Pidkamin festival 2010

July 28th, 2010

Finally, I’ve arrived back to my sweet 127.0.0.1

With the help of this post I’d like to start my summer story. I was eager to do the same previous year. I wanted to carefully explain every day of my summer’09.
I started at 01-07. And after it grown to 3 A4 typed sheets of paper in 5 days, I lost my wish.

Now I’m about to post only main events of my summer trips.

Several days ago I returned from Pidkamin Etno-Festival 2010. I was there for the third time in my life. Those, who were there in 2008 should definitely recall in memory that famous Pidkamin’s dust! Everything and everyone was in dust. From top to bottom, from toes to head. That was awesome!

So let me introduce some facts about Pidkamin Festival. These main parts make it a great festival!

  1. People. Since I was at Pidkamin for 3 times, I should say, it was always great fun to get to know with new people. People, who come to the festival were always astonishing for me. We had so much fun together: from cooking in a great bucket for 30 persons, to playing hog wars in dust! That’s really great! All of them are from different parts of Ukraine. But we are so same in smth. Maybe, that’s because we all have common idea and goal: to have fun on this weekend at Pidkamin festival.
  2. Time. That would be useless to just sit all the time in front of bonfire. Pidkamin offers several quite interesting places to have fun.
    • The first one is lake. There’s a small puddle in at the festival area. Although it’s huge enough, there’s one better place to swim. It’s forest-lake. I heard about it 2 times, but only in 2010 I finally get to it. It’s in 10 minutes from the camp. I was there at 00-00. It was great fun. The water was hot and all the lake’s surface was in fog! That was so exciting to swim in fog. You just see nothing. Only hear.
      Apart from these, you can they organize soccer and volleyball pitches.
    • In 2009, they created “Pidkamin’s puddle in memory of Pidkamin’08″. A small puddle (~2 tennis courts) full of dust! Awake your inner hog and have fun!
    • You can spend some money buying different stuff at the bazar there. Generally, all most of the stuff is from China, but there are lot’s of handmade things! You should definitely check Drymba and Medovukcha. The first one is an old Ukrainian musical instrument. The other one is an alcohol. Really nice alcohol. It’s based on honey. Try it!
    • Besides all this prerendered places, there’s huge open area to discover! Great stone, caves, ancient monastery! I can’t stop talking about them in details, cos’ that would stretch the post several times!
      Obviously, if you are in a company of great people, you’ll find the way to spend time! I choose frisbee. That’s unique sport! Like Nokia, Frisbee’s connecting people! We even tried our best to play ultimate (a game with flying disc)!
  3. Music. That’s a bit frastrating issue. As for me, the best musical program in Pidkamin was in 2008. The previous year (due to financial problems) the last day was musical disaster. These year everything was as expected. Even though bands where not as cool, as they were in 2008, the first day was nice. Unfortunately for me, I injured my knee a bit, so I couldn’t jump, run and dance. But my fellows had a great time, definitely! The second day could be much better. Everyone was expecting TIK(Ukrainian humour band) && UNIA(Belorussian band which I heard a year before. They where better a year before). But when I heard them… It was like… Hey! WTF?! Is this TIK?.. TIK seemed to be singing not live… The third day was filled with local musicians… and was not such a great fun.

To cut that long story short, I should say, that my goals where achieved && tasks where accomplished! I had great time there! Nice people, nice territory, cheerful music! Everything you need!
So, Don’t bother, just relax, forget about all the troubles, pack your backpack, and have fun!

ubuntu on hp 6735s: common afterinstall guidelines

June 18th, 2010

After installing ubuntu on your hp6735s laptop it’s quite good to execute the following commands:

  • sudo gedit /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf
    and add
    options snd-hda-intel model=mobile
  • sudo gedit /etc/modprobe.d/options
    and add
    options snd-hda-intel model=mobile
  • that’s if your sound isn’t working :)

    *will be updating this page with good stuff for ubuntu/hp6735s laptop

hp6735s and ATI display driver in ubuntu

June 14th, 2010

Situation:

  • I enjoy using Ubuntu!
  • I enjoy using Ubuntu 9.10 (cos’ I still haven’t upgraded to 10.04)
  • I have hp6735s laptop
  • I use ATI proprietary driver
  • everything is too smoothed on the screen
  • font look like shit
  • windows *** works fine

After digging a little I found out that the problem is:

  • not with the fonts
  • Ubuntu set wrong screen resolution for me: 1280×768
  • right screen resolution 1280×800 is not in the list in System > Parameters > Screen
  • right screen resolution is not available in ATI Catalyst either

Here’s how I fixed it:

  1. run sudo gedit /etc/X11/xorg.conf in terminal
  2. found something like Section "Monitor" ... Option "PreferredMode" "1280x768"
  3. changed 1280x768 to 1280x800
  4. everything works fine after reboot!
  5. compiz and all 3D effects work nice too!
  6. ...and hey, it's the first time I edited xorg.conf by hands!

