To get back after some time, a report on a new discovery: Awesome Window Manager for X. One (meaning, me) just gets bored ever so often with the look of Compiz/Metacity/Beryl… whatever. I just go and get a new theme every now and then, when I am content with one, I might stick with it for a month or two – New Wave I found THAT good, or Mac4Lin. However, now after close to two years of life in the Linux world, using Gnome without exception, I got bored of the feel of the standard Gnome desktop too. Sad as it is, I began searching for a satisfying solution to this problem.
The result was Awesome WM, a window manager belonging in the category of “tiling” WMs. It spreads windows across the whole screen in order to utilize the whole screen.
This makes it especially suitable for large displays. My 22 inch LCD is really put to its use with three rows of windows: Pidgin plus a message window, one, two, three terminals, maybe Rythmbox and Firefox somewhere. My second monitor, an old 17 inch flat screen is also managed separately. This means, the “view”, so to speak, can be arranged for each monitor accordingly. Awesome, even though being a tiling WM can also do regular floating windows, arrange them by “spiral” or “Z” or maxmimize a window at two strokes on the keyboard.
Also, it features 9 virtual desktops that are not really virtual desktops but “tags”. Tags are assigned to each programm (one can contain multiple tags) and when a tag is selected the so tagged programms are shown arranged in whatever view the tag is set to. Each monitor also has individual taggs – quite comfortable and flexibel to use.
Best by far is the usability via keyboard. By default, the “Windows” Key, also called “Super” or “Mod4″ is the action key which, combined with some shortcuts, gives you full controll over your screen – great for people who type a lot and don’t want to be bothered by their mouse. Developing is just so much fun in Awesome!
Now the disclaimer: Awesome is not for nOObs. Why? Cause it does not feature nice GUIs to configure its behaviour. It can be scripted very flexibely in Lua via a config file but ONLY via this config file. The awesome menu is not necesserily a A+ in usability, but who needs a menu when via Mod4 + R you can run any command as we were used to via Alt + F2.
Installation is simple on Debian based systems – its in the repos. For Fedora it’s more of a demanding process since it does not come via yum – however, there are RPMs available.
Enjoy trying it, i can strongly recommend it!
Hallo zusammen,
normalerweise ist es ja nicht die Art von diesem Blog über neue Hardware zu berichten, aber in diesem Fall muss ich einfach mal von meinem neuen Traum-Notebook, dem Acer 1820PT berichten, dass nun (endlich!) so langsam in die Shops dieses Internets wandert und vorbestellt werden kann mit einer angegebenen Lieferdauer von 2-3 Wochen 
Was ist daran so toll? Nunja: Multitouch, Convertible, “echter” Core 2 Duo, 4GB RAM, Bluetooth – an sich alles was das Herz begehrt – und das noch zu einem “Netbookartigen” Preis von 600€. Ich warte sehr gespannt und werde es mir bei Erscheinen garantiert schnell zulegen 
Alex
The Situation Room – not with Wolf Blitzer but a regular student. What’s happening out there with that funny virus that nobody seems to take serious but is obviously enjoying itself?
The situation: A school of roughly 1000 students in Germany – a regular high school, grades 5 through 13, is close to being shut down by this funky flu! Allegedly (take this by its literal meaning – I have no official prove for these statements), about 30% of Year 8 are our of school, 25% of Year 9, some folks from Year 11 and 12 plus an adittional confirmed four from the graduation form 13. Additionally, some 3-5 teachers are ill with the virus. If you add these numbers up and are, like me, a fatalist, you could end up with as many as 10% of the whole school being ill. Call this extreme or not – some people are still not thinking about being vaccinated and continuously pose a threat to society by providing themselves as viable hosts for a virus which is due for a mutation. How I get to these bold statements? Here it is:
First things first – the virus. A virus is a, by most definitions, non-living thing composed of a phospholipid or protein outer layer with some DNA or RNA in it, maybe even some enzymes or ribosomes. What makes it unique are the receptor proteins which might be attached to its outer shell. Those are like a name – on a cellular basis. How does a virus work? It infects your cells by injecting its genetic material into them and makes them into zombies, creating more of the same type of virus. To do so, it the cell replicates the DNA or RNA of the virus many times to put it into the newly created viruses. In this process – as always if you try to copy something (ever stood in front of one of these Xerox beasts???), mistakes happen now and then. BOOM! DAMN! How did that happen? A mutation occurred right on the spot. Nothing spectacular, if it were not to make the virus more lethal or more virulent, which could eventually happen, becoming even more probable as more people become infected and more viruses are created.
