When mass-renaming video files for Mai-HiME (which I recommend to anime fans out there, unless anything involving magical girls in any way is not your thing; but not the point), I made a mistake in the mv command, which caused all files to be moved to a single destination. I quickly pressed Ctrl-C, but the first four files were lost.

I immediately Googled up an instruction on undeleting files on reiserfs, which (to my dismay) involved unmounting the partition and running reiserfsck --rebuild-tree -S as root. My first thought was: “What a fool I was to choose reiserfs! Surely ext3 can handle undeletion much more gracefully!”

Anyway, I dropped to the root shell, unmounted /home, and in about three hours, it finished. Free space on the partition decreased by about 4 GB, and I found a lot of files in /home/lost+found, many of which turned out to be familiar. I copied files roughly within the size range to a different directory and found three of the four videos (thanks to Nautilus happily displaying thumbnails), but the fourth seemed to be lost.

In retrospect, I should have probably just waited until Monday and asked the guy to whom I lent the DVDs to return them. (And of course, I had no other backup — a lesson to be learned here.) As I remounted the partition and loaded GNOME, minor inconveniences began to pile up.

• The Tomboy applet failed to load at the first login, but subsequent logins fixed it.
• The custom GNOME theme (modified Murrine Brave) became corrupted, and I had to restore it from a UFD (where I copied it to bring it to another computer).
• Thunderbird now just crashed at startup without opening any windows. Luckily, I migrated from POP3 to IMAP Gmail a while ago and moved all my sent mail from the local folders, so just killing the profile was a good option.
• OpenOffice.org and Gajim preferences were reset.
• An Eclipse workspace lost all projects and I had to reimport them. Then it turned out that some Java and C++ projects in this workspace now refused to build because reiserfsck restored them at their previous locations, rather than in lost+found! I had to redelete them.
• Worst and strangest of all, the GTK file dialog now takes a minute to pop up. (Nautilus, mc and the Qt dialog all work fine.) I deleted everything from /home/lost+found and cleaned up the home directory, but the problem still persists…

Was all this worth a partial recovery of deleted files that I could obtain from elsewhere? If it was crucial data, probably… but it wasn’t.

But at least reiserfs has some kind of undeletion — slow, intrusive, problem-prone, but it works. Partially. It turned out ext3 didn’t have even that (while ext2 actually had nicer undeletion).

Maybe I should split the file dump from the home partition and migrate it to ext2…

The new blog software is gradually coming to life. I’ve got tags and RSS working, plus moved some articles to Textile and added redirects from their old URLs. I didn’t map WordPress categories to new tags because I didn’t see the point – it will be better for me to later tag every post manually, since I’ll add some new tags anyway.

Per-tag RSS redirects from the old address for the purposes of Planet Ubuntu, but global RSS doesn’t. Therefore, if you’re using RSS on this site, you should update your client to use the new URL as linked from the sidebar.

Two pages are also available at new addresses (with redirects from the old ones):

• The Expanded Otomeverse
• Time Travel in Stargate SG-1

The “Mai-Otome GEMs” article, originally saved from Wikipedia, is now available at this address on Wikia’s Mai-HiME Wiki.

To convert HTML (as used by WordPress) to Textile (as used by the new software), I use this Python script, originally downloaded from here and tweaked to read HTML from stdin and write Textile to stdout.

To determine what legacy URLs need to be mapped, I use the public inbound links page. What, you didn’t expect it to be public? Well, both the QDB and Sideways Spa contain one each as well, and admins can see your IPs. Be warned.

What needs to be done:

• Archive
• Tag cloud
• More articles

Oh my…

There’s a site dedicated to it. In Russian, obviously.

And there’s this photo. Who could have known it’s so beautiful?

An obligatory link for non-Russians who don’t know what a microdistrict is.

You know, for a native English speaker, it’s probably hard to take a company named “Softage” seriously, even if it is Russian.

Amazingly, a certain Scottish company does…

Regarding the blog: a lot of stuff still isn’t working. This includes the “archive” and “rss” links, plus proper pagination (the main page is currently set to display the last 20 posts). Comments work, but old comments still need to be imported from WordPress — and since many of them are anonymous and new comments are OpenID-only, I’ll need another hack field…

Edit: And pagination works now. I’ll try to deploy this pagination to the QDB this evening, to replace the awfully hackish one it currently has.

The new blog has been deployed.

And it’s a disaster so far. WordPress keeps posts and pages in the same table, which has resulted in many pages turning into posts.

But at least, Dorothy, we’re not on WordPress anymore. Maybe one day I’ll find or write a converted from WordPress’s fubar HTML to Textile, so that I no longer need to have a separate hack flag to display the old posts…

Edit: Copied the wpautop function from the WordPress source code to process old posts. Indeed, the only way to process WordPress posts is to do it like WordPress does… as opposed to an open format, such as Textile.

