Diverse

1.I really want some tagging for my files. How can I do it? I know about desktop search and use it up to some point, but Amarok gave me the habbit of tagging and I can’t stand their missing from my FS. Yes, I know, I have to give a try to NEPOMUK from KDE4. Do you know about some other simple solution?

2.I hate Raiffeisen, both in Romania and Austria. If “hate” too tough replace it with: “I am very dissapointed with the services”.
-today I wanted to make a transfer and they told me I can only do a transfer in the place where I have done the account. I asked if I can do it with cash, the answer was no. I asked if there is any way to do it there, the answer was no. I was so lost and surprised that I just tried to fake a smile, say goodbye and left.
-the e-banking was not working. Went to the bank, the lady didn’t know why it was inactive, she said that in a few minutes should be activated. When I last checked (3 days after the happening, it was still not working).
They are generally slow. The employees are not as polite and helpful as they could be (except from the ones in Roman).

3.In Debian there exists a software named Cycle (page on Sourceforge). You guessed it, it is about women’s cycle. Citation from the description:

Cycle is a calendar for women. Given a cycle length or statistics for
several periods, it can calculate the days until menstruation, the days
of “safe” sex,[...].

NOTE: This program is not a reliable contraceptive method. It does
neither help to prevent sexual transmision diseases like AIDS. [...]

I am pleased to see this is a GUI program. I only note it for being interesting. The next one will be noted for being funny.

4.PornView, is an image viewer that appears in my list of Debian software. It was covered for its name before, so I won’t do it again. Page on Sourceforce.

5.KDE has made some excelent advances. In two or three weeks since the last compilation the following have happened:
-the panel received a new design that makes the tab of one window distinguishable from the tab of another.
-Plasma crashes less often and when it crashes it doesn’t massively reset the panels, desktop and other related settings. It still does reset some of them.
-I haven’t seen any KWin crash.
-the panel is now stable, its components can be moved without any major oddities.
Excelent work, the first two points already made try the new KDE for longer.

Citind știri vineri 12.12

O grămadă de știri azi:
Nord Coreeanul Kim Jong-il apare în știri că e operat. Pot crede deci că nu e mort, așa cum aveam impresia.
Un tînăr a protestat față de prelungirea mandatului prezidențial în timpul unui discurs al președintelui rus și se pare că încă trăiește.
Fabricanții americani de automobile încă nu primesc bani.
Avioane rusești deasupra Mării Nordului.
Europenii s-au înțeles asupra cantităților de emisii poluante.

Cîmpii de duminică – cum să fii diplomat

Citeam ieri un ziar de alaltăieri și am văzut că guvernarea chineză a refuzat participarea la un summit UE-China. Cît tact trebuie să ai ca porți niște relații cu așa guvern de rahat, să stabilești întrevederi cu ei, să discuți despre economie, mediu, armată și politică în general (drepturile omului sunt altă treabă).

Vorbind cu un chinez am încercat să îndrept discuția spre sportivii lor care au cîștigat medalii la jocurile olimpice. Aproape orice altceva aș fi vorbit despre țara lui mi-ar fi trezit un sentiment cumplit de ipocrizie. Două fire total paralele, pe de o parte încerci să îndrugi ceva plăcut despre ei, pe de alta știi că e țara în care: cel mult cîteva sute de mii/milioane de oameni cu funcții în stat oprimă o majoritate de peste un miliard; în care a avut loc scandalul cu melamina din lapte; în care cîteva mii de oameni sunt executați oficial în fiecare an; în care faci închisoare pe motive politice fără nici o problemă; care implementează Great Firewall of China; care nu a reușit să infirme zvonurile despre oamenii omorîți pentru organe, și or mai fi.

Ce altceva puteam să mai discut? Eventual despre cultură? Dacă tot e atîta cultură de ce **** *** își conduc țara în felul ăsta?

Ș-am scris pagina asta în română ca în caz de-oi fi prieten cu vreun chinez să nu afle cu atîta ușurință că eu m-am căcat pe țara lui pe blogu ăsta. Cred că prima dată cînd mai aud pe cineva că plînge după Ceaușescu nu mai stau pe gînduri înainte să sar la bătaie .

Deutsche Sprache (și chestii de pe coclauri)

Mi-a cam trecut avîntul de învăţat germană. Mai continui pînă mă întorc acasă. Îmi iau cărţi ca să mai scot oleacă din praf franceza, şi mă apuc şi încep încă o limbă latină (nu spui care). Germana, cine ştie…

Diverse 1:
În buna tradiție a omului oleacă extremist acest blog va conține de acum doar „ș” și „ț” cu virgulă, indiferent de cîți cititori ratează cu această ocazie (și așa nu-s foarte mulți).

