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. Click it and get a PDF of what you are reading.
I’ve used wxWidgets back when it was wxWindows but haven’t played with it lately. So I loaded up Code::Blocks (with wxSmith) and wrote a little game. The premise is “concentration” but instead of cards, the game loads up random images from Google based on your choice of keywords. It isn’t perfect. The search sometimes returns strange things (just like any search) and if you get the same picture twice (unlikely but it happens) it can be confusing.
Anyway, for a quick throw together its not bad.
The Battle of Shaker Heights movie download
Since wxWidgets is cross platform, the game ought to run under Windows as well as Linux (where I developed it).
One of the things that makes Firefox a great browser is its extensions. If you want an extra feature you can add it to Firefox without having to rewrite Firefox. However, all those great extensions keep cluttering up your toolbars with more and more little icons.
The answer? Um, more extensions! Here’s how I get the most bang for my buck on Firefox screen space:
1) Install the Tiny Menu extension. This will collapse your menu to a single item (“Menu”) that then pops out the actual system menu.
2) Install the Searchbar Autosizer extension. This lets you make a smaller search box and then when you type it pops it out. In the Preferences, click Keep the same width all the time and then press Advanced. Check “Shrink seachbar to button if empty” and then press Add Button to Toolbar. Size the search bar dn then set the minimum and suggestion widths to the same as the maximum. Also check “Empty searchbar when a query is submitted.” Now you’ll have a button on your toolbar that expands to the searchbar when you need it.
3) Customize the toolbars so you wind up with one or two tool bars that have everything you need on them. With the menu and the searchbar shrunk, you can get a lot on there. Particularly if you select icons only and check the small icon box.
4) (Optional) If you want to auto hide your bookmarks toolbar, read this Lifehacker article. Personally, I keep folders in my bookmark toolbar folder and then fill the folders with RSS feeds (live bookmarks). That way the feeds I follow are always a click away.
Here’s what my toolbar set up looks like:
Firefox toolbar - click to zoom
Note that I lied. My bookmark toolbar has a few non-folders on it (Hulu, for example). But most of them are folders containing live feeds.
Creating embedded applications is easy using the GP3 Alvin and the Chipmunks move
— if you are a Windows users. But what about Linux?
The GP3’s always had a Linux library available (which was recently updated to make creating a shared library easier). And you can always use Java if you can get Java to work with your serial ports. But a Windows developer can always slap together something in Visual Basic in a few minutes with almost no effort.
shows you how to use Gambas, a Linux rapid application development tool, to work with the GP3. Gambas is a lot like Visual Basic, but in fact its better.
The GP3 support for Gambas includes a Gambas component so you can use the GP3 on Linux as easy as Windows user with VB!
The sample program flashes an LED and watches a PIR sensor to dismiss your computer’s screen saver when you approach the PC. Of course, that’s just a simple example. You can access all of the GP3’s analog and digital I/O functions easily with Gambas.
Early release, it is true but it does work.
Download from here:https://jdk6.dev.java.net/6uNea.html
From a terminal:
cd /opt
sudo sh ~/jre-6u12-ea-bin-b02-linux-amd64-08_dec_2008.bin
# So you wind up with /opt/jre1.6.0_12
cd /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins
sudo ln -s /opt/jre1.6.0_12/lib/amd64/libnpjp2.so
# (restart firefox)
http://www.thinkfree.com finally works! Hoo ray!
If you use grub and have a boot menu with several different entries, did you know you can configure KDE to let you pick which one to use when rebooting?
Go to System Settings and on the Advanced tab, pick Login Manager. On the Shutdown tab, pick Grub as the Boot Manager.
That’s it. Now when you see a restart button it will have a little arrow that will allow you to pick any of your grub entries for the next reboot only.
Pretty cool.
One of the downsides of using 64-bit Linux (I use Kubuntu, a variant of Ubuntu) is that there hasn’t been a 64 bit Flash plugin. Sure, you could use a 32 bit browser, but that seems wrong. You could also use nswrapper to provide a 64 bit front end to a 32 bit plug in, but performance is not so good and it occasionally fails mysteriously.
I guess Adobe got tired of hearing folks whine, so they’ve released an alpha version of a 64 bit flash plugin. So far so good:
apt-get –purge remove nonfree-flashplugin nspluginwrapper
wget http://download.macromedia.com/pub/labs/flashplayer10/libflashplayer-10.0.d20.7.linux-x86_64.so.tar.gz
tar xvf libflashplayer-10.0.d20.7.linux-x86_64.so.tar.gz
sudo mv libflashplayer.so .mozilla/plugins/
Restart Firefox and check the about:plugins page.
