exec ck-launch-session dbus-launch openbox-session

exec ck-launch-session dbus-launch `which goomwwm`

$ conky-colors --cputemp --theme=human --arch --cpu=4 --proc=5 --clementine=vinyl --calendar --nvidia --hd=default --weather=USMA0245 --photord --network --unit=F --clock=modern --side=left

grub> find /boot/grub/stage1
 (hd0,0)
 (hd0,3)
grub> root (hd0)
grub> setup (hd0,3)
....
grub> quit

$     gcc  -o tutorial01 tutorial01.c -lavutil -lavformat -lavcodec -lz -lavutil -lswscale -lz

// tutorial01.c
// Code based on a tutorial by Martin Bohme (boehme@inb.uni-luebeckREMOVETHIS.de)
// Tested on Gentoo, CVS version 5/01/07 compiled with GCC 4.1.1

// A small sample program that shows how to use libavformat and libavcodec to
// read video from a file.
//
// Use
//
// gcc -o tutorial01 tutorial01.c -lavformat -lavcodec -lz
//
// to build (assuming libavformat and libavcodec are correctly installed
// your system).
//
// Run using
//
// tutorial01 myvideofile.mpg
//
// to write the first five frames from "myvideofile.mpg" to disk in PPM
// format.

#include 
#include 
#include 
#include 

void SaveFrame(AVFrame *pFrame, int width, int height, int iFrame) {
  FILE *pFile;
  char szFilename[32];
  int  y;
  
  // Open file
  sprintf(szFilename, "frame%d.ppm", iFrame);
  pFile=fopen(szFilename, "wb");
  if(pFile==NULL)
    return;
  
  // Write header
  fprintf(pFile, "P6\n%d %d\n255\n", width, height);
  
  // Write pixel data
  for(y=0; ydata[0]+y*pFrame->linesize[0], 1, width*3, pFile);
  
  // Close file
  fclose(pFile);
}

int main(int argc, char *argv[]) {
  AVFormatContext *pFormatCtx=NULL;
  int             i, videoStream;
  AVCodecContext  *pCodecCtx;
  AVCodec         *pCodec;
  AVFrame         *pFrame; 
  AVFrame         *pFrameRGB;
  AVPacket        packet;
  int             frameFinished;
  int             numBytes;
  uint8_t         *buffer;
  struct SwsContext *img_convert_ctx;
  int frameCount=0;
  
  if(argc < 2) {
    printf("Please provide a movie file\n");
    return -1;
  }
  // Register all formats and codecs
  av_register_all();
  
  // Open video file
  if(avformat_open_input(&pFormatCtx, argv[1], NULL, NULL)!=0)
    return -1; // Couldn't open file
  
  // Retrieve stream information
  if(av_find_stream_info(pFormatCtx)<0)
    return -1; // Couldn't find stream information
  
  // Dump information about file onto standard error
  av_dump_format(pFormatCtx, 0, argv[1], 0);
  
  // Find the first video stream
  videoStream=-1;
  for(i=0; inb_streams; i++)
    if(pFormatCtx->streams[i]->codec->codec_type==CODEC_TYPE_VIDEO) {
      videoStream=i;
      break;
    }
  if(videoStream==-1)
    return -1; // Didn't find a video stream
  
  // Get a pointer to the codec context for the video stream
  pCodecCtx=pFormatCtx->streams[videoStream]->codec;
  
  // Find the decoder for the video stream
  pCodec=avcodec_find_decoder(pCodecCtx->codec_id);
  if(pCodec==NULL) {
    fprintf(stderr, "Unsupported codec!\n");
    return -1; // Codec not found
  }
  // Open codec
  if(avcodec_open(pCodecCtx, pCodec)<0)
    return -1; // Could not open codec
  
  // Allocate video frame
  pFrame=avcodec_alloc_frame();
  
  // Allocate an AVFrame structure
  pFrameRGB=avcodec_alloc_frame();
  if(pFrameRGB==NULL)
    return -1;
  
  // Determine required buffer size and allocate buffer
  numBytes=avpicture_get_size(PIX_FMT_RGB24, pCodecCtx->width,
                              pCodecCtx->height);
  buffer=(uint8_t *)av_malloc(numBytes*sizeof(uint8_t));
  