Contagieux

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yawn)
(http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Yawn)

Using the microphone in Debian – I hope Windows XP works on my laptop

Update: Using the ncurses program “alsamixer” I was able to get decent settings and make the mic. work right. Unlike KMix and Alsamixergui, changes made with alsamixer were applied. It is also keyboard friendly (it’s stupid console in fact, couldn’t be otherwise). I’m still thinking about other OS, this was too big a hassle

VoIP is finally reaching us, and offers prices that are unbelievably good. Buy credit from a VoIP provider (TerraSIP in my case), start a VoIP program (WengoPhone in this Debian case), do some settings to the program and call home. I have mention that quality is also surprising, I guess that in more than half of the case it is better than phone to phone. Being abroad this means very important savings.

And I did this, until Debian sabotaged me. To make the microphone work correctly on this laptop, a fair bit of experimentation is necessary, I did that and everything worked. After some time, with no conscious ALSA related changes on my system, this doesn’t work anymore, and the sound is no longer clear. It now misses all the higher frequency sounds and transforms them in squeaks.

The bad thing is that I don’t know where the problem is coming from, and more, I have no idea how to solve it.

Here’s a picture showing Alsamixergui with the best settings I could get. The program has tons of controls and none of them is explained. Googling didn’t give me too many answers. Some of the controls cannot be used (although KMix uses them, but to no effect), and also the range of possible combinations, without using a manual, is frightening.

So counting the sacrifices done for running Debian:
-no 3d acceleration -> No playing CS with friends. No other interesting gaming. I never got too far with Blender to feel the need for real 3d, but I will.
-problems with opening fancy shit office documents, not using proprietary math software from the university, others like this -> A few bad marks and some time wasted.
-calling at home from abroad with prices as much as 15 times higher than the VoIP ones. Well, this is the hot point, the costs are directly measurable as money. I guess now I have enough reasons to leave the Debian away.

So, where to?
I guess Windows XP/Server 2003. (The Vista saga is also written on this blog, and it is also not happy.) After about 3 years of running Linux on an underpowered desktop (but at least with good sound ), I have to give up goodies like KDE+Kwin, a decent console, nice package management from Debian, easy development with Qt and easy plugging in of external libraries, the Xorg middle click paste and easy switching of users and desktops. The good thing is that Amarok, Kate, Konqueror, KOrganizer and others make their way to Windows, I will be able to use the decent Visual Studio debugger and some others.

There are alternatives, but with shortcomings:
KUbuntu, I’am afraid they will try on me stuff like PulseAudio, the kernel TCP/IP bug (they didn’t release this one after all), and other half working thinks.
SuSE looks attractive, but it seems they said goodbye to KDE 3 and I guess there are not as many programs as with Debian.
Mandriva. My all time favorite, although the lack of proprietary packages (and also free ones) makes it hard to use.
And also, there’s no guarantee the sound problems will go away, while with Windows I have high hopes they will.

Oh, and later random thoughts:
-the man/woman/guy/dude (I didn’t dig to see who he/she is) from linuxhatersblog said he would stop. I still think he knew a lot more about Linux than I do.
-I still hate AMD/ATI for tricking me into buying a laptop with a radeonhd “supported” shit video card. I hope they will get their shit together though, as competition is always good.
-I will ask some help from some ALSA guys before leaving Debian. I would do some coding myself, but it’s a bit beyond my power.
-I think this message has a record number of “shit” words, I think 5 if we include this one. There is no f-word though. I hope there’s none on this whole blog.

Running this recovery DVD will delete all data on your disk

Not long ago, I had to buy my first laptop, and after spending lots of time thinking about the right decision, I made the wrong one.

Finally, I went to the shop and made the decision based on:
-(screen size + memory + hardware performance + warranty) / price;
-looking capable to run Linux;
-having AMD/ATI graphics, as these guys sponsor free video driver development.

The though point:
1.The recovery DVD from Asus.
Later after buying the laptop I erased the vfat recovery partion and made the C: smaller. This was a mistake, as now Windows is not booting anymore (I only found out today). I can imagine some reasons, but from the point of view of the stupid user, this is a Microsoft screw-up. If the Windows partition is bootable by itself, why does it need to find information about anything else?. This was a strong point of other Windows versions: just select the partition, and bang, it works. As somewhat experienced luser, I am able to repair a Linux boot, which used to be somewhat hard, but I have no idea how to repair the Windows one.

