Does anyone know qooxdoo?

qooxdoo is a rich internet application framework, which basically means that it allows you to create javascript based web applications that look pretty similar to native applications by providing common GUI elements which you can not get by using just HTML and recreates some others in order to give the GUI a consistent design. The framework part means that in order to create your own qooxdoo application, you need to install some software on the operating system you are developing with.

This software are actually a bunch of python scripts that merge many javascripts together, strip them down and do some other useful tasks. That means however, that you need to build your project, before you can release it.

I haven’t done much with that framework yet – except for creating an AUR package – but I guess I will code something with it in the future

If this stuff sounds interesting to you, check out the demo browser.

After a long search…

…I finally found a lyrics display program, that fits my needs. As always, I am looking for some specific features I want definitely to be implemented. In this case, I required realtime scrolling with the text (so it displays just the line that gets spoken on the song right now), support for Amarok 1.4 and the ability to act as OSD (on screen display). Last but not least I wanted to get the lyrics downloaded automatically from the intertubes. Well, after spending too much time trying out all the lyrics programs I could find – twice – I decided to stick with osd-lyrics. It has a few bugs though, but it basically does what I want it to

 

osd-lyrics in action

My first wall texture

I decided to make a wall texture and see how it turns out, but the only think I really like about it are the colors. Compared to a wall texture I used from another Urban Terror map just for testing, this one has much bigger bricks (but that isn’t too bad as it is theoretically possible to scale it within the level editor).

But the thing that really bugs me is the blurry middle part… in case you don’t know too much about such textures (as I did yesterday until reading some tutorials), you take a square of a (free-for-use) photo and then set an offset for the image in GIMP (or what you like to use) to x/2 and y/2 (if your imagination isn’t that good, here are some example pictures). The goal is to make a transition between all the edges (which are now in the middle) and in my bad example, it looks like the that part is painted or something :-\

I’m glad I did a wall anyway, because now I know exactly how it works. But for good looking textures, I’ll probably use some from the default UrT maps and change the color in order to get what I want.

Finally some spare time…

…that I can use to write an article in my blog. That software I develop, ghostship, runs very stable in my experience. I think *someone* should package it for other Linux distributions. I’ve got already someone working on a Debian port, but I am not quite sure if and when he will actually do it – maybe I will do it myself in a few weeks.

Twitter became a handy tool for me, now I am able to post things like „the new southpark episode is [my opinion] [link]“ in just a few seconds rather than expanding this information to a whole blog article and finally posting it on wordpress (like I used to do previously). Another cool thing I noticed is that this information does get indexed on my blog by Google however, because the most recent (and who reads old ones anyway) tweets are shown in the navigation. That way you don’t even need to „follow“ me or add my twitter account to your feed reader

I’ve experimented around a bit with GTKRadiant (a map editor) in combination with Urban Terror as I wrote earlier. By now I am trying to remake cs_1337_assault from Counter-Strike 1.6, as this is one of my favorite maps with some outdated graphics though. On the other hand, I don’t like the Source version, because it is too different from the original cs_assault – I’ll try to mix it up with my own ideas. But by now I don’t have much yet except for the one building which is directly in front of the CT spawn, crappy lighting and some lame textures which I just use from the default Urban Terror maps. Well, if I have enough time and the map turns out to look great and be very playable without changing the original cs_assault feeling too much, I’ll definitely post it on this blog.

Urban Terror mapping on Archlinux

Yesterday and today I’ve been trying to get a version of gtkradiant working with Archlinux in order to make own Urban Terror maps. The result is that I expanded the UrT wiki page and created two AUR packages. Everything seems to work now, I just need to get skilled in that editor

Finally a new desktop

Yesterday night I decided that it was time to give my desktop a new design. In my case, usually everything begins with a new wallpaper, but this time I decided to also use a new icon set. So I asked yaourt what the AUR had to offer and stumbled upon some very nice themes called gnome-colors. They are beautiful, I am using GNOME-Carbonite, which is included in that package right now. The next step was to find a fitting background… in the end, I chose Kurt Russell who plays Stuntman Mike in Quentin Tarantino’s Death Proof (which is part of Grindhouse). Needless to say that I like the movie and recommend it, if you like QT’s other movies. Last but not least, one needs to set some matching gnome colors (I pick them with GIMP right off the wallpaper) and re-configure conky. I’m glad I did that, because my old desktop setup got kind of boring (as with all of them after a while).

desktop, stuffed

desktop, clean

Jetzt auch bei Twitter!

