The Splendid Fishpaste Auditorium

Broken Beko washing machine spins really fast

2011-10-02T19:43:00.004+01:00

I know this is a tedious blog about fixing my computer problems, but since I feel duty bound to give information back to the interwebs after it's helped me, I hope a post about washing machine fixes will be acceptable.

So, here's hoping this post will turn up for people google-ing for the same problems as me this morning.

My Beko WMA520W washing machine broke last night. Half way through a wash there was a "wheeee!" noise and the drum stopped. We turned it off and took the laundry out. Thereafter, every time I turned it on, it pumped water out, then spun really fast, then stopped. Even turning it off at the wall or holding down the cancel button would not re-set it, as it was convinced it was mid-cycle.

I bring you a two-part solution. First, according to this post, there is a magic raindance on the front control panel to re-set the machine:

Turn the power button off but leave the machine on at the wall
Select a 90 degree wash
Hold the start/cancel button down for 3 seconds and turn the power button on whilst still holding buttons down. The start light will flash.
Select any spin position.
Hold down the start/cancel button again for 3 seconds. If other buttons start to flash, press start/cancel again for 3 seconds.

Now the machine is happy to accept instruction. We tried a nice rinse cycle, with the machine empty. It filled with water okay, but when it got to tumble-time, the drum just span up to warp speed again, then stopped.

After checking various things, we removed the motor and the issue turned out to be a shattered tachometer magnet. The magnet pieces no longer rotated with the motor shaft, so there was no induced current in the tacho coil. The control unit therefore assumed the motor was not rotating, so increased the speed until it reached some safety cut-off.

In this model, the magnet appears to have been formed around a textured brass ring, so even if spares were available (and the internet doesn't seem to have any) it seems unlikely you could get a replacement on without shattering it. We opted for some Araldite Rapid Steel epoxy and have tried to glue the two pieces back together. This may not last us very long, and we don't intend to leave the washer on when we're not around, just in case! It we want a longer-term fix, it seems the only option is to buy a whole new motor which seems a bit stupid just for a magnet, but hey ho. We'll try the £5 fix over the £80 one any day. Of course, the third option is to obtain the new motor less expensively by cannibalising other Beko machines at the skip or otherwise obtaining a broken one for spares.

Other news from my fascinating journey round the Beko's guts:

We've always had to pour another 20 litres of water through the tray on a wash cycle as the machine doesn't put anywhere near enough water in. However, it looks like we can make adjustments on the fill pressure sensor (top front right corner) in the future, but let's break one thing at a time for now.

Some corners of the web mention timing wheels and other such nonsense. I didn't see any of those inside our beastie, so I conclude most of the control goes on inside the processor (an Atmega32). When that gets toasted, it'll be £50 for a new board :-(

Linux hostname

2011-09-05T21:02:00.002+01:00

This shouldn't have taken me so long. My husband wouldn't name his new laptop after a popular British F1 driver, until I managed to change the desktop hostname to that of his team-mate. The desktop was previously so named because it was so fast (ha ha oh).

Anyway, the answer was to add

HOSTNAME="F1driver"

to /etc/sysconfig/network (since it wasn't already there for me to change). Alternatively, I could have done

sysctl kernel.hostname=F1driver

as superuser.

It's a win.

Equation referencing in Word 2007

2010-11-16T08:09:00.003Z

It baffles me that something so essential is not simple with micro$oft word. If you are going to want to put equations in your document, of course you will want to talk about them! (Otherwise, why bother?) To talk about them, of course you will need to reference them and the best way of doing that is with numbers. Why then is there no simple way to do this? Why give an equation tool but no easy numbering method?

So: how to insert a numbered equation in Word 2007 and reference it in the text. For the first part, I follow this blog post.

Insert a 3 column, 1 row table.
Format the table to fill 100% of the page width, with the column widths in percent as 15:70:15.
Centre the text in the middle column and remove all table borders. Make the spacing below the table the same as other paragraphs.
Insert your equation in the middle column. (I use insert>object>M$ equation 3.0 since the new equation package won't work on my machine).
Insert a number in the right-hand column by insert>multilevel list. You can define your own so that the numbers are formatted like (x).

Here is the nice part (ha ha). Since my "equation gallery" is broken too, I can't save these shenanigans for easy re-use. To insert a new equation later, I simply copy the whole table and paste it elsewhere and change the equation! The numbers automatically sort themselves out (hallelujah).

To reference the numbered equation in the text:

Highlight the equation number and insert>bookmark. Give it a nice name.
Put the cursor at the place where you want your reference inserted and insert>cross-reference. Insert a reference of type "bookmark", select the name of your equation and insert the reference to the paragraph number (full context).

There. That was a complete pain, wasn't it? And it took about 40 mouse-clicks! Doesn't your equation look horridly rendered too? Oh, I love LaTeX and I want it back.

Save excel graphs as vector images

2010-10-29T18:45:00.003+01:00

This is a lame workaround to get excel plots as vector images.

Select your Micro$oft Excel plots. Copy. Open Micro$oft PowerPoint. Paste-special as enhanced metafile (emf) into an otherwise empty slide. Save your PowerPoint slide as an "other format" file (on the 2007 menu), and choose "emf" (an enhanced windows metafile! wow!). Import your emf file into inkscape and ungroup the object. Delect all the a4-sized crappy blank space from the image and enjoy.

Excel axis labels workaround

2010-10-29T18:35:00.003+01:00

Problem:
When making an x-y scatter plot in Micro$oft Excel 2007, there appears to be a bug which prevents the x-axis tick labels displaying correctly (at least on my machine). When you set the x-axis tick labels to text, e.g. "apple", "banana", "pear"..., the chart just displays the labels as 1, 2, 3... even when you are careful to select the cells containing the text labels as your x-data, and despite them showing up correctly in the "select data" dialogue box. This only appears to be an issue for the x-y scatter plot type.

Workaround 1:
Install linux boot disc...

Workaround 2:
Add a new dummy data series to your graph with x = {"apple", "banana", "pear"...} and y = {0, 0, 0...}, or some other value below the y-axis minimum. Select only this series, and set the chart type to area. The x-axis tick labels should now display correctly for the whole chart. Obviously delete the dummy data label from your legend, if you have one.

Stupid papersize stupid stupid

2010-10-01T19:21:00.002+01:00

After finally getting to the stage where my thesis would compile on a different computer (see last post to install the extra .sty files), I then discover my page headers have disappeared on my pdf output. It turns out that this is due to the default ps2pdf setting being US letter paper, rather than the A4 size that the rest of my document is on. The answer (for the moment, anyway) is this:
ps2pdf -sPAPERSIZE=a4 thesis.ps
I'm forced to go a-latexin' followed by dvipsin' then ps2pdf because of some bounding box issues with my images with pdflatex that I can't be bothered to solve.
That will serve me right for having a typo in my thesis.

