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/make-emacs-open-fullscreen-all-the-time/ http://bshootz.com/make-emacs-open-fullscreen-all-the-time/#comments Sun, 05 Sep 2010 18:35:34 +0000 admin http://bshootz.com/?p=1180 Posted in How ToTips

Posted in How ToTips

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.

]]>

Running a Website on a Minimal Server

Currently my website is being hosted on a tiny account on A Small Orange servers. It includes 150mb of disk space and 4.5gb of bandwidth.This might not seem like a lot of resources to most people but it is more than enough for many websites. I run many different programs on my account some that are for the public and many that I use personally.

The most resource intensive program that I use is my WordPress blog install. It uses about 30mb of space on my hardrive and uses the most bandwidth. I still manage to stay under about 250mb per month depending on whether or not I post some pictures or something else that takes a lot of bandwidth.

I will admit that if I ever encounter a huge rush of traffic from Digg or somewhere else my website will be crushed within minutes. That is why I have a backup plan. I have a smaller blog called crash test. Crash test, is run by a lightweight CMS called snews. It uses a couple of kbs of bandwidth per page load which enables me to redirect people to a smaller less resource intensive version of an article if need be.

I probably could run an snews site with under 25mbs of bandwidth every month. It is that small. The other advantage is that it loads almost instantaneously. If you would like to check it out it can be found at quips.bshootz.com.

No matter what all the other hosting providers say unlimited is never truly unlimited. They know most sites use half a gigabyte of bandwidth or each month and count on you never fully trying out their limits. Because they tell you you are getting an unlimited account you are more inclined to pay more for something they really aren’t providing. I would rather now exactly what I am and am not paying for. I don’t want an excuse saying I would rather now exactly what I am and am not paying for. I don’t want an asterisk after my hosting conditions putting unknown limits on my usage. i say spell out your terms and conditions in clear print for everyone and stop hiding between unlimited* plans. Even though at first ASO’s hosting plan may sound restrictive it is actually quite the opposite. Even though at first ASO’s hosting plan may sound restrictive it is actually quite the opposite.

If you are looking to run a personal blog I say start with the smallest possible hosting account you can find and work your way up from there. I will keep my twenty-five dollar a year plan until I start using 4499mb of bandwidth a month or 149mb of drive space. With my host I know I can always add badwidth for a couple of dollars or switch plans at anytime. I am truly unrestricted.

Recently I have begun on the noble quest to try to organize my notes. I had never thought about archiving important information in a centralized place until recently. It took me quite awhile to figure out which software did and did not work for me in my pursuit of note taking nirvana. For the last two or so months this is the system that has been working for. I think I have finally gotten it finalized and in a good enough situation that it is worth sharing.

I know this system probably won’t for many people, maybe it only works for me! So if you have a better note taking system. Please tell me about it in the comments. This note taking system utilizes two free programs. Simplenote and TiddlyWiki. They both accomplish the same task of keeping notes in one place in different ways. Because they are fundamentally different I use them for different notes at different times.

First I will start out with Simplenote. Found at simplenoteapp.com Simplenote is a free online note synchronization platform. Think of it as evernote but faster and wit no upload limits. But without the extra non-note capabilities. Evernote could probably fill the same position: I prefer Simplenote because it is lightning fast and syncs very quickly. Also their iPhone app is great. Still this system does not need Simplenote specifically it just needs a program like it.

The next program I use to keep my abundance of notes in check is this nifty little file called TiddlyWiki. Yes it is a file. You just save it on you computer and open it up in you web browser and you are ready to go. TiddlyWiki is small and portable and can be put on anything including floppy drives! I have to admit I don’t actually use TiddlyWiki. I use ccTiddly: ccTiddly is a version of TiddlyWiki that runs on a webserver. I just have it hosted on my hosting account for the ultimate level of accessibility. Their features are exactly the same. One just runs on your hard drive and one is stored on a server.

Anyways TiddlyWiki is great because you can link all of your notes together and has many of the wiki features found on normal wiki software like Wikipedia’s MediaWiki software. TiddlyWiki allows you to keep all of your notes and notes related to them all together in one space. I am also pretty sure that ccTiddly allows you to upload images. I haven’t needed to use that feature yet, but it might be helpful to people who need to have certain photos accessible at all times.