Enjoy using linux!
That the OS you really need!

Proxy in processing

May 29th, 2010

I’ve been studying processing language, and I think it’s great tool for

  • designers, who want to programmmmm
  • and programmers who want to design

More about it you can read at the official page of the project: processing.org/

If you need to work in processing with internet data && you are behind proxy, it’s a little bit trickier.

Place the following code in your setup() function, and everything gonna be alright!

void setup() {
        size(800,600);

        Properties systemSettings = System.getProperties();
        systemSettings.put("http.proxyHost", "your.proxy.org");
        systemSettings.put("http.proxyPort", "8080");
        System.setProperties(systemSettings);
}

Red Lions Frisbee Team

February 27th, 2010

 

RedLions Frisbee Team Logo

RedLions Frisbee Team Logo

Recently started playing ultimate!
That’s definitely the best sport ever! Everyone is positive! There’s only good and funny atmosphere round!

 

I’ve been playing Frisbee for more that 3 months.
I’m in RedLions Frisbee Team (Lviv).

The first tournament of mine was “Banosh vid Samoghonu”. It’s organized by Kolomyian team “Samoghon”.
We’ve got second place! My first tournament and the team already scores such a great result!

Watch your webcam in console!

January 8th, 2010

Wow! I really love linux! I feel that with every minute spent inside linux my love to this OS grows up! It’s so outrageous! You can do almost everything!!!

Today, I was really shocked with the abilities of the mplayer!
Here’s a short video of what I’ve done:

So, here’s a list of what I was doing with it (everything is done in tty-conole->[Ctrl]+[Alt]+[F5]):

  1. I wondered if I can watch films in console. That’s real! You just have to specify the special output driver. It’s the ASCII-Art driver:
    mplayer -vo aa nameOfYourFile.avi
    You can enjoy colour video in console, just replace aa driver with the Colour ASCII-Art driver caca!
  2. I felt it’s not enough! So, I tried to watch my web-cam in console! Obviously, mplayer is able to do it! You just need to specify the tv:// protocol, instead of filename:
    mplayer tv:// -vo caca
  3. Here’s the first problem. The output is alright, but that stats information always updates, and the video is blinking:( So, it makes impossible for you to watch your wab-cam normally. I started to investigate the mplayer’s man page:
    man mplayer
    it’s so huge! (read it if you want :) )
    I quickly found the solution! Here is it: the parameter -really-quiet:
    mplayer tv:// -vo caca -really-quiet
  4. But that was not enough! I wish I can watch the web-cam, as I look at mirror! I found the parameter -flip. But it just turns everything upside-down. The real solution for that is the video-filter Mirror! Specify it & enjoy:
    mplayer tv:// -vo caca -vf mirror -really-quiet
  5. There’s one more improvement, you can do to your output. You can make it better by specifing the font. The smaller the font – the better’s the output. I usually use Uni1-VGA8:
    setfont Uni1-VGA8

That’s all, folks! Go and watch your favourite videos in console!

arp-attacks in our hostel

January 3rd, 2010

Happy New Year 2 everyone in this world!
Let al your dreams come true in this 0x7DA year!!!

Right after the NY celebration I wanted to crawl the web & get in touch with my friends. I was really disappointed when I saw our local gateway down…No ping queries were successful:(
I put ping 192.168.1.123 -t and returned to celebration!
At 02 AM ping succeeded!
The situation repeated several times…

But I really wanted to wish best wishes to my mates!
So I started to investigate… The computer was overfilled with ARP-queries :( They changed the real MAC-address of the gateway, so the computer sent packets into wrong place.

The solution is simple:

Make your ARP table entries static!
Under Windows You can do it in the following way:

  1. Run “cmd”; [Start->Run->type "cmd" into it]
  2. type in command line:
    arp -s Gateway.Or.Another.Computer It-s-MAC-Address
  3. For instance if computer’s ip is 192.168.1.123;
  4. It’s MAC-address is 00-11-22-33-44-55;
  5. So you should type into command-line:
    arp -s 192.168.1.123 00-11-22-33-44-55

Best Wishes!!!