Das zweiter Update für den languages Abschnitt der Navigation auf der rechten Seite ist nun fertig; ein Twitter Icon. Das erste Update war übrigens das Symbol mit dem Briefumschlag, über den es dank feedmyinbox möglich ist die neuen Artikel via E-Mail (es soll tatsächlich Leute geben, denen das lieber ist als einen Feed-Reader zu nutzen…)  zu lesen. Aber im Gegensatz zu dieser eher simplen Änderung, die ja wirklich nur aus einem Link und einem Bild besteht, forderte die jüngste doch mehr Aufwand. Zwei Twitter Accounts sowie einen Account bei RSS2Twitter.com als Kleber zwischen den Protokollen sorgen dafür, dass die Sache läuft.

Now also at Twitter!

The second update for the languages section in the navigation on the right side is now complete; a Twitter icon! By the way, the first update was about the symbol with the envelope. Thanks to feedmyinbox, it allows you to read all the new articles via E-Mail (some say that there are actually people who prefer that over using a feed-reader…). But compared to that rather simple change, which was actually only a linked picture, the newest one needed a bit more work. Two Twitter accounts as well as one account at RSS2Twitter.com as glue between the two protocols do the job.

Wie man nicht Informatik unterrichten sollte

Bis vor kurzem hätte ich zwecks mangelnder Erfahrung nicht gedacht, dass IT besonders langweilig sein kann. Doch ich lag falsch, wie es sich zeigen sollte.

Als erstes gab es zwei Vorbereitungsstunden, die in einem Raum stattfanden, welcher nicht mit Computern ausgerüstet war. Es wird wohl erst mal lange Zeit um das Thema Tabellenkalkulationsprogramm nutzen gehen, weshalb der Lehrer erklärt hat, wie denn die Tabellen aufgebaut sind, wie man Formeln in die Zellen schreibt und was absolute und relative Adressierungen sind (das mit $A$1 bzw. A1). Es ist tatsächlich möglich damit neunzig Minuten zu füllen, wobei jeder, der zumindest einen Computer von Weitem schon einmal gesehen hat, selbige Informationen durch eine Demonstration an einem solchen Gerät in sagen wir mal maximal 20 Minuten aufnehmen kann. Denn dann braucht man sich nicht alles selbst vorstellen, sondern sieht direkt wie es funktioniert. Stichwort: praxisnah.

Aber genug davon, war halt vom Stundenplan her nicht anders zu organisieren, dachte ich mir und so freute ich mich schon auf die nächste Doppelstunde. Es fing auch ganz gut an – wir bekamen ein Arbeitsblatt mit einem mathematischen Problem, dass sich leicht in Excel, das Tabellenkalkulationsprogramm, welches in diesem Raum installiert ist,  lösen ließe. So weit so gut. PC anmachen, ein bisschen herumprobieren und innerhalb von ein paar Minuten dann das Problem gelöst haben, den Anderen ein bisschen helfen, nächste Aufgabe? Pustekuchen.

Viel mehr begann der Lehrer dann damit eine Tabelle an die Tafel zu zeichnen und uns nach Formeln zu befragen, wie man nun jenes Problem lösen könnte. Das ging so weit, bis detailgenau jeder einzelne Mausklick besprochen wurde und alle benötigten (es waren eh nur zwei oder drei) Formeln in Excel Syntax an der Tafel standen. Das beste ist, dass unangekündigte Tests auch so ablaufen werden – ohne Computer, einfach alles schriftlich auf ein Blatt schreiben. Und wehe es ist etwas falsch! Dann gibts keine Punkte, also besser Rechenweg auch noch dazuschreiben. Was? Haben wir jetzt doch Mathe oder Physik?