Installing a latex .sty file

2010-09-30T07:27:00.004+01:00

I've never managed to successfully do this until now. Here's the deal:
1) download & unzip the package from CTAN
2) run latex on the .ins file so that it creates a .sty file
3) find out what your computer thinks your TDS tree should be:
kpsewhich -var-value TEXMFLOCAL
(mine says "/usr/local/share/texmf")
4) create the tree /usr/local/share/texmf/tex/latex/ if it isn't already there (where is the name of your sty file)
5) paste in your .sty file
6) run mktexlsr /usr/local/share/texmf/
7) profit.

Including pdf files into latex

2010-08-16T17:35:00.002+01:00

Further to my earlier post today, this post is the story of how I managed to get my research papers into my thesis as appendices. The earlier post tells a fascinating tale of how I sorted the page counters out and forced some blank pages. I then compiled up to pdf (via ps2pdf, to include my eps diagrams). To insert my other pdf pages I wrote a new latex file to stitch stuff together using pdfpages. Sadly this makes my hyperlinks go away, but nevermind. The object here is to be able to have a file which can be printed and bound by people who don't care to re-arrange pages for me. Behold:

\documentclass[a4paper,portrait]{article}
\usepackage{pdfpages}

\begin{document}

\includepdf[pages={1-32}]{thesis.pdf}
\includepdf[pages={33-34}, landscape, turn=false]{thesis.pdf} % some landscape pages
\includepdf[pages={35-202}]{thesis.pdf}
\includepdf[pages={1-5,{},{},{}}, landscape, nup=1x2, turn=false]{Appendices/specs.pdf}
\includepdf[pages={203-204}]{thesis.pdf}
\includepdf[pages={1-4}]{Appendices/prl.pdf}
\includepdf[pages={205-206}]{thesis.pdf}
\includepdf[pages={1-4}]{Appendices/pra.pdf}
\includepdf[pages={207-220}]{thesis.pdf}

\end{document}

Chunks of my thesis are included (I guess you can spot them), including some landscape pages as a special case. The "turn = false" means that any pdf viewers still display them as portrait. This was important to me, as I want to be able to check they're not going to print upside down! The last two appendices are four pages each and on American letter ("freedom") paper, but that's okay: they'll be scaled for A4. The "specs.pdf" file is 5 pages long and I have included it as 2-up printing on landscape pages which show as portrait in the viewer. Since I needed ensure that they occupy 4 sides of A4 in total, I included 3 blank pages denoted by the empty braces {}. So, the first two-and-a-half sides of A4 have the 5 pages of specs.pdf, and then there are one-and-a-half blank sides following.

I compile with pdflatex.

LaTeX: coloured text and blank page fun.

2010-08-16T15:35:00.003+01:00

I want to insert some research papers into my thesis. These are in separate pdf files which I don't yet know how I will insert. (pdfpages isn't my friend because I'm banned from using pdflatex due to having eps graphics which I can't be bothered to convert.)

I'll figure out that bit in a minute, but right now I want to force a blank page (with a header and footer) which will be printed on the reverse of an appendix section page. This has to come before the place where I will insert the pdf pages. Actually, latex adds this page automatically at the moment, because it wants my "Appendix" section pages to be on the right-hand sides of my document. The issue is that if I then start to add to my page counter, the reverse-side blank page has the wrong page number for where it will be printed!

Here's my work-around. Each introductory page for an appendix goes like this:

\chapter{An included paper}
Following is a copy of an amazing paper from our research group.
\newpage
\mbox{}

The mbox ensures the new page actually happens. Then, before the next \include{} in the master file, I add four pages (the research paper length!) to my counter.

\addtocounter{page}{4}

So far, so awesome. Now I'll fight to include the papers in the file. I'm thinking psutils...

OH! I forgot to tell you about coloured text! Before I found the mbox doo-dah I was going to just write "cheese" in white on the blank page. I'd do the following in my preamble:

\usepackage{color}
\definecolor{orange}{rgb}{1,0.5,0}

and then on my "blank" page, I'd do:

\newpage
\textcolor{orange}{cheese}

Ok, that's orange, but you get the picture. You can define white.

Non-coloured hyperrefs in latex

2010-06-07T18:43:00.002+01:00

So, I love to leap around my thesis like superman using the "hyperref" package. However, I do not like increased printing costs by having pretty pink references on every page (our printer selects the cheaper b/w printing intelligently). I was colouring my links black using this clunky bit of code:
\hypersetup{
colorlinks,%
citecolor=black,%
filecolor=black,%
linkcolor=black,%
urlcolor=black
}
...but this resulted in the printer choosing to mix colours to achieve black text on pages with a hyperlink! Argh! It looked stupid, it was stupid! Hopefully this more elegant bit of code might fix whatever oddity is occuring:
\hypersetup{pdfborder={0 0 0},colorlinks = false}
The pdf certainly looks no different... fingers crossed for printing time.

Sidewaystable prints upside down

2010-06-04T15:46:00.002+01:00

I have two consecutive landscape tables in my thesis using the "sidewaystable" package. The package rotates them so that the top of the table is closest to the spine of the book, however this manifests itself in the pdf as the page headers and footers appearing to the right of one landscape page, and to the left of the next. When I print double sided, one page has a header which is upside down. My preamble is thusly:

\documentclass[a4paper,11pt,twoside]{book}
\usepackage{rotating}

... the solution was to choose:

\usepackage[figuresright]{rotating}

So that the figures are always in one direction. Now my headers are always to the right of the landscape page. Hopefully this will now force them to be the right-way-up! If they both print upside down, I suppose I must choose [figuresleft] instead. I've no idea if this is just a symptom of my particular combination of pdf reader and printer, but hey-ho.

Thanks to the Szwer for solving this one for me.

Breaking URLs in BibTeX

2010-03-24T20:25:00.003Z

Here's a work-around for a sticky problem when citing URLs in LaTeX documents.

My problem manifested itself in ugly URLs in my bibliography which did not break over multiple lines, causing underfull hboxes all over the shop: the line of text preceding the URLs had 5 words spread horridly across the page.

I tried various work-arounds found via google but the one that eventually solved my problem was found here in "BibTeX tips and FAQ" by M. Shell and D. Hoadley.

My preamble contains the following:
\usepackage{url}
\usepackage[ps2pdf, pagebackref]{hyperref}

And I cite all my URLs in BibTeX like this:
\url{http://morecakelessfish.blogspot.com/}

I like to compile into pdf by using dvi2ps then ps2pdf otherwise I seem to have some issues with offset bounding boxes in my pyxplot .eps graphics. Despite calling the url package in my references (see example above), my URLs still weren't breaking. Apparently this is a problem when going via dvi after including the hyperref package. The problem was solved by including breakurl.sty AFTER the hyperref package in my preamble thusly:

\usepackage{url}
\usepackage[ps2pdf, pagebackref]{hyperref}
\usepackage{breakurl}

Jobs a good'un.