YouTube videos still play in squashed fullscreen if you have dual monitors but that’s not a 64 bit issue.
Enjoy! Now if only Sun would give us a good 64 bit Java plugin….
I try to keep my Linux desktop updated pretty regularly via Adept (although I know many people use Synaptic or Aptitude for the same purpose). So a few days ago I saw that Adept wanted to upgrade Wine to version 1.1.7.
Wine — if you don’t already know — is a port of the Windows API that runs under Linux. The purpose of it is to run Windows programs inside Linux. I can hear some people saying “Ugh — I don’t want to run Windows programs.” But the truth is there are many programs that run only on Windows that you might want to run or might have to run.
For example, I use Endicia for printing postage. The flat rate they charge suits me better than Stamps.com and the software — while not as friendly — is better suited for people who ship a lot of parcels (for example, you can use XML to transfer shipping information from another application). The problem is, of course, no Linux version.
Wine has been able to run Endicia’s Dazzle (which is sometimes called Envelope Manager; I don’t know why). But for some reason the postage bar code would print as a big black box. In addition, WINE won’t store your passphrase for Dazzle, but that’s a minor problem — you just have to enter your passphrase when you launch the program.
Once Wine installed 1.1.7 Dazzle was able to display and print bar codes! So it looks like Linux users can finally run Dazzle without resorting to VirtualBox (which is what I have been doing). The passphrase storage doesn’t work, so you do have to put your pass phrase in each time you start the program.
There seem to be some major improvement to Wine. Evernote portable now runs without crashing (or, at least, it crashes less frequently — it has always run but with some crashes). Other software I like to run with Wine includes SwitcherCAD (the free Spice software for electronic simulation) and the MPLAB tools from Microchip.
GIMP in Xnest
Well I like GIMP for image editing, but the mutliple windows kind of bugs me. I had a plug in that sweeps up the windows into one master window. But I found it only works for Windows! Since I’m now 99.9% Linux, I wanted to find a similar solution.
Well, the answer turns out to be pretty simple. You need:
Xnest – the nested X server
A simple window manager such as xfwm4 or twm.
I used twm but only because I happen to already have it installed. But you might prefer xfwm4.
Then you can make the following shell script (I named it gimp1):
#!/bin/bash
exec Xnest :1 -ac -name GIMP -geometry 1200×1000 & twm -display :1 & gimp –display :1
That’s it! Set the geometry to suit yourself of course. And this assumes that display :1 is already free. But you get the idea. Enjoy!
Oh, and for the record, yes that is my car. I love it (SLK230)!
UPDATE: Ugh. Xnest doesn’t appear to exchange the clipboard with the “real” X server 
So that makes this a little less useful than you’d think unless you aren’t worried about using the clipboard (for example, using a screen shot from the clipboard).
If you use the Linux command line a lot you know the value of man (that’s man as in manual, not as in a guy). But I do find it annoying that when I quit paging through man’s output, the output disappears. Of course, you could fix this by changing the pager, but what I really wanted was a way to just have a “help window” show up that I could refer to while I was typing. Of course, there is the venerable xman, but it is a clunky old X application with a poor interface.
I noticed manview the other day in the repositories (part of manedit). I installed it (on Hardy it shows up under Development, but your milage may vary). Of course, then you have to remember to type manview instead of man — and I’ve been typing man for nearly 30 years.
So here’s the latest two entries in my ~/.bashrc:
Cast Away movie alias man=xman
xman () { if [ -z "$DISPLAY" ]; then 'man' $@; else manview $@ & fi }
This way when you type “man” from an X-Window shell you get the GUI but over a non-X shell you get good old fashioned man (be sure your shell function quotes man or you’ll get an endless loop thanks to the alias). Of course, you need to make sure manview is installed (for example, sudo apt-get install manedit).
I've been a ham radio operator (WD5GNR) since 1976. But I always say I go through more rolls of solder than logbooks. This Blog talks about anything geeky I'm interested in. That includes embedded systems, programmable logic (FPGAs and Verilog for the most part), programming, ham radio, gadgets, and cool Internet stuff.
Don't miss the Articles link (see Site Links below) -- these are some items that are bigger than Blog posts. Also, be sure to check out AWCE where you can find electronic kits, free projects, and more. Enjoy!
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