Game of Life

It's been some time since my last post. Since then many things happened. Well in fact just one serious thing: my laptop's HD has been fried... :-( At the same time I fell in love with Ubuntu Live CD which I've been using for the past 5 days...

I went to some stores but I couldn't find any IDE HD with more than 80GB capacity, so I'll wait one more day for their supplies to arrive. One of the salesmen told me that they "might" get some IDEs for laptops this Friday. >:-(

Anyway. Today I made a nice little prog that calculates a possible state in Game of Life that will evolve into a specific state after one step. I'm too tired to explain more about the Game of Life so try wikipedia. :-)

Here's what I made with it:

 # ## ## #      #     #                                         
           #            #                                       
  #### ####   ##### ####             ###########  ###########   
 ##   #   #   #  # # #  #                 #            #        
 ###  # # ## ####  #  #   #               #            #        
  #####  ## ##  ## #######                #            #        
#  #  # ##  ######   #  ###               #            #        
   #   # #  ##  ##  ##   ##               #            #        
       ## ###  # ### #####                #   #   ##   #        
    # # # # ##  ##   # ##  #              #   #  #     #        
    # ## #  #    #  # # ## #              #   # #      #        
   ###  # #  ##### ### ###                #   ##       #        
   ##   ## # ## ###  # ### #              #   ##       #        
 ###  ###   #    #   ## #  #              #   #        #        
   #### # # ### #  ## #  #                #   #        #        
    #   ### ######## ######                                     
  #  # # #####  ####### ## # 

To the left is the first state which evolves into what you see to the right. (TrT stands for Tritonio). I simply gave the right state to the program and it calculated the left one. The script uses an algorithm similar to the one I used while making my keyboard.

I am trying to make an "INSHAME" logo right now but, if at all possible, it will take much time due to it's size.

If you are really curious you can find the Lua source code of the program here but it's undocumented, written in the past three hours, and geek-only. ;-)

UPDATE:

Finally the Logo has finished!!!!!!! Here it is!!!

# #     ##  ##    #  #     # #  ##  # #   #  #  ## 
   #            #  #  #            #         #     
  ###   ###    ### #####    ##      ##  ##  # # #  
 ## # ####  # #### # # #    ###    #   # #  ####   
 #  # # #    # ##   #      # ###   # # ##     #   #
  ##   # ##   # ## # ###  #      # ## #  #  #  #   
  ##    # #     ###    #   #####   #  #  ####  ##  
  ##    ##   #   ##       #     #  #  ## #  # ###  
 #  #     #        #   ####  #  #### ###      ##   
  # ###  #  #  ## #    ###    # #  # ### #### ## # 
#   #    #    #     #           #     #  ## #  ##  
#  #       #  #    #   # ## #  #   ##  #          #

This evolves into INSHAME! :-D
I am still improving the algorithm.

Isn't it ironic?

People cry for 21 students that died in an accident.
People cry for the 80 that died from the fires in Greece.
People cry for the 2948 people that died in the WTC.

But people don't cry for her...

What's more tragic? Her and the other 9.7 millions kids per year (1 death per 3.25 seconds)? Or the 21 students? Don't tell me that tragedy cannot be measured. Because it can! Dying from starvation is not the same thing with dying in an accident... And 1 million kids are more than 100 kids.

People don't cry for the thousands of impending deaths because of the huge natural disaster that the fires caused. 2.600.000 acres burned leaving nothing but our future diseases... We will die of cancer, floods or even wars for water, but we mostly care about the 80 that died.

Every single death is a tragedy. I don't expect from someone who lost a friend or a relative not to mourn him because some kids in Africa die. But I expect from everyone else to stop being a hypocrite or illogical (whatever is the case).

If you feel like crying after seeing about the death of 21 kids on the TV and you don't cry about the hundreds that die at the same time, just because the TV didn't report it then you are really illogical. If you don't fell like crying but you still do then you are a hypocrite.

Next time don't cry when hearing about a tragedy on the TV, instead try to understand it logically. Because if you only confront it emotionally it will last very shortly and you will gain nothing from it.