Battles won against my laptop

2009-07-23T17:00:00.003+01:00

My 7 year old laptop is now too geriatric to run anything too meaty. Windows is definitely out of the question, so I have Xubuntu.
Today, I bring you:

How to add a terminal launcher to the xfce panel:
right-click>add new item>launcher
Then find the terminal program in /usr/bin/xfce4-terminal and drag it into the launcher. Or, just set command to "/usr/bin/xfce4-terminal" and uncheck the "run in terminal" box. Give it a nice name and picture of a terminal window.

How to connect to a windows shared area when smb4k is acting up:
If you can see the various windows computers in smb4k (eg ACOMPUTER) but it won't let you mount ACOMPUTER/afile, then try this on the command line...

sudo mount -t smbfs //ACOMPUTER/afile/ -o username=myname /home/myfile/MyMount/

...where you have provided your username to access the shared area. When prompted, give the corresponding password.
To unmount:

sudo umount /home/myfile/MyMount/

Greek letters in Inkscape

2009-07-17T13:57:00.003+01:00

To get greek letters, press Ctrl+u. You'll see "Unicode (Enter to finish)" come up in the status bar. Let go of Ctrl+u and type in your unicode number followed by the return key.

w00.

Formatted Read Statements yet again.

2009-07-03T13:29:00.003+01:00

Further to my last post, I want to add a code snippet for reading in large arrays with many columns. It has some nice implicit do-loops. "myfile.ans" contains 1 column of integers, followed by Ncols of data that I want to read into "Blam" and Ncols that I want to read into "Dlam".

integer :: i, Nrows, Ncols
real :: Blam(Nrows, Ncols), Dlam(Nrows, Ncols)
integer :: pixies(Nrows)
character(1) :: tmp

open(unit=2,file='myfile.ans',status='OLD',action='READ')
do i = 1,Nrows,
read(2,20) pixies(i), (tmp,Blam(i,j), j=1,Ncols), (tmp,Dlam(i,j), j=1,Ncols)
enddo
close(2)
20 format(I3, 36(A1,F6.4))

Annoyingly, I can't seem to replace 36 (=2*Ncols) with a variable name or my compiler shouts. A mystery for another time I think.

Formatted Read Statements again.

2009-06-22T12:57:00.002+01:00

Grrr. I'm trying to read in a formatted file of integers such as:
1 1 1
10 10 10
100 100 100
(... three characters wide, one space between each column)
Fortran is giving me junk unless I format my read statement with
10 format(I3,A1,I3,A1,I3)
where I read the single space into a temporary variable declared as:
character(1) :: tmp
This is why I am in a bad mood with Fortran today. I put faith in it, and this is how it repays me. Plus, the fridge has frozen my tomatoes. I wonder if they are in league.

Compiling modules separately

2009-06-19T20:15:00.002+01:00

When I have a module declared in mymodule.f90, I can compile it like so:

gfortran -m32 -c mymodule.f90

... I can also compile the main file this way:

gfortran -m32 -c mainfile.f90

Finally I must link it, possibly also with the NAG library:

gfortran -m32 mymodule.o mainfile.o /opt/NAG/fll3a21dfl/lib/libnag_nag.a -o mainfile

Fortran array initialization

2009-06-18T14:30:00.004+01:00

This webpage here is very helpful for fortran arrays.

I'd forgotten that you can initialize vectors like this:

x = (/(i,i=0,maxx-1)/)

Instead of:

do i=1,maxx
x(i) = i-1
enddo

gcc fails to find header files

2009-05-13T17:47:00.003+01:00

Because I have clearly been neglecting the guts of my gcc installation too much recently (oh happy respite from commandline errors!), my computer decided to throw a wobbly about compiling a C program that included (amongst other friends) io.h, conio.h and dir.h.
A simple "hello world" program would compile when including stdio.h but not when I added io.h, screaming:

error: io.h: No such file or directory

I thought gcc would search /usr/include/sys automatically, but it appears not. I have to tell it on the command line:

gcc -o andorsif andorsif.c -I /usr/include/sys -L /usr/include/sys

After I cleared up that heap of doodoo then I still get errors from the program that look like:

error: ‘MAXPATH’ was not declared in this scope

but replacing incidences of MAXPATH with FILENAME_MAX seems to clear up that one.

Addressing integer bits in Fortran

2008-12-10T12:02:00.004Z

I want to find out about 8-bit integers (kind = 1) in gfortran.
Apparently they seem to be signed and stored as "two's complement". When you give the integer a value, you can view the bits like so:

integer(kind = 1) I
integer numbit(8) ! stores the bit values as 0 or 1's

I = 5
do j= 1,8
numbit(i) = ibits(I,j-1,1)
enddo
write(*,*) 'bits: ', numbit

...where here IBITS is extracting 1 bit from I at position j-1 and returning it as an integer with the bit value right-justified and the rest of the bits 0. So "1" at position j-1 is returned by ibits(I,j-1,1) as "00000001" which has integer value 1.

Alternatively, I could do this:

integer(kind = 1) I
integer numbit(8) ! stores the bit values as 0 or 1's

I = 5
do j= 1,8
numbit(i) = btest(I,j-1)
enddo
write(*,*) 'bits: ', numbit

...where BTEST returns .true. if the bit in position j-1 is "1", and .false. otherwise. This is implicitly converted to an integer by the gfortran compiler (but not without warnings at compile time), where .true. => 1 and .false. => 0.

Both of these return:
bits: 1 0 1 0 0 0 0 0

I guess the take-home message is that when you write out a bit-string, eg.
5 = [0101]
then the right-most bit is addressed as bit 0, and in general, bit number 1 is the second bit as you move left, etc.

So if you start with all bits set to zero, you can use IBSET to set certain bits to 1 and get whatever number you fancy...

I = 0 ! [00000000]
I = ibset(I,0) ! [00000001]
I = ibset(I,2) ! [00000101]
write(*,*) 'I = ', I

... and we get I = 5, as intended.

I guess this is a stupid post, but it wasn't obvious to me that the bit string would be numbered from the right starting at index 0. The default index for matrices in Fortran 95 starts at 1. Ho hum.

Incompatible ranks?!

2008-12-09T12:04:00.004Z

Here's a fun problem that I have encountered. It might be a bug, or it might not (I've run out of patience with google-ing it now I have my program working).

