Gert's Blog

I had a coding fit earlier this week

I needed a way to track magical items in my DnD campaign; something with a printout containing all the notes that I could just hand out to the players. So I decided I wanted a QR code on there with the hidden info. Want to know something about that item you found earlier? lemme scan the code! Yes. this isn’t very cheat safe, but its a game for adults, don’t spoil your own fun!
The project is live on items.cone.be and info is available on gertschepens.be/items
Does what I need it to do and nothing more Little caveat; the preview item page doesn’t work correctly on my server. It uses parse_ini_string and that requires php >= 5.3.0 while my serv is on the previous version. Necessary updates when I find the time..

In the process I also realized that putting a QR code on a page is easy with jQuery; easier even than server-side using php! Neat little piece of code I want to have handy so its now on gertschepens.be/jquery

Glad to have gotten that out of the system

My darling wife has a new laptop and uses gMail all the time, used to do the t-bird but will probably go all the gMail way soon!

Unity has the dash (press the super key, most laptops have the Windows logo printed on there, to open) with some nice big touch friendly links and I want gmail there!

There’s an app for that: gnome-gmail
there is a problem there with 11.04 though, as this wont show up in the preferred applications menu

Ask Ubuntu has the question in its pages: Changing eMail application in preferred applications and offers the following:

edit ~/.local/share/applications/mimeapps.list :
x-scheme-handler/mailto=gnome-gmail.desktop;

You need to add the line to the [Added Associations] list and after that the option will be available to you in the “preferred” dialog!

The huge gMail icon looks Awesome there

If all goes well, I did my Barcamp 4 presentation in Gent today! (authoring this yesterday )

Presentation info is at gertschepens.be/2011-barcamp-gent-4-about-pages and the presentation itself is ready to go at BCG4_AboutPages.html and slideshare.net/../bcg4-about-pages

The presentation runs from that page because of the wonderful slideshow.rubyforge.org/ project! It took a bit getting used to but it feels damned good not to have to use bulky office software for this! Also I REALLY like not being bothered by annoying markup shit (thanks to textile) while writing content and I Love the separation this software gives. Slightly weird to have to “compile” (slideshow -t slippy about_pages.textile) a presentation but its cool none the less!

We had fun
lots of interesting stuff

Story of the weekend: rolling out a 1600+ server datacenter with puppet in 45 minutes!
Thats Impressive!

A new type of internet trend is popping up: about pages. These pages list your internet persona in one simple page with snazzy graphics, relevant pictures and a handy list of links to the many pages you believe define you.

@g3n yep, it’s like you dress up like who you are on the web and make a picture /cc @aboutdotme
from @bertheymans (Bert Heymans)

Yet Another Profile Page.
We had it comming, really. It all started with traditional web pages. Then we had blogs. Then microbloging (twitter, aka blogging for twits) Then the first social network we all actually cared about, Facebook. Add a wad of misc experimental, private, project and whatever sites and we (the tech savvy ones) all have an conservative average of 4 URLs a person.

Enter this “about page” concept.
I was introduced to the idea by About.me. I subscribed to the beta and got me about.me/gertschepens
Then later I heard about KimTag: kimtag.com/GertSchepens. Was introduced to jumpscan.com: jumpscan.com/gertschepens. And curious and already slightly annoyed at the fresh trend, I checked for alternatives with alternativeto.net and found that these will indeed be the next black. As a side note; Google has an about page too though nobody really seems to realize that.. Bert has a wonderful presentation about QR codes and touches on these about pages.

I get it.
Really, I do! Facebook can’t offer this service because of its closedness that at first sight offers privacy, but in the end only serves to protect their monetaty gains. (Monetary gains like selling their user data (yes, YOUR data) to whoever wants to pay them for it.) Whatever the reasons, the fact is its not an about page. Neither is twitter, which aims to be good at what it does without adding the bloat. Respect for that decision, specialisation is good. Sites like picasa or the one that keeps on screwing up on user data (Yes, thats you, flickr) often offer some sort of a profile, but in the end they aren’t suitable either.
Google made a throw at profile pages but they are too creepy in that they have your chat, your email, your everything and they dont realize that you dont just want anyone to have that url. (which is often readable on the profile page in some form any half smart person can figure out) You can disable the links, but its still creepy and .. Google just isnt that good at social; look at Orkut.
I had high hopes for Diaspora, an open source facebook alternative. Being open, it could offer exactly that style of data, accessible to who needs it. But I dont think its ready for prime time yet.
Blogs have about pages, but not everyone has a blog; blogs sometimes move and writing a decent about page for your blog is harder than you d think.. So we DO need a place that offers that info and that takes part of “choosing what info and making it pretty” out of our hands..

