Saturday 22 May 2010

persistent ssh with screen

Log into the remote machine with ssh

type, `screen'

work as normal.

Kill the connection or Detatch (CTRL-A d) the session.

Reconnect. Type, screen -ls

The screen session should be listed. (r)econnect to it by typing,

screen -r

Where is the information listed from screen -ls

--Naming----------------
screen -S test : create a new screen with the name, `test'

Or, within session: CTRL-A : sessionname test

------------------------

Friday 21 May 2010

[12:35:57] Dr. F: I don't know who pgp is, but he doesn't know that Linux sucks the sweat off a dead man's testicles...
[12:48:32] Dr. S: pgp, Dr. F, is `pretty good privacy', and linux rocks.
[12:49:41] … An example: `D' plays World of Warcraft under its intended operating system, Windows. Dr. S plays an identical copy of the game (literally, copied) under linux using WINE. D's is unstable. Dr. S's is rock solid.
[12:52:46] … Another example: Dr. S clicks on a file in windows. It contains a virus. The virus installs, grabs credit card details, transmits them elsewhere, intercepts attempts to use a browser, re-writes the master boot record and blue screens. The disk needs to be low level formatted and the operating system (such that it is) reinstalled. In another world, Dr. S. double clicks an infested file under linux. It tries to access system files to install, and Dr. S is asked for his super user password (required for all installations). Dr. S smells a fish and politely declines. No damage.

Wednesday 19 May 2010

Car notes

Last oil change was long life, at 77k miles. Minimum service date, May '10.
Required oil: VW506 00 only. 4.3 Litres. 34L fuel tank.

Monday 17 May 2010

Lexmark 6200 with linux.

Purchased a couple of years ago or so, for about £200. Colour ink-jet printer, scanner. It may even print photos, I forget.

Anyway, Suse10: The printer shows up, but a test page doesn't work.

Hunting through Lexmark's site: no support for linux. No support for linux?
You fucking assholes, I may as well have donated the money to you. You cannot spare the salary of a single engineer to provide linux compatability? Well, fuck you. I will NEVER buy Lexmark again. With any luck, that's probably ten printers gone, over my life time. From a single person. Move with the times, Lexmark. Even when you do start to support Linux, I'll never buy from you again.

On a plus note, Brother printers seem to work well (so I'm told), and I know I got a Dell duplex laser printer to work well under linux. Pity Lexmark are so fucking pathetic as to not keep up. Well, a pity I didn't realise how shit they were before parting with my cash. It won't happen again.

Friday 14 May 2010

Latex memory

The animation package has tips in Section 8. They were,

Find texmf.cnf:

$ kpsewhich texmf.cnf

As root, edit it. Change the main_memory entry to

main_memory=10000000

Actually, mine was already 1.5x greater than that.

Rebuild the formats (?) as,

$ sudo fmtutil-sys --byfmt latex
$ sudo fmtutil-sys --byfmt pdflatex
$ sudo fmtutil-sys --byfmt xelatex

Saturday 8 May 2010

burning bluray / cd

growisofs -Z /dev/dvdrw -R -J -allow-limited-size /home/ms/forBluRay

worked!

I had installed dvd+rw-tools previously. This burned at 4x, estimated time approx 1.5 hours to burn a disk.

Another page recommended,

growisofs -v -Z /dev/dvdrw -r -J -allow-limited-size -speed=1 -dry-run /home/ms/forBluRay/2/*

Lower case `r' is recommended for Linux. `v' is verbose. -dry-run marks a test.

CD:

To burn an iso:

wodim --devices

wodim dev=/dev/cdrw -v -data cd_image.iso

To create an AUDIO cd from a bunch of wavs (cool!):

wodim dev=/dev/cdrw -v -audio [wav files...]

where `v' is verbose.

Friday 7 May 2010

Matplotlib bar charts.

from pylab import *
import numpy.numarray as na

labels = ['Other', 'Lib Dem', 'Warmongers', 'Posh twats']
data = [12, 23, 29, 36] # % data from the independent.
xlocations = na.array(range(len(data)))+0.5

width = 0.5
bar(xlocations, data, width=width)
ylim(0, 100) # a meaningful scale.
title("Voting proportions on a meaningful (%) scale")
gca().get_xaxis().tick_bottom()
gca().get_yaxis().tick_left()
xticks(xlocations+ width/2, labels)

Political memories, paper rubbish

Labour:

Illegal war under Tony Blair: huge protests not only in the UK but throughout Europe.

ACMD resignations over political pressure: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 members of the scientific community gradually withdraw from the board in protest. Public focus on the resignations makes no difference to the behaviour demonstrated by Labour.

http://ericcarlin.wordpress.com/2010/04/02/my-acmd-resignation-letter-to-the-home-secretary/



Tory:
Propose tax breaks for married couples. The break amounts to next to nothing financially, but the question remains: where would the money come from? Ultimately, from those who didn't get the break. The single person. It's ok though, as they'll raise the limit for inheritance tax up towards one million pounds, from the 250k or so it currently stands at. Bear in mind, the inheritance tax point has been changing with inflation (unlike some other tax break points), so this proposal is designed specifically, to benefit the rich.

Out of interest, how much do you need to earn to get a one million pound mortgage? At 3.5 times earning, approximately £300k. Not many degrees will get you there. That sort of money has to be inherited.


Lib dem:

Nothing bad to report, yet.


Independent reports on founding of `The big chill'. Source: wikipedia
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/08/10/balls_festival/


Daily Mail report iphone 4 recall: source twitter
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/06/28/daily_mail_fake_tweet/

Thursday 6 May 2010

Words and phrases of the day.

7/5/10: Abomination. (re: political outcomes)
6/5/10: Puerile.
7/5/10: Banal.
19/5/10: Irascible.

Monday 3 May 2010

flv youtube downloads

sudo apt-get install youtube-dl

voila.

There is more. Applications, software: install the restricted extras. Whatever: in firefox, about:plugins showed shockwave flash was installed and ok, when it was working. I had also installed smplayer and vlc a few minutes before.

I think it was probably the restricted extras that did it.