All further reasoning is based on this process. If viruses could become more dangerous by mutation and mutation happens more often as more people are infected, the consequence of more infected people is a higher chance for H1N1 to become really deadly – like the black death or funky things such as that. Continuing along these lines, people are far less likely to become infected if they have received a dose of vaccine, thus, they are less likely to contribute to making the illness more serious. Therefore, obviously, getting vaccinated is an act of civil responsibility since it tries to inhibit H1N1 to become a killer baby virus. In turn, not being vaccinated is plain naive, unless you have serious reasons like being pregnant or having problems with the vaccine.
To get back to the situation at our school. Many a person is missing these days. Even those not ill at all are avoiding the place to simply avoid infection – and they are still not closing for seven days! “OH no, you didnt say that?” Well actually I did just state that closing school would serve a good purpose. Those already ill could get better and not be spreading the virus, latent infections would not cause any spread and anyone getting the virus from somewhere else would stay out early enough so as to not spread it further. Problem is: exams and the loom and gloom of our Abi – graduation- exams in April is omnipresent these days for 13th graders. However, a week of missed lessons will most likely not kill our grade and as an appropriate reaction to a pandemic as we are experiencing now, Duesseldorf might even consider postponing the exams?
Why am I so bothered about all this? One week ago, nobody was infected. Now, its probably around 100 people in 1000. Its funny how classes get more and more empty, how friends are just not there and leave brief IMs: “Oink oink – it got me”. Won’t anybody act?
Hi Folks,
for some time, Alex and I have been working on a simple Book Rating system for school, which, of course, was developed using Django. It sits on a PostgeSQL database and authenticates users against an LDAP which the school runs – pretty neat. However, for reasons of time and safety we do not fancy setting up a webserver to get mails every time an error occurs (still quite frequently according to the users). What to do? Apache Error logs are not very meaningful, since all they say is “Provide a 404 Template”:.. aint gonna do that! The shortest way around was simply writing up a Middleware, which, upon error, would write request and exception to the syslog – sorry Windows users, YOU can not use it. Aside I figured it’d be neat to also have a full fledged output file right in app, even though Alex didn’t like the idea too much, granted, the syslog thing IS cooler. So I ended up implementing that funky solution which nobody ever seemed to have thought of (????). Here’s the code:
from syslog import * import time
class SyslogOutput:
def process_exception(self, request, exception):
# Compile the string for the exception in the format: "Variable: Value" so as to make it readable
request_string = ""
filename='/var/www/django/log/%s_error.csv'%(time.strftime('%y-%m-%d-%H-%M-%s'))
txt = file(filename, 'w')
for item in dir(request):
value = getattr(request, item)
request_string += "%s: %s\n"%(item, value)
request_string += "\n\Exception: %s"%(exception)
syslog (LOG_DEBUG, request_string)
txt.writelines("Exception: %s"%(request_string))
txt.close()
return None
If you find it helpful or have any contributions to improve the behavior, please feel free to comment! Hope this helps some folks getting the logs they want.