I have a two dimensional matrix. I sum it down one dimension and then find the position of the maximum entry.

subroutine ionfinder(subframe,x_dim,y_dim, irow, icol)

! define imputs, and function type itself
integer, intent(in) :: x_dim, y_dim
integer, intent(in) :: subframe(x_dim,y_dim)
integer, intent(out) :: irow, icol(4) !ion positions

! the code follows...*********************
irow = maxloc(sum(subframe,1))
write(*,*) 'ions in row (y): ', irow

end subroutine ionfinder

...but this causes my compiler (gfortran) to shriek:

irow = maxloc(sum(subframe,1))
1
Error: Incompatible ranks 0 and 1 in assignment at (1)

Huuuurrrmmm. Seems a bit silly, but the following kludge fixes things:

subroutine ionfinder(subframe,x_dim,y_dim, irow, icol)

! define imputs, and function type itself
integer, intent(in) :: x_dim, y_dim
integer, intent(in) :: subframe(x_dim,y_dim)
integer, intent(out) :: irow, icol(4) !ion positions

! define other datum within function
integer tmp(1)

! the code follows...*********************
tmp = maxloc(sum(subframe,1))
irow = tmp(1)
write(*,*) 'ions in row (y): ', irow

end subroutine ionfinder

Well well well. I should probably investigate the cause further but I'm not going to because I have physics to do, not Fortran to fix.

Formatted Read Statements

2008-09-16T09:58:00.001+01:00

This is not a very exciting problem or solution, but I shall post it anyway.
I was trying to read formatted data from a file like this:

0 9.99929445e-01
1 6.46409406e-05
2 3.80249651e-06
3 1.03999904e-06
4 4.24499610e-07
5 2.23999794e-07

I first tried the following:

integer :: myint(5)
real(kind = 10) :: myreal(5)

open(unit=2,file=filepath,status='OLD',action='READ')
do i = 1,5
read(2,20) myint(i),myreal(i)
end do
close(2)
20 format(I6,E15.8E3)

The I6 refers to the field width of the integer column. But alas, the output was this:

0 0.99992944E+001
1 0.64640941E+001
2 0.38024965E+001
3 0.10399990E+001
4 0.42449961E+001
5 0.22399979E+001

Oddly enough, everything was in order except that it would round powers from e-01 to e-09 up to E+001, and e-10 to e-19 became E+000 etc. Most odd. The solution was to change the format statement to skip the 2 blank spaces between the columns, which I had forgotten to do:

20 format(I6,2X,E15.8E3)

Simple really, but I don't know why it gives such a strange behaviour.

Oh Fortran, how I love thee.

2008-09-08T18:16:00.000+01:00

Fortran's logical operators that operate on integers happen to be bitwise. I didn't care about this until now. Here's a summary for two integers, a and b, which can take values 0 or 1.

logical AND:

(ab)	iand(a,b)
00	0
01	0
10	0
11	1

logical OR:

(ab)	ior(a,b)
00	0
01	1
10	1
11	1

logical XOR:

(ab)	ieor(a,b)
00	0
01	1
10	1
11	0

logical NOT:

(a)	not(a)
0	-1
1	-2

WTF? I have been bitten by the bitwise bear! In order to get zeros and ones, I must use ieor(1,a) instead of not(a). Pah.

Also, the tables in this post look all shit in my browser but I can't be bothered to fix them when I have Fortran to do instead.

Today's post was brought to you by the numbers 0 and 1 and the letter F.

Installing an Epson scanner under Mandriva

2008-05-19T09:42:00.000+01:00

Another how-to, brought to you by Mr B.:

To install and use the Epson Perfection 2480 scanner under Mandriva:

1) install "sane" (in package manager, install "libsane", "sane-backends" and perhaps "sane-frontends").

2) login as root, go to /etc/sane.d/ and edit the file "dll.conf" and ensure the line "snapscan" is uncommented (without a # at the beginning of the line).

3) from the CD supplied with the scanner, find the file "ESCAN/ModUsd.cab" and copy to your desktop (or elsewhere!).

4) go to the directory on your hard drive containing "ModUsd.cab" and run

$ cabextract ModUsd.cab

cabextract is a program to extract files from a micro$oft .cab format, which I have described in a previous post.

5) login as root and copy the firmware file "Esfw41.bin" to /etc/sane.d/esfw41.bin

6) run the following (as root):

$ scanimage -L

...and the scanner should be detected!

7) use "Kooka" or "Xscanimage" to use scanner (Xscanimage is from the package "sane-frontends")

Extracting Micro$oft .cab files

2008-05-19T09:39:00.000+01:00

Here it is, courtesy of Mr B.:

To extract Microshite .cab files, install "cabextract" (from package manager).
Copy blah.cab into a directory and:

$ cabextract blah.cab

$ cabextract -l blah.cab

to list the files in the .cab.

Fixing dvips

2008-05-16T20:55:00.000+01:00

We have a lovely shiney (the case really is!) new computer named Lewis. (This is after Lewis Hamilton, because he is so fast).

Anyway, it was super fast to build and amazingly the whole kit works, even the processor fan started so our new core2duo didn't melt. Mandriva 2008.1 installed quicker than it takes our old laptops to boot up. Now I have to iron out all the little problems getting things to work. (Like why Firefox is thinking every word in the english language that I'm typing is spelt wrong!!!).

First up, I can't seem to convert dvi to ps in Kile. Actually, it doesn't work on the command line either- it says:

dvips: ! Couldn't find header file cm-super-t1.enc.
Note that an absolute path or a relative path with .. are denied in -R2 mode.

R2 is some sort of secure mode. I am using texlive. Part of the problem is that dvips is correct- I really didn't have this file. I installed the following package:

texlive-texmf-cmsuper

But dvips still couldn't see it where it was hiding (which was in /usr/share/texmf-texlive/fonts/enc/dvips/cm-super). It seems that dvips uses the same search-y doo-dah as TeX, so all I needed to do was update the lists by running

texhash

as a superuser. It's happy now.

Povray

2008-05-15T15:40:00.000+01:00

Povray is amazing. This post is really just to remind myself of how to render an image with anti-aliasing from the command line:

povray myimage.pov -geometry 640x480 +A0.1

Hoorah!

Another Fortran idiosyncracy bites me on the bum

2008-03-12T15:36:00.000Z

I thought I'd have this program done by the end of the afternoon. So I start to write a function to calculate a nice simple Gaussian function. No NaNs and +Infs to contend with here, I thought. How wrong I was.
This time, I was finding that the intrinsic function exp(x) returned zero for x less than around -0.1E3. After some bashing, my compiler was sweet enough to tell me:

Result of EXP underflows its kind

Apparently, Fortran is not content with just "exp". It also has "dexp" and "cexp" for double-precision and complex floating point numbers respectively. So, dexp(x) it is then. But be careful how you define x, or you will get a shouty like this:

Type of argument 'x' in call to 'dexp' at (1) should be REAL(8), not REAL(4)

So one should try dexp(-0.1D3) (note the letter D!) rather than exp(-0.1E3), which will return zero, possibly grumbling in the process.

NaN, +Inf, -Inf, horrid things...