  // Assign appropriate parts of buffer to image planes in pFrameRGB
  // Note that pFrameRGB is an AVFrame, but AVFrame is a superset
  // of AVPicture
  avpicture_fill((AVPicture *)pFrameRGB, buffer, PIX_FMT_RGB24,
                 pCodecCtx->width, pCodecCtx->height);
  
  int w = pCodecCtx->width;
  int h = pCodecCtx->height;
  img_convert_ctx = sws_getContext(
    w, 
    h, 
    pCodecCtx->pix_fmt, 
    w, 
    h, 
    PIX_FMT_RGB24, 
    SWS_BICUBIC,
    NULL, 
    NULL, 
    NULL);

  // Read frames and save first five frames to disk
  i=0;
  while(av_read_frame(pFormatCtx, &packet)>=0) {
    // Is this a packet from the video stream?
    if(packet.stream_index==videoStream) {
      // Decode video frame
      int len = avcodec_decode_video2(pCodecCtx, pFrame, &frameFinished, &packet);
      if ( len < 0 )
      {
        fprintf(stderr, "Problems decoding frame\n");
        return 1;
      }

      fprintf(stderr, "len = %d\n", len );
      
        
      
      // Did we get a video frame?
      if(frameFinished) {
        ++frameCount;
        
        fprintf(stderr, "Saving frame %d\n", frameCount);
        
#if 0 // this is the old code
        img_convert((AVPicture *)pFrameRGB, PIX_FMT_RGB24, 
                    (AVPicture*)pFrame, pCodecCtx->pix_fmt, 
                    pCodecCtx->width, pCodecCtx->height);
#else
        sws_scale(
          img_convert_ctx, 
          (const uint8_t* const*)pFrame->data, 
          pFrame->linesize, 
          0, 
          pCodecCtx->height, 
          pFrameRGB->data,
          pFrameRGB->linesize);
#endif
        
        // Save the frame to disk
        if(++i<=5)
          SaveFrame(pFrameRGB, pCodecCtx->width, pCodecCtx->height, 
                    i);
      }
    }
    
    // Free the packet that was allocated by av_read_frame
    av_free_packet(&packet);
  }
  
  // Free the RGB image
  av_free(buffer);
  av_free(pFrameRGB);
  
  // Free the YUV frame
  av_free(pFrame);
  
  // Close the codec
  avcodec_close(pCodecCtx);
  
  // Close the video file
  av_close_input_file(pFormatCtx);
  
  return 0;
}

The first thing you need to know before using sudo is that you should use the visudo command to edit the sudo config file. This script does a number of useful things, like creating a lock to prevent mulitple editing, and doing some sanity check. But if you have the problem that setting $EDITOR and $VISUAL is ignored when running something with sudo (like sudo visudo or sudo crontab -e), that's a sudo config issue. Add the following in your /etc/sudoers file:

Defaults env_keep += "EDITOR VISUAL"

And you can use sudo from within your normal Emacs window by using the Emacs' Tramp Mode, which allows all kinds of editing, even remote editing. Just use the sudo "protocol" when editing a system file, like /etc/fstab:

Find file: /sudo::/etc/fstab

This will prompt you for your password (not the root password - remember, we're doing this via sudo, which wants your password, not root's). Type it in and you can edit the file in place, rather than running a special Emacs process as root. Very nice!

Every program attempts to expand until it can read mail. Those programs which cannot so expand are replaced by ones which can.

My latest Emacs discovery was on an Arch Linux forum thread on note taking software. I use Remember The Milk for plenty of lists, but the web based nature of it makes it hard to be quick about doing a quick note. I started keeping a simple text file with notes on what I was doing, as I was finding whole hours at the keyboard disappearing into a black hole. I whipped up a quick Emacs macro that I bound to F7, which opened a file to prepend a new quick entry:

(setq logfile-name "/home/jdarnold/Dropbox/dailylog.txt")
(defun insert-new-log ()
  "Start a new log entry"
  (interactive)
  (find-file logfile-name)
  (beginning-of-buffer)
  (insert "==== ")
  (insert-now)
  (insert "\n\n")
  (previous-line)
  )

As you can see, I put the file in my Dropbox folder (use this link to sign up and we both get an extra 250gb of storage space), so no matter which computer I'm working on, I can jot a quick note that looks something like this:

==== Monday, January 25 2010 10:43 AM (1264434222)
after a couple of hours puttering around, including writing a review
for Goodreads, I'm back at work. Trying to figure out what I did to
break the video plugin
#insors

I have a few adhoc tags, stamp it with time date and Unix time, and tried to see what I was working. It's okay, but if I forgot to jot something down when I left the keyboard (which I often did), it lost a lot of its effectiveness.