As some of you may know, the Wookiee' QDB has a public referer tracking page.

Some of the referers amuse me. For example, I was surprised to learn that it's now the ninth Google result for "qdb". However, the three queries that really stood out were made from Yahoo:

• love cutlater
• DARTH TALON BActa pic
• fettish and hot 69 position

By the way, I see your IPs. And so do other QDB admins. I wonder how Darth Culator is going to react to that first one...

Three binary packages of note, which I was involved in, have recently entered Intrepid for the first time in Ubuntu.

The Batik SVG library and FOP, the XSL-FO processor, have been in the Ubuntu archive since Warty, but always failed to build. Thanks to the efforts of Onkar Shinde (slytherin) and me, the build issues have been resolved and the binary packages have entered Intrepid.

As a whole on the Java front, I sure hope that its activity will increase with the addition of OpenJDK to Ubuntu and Debian. Note to prospective maintainers: if you’re out of things to package, package Java libraries! This is an area where both distributions are severely lacking. You could start with the dependencies of Execute Query, a database administration tool written in Swing. (Batik was one of them – thankfully, we have that covered now!)

The Code::Blocks IDE, version 8.02, was packaged by Michael Casadevall (NCommander). I already had a package lying on REVU before that, but I figured that someone actually interested in the software would make a better maintainer than someone who packaged it “just because it wasn’t there before”.

Yesterday, a disgruntled Vista user -- let's call him J -- complained that he only had 14 days left for Vista evaluation. (I don't know what he did, but somehow he screwed up Vista into thinking it was an evaluation copy, and he got it as a gift bundled with the laptop with no install CD.)

My immediate joking response on IRC was "Use Linux, damnit!" That's what I tend to do.

To my surprise, he took the advice seriously and was really interested in switching to Linux. So I offered to guide him through the process.

He immediately noted how many Linux distributions there were, and was lost. From what I understand, he went straight to linux.org, which is, really, fairly useless for this. I pointed him to Ubuntu and gave him a direct link to the download page.

While he was downloading the Ubuntu 8.04 ISO, I went away for about two hours. After I returned, he complained on IRC that he couldn't get it to work and was instead seeing what he described as "a DOS prompt". That was weird, I had previously told him to boot from the CD, and I thought he ran the Live CD. Instead, it turned out that he autoran the CD under Windows and used the "Demo" feature, which, of course, installed Wubi.

Now, I never used Wubi (by virtue of not having Windows anymore), so I told him to uninstall it and boot from the CD instead. And this is where the problems started. He reported seeing some "cable problem", then he booted again and took photos of the screen for me, then we meddled with BIOS settings, unsuccessfully. It took me a while to realize that the CD wasn't actually bootable. He burned it incorrectly.

He presumed that something went wrong with the Toshiba burner software that came with the laptop, and tried to unpack the ISO and burn the files. I told him it wouldn't work, but not before he wasted yet another CD. Finally, I pointed him to the wiki instructions, and this time, he burned the CD correctly with Infra Recorder. And booted. And was excited.

He then played with the Live CD for a while, but installed Ubuntu when I wasn't around. When I logged in today, he complained that he "lost" his Windows partition after installing Ubuntu. After some examination, it turned out that it wasn't really lost, but it wasn't automounted in Ubuntu.

And why? Because it was dirty.

So we had to mount it from the command line with ntfs-3g with the -o force option, then manually create a mountpoint under /media and fstab entry. Now it is automounted. But it's not the whole story...

When he finally accessed his Windows drive, he immediately tried launching Notepad++ by clicking the exe file in Nautilus (without notifying me first). To my surprise, it worked -- but it worked because he had previously installed Wine and forgot about it. Wine has become really transparent these days. I used this as an opportunity to teach him how to add a third-party repository with the Software Sources utility, so he could update to Wine 1.0. It would be much faster to do this from the command line, but I tried to keep its usage at minimum. I then pointed him to Geany as an alternative to Notepad++.

Luckily, in the software list he compiled to check for equivalents, he mostly listed free cross-platform software: Firefox, GIMP, Inkscape, FileZilla, VBA, Audacity and Azureus. All of these were available in the repository, although he apparently opted to use Transmission (which was preinstalled) instead of Azureus.

He also looked for an MS Paint equivalent, and GNU Paint didn't satisfy him. I pointed him to KolourPaint, which he found better. At this point, I gave him a little lecture (all via IRC!) about GNOME and KDE, and GTK+ and Qt, and how they use different settings, icon themes and widget themes, and how QtCurve could help with the latter.