Ganz ehrlich, Gewaltenteilung wäre schön. Wenn es nicht in der Natur des Menschen läge, zu bestimmen. Natürlich, muss jemand das Sagen haben. Früher hatte immer einer das sagen, und zwar über alles. Louis XVI hatte auch das sagen, irgendwann hat er dann leider den Kopf verloren – ungünstig. Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Che Guevara, Mussolini, Franco und Napoleon – alle hatten das sagen… manche von ihnen sind unschön öffentlich gehängt worden, andere begingen Suizid, manche werden von ahnungslosen Teenies für Dinge gefeiert von denen die Meisten nicht wissen, welche das sind. Aber eins haben alle gemeinsam: den Tod, die meisten einen unrühmlichen. Was lernen wir daraus? Es zahlt sich aus, nicht das Sagen zu haben? Vermutlich.
Wie es sich begab, hatte ein cleverer Franzose eine schlaue Idee. Wenn nicht einer über alles zu bestimmen hat, muss man auch nicht alle Nase lang jemanden vom Thron stupsen, eventuell noch mit hässlichen Waffen und der Gleichen. Ironischer weise kam dieser Gedanke einem Adligen, Baron de Montesquieu (den Namen werde ich nicht zu oft schreiben – ich war schlecht in Französisch). Dieser Herr meinte, es wäre vielleicht nicht falsch, Gesetzgebung, Urteilsgewalt und die Staatsgewalt auf drei Schultern zu verteilen als nur auf eine – so hätte man auch drei Leute, die man durch die Guillotine jagen könnte wenn etwas falsch liefe, und somit mehr Spaß. Lustig so eine Guillotine, oder? Dieses Modell bewies sich besonders in Demokratien als tragbar, da man so schön trennen konnte, wofür man wählen konnte und was einfach so war: die Rechtsprechung. Außerdem brachte es Vorteile mit sich, wenn nicht der, der Gesetze gegen Juden postuliert, diese auch noch im Gerichtssaal durch harte Strafen umsetzen kann. Die Kontrolle der Instanzen wäre viel cooler, könnte doch nur der Richter das Gesetz interpretieren wie es ihm gut dünke. Könnte doch die Legislative etwas tun, was el Chefe nicht gut findet. Heute finden wir das alle nich mehr so cool – Amerikaner auch nicht, denn heute haben wir angst.
Angst vor Terror von Menschen die über den Bildungsstand eines Zehnjährigen nur mit Glück hinaus kommen. Angst vor dem Nachbarn, der eine Waffe haben könnte, Angst in der Schule auf Toilette zu gehen, es könnte eine Person mit einem Messer da stehen, Angst zum Arzt zu gehen, da kriege man Schweinegrippe, Angst vor der Impfun, die Regierung hat eine Andere! Warum hat keiner Angst davor, dass die Regierung (Exekutive, die Menschen die sagen, was die Polizei tut) auch Einfluss auf das hat, was die Legislative sagen darf, was die Polizei gesetzlich tun darf? Oder was die Gerichte tun sollen – MOMENT MAL! Was tun die? In den USA hat die Obama Regierung einem Gericht nahe gelegt, einen Fall aus Sicherheitsgründen, also aus Angst, nicht zu behandeln, wo ein Herr gegen den Präsidenten vor gehen möchte, weil dieser als Vertreter der Regierung, Daten von ihm geklaut hat. Die Situation: es soll ein Fax als Beweis gelten, welches sicherheitsrelevante Informationen enthält. Ein Glück, der Staat darf seine Sicherheit verteidigen – der Bürger seine Datensicherheit nicht! HILFE! Jetzt habe ich angst. Der Staat sollte doch für den Bürger da sein und nicht zum Selbstzweck? Alle Legitimation des Staates rührt vom Volke her – wenn das Volk Angst vor den Augen des Staates haben muss, sollte es erwägen, diesen Staat ab zu schaffen. Au au au… gefährliches Gebiet.