Now that you have a grip on the programs that are being used. You need to learn how to implement them. First let us start out with Simplenote. Simplenote is simple. It it used for quick notes. No fussing around. Think shopping lists. You don’t need to reuse a shopping list and you can’t be taking a long time to write it down. So you open Simplenote on your laptop and you type out you list. Then when you are in the car you get a call from your spouse, and you have to add an item.

So you just open up the Simplenote app and append the list. Even cooler you could just have them log on at home and change the list without even telling you! Wouldn’t that be cool, everyone could take responsibility and add their own items to your shopping list! Because when you get to the grocery store the note will already be synced. I also use Simplenote for basically all of my blog posts. I don’t need to archive my posts. Because they are already located on the same server in my fully searchable blog. Think Simplenote = simple notes. Notes you will need only for a short term. Simplenote is great for shorter notes, and items you will need in the short term. That is the first half of my note taking duo.

The second note taking program is the previously mentioned TiddlyWiki. TiddlyWiki is my “archive”. Tiddlywiki is slower to open up and get writing. I use it to host all of my info I will potetially need in the future. TiddlyWiki doesn’t get cluttered up like Simplenote does and it has an awesome search feature. Also I have more control over my data on my selfhosted wiki.

TiddlyWiki is also great because I can link to other notes and I can keep my notes seperate but together. If Simplenote is for wriiting blog posts: TiddlyWiki is for writing term papers. TiddlyWiki is almost my private blog. Basically Simplenote notes go to two different blogs. My public one and my private one. Continuing with my analogies: If Simplenote was the New York Times, TiddlyWiki would be the Library of Congress.

With our program’s tasks defined let’s set some good habits. Taking a page from Getting Things Done. Simplenote is your inbox. A place for things that need to be categorized and put in their place later. I suggest taking half an hour each week sorting your past week’s note into TiddlyWiki. I don’t suggest updating TiddlyWiki every day. It is better done when you have multiple additions and you can link everything together. That way you don’t have to go over notes over and over again linking them together. Just do it all in one shot.

Also try to capture everything into Simplenote. If you have something on a sticky note type it into Simplenote. I think this system definitely works best when used exclusively. If you have notes scattered all over the place you are only hurting yourself. It is either all or nothing.

In my heart of hearts I hope this method works well for you. I haven’t worked put all of the kinks yet. So far it’s the best way for me personally to take notes. As I said before and I’ll say it again. Please help me improve my method. I am always welcoming to constructive criticism and comments.

It has been around for hundreds of years. It is a truly universal game. Chine, Britain, Russia, and even we ”uncivilized”  people from America play it. No I am not talking about Soccer and the current World Cup happenings. Well let me start off first with asking you a simple question. What do you think is the most athletic sport? You may be thinking: Football, Basketball, or maybe even Tennis. But you are all wrong.

The most athletic sport is Chess. Have you ever heard that quote before? Oh, wait I know you haven’t, because I just came up with it. Chess takes, brian power, determination, and the ability to make strategic decisions. There are millions of ways that a chess game can play itself out. No game is ever the same(unless you are playing a five year sibling that doesn’t understand the four move checkmate but that’s another topic).

Playing chess teaches you many great skills like the ones I mentioned above and many more, including how to maintain you “poker face”, think ahead, and see the consequences of you actions. I don’t think anyone could call those bad things to learn how to do.

Now that you know how Chess can help you let’s get down to the basics. Chess is played on a 8 by 8 board with alternating colored squares. There are six types of pieces in Chess. The pieces in chess are pawns, rooks, knights, bishops, the King and the Queen.

Of course just knowing what the pieces are called isn’t enough. Just like with any cool item you have to know what they do. Let’s start with the least valuable piece: The Pawn. Pawns are meant to do you “evil” bidding. They go out on the playing field know they 80% of the time will die. The pawns can move forward one space per turn. They can’t move backwards and they can only attack pieces on diagonals. Although pawns may be your low ranking lackies, they can be given a field promotion. If a pawn makes it to the opposite side of the game board they can be exchanged for any piece(usually a Queen). This extra functionality makes Pawns very valuable at the end of the game.