Then I found out about org-mode in Emacs. It's been in the standard Emacs distribution for a couple of releases, but I'd never heard of it before. And wow, is it amazing! The PDF of the User Manual is nearly 200 pages! And it really does everything you could want in an organizer/todo manager/note taker. It even has a clock in/clock out/idle timeout paradigm, so it can notice when I've walked away from my computer. Unfortuantely, "real" idle only works on Mac OSX and Linux (after compiling x11dle.c). On Windows, it just notices when you are idle in Emacs, which, despite the fact I use Emacs alot on Windows, isn't quite the same thing.

So now I've changed my Emacs checkin macro to be:

(defun start-new-task ()
  "Start new journal task"
  (interactive)
  (find-file (concat dropbox-folder "org/" journalname))
  (end-of-buffer)
  (org-insert-heading)
  (org-clock-in)
  )

so it adds a new heading and starts the clock. And on my work machine, I set journalname to be a work journal and on my personal machine, I give it a different name. Still working out the kinks in the process, but it's closer to tracking what I've been doing.

I also intend on using org-mode to jot down my myriad project ideas. I'm always coming across interesting web sites, esp. for web APIs, that make me want to dabble in some projects, but I've never had anywhere to jot them down. I was using MindMeister.com, an online mind-mapping tool for it, but found it too structured. Given org-mode's flexibility, I should be able to find some easy way to just add my "brilliant" brainstorms to a file!

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I didn't really have as complete a checklist of features as I have had in the past. Of course, it had to install on my beast of a machine, with its myriad hard drives, cd drives, dual monitors, and the like. I wanted an easy to use package manager, with plenty of packages available. I was't quite as sold on a "one size fits all" admin panel like openSUSE's Yast2. I'm feeling a little more adventurous, and hate to see my configs get changed without my knowledge. I wanted a KDE distro, as I find GNOME to be bizarre. I didn't want to get too far off the beaten path, as I like a popular, well documented distro.

First up was Sabayon, which has been getting lots of good press. I wasn't crazy about their home page - it was too hard to find even the download link. And there were a few kinks in the install process. It was a few months ago, so I don't remember exactly the problems, but they were enough to sour me on it a bit. It did have exactly the same problem I was going to find in all the rest of my installs, which is that the setup hard drive numbering for GRUB was always different than the final installation drive numbering, requiring me to reboot using the live disc and edit the /boot/grub/menu.lst file and change the hd0 to hd1. Not sure why that is, but I guess the mix of IDE & SATA hard drives makes it crazy.

So after dabbling a bit with Sabayon, I moved over to try Sidux, which really intrigued me with its cutting edge release and huge package library. It also had an incredibly clean install process and the desktop is stunning. Really a very polished and good looking release. It has a very nice community with lots of good info on the web site. I was a little turned off by its insistence that you drop down into single user mode to install any updates, which isn't something I like doing.

But I played with Sidux for a couple of days. It was nice, but I decided to give Arch Linux a try. It had been written up very nicely in the previous issue of Linux Format, in the "Remix Your Own Linux" article. It's overriding philosophy of "Keep It Simple" was really attractive, as was the very large package library. I found it amusing that the Live CD boots into a commandline, the installer is the old fashioned text-mode graphics and, even after installing, you end up with commandline! It doesn't even install X for you.

I found this a refreshing change and decided to jump right in. I even decided against installing KDE and just run openbox with a stripped down config. It's really been working nicely for me and I haven't looked back. Arch makes a great server install, as there is very little cruft installed by default. When I built my media server machine, with its 1tb software RAID, I only added Emacs & Samba and I know it is a lean, mean, serving machine.

The Arch wiki is incredibly informative and comes up early in many Google searches. The forums are active with intelligent discussions and it is a very nice, experienced, community. While I wouldn't use it for my Grandma's Linux, Arch is a great distro once you get some Linux experience and want to tailor a distro to your ideas, and not the other way around. Arch is also why the calls for fewer distros is misguided. It isn't for everyone but as long as each distro has a certain focus, and hues to it closely like Arch does, there's plenty of room out there. Next up - theme color changes!

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