With the laptop I also received a recovery DVD. I ran it thinking that in 2 minutes I will have Windows repaired with no other complications. Here comes the big blow: “All the data on your partition(s) will be deleted. Asus shall not be held liable…”. This text was written on the _second_ paragraph of some long enough message. My mouse left button was already pressing the “Next” button, waiting for the release that would go to the next step. Only some masochistist curiosity for reading long messages made me skim through the text that predicted havoc.
Thank you Asus for such a lovely experience.

The rest:
1. Beginning, partitioning and Vista from Asus.
I knew that the laptop comes only with 32 bit Windows Vista, I tried not to pay for the OS, but I did not manage to do that, I’m too lazy to ask for a OS refund, I might try a refund for the entire laptop though, and you’ll se why.
The first surprise was partitioning, 20 GiB vfat partition for recovery, around 120 GiB C: with Vista. This only left me around 90 GiB for other stuff. What was worse, is that the Debian installer was not able to resize the oversize C:, so I had to accept the situation and go with small Linux partition for my data. This will come and punish me in part 3.
The other thing is that the OS was configured such that the Antivirus + Security Manager (Symantec crap I think) was always asking me to register, had an unkillable window and kept asked things I found difficult to answer. There where also other programs that started with the computer and made the disk seek like mad and keep the computer slow for minutes after startup. Also, I think was not entirely Asus’s fault, as the OS was also doing huge unknown jobs on its own.
The good thing is that the OS came with disk burning software preinstalled.

2. Linux support.
2.1)Video. “This comes with modern discrete ATI graphics card, Radeonhd will sure do.” False. Radeonhd does not work on my laptop at the moment. Radeonhd is the only driver that does not work.
Fglrx makes 2D feel slow, takes ages to start Xorg, and hard crashes the computer at each logout. Only the open source ATI (2D only) driver works fine.
The Debian installer left me with the vesa driver, that only gave me small resolutions, anything better was on my own. It was good though, as X worked from the beginning, unlike other installs. So I had to do xorg.conf configuration by myself until I got the right results.
At the moment Nvidia is a dream for me. I don’t know what they do, but their shit works.

2.2)Wi-Fi. “Linux is the Chuch Norris of Wi-Fi.” False. I had to do good googling to find out that I need to install (from the repository, fortunately) some firmware. Also worth bo be said, NetworkManager seems to take longer than Vista to connect to wireless networks and it does always simply work. There are two graphical interfaces to NM: KNetworkManager that is not always working correctly; nm-applet, which works correctly, but looks like shit and does give me enough control. NM is strange anyway.

2.3)Sound. “Everyone does sound.” False. a)The internal speakers do not mute when inserting headsets. b)I had to trial and error flip the switches in the ALSA control panel until I got working microphone. c)Not all programs are able to access the microphone as they should. Some get the full volume, others only inaudible volumes, no matter what I do. Skype seems to be the only that will get good quality sound, for reasond I don’t know.

2.4)Suspend to ram. “That’s a done deal, long ago.” False. Does not work, I can’t say why, but at wake-up it used to reboot, after some update it goes to a hard crash.

2.5)Others.
Included camera. Not very important, but that is not working with most programs either.
Blutetooth. I was not able to get that working. I would have a use for it, but not important now., and I didn’t even know the laptop was capable when I bought it, so this is only and unreachable bonus.

Pesenka, reward for lyrics – part II

Ang has replyed to my Pesenka lyrics request, so now I copy them on the first page:

Chto proizoshlo?
Sama ne ponimaju!
Pesenku odnu,
Vesj denj ja napevaju.
Vse moi druzjja,
Pojut so mnoju vmeste.
Mozhet butsy ve

Spoёte etu pesnju.
Vesj denj ja napevaju.
Vesj denj ja povtorjaju.
Vesj denj ja napevaju.

Vesj denj ja povtorjaju.

S pesenkoj takoj
Lozhusj i prosыpajusj.
I motiv prostoj,
Vsё boljshe ja vljubljajusj.
Solnыshko blestit,
I travka zeleneet.
S pesenkoj moej,
Vam stanet veselee.

Malenjkij sekret,
Hranitsja v эtoj pesne.
Spoёm mы s Vami vmeste.
I opjatj ot slov,
Ne sprjatatjsja, ne skrыtjsja.
Druzhno ruki vverh,
I budim veselitjsja.

Vesj denj ja napevaju.
Vesj denj ja povtorjaju.
Vesj denj ja napevaju.
Vesj denj ja povtorjaju.

