I like adding randomness to things. So I added some randomness to the color
selection in the gimp paint tools.
Screenshot there, no patch yet, since it munges across other not quite ready patches atm.
Category Archives: software
gimp stuff
Despite at one time being a fairly prolific gimp script writer (looks like I have about 23 in the main gimp distro, and probably another dozen scattered about), I haven’t written one in years. Partially because the primary scripting engine in gimp is “script-fu” which is a really rudimentary scheme like language and was always a real pain to debug.
But now, theres a gimp python plugin. Well, actually, theres been one for years, but I’ve been lazy and never made much use of it. So I got some idea in my head and decided it needed to be scripted. Writing gimp scripts in python is so much nicer than in script-fu. Not only is the language saner, but you have full access to the standard python libs.
Anyway, a couple rudimentary python gimp scripts are here. One to draw brush stroke preview images, one to convert a font into a series of brushes, and one to convert a font into a gimp image pipes (aka, animated brushes, or “hoses”). There not well tested or anything, and I have no idea if they work on anything but my machine. So they might not work on windows or osx.
sial.org
One of the better collections of to-the-point docs about setting up and maintaining linux/unix systems I’ve found.
digg me
Any digg or del.icio.us users out there?
If so, digg me. Or, er, del.icio.us me?
O(n^3)!! The terrorists have already won!
So, I was reading a friends blog, where he bought a rather nifty sounding device called a Watts up?.
Basically, it’s a power meter you plug in between a electrical device and a socket. And it measures how much power it uses. Simple, but clever. Apparently one version can even send info out over a serial port. Nifty.
So chip measured the power useage of various computers of his doing different tasks. The interesting thing is the dramatically higher power useage when heavily using the CPU. Now, this isn’t really news, but it got me thinking about how much energy resources are wasted because of inefficent code.
I never really thought of optimizing code as a enviromentally friendly thing to do. But at least for widely used software, it’s probably worth it just in the amount of energy saved. A couple watts here and there times a million boxes, and it’s probably more than worth the programmer time to look at additional optimizations.
I wonder how many kilowatt-hours are consumed playing World of Warcraft? Lets do a little dubious math:
Number of WoW players * Average Amount They Play * Average Amount of Power useage = ??
mmogchart.com puts the number of players at 2,000,000. Chip’s numbers seem to indicate ~180 watts of power used for a gaming system. We’ll call it 100 watts.
I have no idea how long people play WoW a day, aside from “too much”, but lets say 4 hours.
2,000,000 * 100 * 4 = 800,000 kWh a day.
Okay, so not all that much in the grand scheme of things. Considering Shearon Harris generates 860MWe.
Now if we figure out all the cpu cycles wasted decoding images of cats posted on the internet…
my wiki is bigger than your wiki
linuxtroubleshooting.com is picking up steam, with a couple outside contributors adding lots of useful info.
Also, couple of weeks ago, while fiddling with mediawiki, I setup Interesting Roads Around North Carolina. More or less, just a notebook of interesting places to ride as I find them. Probably useful for cyclists and sports car types as well.
random ideas
I want to build a mbira using a 3-4 inch diamater pipe, maybe 3 foot long. Have the keys running along the top, but mounted perpendicular to the length. With a shoulder mount. And a sight. I’ll call it a mbirazooka.
I want to make a new brake pedal for the bonneville. With the rear sets and the current brake pedal, the ergos of the pedal aren’t ideal, especially if I’m wearing boots. I want a pedal thats a little bit lower, and/or a little further right. Only concern would be getting the pedal much lower than the foot peg. Scraping a foot peg is mostly harmless. Bashing the brake level into the ground could be bad. Shouldn’t be hard to make.
I want to build an intrument of some sort you control with random remote controls. Using something like irman/lirc and
hacking it to generate MIDI would be enough. Plug that into something like Reaktor. Call the hole thing “Potatoe”. Or maybe
convert the ir signals sound input. Or maybe both.
mapping software
Anyone have preferences for mapping and route planning software? I’d prefer linux or osx based, but I know better than to expect anything useful.
I’d love to be able to add a bunch of intended waypoints and have something calculate the best route to get though them. Bonus points if it has options for suggesting particular roads or types of roads. If there is a web based site that allows that, even better.
Microsoft Streets & Maps? Delorme? Rand MacNally Atlas? Others?
software meme
as per zombiepops and z_kungfu, a quick rundown
of what software I use, by no means complete.
Linux
linux distro
Red Hat, big surprise, RHEL or Fedora/Rawhide depending on what I’m working on. At various points I’ve tried slackware and debian linux. I’ve also tried FreeBSD. But they didn’t really do much for me. I can do the same stuff with Red Hat, and I know it much better. And
linux always seemed to support my hardware better than *bsd.
desktop
GNOME, sorta. I run a pretty minimal config (no nautilus, minimal panel, etc). With ClickToFocus turned off, the way humans use software.
terminal
gnome-terminal I think. whatever I stuck in my panel ages ago. I used to always used a tweak RXVT setup, since I tend to have dozens of terminals open, and it was lighter on mem, but I’ve got tons-o-ram now. All the current gen stuff seems workable, if need be.
editor
vim-enhanced, and emacs. Yup, I’m bi-editorial. vim for doing quick stuff in terminals, email, etc. emacs for
coding, espicially coding python. And vim-enhanced in particular, since normal vim or vi are worthless. I’ll
leave bringing up bare metal broken unices to the admin types.
ide
I guess emacs count. And eclipse when I have to look at java stuff.
mail
mutt for work email, evolution/thunderbird for non work stuff, depending on which one has annoyed me least recently.
im
im at work is for the devil.
browser
firefox
irc
we use irc very heavily at work, I use xchat just because it’s there. Even though it has perhaps the worse server selection screen one could possibly create.
graphics
gimp, gee, big surprise eh…
listening to music
xmms, rhythmbox is overkill for what I need.
osx:
10.4 at the moment
mail
Mail.app or thunderbird, whichever is currently annoying me least. thunderbird at the moment.
browser
firefox
misc
Quicksilver, probably the only app launcher I’ve ever used that actually was faster than a shell in an open terminal.
Desktop Manager, since my brain doesn’t work without virtual desktops.
making music
Cubase SE for recording. It kind of sucks, but I mostly know the ui now.
Reaktor for making weird noises.
Garage Band for fiddling
listening to music
nothing, I don’t have space to store much music on the laptop
fun
MAME
Stella
office
openoffice
editor
stock vim and emacs I got from somewhere
im
iChat
I sometimes use X2vnc and osxvnc/vnc to connect the two. otherwise just ssh/X
If anyone cares, and I missed something, feel free to ask.
gps, riding, etc
So I’ve spent way to much time trying to do something that should be very simple. Download a track from my gps, and display it on a map.
This proved to be much more frustrating that I expected, and finally gave up trying to do it on os x and just did it with my linux box using gpsbabel (tiger seems to have broken the osx version).
Then I wrote a python script to split the GPX file into individual track files, and then used gmapper to display the results on google maps. gpsvisualizer works too, but the maps don’t look quite as nice.
If anyone knows of an easier way to do that on osx, that actually works, I’d like to know.
So anyway, Saturdays ride:
and the sat view:
