Vernon's blog

Planet M.U.L.E. Error MuleException liblwjgl.so wrong ELF class: ELFCLASS32 (Possible cause: architecture word width mismatch)

2012-03-18T19:05:00.003-04:00

Have you ever gotten an error like this?

Planet M.U.L.E. Error
MuleException

/home/geek/mule/data/lib/liblwjgl.so: 
wrong ELF class: ELFCLASS32 (Possible cause: 
architecture word width mismatch)
Please run mule.sh to start the game.

Well, do not worry, here is the solution. The reason you are getting this error is that mule.sh is trying to use a 32 bit library instead of a 64 bit library like your machine probably requires. I got this error when launching the game M.U.L.E. for the first time on a 64 bit linux box. The only thing you need to do to fix this error is change the LD_LIBRAY_PATH in your mule.sh file as follows.

The old line looked like this:
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=.:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH

so change it to:
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=.:/usr/lib/jvm/java-7-openjdk/jre/lib/amd64

Your library path may be different. In order to find what LD_LIBRARY_PATH to change to, I ran the following command:
$ locate jre/lib | grep 64

This assumes that you have recently run the updatedb command, and have the openjdk installed, but it shows all of the files in the java runtime library that mule needs. Your java runtime library may be on a different path.

Hope that helps.

Block anonymous users from seeing media wiki history

2012-03-08T01:29:00.000-05:00

It looks like a patch to the install will be necessary for making it such that anonymous users do not get to see histories. And while the Other restrictions section of the mediawiki page, as of today, confirms this fact, that page does not make it clear how to actually prevent histories from showing up for anonymous users.

But have no fear, as of mediawiki 1.18.1, the following easy changes to two files have worked pretty well for me at preventing casual anonymous users from seeing the histories of pages:

1) Change the beginning of the history function in the includes/HistoryPage.php file so that it looks like this:

function history() {
    global $wgOut, $wgRequest, $wgScript, $wgUser;

    if ( ! $wgUser->isAllowed('edit') ) {
        $wgOut->addWikiMsg( 'nohistory' );
        wfProfileOut( __METHOD__ );
        return;
    }

2) Change the beginning of the insertDiffHist function in the includes/ChangesList.php file so that it looks like this:

public function insertDiffHist( &$s, &$rc, $unpatrolled ) {

    global $wgUser;

    if ( ! $wgUser->isAllowed('edit') ) {
        return null;
    }

This should prevent anonymous users from being able to see the histories of pages. For bonus points in the comments, let us know how badly this will affect our search engine rankings.

Enjoy.

Error for wireless request "Set Encode" (8B2A) : SET failed on device wlan0 ; Invalid argument.

2012-02-04T00:59:00.003-05:00

Have you gotten an error like this?

Error for wireless request "Set Encode" (8B2A) :
    SET failed on device wlan0 ; Invalid argument.

Do not worry. This is the error you will get when you specify the wrong WEP key with the iwconfig command.

Just go back and make sure you have the correct key entered for the extended service set identifier (ESSID) you are trying to connect to.

Cheers.

Using the Places module (or Gadget) in e17 or enlightenment

2011-10-05T23:31:00.022-04:00

Apparently the new version of the enlightenment window manager (called e17 as of now) trys to use udisks instead of hal. But some of the modules, such as Places, have not been updated to use udisks yet.

So, if you load the "Places" module, and then add the Places gadget to, say, your bottom shelf in enlightenment, it may look something like this:So it just shows a blank grey area with no Gadget in it. Not to mention that if you plug a usb device in, the Places module will not detect it. So in order to fix this, I did this:

Solution

1) installed the hal daemon from here.
   a) if you are using archlinux, 
      first install cower from the AUR, and then ...
   b) cower -d -d hal-git
   c) make dependencies first if needed
      I only needed hal-info I think
   d) cd hal-git
   d) makepkg -s
   e) sudo pacman -U hal-git-someDateYouBuiltIt-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.xz
2) Then start the hal daemon
   For archlinux users, probably # /etc/rc.d/hal start
3) removed the old Places gadget from my shelf
   right click the Places gadget 
   (which is just a blank area) -> Gedget Places -> Remove
4) unloaded the Places module
   left click desktop -> settings -> modules -> Places -> unload
5) restarted enlightenment 
   left click desktop -> enlightenment -> restart
6) reloaded the Places module 
   left click desktop -> settings -> modules -> Places -> load
7) added the Places gadget to my shelf 
   left click shelf -> settings -> gadgets -> Places -> add gadget
8) plugged in a usb camera ...
   watched it appear as a new device on the shelf ...
   inside the Places gadget ... Yay!
9) Right Click Places -> Gadget Places -> Move to -> Desktop