2008-03-10T14:51:00.000Z

This is the answer.
Based on such, I have a sample function to detect a +Inf:

function ispinf(x)
! function to detect if x is +Inf
integer :: ispinf
double precision :: x

!local variables
integer :: IPInf
real :: PInf
data IPInf/B'01111111100000000000000000000000'/ ! +Infinity
PInf = transfer(IPinf,Pinf)

if (x.eq.PInf) then
ispinf = 1
else
ispinf = 0
endif

end function ispinf

...in which I pacify the fussy NAG routine

2008-02-27T15:56:00.000Z

As usual, this is of interest to probably no-one but me, but I have just found the bug in my program.
I am trying to call NAG routine G05MZF which generates random integers from a probability distribution supplied by you. I have found routines give unexpected answers if you don't pass them variables of the correct type, so I was careful about this. The error I was getting at run-time was this:

At line 106 of file /scratch/zohair/FLL3A21DF/fll3a21df/source/g/g05mzfn.f
Fortran runtime error: Missing initial left parenthesis in format

I have had errors like this before which have been due to the reference vector (which contains the CDF) being too small, but this wasn't the case here. Instead, it turned out to be angry about being passed what it considered to be a non-normalized PDF. For example, passing a PDF which was 307 entries long with each entry set to 1.0D0/307.0D0 (ie. a flat distribution) worked fine. However, setting each entry to the actual value, 0.32573290D-02 was not accurately normalised enough, and it threw a hissy fit.

So the moral of the story is:
If you think you've normalized your PDF, the NAG library knows better. Expressed in code, this is:
P = P/sum(P)

In other news, I find it incredible how easy it is to destroy my code. Simply compiling program.f90 to the output file program.f90 will replace my code with executable junk. Surely they should have idiot-proofed this?

*********************************

Edit: 20th March 2008

Actually there's more to it than this. Firstly, the bizarre and unhelpful error is due to using gcc version 4.1.2 rather than the recommended version 4.2 which I don't yet have. If you use version 4.3, the error is more helpful, and gives you the value of IFAIL and results in a NAG hard failure telling you the deviation of the probability sum from unity. There are other issues too, but using the right compiler is helpful!

Installing a .sty file!

2008-02-08T17:49:00.000Z

At last, I succeed in one thing!
I needed bbding.sty, so I downloaded the whole zip from CTAN. It included the .ins and .dtx files. I stuck it in a local temporary place and followed the instructions on this handy page.
I ran latex on the .ins file and then on the .dtx file. I then moved the whole folder and everything in it to my local texmf tree:

/usr/local/share/texmf/tex/latex/

into a folder of the same name, ie. bbding. Next, as a superuser I ran:
texhash
and we all lived happily ever after.

Merging PDF files

2008-01-16T17:27:00.000Z

Assisted by this page, I managed to create a handy pdf file from the six .jpg files of sheet music I'd been sent. First I opened them in showFoto and printed them to six .pdf files, and then merged them on the linux command-line thus:
gs -dNOPAUSE -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -sOUTPUTFILE=Merged.pdf -dBATCH 1.pdf 2.pdf 3.pdf 3.pdf
etcetera, etcetera, etcetera...

Keyboard shortcuts for kwrite

2008-01-15T18:25:00.001Z

As usual, this will be of very little interest to anyone but me, but it's actually made my day. I have accidentally discovered the keyboard shortcuts useful for editing fortran code in kwrite.

Ctrl+I - indents
Ctrl+Shift+I - un-indents
Ctrl + D - comments out code (by ! marks)
Ctrl + Shift + D - un-comments code

How exciting my day is today. I actually could have looked this up in the kwrite menu, so I am stupid too!

File I/O in Fortran 95

2008-01-14T16:01:00.000Z

Can a "unit" be re-used after disconnecting from a previous file?
I believe the answer is yes! Two different units are only needed when trying to access two files at the same time. Once a file has been disconnected, one can re-use the number. Hoorah!

I can't even remember how to compile!

2008-01-08T18:02:00.000Z

My previous programs which don't require linking to a NAG library seem to compile thus:

gfortran -m32 program.f90 -o program

If they do require linkage, I compile like this:

gfortran -m32 program.f90 /opt/NAG/fll3a21dfl/lib/libnag_nag.a -o program

Silly me. Won't forget that now, will I?

Another post, in which I continue to destroy/re-build my LaTeX installation with my hopeless fumblings.

2007-12-19T10:28:00.000Z

So, for some reason, I downloaded the TeTeX documentation and stumbled across kpathsea.pdf in the TeTeX documentation menu in Kile. It seems that this is involved in searching for various files needed for LaTeX. For some reason, I tried to run mktexlsr instead of texhash. I probably wasn't managing to find the place where the script was saved, but something seemed to run. But then there was no ls-R file in /usr/local/share/texmf anymore. When I tried to compile any LaTeX code, the text came out ok, but any mathematical symbols, etc. were totally missing. On closer inspection, it was secretly crying that kpathsea couldn't find mf.base. So I managed to stop it finding metafont, or something crazy. I tried to compile the RevTeX sample which came out as a hopeless jumble of lines and which decided randomly to print itself on the group printer.
The shame! The despair!
I have since restored /usr/share/texmf/web2c/texmf.cnf to its former glory and run texhash and I now at least have a working LaTeX again.
Again, I make the changes to texmf.cnf that I made before, and this time run texhash. Boo hoo hoo. Computer says no:

This is dvips(k) 5.95b Copyright 2005 Radical Eye Software (www.radicaleye.com)
' TeX output 2007.12.19:1045' -> atomicstructure.ps
kpathsea: Running mktexpk --mfmode ljfour --bdpi 600 --mag 1+57/600 --dpi 657 cmmi10
kpathsea: Running mktexfmt mf.base
fmtutil: format `mf' not available.
mktexpk: Mismatched mode ljfour and resolution 600; ignoring mode.
mktexpk: Running mf-nowin -progname=mf \mode:=ljfour; mag:=1+57/600; nonstopmode; input cmmi10
This is METAFONT, Version 2.71828 (Web2C 7.5.5)
kpathsea: Running mktexfmt mf.base
fmtutil: format `mf' not available.
I can't find the base file `mf.base'!
grep: cmmi10.log: No such file or directory
mktexpk: `mf-nowin -progname=mf \mode:=ljfour; mag:=1+57/600; nonstopmode; input cmmi10' failed to make cmmi10.657pk.
kpathsea: Appending font creation commands to missfont.log.
dvips: Font cmmi10 not found, characters will be left blank.
kpathsea: Running mktexpk --mfmode ljfour --bdpi 600 --mag 1+0/600 --dpi 600 cmmi8
kpathsea: Running mktexfmt mf.base
fmtutil: format `mf' not available.
mktexpk: Mismatched mode ljfour and resolution 600; ignoring mode.
mktexpk: Running mf-nowin -progname=mf \mode:=ljfour; mag:=1+0/600; nonstopmode; input cmmi8
This is METAFONT, Version 2.71828 (Web2C 7.5.5)
kpathsea: Running mktexfmt mf.base
fmtutil: format `mf' not available.
I can't find the base file `mf.base'!
grep: cmmi8.log: No such file or directory
mktexpk: `mf-nowin -progname=mf \mode:=ljfour; mag:=1+0/600; nonstopmode; input cmmi8' failed to make cmmi8.600pk.
dvips: Font cmmi8 not found, characters will be left blank.
. [1]

I think I must be creating the wrong files. A more intelligent approach is needed, ie. engage brain.