After I found out that he liked the Human widgets but (not being a fan of orange) changed the icon theme to "the first blue one he found" (Crux), I suggested trying QtCurve. I told him how to use Synaptic (previously, he only used the Add/Remove utility), and he installed qtcurve and kde-systemsettings, then tailored the theme to his preference. He was absolutely stunned by Ubuntu's customizability... although he would prefer a panel with multiple rows of icons and task switcher buttons, which is available in KDE but not GNOME.

So far, his impressions are very positive, but there are two drawbacks. The first is the unbootable Vista. As the Ubuntu installer didn't mount the NTFS partition, it also didn't create a bootloader entry for Vista. We used update-grub to autodetect it, but it didn't boot and furthermore turned the partition dirty again (forcing yet another forced mount from the command line). We'll be working on this.

The second is the wireless printer (Brother MFC-665CW). It wasn't automatically added to the list of printers. When he used the printer setup utility to autodetect it, it was added, but didn't print, and tasks sent to it were just instantly marked as done. He's one step away from installing the vendor-supplied proprietary drivers...

To summarize, what he particularly liked in Ubuntu so far was:

• The live CD system
• The vast package repository
• Customizability

What went wrong:

• He didn't know how to properly burn the CD. The download page doesn't contain instructions on that, and I had to search Google for them.
• He chose Wubi instead of booting from the live CD and doing a full install. And Wubi didn't work.
• The Vista partition didn't mount properly, and the installer ignored it. Since he had no Windows CD, he had to mount in forced mode, involving a not-so-user-friendly sequence of commands.
• Even after we got the partition to automount and wrote Vista into GRUB with update-grub, it still doesn't boot.

I'd like to spotlight two new Qt4 applications recently added to Intrepid.

First is Arora, a lightweight web browser based on QtWebKit and the Qt demo browser that ships with the qt4-demos package. The build currently in Ubuntu (and Debian) uses the version of WebKit that ships with Qt 4.4, although the upstream source (which I contribute a bit to) also includes support for building against WebKit trunk snapshots.

In fact, I was so impressed with its speed that I discarded Firefox and now use Arora as my primary browser, despite its (current) shortcomings. I've filed a Hardy backport request for it.

Second is KPlayer, which was added from Christian Marillat's debian-multimedia repository. It's a KDE4 front end to MPlayer and a nice alternative to Dragon Player and SMPlayer (the latter is another MPlayer front end based on plain Qt4). I'm also planning to add it to Debian proper (like I did with SMPlayer), so Debian users won't have to resort to an unofficial repository.

I also have three packages waiting on REVU for the approval of one more MOTU. These are:

• subtitlecomposer, a video subtitle editor for KDE3.
• codeblocks, the wxWidgets IDE.
• fuse-zip, a console utility to mount ZIP archives as directories.

URL bar:

• Clicking an entry in the URL bar autocomplete list should open that page instead of just putting the address in the bar and requiring to press Enter.
• Search by any part of the URL. For example, if I had previously visited http://www.linux.org.ru/view-all.jsp, I expect it to come up when searching for "lin" or "view".
• Better cooperation with faulty themes. The bar shouldn't go all black just because the QtCurve and GTK themes draw gradients incorrectly.

Tabs:

• Close button on each tab (not possible until Qt 4.5?).
• Closing by middle click

Search box:

• Google Suggest dropdown list
• Support for local search engines via OpenSearch (implemented in midori, which uses webkit-gtk)

Bookmarks:

• One-click bookmarking - just add it directly to the menu, or to a subfolder, not to "Uncategorized" like in Firefox 3

General:

• Improved scrolling and textarea typing performance - probably a problem with webkit in general, since the GTK version suffers from this as well
• Ad blocker
• Per-site configuration for enabling JavaScript, plugins and images

I have added information about "2010" to the Time Travel in Stargate SG-1 article.

As it has been noted many times, time travel is a subject best avoided in speculative fiction, due to its inherent problems with causality -- especially when you have to take into account events which you, as a writer, have not invented yet but which can retroactively become continuity busters. Even when the writers do bother to create a reasonable model of time travel, the temptation to divert from it for the sake of spectacle is just too high. Doctor Who is probably the worst offender here; not even trying to explain how time travel works, it goes for the "timey-wimey ball" explanation and chooses whatever fits the story for a particular episode.

Read more...

I Am A: True Neutral Human Wizard (1st Level)

Ability Scores:
Strength-12
Dexterity-11
Constitution-10
Intelligence-14
Wisdom-10
Charisma-12

Alignment:
True Neutral A true neutral character does what seems to be a good idea. He doesn't feel strongly one way or the other when it comes to good vs. evil or law vs. chaos. Most true neutral characters exhibit a lack of conviction or bias rather than a commitment to neutrality. Such a character thinks of good as better than evil after all, he would rather have good neighbors and rulers than evil ones. Still, he's not personally committed to upholding good in any abstract or universal way. Some true neutral characters, on the other hand, commit themselves philosophically to neutrality. They see good, evil, law, and chaos as prejudices and dangerous extremes. They advocate the middle way of neutrality as the best, most balanced road in the long run. True neutral is the best alignment you can be because it means you act naturally, without prejudice or compulsion. However, true neutral can be a dangerous alignment because it represents apathy, indifference, and a lack of conviction.

