Nice Joke

You gotta see this nice little cartoon. Explains beautifully the thinking process of a fellow "Debian addict".

http://mirror7.escomposlinux.org/comic/ecol-160-e.png

overwhelmed with joy

I was overwhelmed with joy upon seeing my name mentioned in the last issue of the Debian Weekly News (2005). Honestly, I have not done anything except starting the page and adding little bit of info now and then. Hopefully it would pick up and help fellow Debian users.

Now I am even more motivated to work on Debian.

Update 1 :- Looks like I am becoming famous :-) I was mentioned second time in another DWN issue http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2006/13/ .

getting rid of warning from reportbug

Recently when I was using reportbug to report a bug against mrxvt, I was presented with a warning

$reportbug mrxvt
*** Warning: master.debian.org is no longer an appropriate smtphost setting for
reportbug; please update your .reportbugrc file.

The warning just mentions that you have to change master.debian.org to something else. But it does not mention "to what you should change"? The answer is in the /usr/share/doc/reportbug/changelog.gz under the changelog entry for version 3.18

In ~/.reportbugrc, You have to change the line

smtphost master.debian.org

to

smtphost bugs.debian.org

Once you do this, the above warning disappears.

My bug on gdb got fixed

Even though it took 5 months for it to be fixed, Daniel Jacobowitz finally fixed a bug that I reported on July 22, 2005. Now I can use gdb to debug my fortran programs compiled with gfortran. Cool uh!

free stuff for give away

You might have arrived here after seeing my email in ISSO mailing list. well, I have a couch, lazy boy chair, futon bed, usual bed . Everything is free and you have to arrange your own shipping. I cant guarantee their condition. Look for yourself. If you like them, take it.

You can contact me at 607-342-5538 or by email (kamaraju@gmail.com)

Update1 :- The futon bed is already gone. I will update this blog if something else is claimed.

Update2 :- The spring matress is also gone. So as of now, only the Couch and the lazy boy chair are remaining.

Update3 :- The couch has also been claimed. Now only the lazy boy chair (waiting lazily, I guess :-)) is available.

Combining postscript files

postscript files (.ps, .eps) can be combined very easily using psmerge. Sample commands look like


psmerge -ocombined.eps file1.eps file2.eps file3.eps file4.eps
psmerge -o/tmp/combined.ps file*.ps

For more details see its man page (man psutils). In Debian psmerge is part of psutils package and can be installed by

apt-get install psutils

list of travel agents

For those who are planning to travel to India from New York, a list of travel agents in New York is available at http://www.usindiainfo.com/travel_newyork.htm .

Please let me know if there are other such similar links.

replicate just the directory structure

Let's say you wanted to just copy the directory structure of /opt directory to an usb drive say (/media/usb3/opt) without copying any files between these two directories. Inorder to do this

mount the usbdrive, cd into the destination directory which in this case is /media/usb3

sudo rsync -avzp --delete-after --include "*/" --exclude "*" /opt .


As usual, do not try this without knowing what it does. Use it at your own risk.

Comments/suggestions/feedback etc., are most welcome and you can reach me at (kamaraju at gmail dot com).

wajig's bash_completion has improved

My wishlist bug against wajig has been fixed in the recent version 2.0.31 . So now bash_completion works on multiple arguments not just on the first argument. Just now updated wajig and it is working Cool!

listening to songs with streamtuner

For those who do not know, streamtuner (apt-get install gstreamtuner) is a stream directory browser. So, what is a stream directory browser anyway? Simply put, streamtuner lets you connect/tune to various online radio stations and the stream of songs will be played through xmms. I dont know whether you can use another player but I like xmms, so it is not a problem for me.

I personally like www.letshitit.com and their website is also very good. You can request your favorite songs and they will be queued up in the line for playing. The previous/present/future song lists can be seen. The lyrics of the current song that is played is also available at a click away. Now that's kind of cool I think...

For telugu song lovers, there is also a telugu music channel available!

this blog is now adsense friendly

Today I created an adsense account and included a 250x250 square ad into this blog. The ads currently appear in the top. However, I would like them to be placed on the side. I will work on that afterwards.
On the other hand, I doubt if Google infact has any targeted ads for the kind of content that I will be posting on this blog (debian + personal stuff + interesting news etc.,) . So I dont think this will be a great source of income or anything of that sort....

But I exactly know what I would do once I get my first check from adsense. Donate money to Debian & vim projects.

upgrade packages which have RC-bugs

Do not try this without knowing what it does. I do not take any responsibility if you have problems afterwards. Use it at your own risk.

sudo apt-get install `rc-alert | grep Package | cut -f 2 -d ' ' | tr '\n' ' '`

It checks the installed packages which have RC (release critical) bugs and tries to upgrade them to the latest versions. Combined with apt-listchanges, apt-listbugs this command provides a way to have an unstable (sid) system which does not contain any RC bugs.

bye
raju

features missing in google's blogging software

I find that the following features are missing in the current google's blogging software. If you have any suggestion on these issues, feel free to leave a comment.

1) Sometimes I want the posts/comments visible to only some chosen/trusted members. There is no way I can do this with current google's blogging software. Granted I can use email for private communication, but including this facility in blogging software would also be nice.

2) I cannot choose my favorite editor - vim (The greatest software of all times) to edit the blogs. Instead I am stuck with some st**id GUI here. There should be a facility to choose the editor (either provided by the blogging software or is installed on the user's OS).

3) The formatting features in the default editor are not adequate. AFAIK, there is no way I can include complicated stuff like tables etc., on this software. There should be some LaTeX kind of functionality built into this blogging editor so that bloggers can write stuff other than just poetry and "I did this today" notes.

Transpose of data

To take transpose of rectangular data in oocalc

• Select the rectangular region of interest
• Press ctrl-c to copy the data
• Go somewhere where you have sufficient space to paste the transpose. This will be your top-left corner of the new matrix.
• Enter Ctrl-Shift-V to bring up the Paste Special dialog
• Select Transpose in the Options field and press OK
  

tested on oocalc 2.0 on Debian Sid

passed 8th grade again :-)

You Passed 8th Grade Math

Congratulations, you got 10/10 correct!

Could You Pass 8th Grade Math?

tensor redefined

Thanks to Gas, now I know the latest definition of tensor.

If a person is always tensed up, you call him a tensor.

generating tableofcontents with texmacs

To generate table of contents inside TeXmacs

• Text -> Automatic -> Table of contents
• Document -> Page -> Type -> Paper
  
• Document -> Update -> Table of contents or Document -> Update -> All
  

repeat the last operation until there is no change in the document.

More information about this can be found at
http://www.texmacs.org/tmweb/manual/webman-links.en.html

gcc cvs -> svn

According to http://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/SvnPlan gcc is moving their code repositories from cvs to svn. More information can be found at
http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc/2005-10/msg00047.html
http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc/2005-10/msg00191.html

I think it is time for me to roll up my sleeves and start shifting to svn. I would be very much interested to hear opinions of others regarding this issue.

raju

gnuplotfortran packages

I am waiting for http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=330850 to get fixed so that I can make Debian packages of gnuplotfortran (http://sourceforge.net/projects/gnuplotfortran).