Chto proizoshlo?
Sama ne ponimaju!
Pesenku odnu,
Vesj denj ja napevaju.
Vse moi druzjja,
Pojut so mnoju vmeste.
Mozhet bыtj i Vы,
Spoёte эtu pesnju.
Vesj denj ja napevaju.
Vesj denj ja povtorjaju.
Vesj denj ja napevaju.
Vesj denj ja povtorjaju.

Что произошло?
Сама не понимаю!
Песенку одну,
Весь день я напеваю.
Все мои друзья,
Поют со мною вместе.
Может быть и Вы,
Споёте эту песню.
ля~ля~ля~ля~ля
Весь день я напеваю. ля~ля~ля~ля~ля
Весь день я повторяю. ля~ля~ля~ля~ля
Весь день я напеваю. ля~ля~ля~ля~ля
Весь день я повторяю.
ля~ля~ля~ля~ля ля~ля~ля~ля ля~ля~ля ля~ля~ля~ля~ля ля~ля~ля~ля ля~ля~ля ля~ля~ля~ля~ля ля~ля~ля~ля ля~ля~ля ля~ля~ля~ля~ля ля~ля~ля~ля ля~ля~ля

С песенкой такой
Ложусь и просыпаюсь.
И мотив простой,
Всё больше я влюбляюсь.
Солнышко блестит,
И травка зеленеет.
С песенкой моей,
Вам станет веселее.

Маленький секрет,
Хранится в этой песне. ля~ля~ля~ля~ля
Споём мы с Вами вместе.
И опять от слов,
Не спрятаться, не скрыться.
Дружно руки вверх,
И будим веселиться.
ля~ля~ля~ля~ля
Весь день я напеваю. ля~ля~ля~ля~ля
Весь день я повторяю. ля~ля~ля~ля~ля
Весь день я напеваю. ля~ля~ля~ля~ля
Весь день я повторяю.
ля~ля~ля~ля~ля ля~ля~ля~ля ля~ля~ля ля~ля~ля~ля~ля ля~ля~ля~ля ля~ля~ля ля~ля~ля~ля~ля ля~ля~ля~ля ля~ля~ля ля~ля~ля~ля~ля ля~ля~ля~ля ля~ля~ля

Что произошло?
Сама не понимаю!
Песенку одну,
Весь день я напеваю.
Все мои друзья,
Поют со мною вместе.
Может быть и Вы,
Споёте эту песню.
ля~ля~ля~ля~ля
Весь день я напеваю. ля~ля~ля~ля~ля
Весь день я повторяю. ля~ля~ля~ля~ля
Весь день я напеваю. ля~ля~ля~ля~ля
Весь день я повторяю.
ля~ля~ля~ля~ля ля~ля~ля~ля ля~ля~ля ля~ля~ля~ля~ля ля~ля~ля~ля ля~ля~ля ля~ля~л

Later I will come with an alternative way of finding them.
I also thank Igor for a Romanian translation of Kroshka moya.

Sunday’s frustrations, debugging Amarok

Just before the Amarok developers moved to the next version of Amarok, they just made the current one almost tolerable. Only one important bug still …bugging… me: with many songs in the playlist, immediately after playing a song Amarok would start using the hard disk like crazy for at least 20 seconds (thess seconds easily become minutes if some other process wants to access the hdd ).

Report the bug, a developer tells me that they no longer maintain it.
Hooray, this is my job, let’s repare The Amarok. So here I am, 5 hours after starting this, staring at a GDB console… Of course I did absolutely nothing. Spend a lot of time trying to work with the Kdevelop project that comes with the sources, uselles, absolutely. Screwed my Amarok configuration (at least I have backed up the postresql database). Also found a “HACKING” file inside the sources, it says nothing but uselles shit, something regarding the coding styles. Why the fuck you care about coding style when it is so hard for an Amarok outsider to get something working?!. You won’t have contributors anyway .

Oh well, if there will be a next time, I will ask for some help to avoid such a waste of time.

I once read an article about software that is forever at version 0.8 because programmers rewrite it again and again, but I am not able to find at the moment. It had a very nice name, something like “software in eternal puberty, looking for care”…, whatever, I will come back if I remember.

Pesenka, reward for lyrics

I would love to know the lyrics from Pesenka by Ruki Vverh, a song I discovered recently, and this message is a reward announcement for it .
I will give two beers to a person who gives the Cyrillic variant of the lyrics (I am not able to search through Russian sites, but I do intend to learn Russian sometime). I double the reward or negociate the reward if together with the Cyrillic lyrics I get a Latin alphabet transcription (and maybe a translation.