Vermutlich liest jetzt bereits ein Bot von Echelon oder dem BKA mit, und sollte ich dagegen klagen, würde vermutlich ein Minister sagen, dass dieser Text staatssicherheitstechnisch bedenklich ist und deswegen keine Klage zugelassen werden kann. Vielleicht sollte ich einfach direkt ins Gefängnis gehen. Offensichtlich hat Montesquieu eine idealistische, nicht mit dem Menschen zu vereinbarende, tolle Idee gehabt, die aber in der Praxis nicht funktioniert. Schade, denn dann könnte wirklich jeder tun und lassen wie ihm es passt, ohne das Internet abgehackt zu bekommen, wenn er drei mal was tut, was nicht der Ordnung des kleingeistlichen Verstandes eines Beamten entspricht tut – Früher hat man einfach Hände gehackt… egal.
Gut mit der Polemik, allmählich werde ich derer Leid. Dennoch, Bürger dieser Welt,schaut auf unserer Regierungen! Der Staat ist kein Instrument zum Schutz aller mehr. Seit 9/11 nicht, aber es stört die Machthaber auch nicht, hoffentlich uns!
Hey guys,
finally, Karmic was released yesterday including many very interesting new changes and features. Personally I use this version since one week and I am very satisfied with the whole system – smooth and stable… At least since I found the reason for a bug in the nm-applet which wouldn’t let me connect to my SwissVPN: I spent hours to find a solution and in the end it was a wrong password 
However, the indicator-applet was part of a big evolution, too – and the possibilites and API changed a lot… Currently I’m trying to adapt gm-notify to the new situation and it almost works – at least the way it did before. Nevertheless, the checking algorithm never was really convincing at all, so I’m trying to rework this, too. If anybody has an idea or some documentation how GoogleMail can push new mails to the notifier please let me know
All in all I hope that I can release a new version in a few weeks!
Alex
Touchstone (As You Like It) to William, a lover of his bride:
Therefore, you clown, abandon, -which is in the vulgar, leave, -the society, -which in the boorish is, company, -of this female, -which in the common is, woman; which together is, abandon the society of this female, or, clown, thou perishest; or, to thy better understanding, diest; or, to wit, I kill thee, make thee away, translate thy life into death, thy liberty into bondage.
From Sonnet No. 60
And nothing stands but for his scythe to mow.
Good evening
well, maybe you noticed that the gm-notify development was a bit slow in the last few months. But now, six days prior to the 9.10 release, I need to fix several issues with the indicator applet, since the API changed a lot between both versions.
My problem is that I can’t find any documentation about the python-indicate lib – or even worse: I don’t really know what exactly has been changed or which new features I could use…
So: If anybody knows a good blog post documenting new features or has some piece of doc or example code I would be glad to get some hints -> Let’s make gm-notify again the best Google Mail notifier for Ubuntu 9.10!
Alex
Alright, Cal dissed us Django Developers by comparing Django to “Flamework”, the Flicker Framework and finding that Django is definetely unsuitable for large large large scale productions like Twitter, Flicker, Yahoo or the like.
Alright, a point granted is that syncing models to the DB is uncomfortable, deployment is not yet all that great and the template syntax is akward. However, the demand for a mascot, like a Snake and/or Monty Python for Python, Dolphins for MySQL or the Road Sign for Bazaar, has turned the whole friendly Django world glittery pink.
A pony, to be more precise, THE Django Pony
http://djangopony.com/
is the result of this sarcastic comment. Also:
http://code.google.com/p/django-pony/
has sprung up in the aftermath of Django Con.
I implore all of the Django Community: Please, let’s abolish this devilish pony and open a discussion round for a real mascot – as we could use one indeed, but not PINK and not PONY. Or, if we were bound to stick with it, let us at least make it a unicorn, sit a python snake on top of it and call it the Django Unicorn of Death – DUD, and there we go, it would be almost as cool as Tux.
Habemus mascotum – or what else that might be called.
Und wir freuen uns alle – All looking forward to it!