Content
Lets take a look at what the Standard Content for these pages is..
All the pages have a default setup. They all have a Picture, First name; Last name and Location field. They all offer some sort of Headline / About text field with sometimes a separate Biography space. And a wad of options for listing or connecting with sites like.

To put it in a list:

• Picture
• Name
• About & Biography
• Website
• Twitter
• Blog
• Email
• Facebook, Flicr, MySpace
• Blog, Email, Website, other sites
• Custom ID, Custom Link
• Address, Aim, App Store, Blogger, Buzz, Delicious, Digg, Diigo, Formspring, Foursquare, Friendster, Hi5, iTunes, Last.FM, LinkedIn, Meetup, Mobile, Picasa, Reddit, RSS, Skype, Soundcloud, Steam, Stumbleupon, Tagged, Telephone, Tumblr, Typepad, Vimeo, WordPress, YahooID, Youtube

They all offer about the same listing options though some offer extra drama and flavor with the ability to aggregate content or star sites you find more important.

The Goole Profile goes an extra mile and offers an extra wad of fields in which you can define yourself and does this slightly more tongue in cheek compared to the others

• Introduction
• Occupation
• Places I’ve lived map
• Birthday
• Links
• Bragging Rights (Ex survived highschool, have 3 kids, ..)
• Employment
• Education
• Home
• Work
• Relationship
• Looking For
• Gender
• Other names (ex alternate spelling, maiden name, ..)
• Nickname

The biggest added value is undoubtedly in the extra options

• Download VCard
• QR code
• Share
• Friends (Teh social)
• Stats!
• Mobile version

Generating QR codes is a big service even though its not hard to do with services like ZXing. I dont think we need extra help with the sharing nor the social part. The stats might be important to some and I have heard people say that a mobile version is Very important though I personally switch to the full versions for 90% of the sites. The VCard is a nice touch (Jumpscan does this) and I think this is interesting added value but on the other hand I also wonder if anyone ever really uses vcards… except for creating and attaching them, that is.. But I realize that this is just my outlook on vcards and that I am probably wrong here. And to reitterate; being pretty is an important added value too; something about.me is very good at. Even though Kimtag has the prettiest QR codes. I like the extra block with the K; makes it look all nice
Considering DIY
I look at these pages and I think .. is this really all they are doing? Will I have to keep up with yet another profile site just to have this? Or several of them if I cant choose what features I prefer? And do I want to print those QR-codes on everything I own, considering the service may stop in a year, maybe two because of the many reasons sites like these stop? (bought by some company, ran out of money, ..)
In short, I look at these pages and I think “I should host this myself”!

Take a Drupal site or a WordPress site. Put your name and picture on there; fill in the data (check the list earlier if you need an idea on what to put in there) and generate a QR code for your page. And you ve got your own similar page! For the sake of completeness; there are some features you might want and that are not readily available in Drupal and WordPress; so without further ado; another list!