Mandriva sound problems

2007-12-18T17:04:00.000Z

Unfortunately, the version of Mandriva that is installed on my machine at work appears to be incompatible with my soundcard. That means from time to time it will scream like a banshee, and there's not much I can do about it, except mute the whole sound system. It can be done on the command-line like this:
aumix-text
and then choose "mute" or somesuch. That should stop the screaming. Thanks Greg!

Installing LaTeX packages

2007-12-17T19:00:00.001Z

This post is going to change a lot as I try this new feat. I'm writing as I go, and this may not even work. Worse, I might break my current LaTeX distribution. Wish me luck.

I'm using several very helpful pages. One is the readme file for the package I'm installing, and the other is here.

I download the package I want: it happens to be REVTeX4. It's saved as revtex4.tar.gz somewhere temporary. My path $TEXMFLOCAL happens to correspond to /usr/local/share/texmf. This is where all my updates will be stored- in a nice local file, so I can find them again. In this path, I created some handy directories...
mkdir /usr/local/share/texmf/tex
mkdir /usr/local/share/texmf/tex/latex
I changed directories here:
cd /usr/local/share/texmf/tex/latex
next moved the tar file into this location...
cp /temporarylocation/revtex4.tar.gz .
the full-stop is not a typo. I un-tarred it like so:
tar -zxvf revtex4.tar.gz
I had to be acting as a superuser, of course, to wield such fantastic powers. I now have a lovely directory named revtex4. The readme suggests I put the *.bst files in $TEXMFLOCAL/bibtex/bst/revtex4, so I do the following:
cd /usr/local/share/texmf/
mkdir bibtex
mkdir bibtex/bst
mkdir bibtex/bst/revtex4
cd bibtext/bst/revtex4
cp /usr/local/share/texmf/tex/latex/revtex4/*.bst .
I think I shall also delete them from their current home in /tex/latex/revtex4 for good measure. It is now time to instruct my TeX system where to find it all. I altered a cunning file:
kwrite /usr/share/texmf/web2c/texmf.cnf
From here on, I (almost) quote verbatim from this page.

I had already defined a directory for local material, and stuck everything there. This was /usr/local/share/texmf.

If your configuration file has a line that says something like:
TEXMFLOCAL=$SELFAUTOPARENT/share/texmf
...then you are fine; leave it alone. Some older distributions instead have a line like
TEXMFLOCAL=/usr/local/share/texmf
...commented out (it starts with a percent sign). If yours is commented out, then below it put the non-commented $SELFAUTOPARENT line (and date the change in the file; sometimes that's helpful).

Mine had the "older distribution" option, but it wasn't commented out, so I left it as it was.

Turn on searching of that local directory. A bit further down I found this line
TEXMF = {$HOMETEXMF,!!$TEXMFLOCAL,!!$TEXMFMAIN}
I commented this line out by prefixing a percent sign to the line. Below it I added a new line:
TEXMF={$HOMETEXMF,$TEXMFLOCAL,!!$TEXMFMAIN}
...in which I've deleted the twin exclamation points. The twin exclamation points tell the system that if it does not find a file in the main tree's ls-R database then it should not go on to search the disk. That's OK because your main tree will never change since you will put new things into the local tree. So the rehashing done [later] will be up to date forever. (Older versions have a TEXMF=!!$TEXMFMAIN line which you can comment out and replace with what's above.)

The page also offers wisdom on what I'm actually doing. The re-hashing I do at the end.

Your TeX system can precompute the position of [certain] files so that, instead of scanning the directory tree on your physical disk, your system finds where a file is in a database file called 'ls-R', which lists that directory tree. Then your TeX goes straight to that spot in the directory structure on the disk to get the file's contents. (The software libraries that do this work are called `kpath'.) Point One: If you make any changes to a precomputed portion of your setup then you must rebuild (or `rehash') the database of files, or your changes won't be found.

I continue:

Insure that searching of that local directory is done on disk. For certain kinds of files (such as .vf files), if the system finds a filename database in the directory tree then it will look for that file only in the database -- it will not go on to search the disk (whether there are twin exclamation points or not). Thus, for those files, forgetting to rehash results in your system saying that it cannot find files that you know are in the right place. To avoid that puzzlement, we will omit creation of that database for the local tree... I found this line
TEXMFDBS=$TEXMF;$VARTEXFONTS
...commented it out with a percent sign, and added this just below it:
TEXMFDBS=$TEXMFMAIN;$VARTEXFONTS
The version with TEXMF would have caused TEXMFDBS to expand to include the local tree, but now with TEXMFMAIN it will only include the distribution's tree.

And now for the hashing of the database:

Run the command to remake the ls-R filename database. I first checked that there was no ls-R file in the local directory /usr/local/share/texmf and then I did this.
texhash
The system responded by telling me that it had made /usr/share/texmf/ls-R (and also a /var/lib/texmf/ls-R file that has to do with user-created fonts that I will not discuss). The main point is that the system did not make /usr/local/share/texmf/ls-R. Consequently, searches of the local material will be made on disk.

Et voila. Thank you, oh great author of handy page (and sorry for stealing your text- I reproduce it here in case it disappears, or I can't find it again!)

LATER: Ok, this appears to have broken my LaTeX as predicted. I'm having problems with finding Metafont. Will sort this out and post in a later post about it, if I can fix it.

A really silly post to remind myself of 4 letters

2007-12-12T14:03:00.000Z

ps ux
... will show me all processes running for my user on my work (mandriva) linux computer. Then I can get rid of the process number that has hung up via the "kill" command.

Also, I think perhaps the following is true for mandriva:
urpmi -install a package
urpme -uninstall a package

Converting integers to strings in Fortran

2007-12-04T15:41:00.001Z

Assisted by this page, I present the result:

character(11), parameter :: fstart = "Xfiles/Xbin"
character(4), parameter :: fend =".txt"
character(3) :: fnum
character(18) :: fname
integer :: blob

blob = 2
write (fnum,1000) blob
1000 format(I3)
fname = fstart//trim(adjustl(fnum))//fend

The double slash "//" concatenates strings. The strange form of the write command (rather than just char(blob) gives you the value of blob as a character, rather than the ascii character for that number. The adjustl(fnum) function moves the contents of string "fnum" to the left, to leave all trailing blanks to the right. The call to trim(string) then removes the trailing blanks. This is necessary to avoid spaces appearing in "fname" if the value of blob is only 2 digits or less, since I defined "fnum" to be three characters long.