Fünfzehn Minuten vor Schluss durften wir dann die Rechner booten und den Kram in Excel eintragen. In dem relativ langsamen Schulnetzwerk dauert das Hochfahren einer solchen Maschine schon an die fünf Minuten, das macht dann praktisch zehn Minuten stupides von-der-Tafel-in-den-PC-eingeben. Toller IT Unterricht.

Angenommen es würde um irgendetwas kompliziertes gehen, wie das lernen von C++ oder so, dann würde ich ja verstehen, dass man alles vorerst an der Tafel macht. Aber doch nicht bei Excel! Das funktioniert intuitiv, da ist man wirklich schneller, wenn man es einfach ausprobiert, bis es passt. Das läuft in der Praxis doch auch so ab, da wird nicht erst >60 Minuten Brainstorming durchgeführt!

Ich bin tatsächlich ganz froh, dass ich nur zwei Stunden von dieser Sorte von Informatik in der Woche habe.

How to use Ultrasurf with Firefox

This is a little tutorial that should help you to set up Firefox for using Ultrasurf as Proxy. It should work on Windows as well as on Linux with either Ultrasurf running simply in Wine or as a daemon with ghostship. I will assume that you have already installed Ultrasurf (for detailed instructions on how to do that with wine, look here).

tl;dr: Server: 127.0.0.1, Port: 9666

1. Start Ultrasurf (or ghostship) for the first time. If you use ghostship, read on at step 6 (or if you require that Ultrasurf uses a proxy itself, run ghostship --viewer and follow the next steps).

2. The main interface appears now. Click Option (which should actually be named Options, but that does not matter – the software works anyway ).

3. Again, you will get another dialog right in your face. This time, check Do not use IE because we are talking about Firefox and not Internet Explorer and Hide Golden Lock because the image of a golden lock at the bottom right is not useful anymore (it should tell whether Ultrasurf has set the IE to use it or not).

4. Optionally, you can make Ultrasurf itself use a proxy by clicking Proxy Settings. This is only required if you can’t access the Internet without using a proxy in your local network or if you want to chain multiple proxy applications in a row.

5. Close the Options GUI (picture above) by clicking OK and the main window by clicking Exit. Then start Ultrasurf again, just as in step 1.

6. Start up Firefox, navigate to checkip.dyndns.org and write down your current IP somewhere.

7. Now you should think about whether you would like to always use Ultrasurf (easier, continue with step 12) or depending on a white- or blacklist with specific sites (read on) and/or with a icon in Firefox that allows easy switching on the fly.

8. Install the Firefox Add-On FoxyProxy by opening this website and clicking Add to Firefox as well as in the popping up dialog on Install Now.

9. Restart Firefox.

10. After that, you will be greeted with a dialog that asks whether you would like to set up FoxyProxy for usage with TOR. In this tutorial, you don’t need to do this as the onion router is  a completely different proxy application and should therefore click on No, but you might want to do it anyway if you have TOR installed.

11. Foxyproxy is a very powerful application that allows – as mentioned before – the usage of proxys depending on lists just to name one big feature. Keep in mind that Ultrasurf will listen on your loopback IP, which is always 127.0.0.1 (that information might also be called server), on the port 9666. You can now either do a very simple setup that allows you to switch proxys on the fly by following this tutorial, or dive right into the official FoxyProxy documentation and learn how to use the more advanced features. Continue when you have Ultrasurf set up.

12. Open up Firefox’ preferences by clicking Edit/Preferences (Windows users will find it in the Tools menu).

13. Navigate to Advanced, Network and set up a pretty high cache, like in the screenshot below (1024 MB). This will make sure that Firefox downloads only new data and keeps the old on the harddrive, thus speeding up the surfing experience and keeping away unnecessary traffic from Ultrasurf.

14. If you use FoxyProxy, click Close and continue with step 16 now. otherwise click Settings.

15. In the new GUI, click Manual proxy configuration, Use this proxy server for all protocols and fill in the following data:

HTTP Proxy: 127.0.0.1

Port: 9666

After that, click OK.

16. So you set everything up? You better check that by calling checkip.dyndns.org again and comparing the current displayed IP with the one from step 6. If it is different, everything works