• The Data
  You know who you are and what to put there. You might need a bit of inspiration, but other than that its just summarizing your digital life onto the page and adding your picture..
• Aggregating Content
  If you like to have certain data aggregated from, for example, twitter, both WP and Drupal have options to do this. I personally dont; I like an about page to be just about the data. The easiest way that will work for most of the sites is to take the rss feed and have it aggregated. WordPress has rss widgets for this and Drupal has an aggregator plugin by default and a wad of other plugins for when you need more options.
• QR Code
  Both WordPress and  Drupal have plugins that generate QR codes. You can use those to auto generate them and with a little configuring, you can put an automated QR code on all your pages. Or if you just need the one, you can generate it at ZXing and upload it to your site; they’re just images in the end.
• Share
  Both Drupal and WP have plugins that put a slew of sharing buttons on your site. These share/save buttons are as easily added as including a plugin and honestly; I think we’re all able to plug our sites on the social networks we use without needing a button to generate the message..
• Stats
  This might be the one thing thats toughest to replicate. About.me has a wonderful page with twitter stats; listing who retweets you the most; who @-messages you most frequently .. I use Google Analytics for my stats and it does a Wonderful job. I have a slew of statistics about who visits me when and why; but no twitter stats. I am content with the many stats that Google Analytics offer. Both Drupal and WP have plugins that facilitate the integration of Analytics into your personal pages.
• Mobile version
  Although I personally don’t use these too much; I’ll admit that they have their uses. Both site engines offer plugins for awesome automated mobile versions.
• VCard
  Generating one of these by hand isnt tough and uploading them to your page isn’t either. You will of course have to maintain it; but that data usually doesn’t change a lot at any rate..

This does mean that you’ll need to get a WordPress or Drupal to tinker with. Either on some personal webspace or maybe wordpress.com?

And yet
In the end I’m still a bit skeptic about it all. This just feels like another iteration of the many social pages that pop up, live for a short while and then go the way of the Geocities. But on the other hand I do recognize the itch its trying to scratch.
So expect a post about a new page at about.gertschepens.be soon. Based on Drupal with some jQuery for minor usability effects.

When clicking through an apache log at home I was irked by the many “[error] File does not exist: /var/www/favicon.ico” messages. There is Ovbiously only one solution; Automagical favicons (for all the servers running apache in the network) with ImageMagick & Puppet!

I want a different auto favicon for all servers; based on their names. First off; putting text in an image:

convert amber.png -gravity NorthWest -fill DarkRed -pointsize 50 -draw “text 0,5 Server” -gravity South -fill black -pointsize 13 -draw “text 1,1 Server” O.ico

Or to rip it apart..
The amber.png is a png image containing the background. The image is the preferred favicon size; 48×48

convert amber.png

Start out with a base image with a nice amber texture background

-gravity NorthWest -fill DarkRed -pointsize 50 -draw “text 5,4 Server”

Draw “Server” on there; top left,  Red and 50pts

-gravity South -fill black -pointsize 13 -draw “text 1,1 Server”

then add “Server”, on the southern edge, black and 14pts

O.ico

And output that to O.ico

Next we need to gently ask puppet to do the work of generating that image for each server and pushing it to the favicon..
We ‘d want the file to be generated server side and generate would be perfect though the many security rules have rendered it near impossible to be of practical use. So, in the interest of having this work sooner rather than later; the code to generate it client side: Keep in mind .. This does mean you’ll have to ensure ImageMagick to be available, the base file (here amber.png), the fonts, realize this only makes a file if its missing, ..

$webroot = '/var/www'

exec { "createFavicon":
command => "convert /tmp/amber.png -font URW-Gothic-Book -gravity NorthWest -fill DarkRed -pointsize 50 -draw 'text 5,4 $hostname' -gravity South -fill black -pointsize 13 -draw 'text 1,1 $hostname'  $webroot/favicon.ico",
cwd => "/tmp",
creates => "$webroot/favicon.ico",
path => ["/usr/bin"],
require => File["/tmp/amber.png"],
}

file{"/tmp/amber.png":
source  => "puppet:///module/amber.png",
owner   => 'apache',
group   => 'apache',
mode    => '644',
ensure => file,
}

An quick end to missing favicon.ico files. Customised files for each server.

Since the next version of Ubuntu will make the controversial move to Unity, I decided to give it a whirl today. I’m curious and hopeful. I will try to stick with it for at least a full day of work.
Lets keep in mind though that this is the old version of Unity, not the one they’re launching with 10.04; which will, amongst other things, include Compiz candy. As an aftertought to pouring my findings here, I might want to install the repository that will provide me with the latest version. Also, this is Unity 0.2.46 or something near that and its Unity for Ubuntu Netbook Edition .. Still, the fact that this is “live” for netbooks makes the many usability questions worse.