Ubuntu Hardy Heron 8.04

The new version of Ubuntu has been released! I installed it one day after it got released. Like Gutsy Gibbon, Hardy Heron is really nice and has lots of new features and additions.

Story 1:

Installation:
I made a fresh install on my Acer Aspire 9420. Not a single problem! All of the devices were installed automatically and worked almost perfectly!


Customization:
The first thing I was going to do with Hardy was to install the programs that I used with Gutsy. I was really pleased to see some of them (Emesene, Qlandkarte*, Infon) included in the new repositories, as this meant more time to explore the new release. So I went on and added extra repositories: Ubuntu Satanic Edition (wonderful theme!), Medibuntu, Wine.

Satanic Edition Theme:


After that I started installing Add-Ons for Firefox. Hardy comes with Firefox 3 beta 5 installed. Although it feels much better than version 2, many of my favourite Add-Ons are not compatible with the new beta (yet...).

Firefox 3 beta 5:


I also found a very nice bittorrent client called Deluge. Well, in fact I already knew about Deluge but it's the first time that I actually use it. ;-)

Deluge:


I was amused by how easily accessible are encryption and digital signing capabilities in Hardy. Well in fact you have to run seahorse to create your public-private keypair but after that you can simply use the right-click context menu and the Clipboard encryption panel add on.

How to add the Clipboard Encryption panel add on:


Seahorse is in the background, a digital signature in the foreground:


Finally I had to setup all the Compiz plugins once again because for some reason the backup of my old settings didn't seem to work with Hardy... :-( But the result is nevertheless rewarding. :-)

The four desktops as seen with the Expo plugin:

Story 2:

Installation:
I also decided to install Hardy on my father's PC. I had a serious problem that didn't allow me to run the live CD. After reading about it I managed to solve it by adding the all_generic_ide boot option. It seems that there a major bug in the Live CD but luckily it doesn't affect all PCs. After installing Ubuntu everything worked just fine.


Anyway. Well done to everybody that worked on Hardy! :-)

*(I am not sure if Qlandkarte wasn't available on Gutsy's repos)

Steal photos with Emesene

[The script has been updated on 12 Apr 2008] I just adapted the SuperStealmore script to work with Emesene. As with the aMSN version you will have to change the first two lines of the script to fit you system. I also added the #!/user/bin/lua line at the top the two scripts so that they can be run just by clicking on them if you have Lua installed on your Linux system. You can download the script from here.

Emesene

I never liked Pidgin (former Gaim). I was always an aMSN fan. Although aMSN doesn't blend with Ubuntu nicely (probably because it's written in Tcl/Tk) compared to Pidgin, it has more features related to the MSN network. aMSN supports offline messages, camera sessions... almost everything that the official client does! (except shared folders I think)

Still there was some things in aMSN that kept annoying me.

1. Offline messaging was too slow. After pressing enter I had to confirm that I want to send an offline message and then the whole program stopped responding for one-two seconds.
2. The program sometimes crushed after long runtime periods. I have found in many occasions, after returning home, white aMSN windows which do not respond.
3. The program feels a bit heavy. Well, maybe... But some things take too long and the program stops responding (login etc).
4. There are many other minor bugs like false "file send failed" messages etc.
5. Connection problems. Some times (quite often) I had to close and reopen a chat window in order to be able to send again a message to a contact. Else I would get "could not deliver message" errors (or something like this).

Now I am using Emesene (wikipedia). I found out about it from a guy in my University's forums. It misses some features compared to aMSN like camera and voice support) but I really don't care. After all I use Skype for these. On the other hand it's much lighter (written in Python), it responds really fast, no crazy crashes, and lots of neat plugins!

Initially all plugins are disabled. You have to enable them through Options->Plugins. Some notable plugins are:

• Youtube which shows thumbnails next to youtube links that your contacts send to you.
• Tinyurl integration.
• CurrentSong which changes you personal message to show the currently playing song and even supports Listen! (my favourite music player for Ubuntu)

Emesene doesn't need any installation. Just download the source code, unzip it in your home directory and run a file called emesene inside its directory. You can also drag it to your panels to create a convenient launcher!

Try it! It's by far the best MSN client I have tried!

PS: There is a Windows version too but I haven't tried it. A friend told me that it doesn't work for him.