8bit Second-hand rush!

December 20th, 2009

Yesterday my 2 friends & I went to our local second-hand store. We wanted to have some fun &, if we could find smth special & outrageous, we could buy it…

Right at the beginning of the shop we found smth that had blown up our minds!
While surfing all the heaps with closing we saw an old Nintendo-clone: PowerJoy.

Power Joy

Power Joy Nintendo clone

I’ve never seen anything like that… My all childhood was spent with Dendy/Dendy2, which was created in Russia…and was de-facto the standard for game consoles… Almost every child had one!

 

Yeap… we bought it!
It’s awesome!
The only thing you need in order to play is TV.
So the pluses of this console are:

  • it works from batteries – no AC cable needed!
  • main gamepad is the gamepad itself+main computing center+pistol
  • has 9999+ prebuilt games!

As it was bought in second-hand store I had to fix it a bit. There was a problem in battery connection, but I fixed it quickly & was really astonished, when my ears heard the same, known from the earky childhood 8bit noise!!! Then a picture came up!!! That was AWESOME! I quickly found the game, called Tank90 & started fighting with evil tank forces!

It’s really interesting to remember that childish shit… In our days, when people are playing NFS & still complain that they are not satisfied with gameplay or video graphics that 8bit console remembers about the days spent in front of the TV, playing hard & trying to kill all the mushrooms and turtles with the help of Mario&&Luigi…

Піф Давольний

December 10th, 2009

Давольний як ніколи!
За останні 3 місяці такого нервового сплеску не переживав!
Настрій підняли.
Ваааааааааааааааааааааааау!
u r brilliant!

Genius G-Pen 4500 && Ubuntu 9.10

December 10th, 2009

I’m about to use my Genius G-Pen 4500 with Ubuntu. And here is my experience in installing this tablet.

Everything is pretty stright-forward.

  1. Go to http://code.google.com/p/linuxgenius/
  2. Get the source for wizardpen. I used http://linuxgenius.googlecode.com/files/wizardpen-0.7.0-alpha2.tar.gz
    wget http://linuxgenius.googlecode.com/files/wizardpen-0.7.0-alpha2.tar.gz
  3. Unpack.
    tar -xvf wizardpen-0.7.0-alpha2.tar.gz
  4. Move into the unpacked dir:
    cd wizardpen-0.7.0-alpha2
  5. Configure, make and install:
    sudo ./configure --with-xorg-module-dir=/usr/lib/xorg/modules && make && make install
  6. Check for wizardpen.la and wizardpen.so (driver installed correctly):
    ls /usr/lib/xorg/modules/input/wizardpen.*
  7. Connect your tablet (if not yet connected)
  8. Create file /etc/hal/fdi/policy/99-wizardpen.fdi
  9. I used the following data inside the file:
    <?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1" ?>
    <deviceinfo version="0.2">
    <device>
    <!-- This MUST match with the name of your tablet -->
    <match key="info.product" contains="UC-LOGIC Tablet WP5540U">
    <merge key="input.x11_driver" type="string">wizardpen</merge>
    <merge key="input.x11_options.SendCoreEvents" type="string">true</merge>
    <merge key="input.x11_options.TopX" type="string">0</merge>
    <merge key="input.x11_options.TopY" type="string">0</merge>
    <merge key="input.x11_options.TopZ" type="string">40</merge>
    <merge key="input.x11_identifier" type="string">stylus</merge>
    <merge key="input.x11_options.BottomX" type="string">32739</merge>
    <merge key="input.x11_options.BottomY" type="string">32745</merge>
    <merge key="input.x11_options.BottomZ" type="string">1024</merge>
    <merge key="input.x11_options.MaxX" type="string">32739</merge>
    <merge key="input.x11_options.MaxY" type="string">32745</merge>
    </match>
    </device>
    </deviceinfo>

    * This source code was highlighted with Source Code Highlighter.
  10. After all this You should reboot and start using your Genius G-Pen 4500.
  11. FIXED: I still have one unsolved problem. The stylus starts working a bit far from the tablet. Can’t resolve this. Under Windows I found quite unique driver, which let me set sensitivity for it. FIX: Add TopZ and BottomZ values to the file