Race:
Humans are the most adaptable of the common races. Short generations and a penchant for migration and conquest have made them physically diverse as well. Humans are often unorthodox in their dress, sporting unusual hairstyles, fanciful clothes, tattoos, and the like.

Class:
Wizards are arcane spellcasters who depend on intensive study to create their magic. To wizards, magic is not a talent but a difficult, rewarding art. When they are prepared for battle, wizards can use their spells to devastating effect. When caught by surprise, they are vulnerable. The wizard's strength is her spells, everything else is secondary. She learns new spells as she experiments and grows in experience, and she can also learn them from other wizards. In addition, over time a wizard learns to manipulate her spells so they go farther, work better, or are improved in some other way. A wizard can call a familiar- a small, magical, animal companion that serves her. With a high Intelligence, wizards are capable of casting very high levels of spells.

Find out What Kind of Dungeons and Dragons Character Would You Be?, courtesy of Easydamus (e-mail)

Those have been two busy days for me, as there was quite a lot of software to upgrade just before the freeze.

• celestia 1.5.0
• aria2 0.12.0
• midori 0.0.17 (with webkit svn29752), synced from Debian
• glest 3.0.0
• qcomicbook 0.4.0
• smplayer 0.6.0~rc2
• dirac 0.9.1

...and some less important ones, including sponsored uploads that I don't remember. (And it being 2 AM here, it's not like I'm in the mood to remember them either.)

I regret not finding time to upgrade eric and freecol, as well as not spending enough of the limited time I had on REVU.

Also, the Debian QA team is probably going to get some pings from me about inactive maintainers...

First thought: shiny new buttons!

Second thought: isn't it a bit ironic that I became a MOTU just before feature freeze? I missed all the REVU days, and the sponsorship queue immediately distracted me from uploads I prepared beforehand.

And this is largely a test post, to see if Planet Ubuntu posts work for me. However, I'll write more tomorrow, when I'm not as sleepy and tired as I'm now.

I have updated the hardware support page for my computer for Ubuntu 7.10 (it was originally written for 6.10).

I've uploaded SMPlayer version 0.6.0 RC1 to Debian unstable and got it synced to Ubuntu Hardy.

Gutsy has 0.5.62 in backports. To the end user, the main difference between the repository packages and upstream ones is that the former are split into smplayer and smplayer-translations.

Also, if any Debian developers happen to be reading this, I need sponsorship for smplayer-themes. It's listed in the Recommends section of smplayer, but not currently in Debian. (It is in Ubuntu, however.) It can be found on mentors.debian.net here.


sikon@lucidfox:~$ history|awk '{a[$2]++ } END{for(i in a){print a[i] " " i}}'|sort -nr|head
53 juic
49 sudo
38 mc
34 debuild
23 killall
18 make
15 firefox
14 dpkg
13 dpkg-source
12 apt-cache


The mpeg4ip binary packages have passed NEW, and it means that the libmp4v2 build chain is unbroken at long last. All hail jdong and superm1!

As I'm writing this, new versions of faac and gtkpod-aac are currently building for Hardy. Soon, avidemux 2.4.0 should follow suit.

In other news:

• smplayer-themes has been accepted, the binary package is waiting in NEW. So SMPlayer users can expect choice in icons soon. Also, the main smplayer package has been sponsored by Christian Marillat into Debian's NEW. There's also a new upstream release underway, and I will probably get it into Debian first.
• The entire qtcurve package trio has been updated from 0.55.1 to 0.55.2, thanks to the Debian maintainer suddenly coming out of 4-month slumber. The KDE4 package (kde4-style-qtcurve) now has two versions, one with plain Qt4 and the other with support for configuration from KDE4's KControl, so... yes, NEW for now, because of the extra binary package.
• On REVU, all registered users can post comments now, not just MOTUs. I've been reviewing some packages since then to get some training.

Was asked by Daniel Holbach to reapply for MOTU in "a very few weeks" (sic). Well, if that's what it takes. It's not like I'm in a hurry.

Got f-spot 0.4.1-4ubuntu2 uploaded. It introduces some patches cherry-picked from upstream SVN, as well as, thanks to the Debian maintainers, the automatic sqlite upgrade script. After that, I went on a bug closing spree and found, among other things, some duplicates. As a result, the number of bugs for f-spot in Ubuntu has gone down from 80+ to 68.

Also, smplayer-themes has passed REVU and is now waiting in NEW. This makes it the third package I contributed to Ubuntu from scratch, after videotrans and inkblot.