Just some small updates, while I'm trying to get off my ass and migrate the site completely to Textpattern.
“Quarterly” Report: Yakuake
April 17th, 2009Another month has passed without a blog post. My new year’s resolution is an epic fail. Luckily, the rest of my life didn’t follow suit. Since I’m trying not to beat around the bush, I’ll get straight to the point. This post will be all about Yakuake, specifically the cool new features you’ll be seeing in the next release.
First up is moving/rearranging tabs using drag and drop. Click and hold on a tab with the left mouse button (or right mouse button, if you’ve reversed them) and drag and drop to the desired location. Drop indicators will appear on the tab bar, indicating where you’re allowed to drop a tab. People using tabs in Konsole might be familiar with this behavior.
You can now prevent tabs (formally called “Sessions” in Yakuake) from being closed. You can do this through the tab’s context menu (right-click on the tab name) and setting the “Prevent Closing” option. If you try to close that tab, you will be asked to confirm the action. This lock applies to all terminals (in the case of split views) in that tab. There’s a catch, however. Due to certain limitations in how the embedded Konsole works, there are 2 instances where the protection is bypassed: Using the shell’s own exit methods (”exit” command or Ctrl+D) and the embedded Konsole’s Close Session method (right-click inside the terminal, select Close Session or press Ctrl+Shift+W).
Another new type of lock is “Disable Keyboard Input”. This virtually makes the terminal read-only, perfect for important processes that must not be interrupted by keypresses or for monitoring something in the terminal. Again, this option is available in the tab’s context menu, but this time, you have the option to lock individual terminals or all terminals in the tab. And since this disregards any keyboard input inside the terminal, it means that even Ctrl+D and Ctrl+Shift+W are blocked. So with the feature to prevent closing tabs, you now have one indestructible tab.
And last, but definitely not the least (in fact probably the most visual change) is the new “Visual Effect Overlay”. Basically, this makes it possible to display a translucent “cover” over a terminal. This is effect is used in the disable keyboard input feature mentioned previously. For example, if you try to type into a locked terminal, that terminal will flash red for a while (or repeatedly, if you keep on typing). And when you’re trying to choose which terminal to lock from the tab’s context menu, the corresponding terminal is highlighted with a blue color when your mouse hovers over the terminal name.
I’m personally very happy with this coming release, since I’ve been responsible for the first two features mentioned. My biggest hacking contribution to KDE so far, and my first SVN commit spree. Lead Yakuake ninja, Eike Hein, (should I start calling him Hokage?) did the rest of the work, including a lot of other features and bug fixes. And he has more planned for the future. A website is in the works, too.
Winter has arrived in Yakuake, so hopefully you will have a shiny new version very soon.
/me is a happy KDE hacker 
Crash and Burn
March 11th, 2009Topics: Personal, KDE, Source Mage, N810, UPOU
Preface: I’ve started putting a list of Topics (read “tags”) at the top of my blog posts so that planetkde readers can choose whether to continue reading or not at first glance. I’m kind of nice that way. 
I haven’t figured out how to do it automatically in Wordpress though, without some PHP hacking (I presume). Mere tinkering with the theme doesn’t affect the content that is sent out through feeds.
2009 Q1 is almost over and already life has been showing it’s ugly side. I barely survived this last semester. Entirely my fault, of course. I’m resolved to go over my subjects again this summer break, this time more thoroughly, as I feel I merely skimmed through the whole course this year. Blaming stupendously horrible textbooks is not really an excuse.
That’s not to say the whole quarter was a mess. The N810 was probably the biggest saving grace. Finally getting a real usable desk (and cleaning my room to take advantage of that) was also a bonus. I have been able to work on some of my mini-projects for KDE and Source Mage, like hunting down the cause of an ugly bug in Konsole that affected Yakuake, creating a theme for the Source Mage wiki, etc. My list of pending todo’s is far from empty, though, particularly setting up a Maemo SDK on Suzaku (my desktop). Maybe I should keep a list of accomplished feats for some source of inspiration…
But what made the last two months hell on earth was less technical and more emotional. I’ve come to the conclusion that of all kinds of problems I encounter, I handle emotional stress worst. Emotional baggage brought about by family and personal problems and whiny and insatiable users/people (but probably well-intentioned… I’d like to give them the benefit of the doubt, I really do) really forced me to wave the flag and walk away for a while. And even begin to ask whether it’s all worth it. Unfortunately, I still don’t have an answer to that.
In the meantime, I’m probably going to try to keep myself busy with activities to avoid thinking “bad stuff”. But I need to be careful, as someone noticed that I easily crash and burn whenever I go into an intense “marathon”. Although at this point, I don’t know how I can keep up with my todo list if I don’t. Up next: Maemo SDK and figuring out how to get Qt and KDE apps on the tablet, Yakuake website (almost ready), reviewing Textpattern for my own site, and starting my own dream Qt/KDE apps.
(Wish me luck… I’ll need it. Lots of it)
HowTo: Dual Booting the N810
February 16th, 2009Topics: FOSS, KDE, N810, HowTo
This isn’t really a full HowTo. They’re more like my own notes for future reference, for myself and hopefully for others as well. Instead, I link to already available material, but make annotations for some customizations that I made.
This HowTo describes the steps to take in “dual booting” on the N810, that is, booting from a flash card.