Other notes:
These guys have many others songs that are really nice, the most popular is called Kroshka moya, other are 18 Mne Uzhe, Narisuy Mne Osen’, Natasha.
Kroshka moya: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dpCq9nr8pmY&feature=related
Pesenka: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XsrklSlDA7w
The translation may be in some more widely used latin or germanic language, Romanian, anything that I have a chance of understanding ten words.

One more later note, for Kroshka moya you can find the original Cyrillic lyrics, their “transliteration” and the translation at: http://www.italodanceportal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=660, and I copy them all in here for the moment:

Cyrillic:
Крошка моя я по тебе скучаю
Я от тебя письма не получаю
Ты далеко и даже не скучаешь,
Но я вернусь, вернусь, и ты узнаешь…
Что я далеко я по тебе скучаю
Я от тебя письма не получаю
Ты далеко и даже не скучала,
Но я вернусь, вернусь, чтоб ты узнала…..
Что я далеко от тебя….

Ты обещала написать, обещала рассказать,
Как живешь, как тебе там плохо
Ты обещала долго ждать, и страдать
И сгорать от любви, но это невозможно!
Нет, нет ни строчки от тебя
Ни словечка от тебя, зря поверил я твоим признаньям
Да, может это было зря, может это было зря
Ты прости, ну что ж за наказанье..

Крошка моя я по тебе скучаю
Я от тебя письма не получаю
Ты далеко и даже не скучаешь,
Но я вернусь, вернусь, и ты узнаешь…
Что я далеко от тебя….

Что, что еще произошло, столько времени прошло
Ты не едешь не звонишь, не пишешь
Да, может быть твое письмо затерялось, не дошло
Напиши еще разок, ты слышишь?
Все, все отлично у меня дома ждут меня друзья
Говорят, что ты по мне скучаешь…
Вот, вот девчонки, так всегда
Ждет солдат от вас письма, а дойдет 100 раз перечитает…

Крошка моя я по тебе скучаю
Я от тебя письма не получаю
Ты далеко и даже не скучаешь,
Но я вернусь, вернусь, и ты узнаешь…
Что я далеко я по тебе скучаю
Я от тебя письма не получаю
Ты далеко и даже не скучала,
Но я вернусь, вернусь, чтоб ты узнала…..
Что я далеко от тебя….

Latin transliteration:
Kroshka moya ya po tebe skuchayu
Ya ot tebya pis’ma ne poluchayu
Ty daleko i dazhe ne skuchaesh’,
No ya vernus’, vernus’, i ty uznaesh’…
Chto ya daleko ya po tebe skuchayu
Ya ot tebya pis’ma ne poluchayu
Ty daleko i dazhe ne skuchala,
No ya vernus’, vernus’, chtob ty uznala…..
Chto ya daleko ot tebya….

Ty obeshchala napisat’, obeshchala rasskazat’,
Kak zhivesh’, kak tebe tam plokho
Ty obeshchala dolgo zhdat’, i stradat’
I sgorat’ ot lyubvi, no eto nevozmozhno!
Net, net ni strochki ot tebya
Ni slovechka ot tebya, zrya poveril ya tvoim priznan’yam
Da, mozhet eto bylo zrya, mozhet eto bylo zrya
Ty prosti, nu chto zh za nakazan’e..

Kroshka moya ya po tebe skuchayu
Ya ot tebya pis’ma ne poluchayu
Ty daleko i dazhe ne skuchaesh’,
No ya vernus’, vernus’, i ty uznaesh’…
Chto ya daleko ot tebya….

Chto, chto eshche proizoshlo, stol’ko vremeni proshlo
Ty ne edesh’ ne zvonish’, ne pishesh’
Da, mozhet byt’ tvoe pis’mo zateryalos’, ne doshlo
Napishi eshche razok, ty slyshish’?
Vse, vse otlichno u menya doma zhdut menya druz’ya
Govoryat, chto ty po mne skuchaesh’…
Vot, vot devchonki, tak vsegda
Zhdet soldat ot vas pis’ma, a doydet 100 raz perechitaet…

Kroshka moya ya po tebe skuchayu
Ya ot tebya pis’ma ne poluchayu
Ty daleko i dazhe ne skuchaesh’,
No ya vernus’, vernus’, i ty uznaesh’…
Chto ya daleko ya po tebe skuchayu
Ya ot tebya pis’ma ne poluchayu
Ty daleko i dazhe ne skuchala,
No ya vernus’, vernus’, chtob ty uznala…..
Chto ya daleko ot tebya….