The next piece is the Rook. The Rook, is basically a moving castle(Apparently castles used to move when the game of Chess was invented). They can move forward, backwards and side to side as many spaces as they want if they come in contact with any other pieces.

Then there is the Knight. The knight which usually is represented as a horse moves in a L shape. I don’t know what made the inventors of chess think horses always jump forward three spaces and then magically change direction and move one space to the side. They must have known some very weird equestrians in their day. The Knight is also useful because it can jump over other pieces so it can break into enemy lines and cause havoc.

The fourth piece I am going to talk about is the Bishop. The Bishop has some trouble walking forward. So he always walks in a diagonal line. This makes it so that he can only attack pieces on his own color. Bishops are particularly helpful in attaining check mate because they can block off a whole diagonal row.

The second most valuable and definitely the most intimidating piece in Chess is the Queen. The Queen has no limits on how she can move. She can move forwards, backwards, side to side, and even diagonal! Making her the most versatile piece on the board.

Last but not least it the King. The whole reason for the game of Chess. The King can move in all the same ways the Queen can move, but it can only move one space at a time. Making him a glorified pawn. He can’t even become a Queen! If the King is put into checkmate: When he cannot move without being attacked. The game is decided.

The person who is playing white always goes first. Each player starts out with 8 pawns, 2 Bishops, 2 Knights, 2, Rooks, a Queen, and a King. Each piece is worh a certain number of points. A pawn is worth 1 point, the Rooks are worth 5 points, the Bishops & Knights are worth 3 points, the Queen 9, and the King: infite points. If there is not enough time to play a game to its finish or if you want to see how your positions stacks up to you opponents you can tally up both players points for a quick way to see who is winning.

Now that you know how to play a game, go out there procure a chess set and start playing. You do know it is the most athletic sport, right?

]]> http://bshootz.com/chess/feed/ 0 http://bshootz.com/how-to-get-in-the-content-producing-zone/ http://bshootz.com/how-to-get-in-the-content-producing-zone/#comments Fri, 18 Jun 2010 18:00:42 +0000 admin http://bshootz.com/?p=1000 Posted in How ToTips

Wow, that title really makes me sound like one of those twitter spamming SEO guys. Anyways, I am writing this post to tell you what works for me when I want to get down to business and write a solid … Continue reading →]]> Posted in How ToTips

Wow, that title really makes me sound like one of those twitter spamming SEO guys.

Anyways, I am writing this post to tell you what works for me when I want to get down to business and write a solid blog post. Over the last (almost) year, I have learned that a couple of things really help me stay concentrated while writing.

I have to admit the biggest thing that has helped my attention span is finding the write text editor. The best text editor in my case was Darkroom(Windows)/PyRoom(Linux). I have already reviewed Darkrooom so I won’t get too much into it, but I have to say it does help you focus on the text and nothing else.

The second thing that has helped my writing is AHK or AutoHotKey. AHK lets you assign hot keys to anything and everything. I use it to open up my browser, Email client, but the most helpful thing it does for me is auto text correction. In my AHK script I have words that are commonly misspelled and when I type they are automagically corrected. I didn’t create this script, but it is saves time and helps me focus on writing and not spell check. You can find my AHK script on my programming page.

The third and final thing that I have learned that helps me write is everyones favorite music streaming service: Pandora. Being such a popular website you most likely already know what Pandora is. An amazing online music streaming service that allows you to customize stations to your own music tastes. Pandora allows me to listen to a medley of music that I like without having to change the song or pick what album I want to listen to. This allows me to stay in the “zone” and not focused on whether I want to listen to ELO or The Who.

I hope these tips help you produce better content in less time, and to become a better blogger. I realize everyone works differently, and that these things might not work for you. Please comment with any other solutions you use to stay focused on writing.

]]> http://bshootz.com/how-to-get-in-the-content-producing-zone/feed/ 0