1. Why dual/multi-boot?
The Maemo wiki cites a few reasons why. The main reason why I decided to dual boot was space. I really wasn’t using the internal 2GB flash memory and I have no use of GPS at the moment. And since Marijn’s KDE packages would be taking up more space, I decided to use the internal memory as my “main partition”. It will probably be useful for future KDE development as well. (Note: Marijn says that the packages were broken, so I wasn’t able to install them fully at that time)
2. First, gain root powers
To be able to perform any of the next steps, you need to have superuser access. The Maemo wiki presents three ways to gain root access. I was advised to use the openssh method. This way, I hit two birds (root access and ssh) with one stone.
3. Split the card
I’m not sure if this step is absolutely necessary. But since the N810 uses the internal flash memory for virtual memory (swap) automatically, I think it’s a good thing to do so anyway.
IMPORTANT: Be sure to backup your data on the internal flash memory as partitioning and formatting will completely erase anything in there.
Oh, and turn off virtual memory in the Control Panel first.
Partitioning might be a bit daunting if you’re not used to command line partitioning tools like fdisk and sfdisk. But the guide in the wiki is very simple and straightforward. The most confusing part is trying to remember which device node (under /dev) stands for which flash card. Just remember that mmc*1 is for external. anything else (mmc*0 and mmc2) are for internal.
Some other notes:
- The first partition’s starting cylinder is always 1.
- The next partition’s starting cylinder is 1 more than the previous partition’s end cylinder
- To compute the number of cylinders for a given MB size, I used the formula numCylinders = sizeMB / 0.032 or numCylinders = sizeKB / 32.
Since I wanted to split the card in half, but giving more space for the cloned system, I gave around 29,000 cylinders to the first partition, leaving the rest to the second partition. The sfdisk step looked something like this:
sfdisk /dev/mmcblk0 /dev/mmcblk0p1:1,29000,6 /dev/mmcblk0p2:29001,,
Maemo wiki: Partitioning a flash card
4. Attack of the clones
This last step was the most complicated in the process, but even that is made easy by a lot of ready made scripts. It would be best if you had your Maemo browser open to the wiki page so that you can just copy the wget commands instead of typing them manually (which I stupidly did).
I followed the guide to the letter except for the following:
- I didn’t configure the bootmenu options at that time (see below for more information)
- Since I was using the latest Diablo version, I used immc2 for the device name in the Set the default boot device step.
- I also didn’t remove the menu (last step)
Maemo wiki: Booting from a flash card
5. And finally…
Everything went well and I was booted into the clone system on the internal flash card in no time. Now for some final tips:
- Don’t forget to re-enable the virtual memory
- Don’t be worried if the memory usage reported for the Device is almost twice as big as on the original system. I was told that this is because the flash card is not compressed, unlike in the original um… memory (what is the technical name for that? RAM?).
- I found that the 30 (or was it 20?) second delay for the boot menu was too long. I wanted to shorten that time, like you could when using GRUB. You can edit the bootmenu.sh file in /mnt/initfs/. However, that mount is read-only, so you have to remount the thing with this command: mount -o remount,rw /mnt/initfs/. Look for the MENU_TIMEOUT line and set the number of seconds that you want.
Enjoy your cloned system and extra space! 
Tweet? Dent? Twitti.ca!
February 8th, 2009I’ve finally succumbed to social trend and created Identi.ca and Twitter accounts over the weekend, just in time to listen in on the Tokamak2 dents (Identi.ca term for “tweets”). Not hearing anything from FOSDEM though.
I’ve been considering micro-blogging for quite some time now, considering how many times I’ve wanted to blog about something very short but didn’t have the time (or energy) to do a full blog post. So I thought that micro-blogging would be better for me. And so far, I think I’m right.
I think it’s also almost perfect for Filipinos here, who are used to sending out 160-character SMS to friends about a lot of things, both the important and mundane. Unfortunately, it comes at the price of writing/spelling properly (u kno? dis kind of txt). Gotta try advertising it though. Maybe they’ll like it and finally get rid of the prehistoric bloat that is Friendster.
Currently using choqok for my Twitti.ca needs. Simple. Direct. Easy to use. No fancy shmancy stuff. And it’s still in the early stages of development, yet already very usable. I’m going to keep an eye on this one. And of course, it’s KDE.
P.S. Dunno if I’m infringing on some legal thingy, but I got so tired of writing Twitter/Identi.ca that I’ve decided to just refer to it as Twitti.ca…
Dreams DO Come True
January 30th, 2009Let me first give a round of applause and shouts of kudos to the KDE team for the release of KDE 4.2, “The Answer”. I literally WOW’ed when I logged in for the first time and was impressed by the improvements in functionality and performance, specially in KWin and Plasma (probably also due to a beta legacy driver from NVIDIA). Although I’m experiencing some random issues from those two, all in all the 4.2 experience has been quite positive.
But that is not the dream I’m referring to in this post.
I’ve always had a gadget lust, from “hi-tech” cellphones/smartphones, to PDA’s, to tablet PC’s, and even to Star Trek PADD’s. Then came a new line of devices; UMPC’s (Ultra Mobile PC), MID’s (Mobile Internet Device), and finally, Nokia’s own Internet Tablet. And after years of dreaming, two years or more of drooling (ever since the N770 came out), and a year of waiting, it finally happened!
I just love it! Even if it’s not a phone (though not impossible to use as a sort of phone). And I’ve got lots of things planned for the N810, and for KDE. I just hope this little baby can keep up.