The programming language Python has many different libraries that allow you to create applications with graphical user interfaces. Some are more popular than others (Tkinter being the most well known). Many are very obscure and have very little documentation. One of these is called EasyGUI.

Easy GUI aims to easily create functional GUIs. It easy a wrapper for Tkinter but streamlines many widgets that would take more lines of code to accomplish in Tkinter. EasyGUI has premade message boxes, code boxes, input screens and a couple of other features. All of these can be created with one command and it only needs the EasyGUI library to function. Because it is based on Tkinter it is cross-platform (and kind of ugly). One great feature of this library is that it also makes it very easy to add a UI after the program has been completed.

A Multiple Entry Box

To get started with EasyGUI all you have to do is download the “easygui.py” script from their website. Then you move it to this folder “C:\Python27\Lib\site-packages” on Windows. You can install it from the linux terminal by typing “sudo setup.py install” while in the EasyGUI folder. Once that is done you just have to include the EasyGUI library in your script by typing: “from easygui import *”. Now you can use any of the EasyGUI functions.

One great feature of EasyGUI is the easy creation of Choice boxes (shown in the first picture). This can be done through this code:

You only have to input a couple of fields to have a usable GUI popup. I highly recommend this library to anyone who has been intimidated by Tkinter widgets or any other Python GUI library. It allows you to focus more on the functions of your script and less on the syntax of coding an interface.

This is a guide on how to be a hipster. Or maybe it’s a tale of how not to be a hipster. With these easy steps you can achieve victory before achieving was cool. Just follow these simple steps.

Firstly, you have to look the part. Hipsters like many types of clothing but generally fall into certain set sartorial statements. Invest in skinny jeans, you have to allow every pre-distressed piece of fabric cling to your body like a wet bathing suit. Buy clothing two sizes two small. Your t-shirts shouldn’t go past your waist. Preferably they barely even touch your pants. The t-shirts also should have some snarky comment in fancy font. They shouldn’t be from any mainstream brand, the more obscure the better. Just start going to thrift stores it doesn’t matter how bad the clothes look when you are making such profound statements. Another part of hipster fashion is the man bag. It’s like a purse but with ragged fabric to make you look outdoorsy.

Then you need to work on your transportation methods. Bikes work the best, or even public transit. Don’t drive cars they’re too mainstream. If you have to drive car get a hybrid. At least make it look like you care about the environment. Your bike has to be a certain type too. The Bicycle should be the oldest one you can find.

You will have serious hipster cred if you start riding an eighteenth century velocipede around your college campus.

Once you have the basics down you need to start accessorizing. Start with your choice of sunglasses. Ray-bans are always a hipster staple. Always have them on even if you are inside. Because you’re too cool to be exposed to the harsh artificial lighting that hurts the environment. To tie everything up buy yourself a Macbook. Hipsters use MacBooks and there is only once exception to that rule. If you want to be ironic get some clunky ten-year old ThinkPad. Never break the computer rule otherwise your hipster card will be revoked. You will never be able to set foot in another Starbucks once your hipster card has been taken away from you. You might as well say hello to Dunkin Donuts and start looking for an actual non-ironic job.

]]> http://bshootz.com/raybans-and-macbooks-a-journey-on-becoming-a-hipster/feed/ 0 http://bshootz.com/my-first-day-of-minecraft-or-how-i-fail-at-minecraft/ http://bshootz.com/my-first-day-of-minecraft-or-how-i-fail-at-minecraft/#comments Thu, 11 Aug 2011 02:58:49 +0000 admin http://bshootz.com/?p=1335 Posted in ReviewsTips

Posted in ReviewsTips

Minecraft is the insanely popular sanbox game from the swedish developer Mojang. It is currently running in a beta. But anyone can buy and download it for 25% off of the sale price when it comes out in November. Anyways enough with the boring description. You want to know how I fail at Minecraft.

I tried to avoid the hype but I couldn’t last, the numerous posts on Reddit and advice from people in real life caused me to fall for Minecraft’s creeper claws. I had quite a few problems with the game before it even started. My current computer is a Hp Mini 311. Admittedly, it’s a little under powered. It is one step above a netbook. So I can’t say I expect all games to run at one hundred frames per second. But I said to myself “look the art is all pixelated why would it need a good computer to play it on? That would be silly”. So I forged on entered my paypal details and hoped for the best. (Okay, I actually did check the system requirements but they were innacurate).

I downloaded the game. Logged in and was confronted with a screen to name my world. I quickly deleted the place holder “New World” and replace it with “Brave New World“. Why? Because I can. It takes a minute or two to get everything running and it drops me in the randomly generated game world. I look around and my frame rate drops to nearly zero. I back out of the game and type into google.

After some failed attempts and repeated google searches I found out how to mod the game and add some changes that would increase my frame rate. (if you need some help check out Optifine and one of the various mod loaders. Downloading optifine seemed to help a little bit and increased my framerates. My first of many obstacles was overcome. Now Minecraft was playable.

I booted up Minecraft and landed back in Brave New World. I looked around and said to myself  ”What am  I supposed to do? Where are all those cool creations that are found on youtube?”.  I alt-tabbed out of minecraft and started googling. I found out I need to cut down trees and build a house. Why did nobody tell me this? I started on my way, but was too slow to create a house before dark and I was killed by some exploding thing. Another lesson I learned the hard way. Things kill you in Minecraft. Again I rage quit.

The lure of the building blocks and /r/minecraft brought me back to Minecraft within minutes. I was determined to set everything right. Cue montage. I chopped down trees, I ate my lunch and built myself a wonderful cave home. Like a Minecrafting BOSS.

That’s all I really got done in my first day. I am now in an endless cycle of wishing I actually had enough resources to build something, and then getting lost in the unexplored abyss that is my minecraft world. Hopefully I will find some redstone dust in the next century. Until then I will keep cutting down trees and being killed by random creepers.

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I have been really busy with school work lately so don’t expect too much high quality journalism for the time being. I haven’t really done any programming lately so don’t expect any high quality updates either. But I have been messing around in Linux. I might write a Linux article soon. I might actually have some time this weekend to sit down and write for fun. Also I just wanted to share this cool link. I just installed Emacs on my flash drive portably. You can find it here.

I just wanted to announce a new addition to the family of scripts I have written recently. It is called Twitathon, and is a Python written Twitter client. You can find it at http://sourceforge.net/p/twitathon/. Please use it and help me make it the best CLI Twitter client around.

FAQS:

1. What are the requirements?

You need the Tweepy python module installed it can be found on github. Preferably running Linux or OSX.

2. How Do I Get It To Work?

Simply download the Oauth.py script run it and paste the variables it returns into the twitathon.py script. Now you are ready to go. Then to actually use it you just write (python twitathon.py “your message here”) in the terminal and it will be automatically posted to Twitter.

I was having problems with Emacs loading half off my desktop when I opened it so I googled around the internet(z) and I found this code:

(defun toggle-fullscreen ()
(interactive)
(x-send-client-message nil 0 nil “_NET_WM_STATE” 32
‘(2 “_NET_WM_STATE_MAXIMIZED_VERT” 0))
(x-send-client-message nil 0 nil “_NET_WM_STATE” 32
‘(2 “_NET_WM_STATE_MAXIMIZED_HORZ” 0))
)
(toggle-fullscreen)

Originally in ubuntu forum topic.