So! Brass tacks; Ugly; Raw and Unfiltered:

Whoops, Fallout 3 launcher icon vanished – Ill put it back later
after the Xorg experience, its back. Thats weird on many MANY levels.

Eeeuw! Everything is fullscreen *puke*

Whot? Compiz?? Grr

Cant find any installed Wine software – Annoying. How am I to start Fallout 3 next time I have some time to play (like not anytime soon)?

Where is my Desktop? I finally got into the Apple flow of actually using that space for productivity flow.. I DONT want to have to un-learn that again :/

When holding the “super”-button (Most hardware has this printed with the windows logo. The EU should really do something about that.) the icons in the bar on the left light up and show numbered shortcuts. Nice.

The app menu for most apps is in the upper bar, like apple offers. Its a choice I’ve been hoping for, but I dont know if I want it as a default :/ Now that I’m on that alley of thought.. I guess the whole Unity interface has been Apple-ized.. interesting…

The apps screen and folder view sure takes some getting used to. Like how can I just browse my directories?? What if I need a folder I didnt open recently??
*Some time after* Oh; its quite simple really.. Click the files view (the one that throws all files you recently opened on the screen – yes, those too), click to the folders pane, click a folder. Now you ll see the folders content (to some extent) and in the upper right corner (very unobtrusive I might say. Hidden might be another word): a folder icon that opens the explorer

I kinda like that when you search for an app it integrates app store options. Or dont I :s

Where is the Unity setup screen? Or isnt there one of those? :s Do I hear Steve Jobs’ whisperings? I would really like to disable some stuff.. No options so far though..

Clicking the bookmark for the local samba server does nothing. Or at least nothing visible. No icons or whatever.. no windows opening.. This is painfully immature :/
Oh I need to apologize. Assuming it did anything was prejudice. It did NOTHING. Then again, thats a Gnome construct so it shouldnt be that surprising.. Cant seem to find the Unity version though.. No network shares for you?
Oh wait, using nautilus it appears it was already mounted. The system just doesnt mention it Anywhere. Until it threw a message through nautilus.. hmm..

Damn, I miss the ability to zoom in Compiz. Says a lot about my eye-sight, but still. That should make it a key accessibility issue (most people have some sort of sight related quirk or problem)

In a “I WANT COMPIZ” kinda moment, I opened a terminal and typed “compiz” – I know, I’m working breakage, but it might just Work! In times where (most) of the earth has been mapped, a man can at least explore crap like that. Anyway. I pressed enter, Compiz discovered I was cheating, running another WM and threw a hissy fit “No I Wont Start!” To be expected. A nasty surprise however was that the actual manager had stopped working and left me in a state where only tty1 and killall Xorg got me out. Nasty.

Oh my, it seems to have lost all its icons and thumbnails again. But they’re slowly coming back. Probably because of the crashlike ending of the previous session. Possibly? Hopefully? :s

I do believe many issues will resolve theirselves as unity gets the hang of your habbits. Important documents and software in the “popular” tabs; the sidebar filled with your favorite icons.. Any software with those options has to be afforded a grace period where it gets to know you..

Now then..
Unity is certainly a next step in vision on usability and the future of the desktop.
Mind you, thats compliment nor derogatory comment.

Considering the big version nr difference between the one in the repos now and the one on launchpad.net/unity; I’m going to uninstall this version and try the most recent one. Changing to Gnome to remove Unity and install the newest version.

# lvresize -L +1G /dev/vg/gert_var
Extending logical volume gert_var to 3.00 GB
Logical volume gert_var successfully resized

# e2fsck -f /dev/vg/gert_var
e2fsck 1.41.3 (12-Oct-2008)
Pass 1: Checking inodes, blocks, and sizes
Pass 2: Checking directory structure
Pass 3: Checking directory connectivity
Pass 4: Checking reference counts
Pass 5: Checking group summary information
/dev/vg/gert_var: 22902/131072 files (6.4% non-contiguous), 472351/524288 blocks

# resize2fs  /dev/vg/gert_var
resize2fs 1.41.3 (12-Oct-2008)
Resizing the filesystem on /dev/vg/gert_var to 786432 (4k) blocks.
The filesystem on /dev/vg/gert_var is now 786432 blocks long.

A breeze! Gotta love it