Three cheers for Greg

2007-11-29T09:54:00.000Z

... who has informed me that when KDE crashes and the title bars disappear from the windows (which it seems to do with annoying regularity), you can just type:
kde-window-decorator &
to get them back again. Hoorah.

Disclaimer: Greg just said "This might not be a solution, it's crashing much more after that!"

NAG library- getting the thing to work!

2007-11-26T12:02:00.000Z

So, I receive my license key, and I've installed the library that I needed (FLL3A21DFL, x86-32, Linux, gfortran compiler, Double Precision) and followed the installers instructions on this page. It installed in:

/opt/NAG/fll3a21dfl/

It's now time to run a test! The User's Note suggests to run an example, like thus:
nag_example e04ucf
...for which I moved to my own directory where I had write permission. However, then I need to tell it where the nag_example script is, so I actually had to run:
/opt/NAG/fll3a21dfl/scripts/nag_example e04ucf
The computer said:

Copying e04ucfe.f to current directory
cp /opt/NAG/fll3a21dfl/examples/source/e04ucfe.f .
Compiling and linking e04ucfe.f to produce executable e04ucfe.exe
gfortran -m32 e04ucfe.f /opt/NAG/fll3a21dfl/lib/libnag_nag.a -o e04ucfe.exe
Copying e04ucfe.d to current directory
cp /opt/NAG/fll3a21dfl/examples/data/e04ucfe.d .
Running e04ucfe.exe with data from e04ucfe.d
./e04ucfe.exe < e04ucfe.d > e04ucfe.r
/opt/NAG/fll3a21dfl/scripts/nag_example: line 58: 12681 Segmentation fault ./${example}.exe <${example}.d >${example}.r

...as it happily seg-faulted. I guessed this is because it called "gfortran" which still refers to the old version of the compiler on my machine (I still haven't worked out how to change that!) But now I guess the correct commands to re-compile it:
/etc/irun/bin/gfortran -m32 e04ucfe.f /opt/NAG/fll3a21dfl/lib/libnag_nag.a -o e04ucfe.exe
Then to run it:
./e04ucfe.exe < e04ucfe.d > e04ucfe.r
And it cried:

./e04ucfe.exe: error while loading shared libraries: libgfortran.so.3: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

No matter, I had forgotten to type
export LD_LIBRARY_FLAG=/etc/irun/lib
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/etc/irun/lib
...because I still haven't managed to sort this problem out a better way. Perhaps making a symbolic link to the missing libraries as suggested in the NAG Installer's notes might work:

To simplify access to the libraries you may wish to create symbolic links in a system location such as /usr/lib pointing at the installed libraries. They would then be in the default search path of the linker during the link phase, and be available for execution at run time (in the case of shareable libraries).

Anyway, re-compiling and running now works fine. Time to call a routine from my program. Since this is the NAG library (and not the NAG f90 library), I must call functions with strange names like S14AAF. After adding the compilers own libraries to LD_LIBRARY_PATH (see above!), I additionally added the NAG libraries:
LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/opt/NAG/fll3a21dfl/lib:/opt/NAG/fll3a21dfl/acml:
${LD_LIBRARY_PATH}
but really all on one line, and with no spaces. Then...
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH
Such that typing:
echo $LD_LIBRARY_PATH
Gives me:

/opt/NAG/fll3a21dfl/lib:/opt/NAG/fll3a21dfl/acml:/etc/irun/lib

I've no idea if that was strictly necessary. (Edit- it doesn't seem to be!) In my fortran code, I must declare the types of the NAG functions I call, as well as the fact that they are external:
real(kind = 10) :: factorial, S14AAF, S14BAF
external S14AAF, S14BAF
Where factorial is an internal function I wrote myself. Functions are then called as you would expect...
gam = S14AAF(n+1.0,ifail)
or somesuch line. The program is compiled using:
/etc/irun/bin/gfortran -m32 gammatest.f90 /opt/NAG/fll3a21dfl/lib/libnag_nag.a -o gammatest
...since I had to tell the compiler where to find the external functions.

Fun and games with gfortran and the NAG library

2007-11-22T13:24:00.000Z

I am trying to install the NAG library at work to run with gfortran. The problem is that it won't work with the old version of gfortran (4.1.2), which is the only package available for my version of the Mandriva linux kernel (2007). I had to update gfortran to 4.2.0 or better. First I needed to find out which kernel version I had (32 bit or 64 bit on a 64-bit processor?). I typed:
cat /etc/issue
which seemed to tell me that I have a 32 bit kernel. An alternative is to try:
uname =a
I then downloaded the 32 bit gfortran binaries for Linux, and saved them in a temporary file. I then changed to the directory in which I wished to install them:
cd /etc
Next I un-tarred them:
tar -zxvf $temp_folder_path/gfortran-linux.tar.gz
Typing:
/etc/irun/bin/gfortran -v
told me all about the new version I had installed. When trying to compile my test code, I had to explicitly give the path to the new version, otherwise it used the old version (haven't worked out how to change this yet!)
/etc/irun/bin/gfortran -o test test.f90
So far, so good, but when I tried to run it:
./test
The computer screamed:

./test: error while loading shared libraries: libgfortran.so.3: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

Typing:
ldd test
showed me which libraries the program calls, and which (might) be missing. To solve this:
export LD_LIBRARY_FLAG=/etc/irun/lib
and similarly...
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/etc/irun/lib
To see what the variables contain:
echo $LD_LIBRARY_PATH
More fun to come, as I try and get the NAG library to work...

Fortran 95

2007-11-20T13:08:00.000Z

Here I am, installing Fortran 95 compilers at work on Mandriva One. It didn't seem to be installed, so I just installed the two packages pertaining to Fortran from rpmdrake, and now my file test.f90 compiles when I type:

f95 -o test test.f90

and runs with:

./test

Hoorah for that.

Linux distros, Rosegarden, MIDI files and other jollity.

2007-11-03T18:12:00.000Z

This is a brief chronicle of my battles with my computer since my last update.

I for some reason I had made a move back to Windows. However, my patience with it was as short lived as most of my houseplants. I'd also recently been using Mandriva Linux at work, which is very yummy indeed. I'd always previously used Ubuntu with Gnome at home, but the wonder of Kile for editing LaTeX tempted me towards KDE. Thus, I spent many evenings installing new distros on my geriatric laptop. First up was Mandriva, but sadly even trying to boot from a live-cd, it hangs before even starting up. I switched again, and tried Fedora. This installed okay eventually, after a few arguments with the disk partitioning. The automatic partitioner failed to wipe the windows partition from the disk, requiring some serious expletives. After a few days, I tired of Fedora as it ran so very slowly on my ancient computer, and was full of all kinds of dowithoutables. Ever faithful to my first linux love, I tried Kubuntu Edgy. It seems to work fine, but is still a little slow. Not the last word by any means- I think I'm going to have to try a tiny version of Linux, but now is not the moment. So, I cope with Kubuntu for the moment.

Now, for various reasons I require a music notation editor. After a little research, I settle for a combination of Rosegarden for the editor, with Lilypond to do my typesetting. I don't recall how I installed them.

Rosegarden seems to work all fine and dandy except one little hitch:

System timer resolution is too low!

...it cries as it opens. Apparently my kernel timer resolution is puny and not good enough to accurately time MIDI files on playback in real time. I could switch to a low-latency kernel, but I can't be bothered. I want a quick fix and instant results. I'm happy for my sound to get a bit squished and crap, any sound will do for the moment. However, apparently I should be hearing my crappy sound even with Rosegarden's little huff. But I have silence. I conclude my problems lie deeper than this. I can't listen to my MIDI file in anyway, Amarok won't recognise it either.

I find this lovely how-to which tells me to install TiMidiy and "freepats" samples. I reproduce some of it's wisdom here for my own benefit:

timidity music.mid

typed in the commandline now lets me here the funky music! Now, I load some modules

sudo modprobe snd-seq-device
sudo modprobe snd-seq-midi
sudo modprobe snd-seq-oss
sudo modprobe snd-seq-midi-event
sudo modprobe snd-seq

and run:

timidity -iA -B2,8 -Os1l -s 44100

on the command line. This loads TiMidity as a midi server and opens 2 midi ports, 128:0 and 128:1 Now Rosegarden makes sounds! Even with it's timing huff. To get TiMidity to do it's stuff on startup, I must edit /etc/default/timidity and uncomment:

TIM_ALSASEQ=true

I also add

snd-seq-device
snd-seq-midi
snd-seq-oss
snd-seq-midi-event
snd-seq

to /etc/modules.

I now remember a neat way to get sheet music- some music editors can import MIDI files and create scores from them. Rosegarden can too, hoorah. So, I boldly import my MIDI file and lo, I can see the music and hear it too! Amarok still doesn't like my MIDI file, but I shall save that battle for another day.

PDF imposition

2007-08-13T17:52:00.001+01:00

Apparently this is where you re-order your PDF pages so that when you print them out two per page and double sided it forms a cute little booklet.

You need "psutils" installed.

psbook -s44 inputfile.ps outputfile.ps

where the -s tag sets the number of pages your document needs. This must be divisible by 4. So, for a 43 page document, you need -s44, and the extra blank page will be added. Neat.

Then you can do the following to go back to a pdf:

ps2pdf outputfile.ps newoutputfile.pdf

When you print, you must select "duplex: short side" or else it comes out all screwy with the reverse pages rotated through 180 degrees.

Jabref

2007-08-13T17:49:00.000+01:00

Jabref is a marvelous program to sort out all my references. However, I always forget the command I need to run it under linux:

java -jar JabRef-2.2.jar

..and that's it.

You need to dress a cat. And you will say to a cat together with a family. "It has changed just for a moment".

2007-07-30T20:50:00.000+01:00

I'm putting off doing the washing up. After just one glass of wine, I find the following sites hilarious. I need help.

Cat Prin- the tailor for a cat you know
It is spring new work! They are frog transformation goods!

The muffler of the car which does the shape of a kitty
Is this probably for the person who likes the kitty? 　Or for hateful person?

Oh dear.

More excitement from the world of my computer.

2007-05-29T21:24:00.000+01:00

Horror of horrors, I now find that my computer didn't come with gcc already! Because I was in a clicky-clicky mood, I went to synaptic package manager, and installed all the gcc- looking things.
I made some crappy C++ program, and tried to compile:

gcc test.cxx

But my computer cried:

gcc: installation problem, cannot exec 'cc1plus': No such file or directory

Boo hoo hoo. The oracle (internet) suggested:

sudo apt-get install g++

And all was merry. However, mostly I want to remind myself how to compile, since I write so little C code recently:

gcc test.c -o test

Where the last flag is to put the output in "test". Huzzah.

Play mp3 files in Ubuntu

2007-04-14T22:30:00.000+01:00

For my second post of ubuntu battles, I'm going to delve back into historic battles (last night) and talk about how to get mp3's to play in Rhythmbox. The first time I did it, it was bizzarre and involved lots of messing about, but now I find the following AMAZING program...
EasyUbuntu
Immense. So easy.

The best thing is, Rhythmbox has AudioScrobbler built-in, so if you are a last.fm fanatic, you only have to enter your username and password in Preferences>AudioScrobbler.

Note to self: Actually RUN the EasyUbuntu program after you download it, before you wonder why mp3's are still not recognised. Doh.

Free Pascal

2007-04-14T21:58:00.000+01:00

For my first thrilling post, I'd like to tell you all about my entire evening trying to install Free Pascal on my laptop which runs Ubuntu Linux (Dapper Drake, no less). Since I'm not a very experienced user (not at all!) I have been mainly fumbling in the dark. However, since I just managed to compile my first pascal program, I thought I'd share those fumblings with you, incase you're interested. So.

I visited this marvellous website, and downloaded the 2.0.4 release for Linux as a .tar file:
fpc-2.0.4.i386-linux.tar
So far, so good. I could have had the .deb packages, but they were numerous, and I didn't know what to do with them, or which ones I needed. So, the .tar version it was. I un-tarred it like so:

tar -xvf fpc-2.0.4.i386-linux.tar

And then I ran the shell script to install it thus:

sudo ./install.sh

I wrote an incredible program, and named the file "hello.pp" (my first ever pascal program!)

program hello;
begin
writeln ('Hello, world.');
end.

And then I typed...

fpc hello.pp

But! Woe is me! The computer told me:

hello.pp(4,1) Error: Util ld not found, switching to external linking

Which was very rude. However, after much head scratching and manual searching, I found the following enlightenment from the freepascal user manual:

Under UNIX systems (such as LINUX) you need to have the following programs installed :
1. GNU as, the GNU assembler.
2. GNU ld, the GNU linker.
3. Optionally (but highly recommended) : GNU make. For easy recompiling of the compiler and Run-Time Library, this is needed.

Compiling a compiler? I can't cope with this! A bit more detective work lead me to install binutils using the synaptic package manager, which gave me the gnu assembler and linker. Then my program compiled sweetly and ran when I typed:

./hello

Great stuff.

Hello, World.

2007-04-14T21:50:00.000+01:00

Hello, deep abyss of cyberspace.

I feel compelled to start my own blog, mainly to chronicle my battles against my computer. It's going to be a fascinating read, I can just tell.

Everytime I work out how to do something with Linux (ie. Installing my printer, taking a whole day) I mean to write it down. However, I never do, and when my computer finally goes mental (I spill a glass of water on it) I have to re-install everything. By this time I've forgotten exactly how I ever got it to play mp3s. But this is getting more regular, as my computer becomes more geriatric. So here's my blog of reminders for myself next time it all goes tits up.

Useful, that is, providing it's not my Ethernet card that gets fried (again).

So, welcome, complete lack of readers, to this most fascinating and fishy blog.