My Places gadget on the desktop now looks like this with a camera plugged into a usb port:
And when I click on it, it opens a file manager, and shows me the files on my camera ... imagine that. Hope this blog post helps get the Places module working on your desktop.

The day of the cross

2011-05-10T13:07:00.007-04:00

This is an update to my earlier post on this subject. You can download Celestia and see what happened on April 3 of 33 A.D. for yourself with this handy little celestia script. Just save the script to your desktop, launch Celestia, and click File, Open Script, and select the file you downloaded. It appears that this script needed some adjustments for the newest version of Celestia 1.6.0.

Enjoy.

P.S. If anyone knows from the change logs, which revision it was in Celestia which caused this script to need adjustment, please let me know. Thanks.

Flex Jam Orlando 2011

2011-05-03T12:58:00.003-04:00

Flex Jam with Greg Wilson, James Ward, and Holly Schinsky .... jamesward.com
gregsramblings.com
devgirl.org

Errors: unable to open 'C:\Documents and Settings\geek\Adobe Flash Builder 4.5\TourDeMobileFlex\libs

2011-05-03T11:06:00.002-04:00

Description Resource Path Location Type
unable to open 'C:\Documents and Settings\geek\Adobe Flash Builder 4.5\TourDeMobileFlex\libs' TourDeMobileFlex Unknown Flex Problem

Do not worry about this ...

Right click "TourDeMobileFlex" -> New -> Folder
Then just type "libs" in for the Folder name, and click Finish.

Hope that helps.

error: SSL certificate problem, verify that the CA cert is OK.

2011-05-03T10:35:00.005-04:00

$ git clone https://github.com/someguy/hisApp.git
Cloning into hisApp ...
error: SSL certificate problem, verify that the CA cert is OK. Details:
error:14090086:SSL routines:SSL3_GET_SERVER_CERTIFICATE:certificate verify failed while accessing https://github.com/someguy/hisApp.git/info/refs

fatal: HTTP request failed

If this happens to you ... no problem.

$ env GIT_SSL_NO_VERIFY=true git clone https://github.com/someguy/hisApp.git

Hope that helps.

James Gosling now working at Google

2011-03-29T15:06:00.007-04:00

Do Good Anyway

2011-03-15T23:17:00.000-04:00

* People are often unreasonable, irrational, and self-centered. Forgive them anyway.

* If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives. Be kind anyway.

* If you are successful, you will win some unfaithful friends and some genuine enemies. Succeed anyway.

* If you are honest and sincere people may deceive you. Be honest and sincere anyway.

* What you spend years creating, others could destroy overnight. Create anyway.

* If you find serenity and happiness, some may be jealous. Be happy anyway.

* The good you do today, will often be forgotten. Do good anyway.

* Give the best you have, and it will never be enough. Give your best anyway.

* In the final analysis, it is between you and God. It was never between you and them anyway.

-- Mother Theresa

If you did not like this, try Beautiful Thoughts anyway.

Cứ làm tốt luôn luôn

2011-03-15T22:20:00.007-04:00

* Người chung quanh chúng ta thường làm những điều vô lý, vớ vẩn, và ích kỷ. Tha thứ luôn luôn.

* Nếu bạn tử tế, có thể bạn bị tố cáo là bạn ích kỷ và có mưu đồ xấu. Tử tế luôn luôn.

* Nếu bạn thành công, bạn sẽ được một ít bạn không trung thành, và người thù nguyên thủy. Thành công luôn luôn.

* Nếu bạn là ngay thật, có thể bạn bị họ lừa. Cứ ngay thật luôn luôn.

* Những cái bạn chế tạo ra tốn thật nhiều thời gian, người ta có thể phá hoại trong chốc lát. Cứ chế tạo luôn luôn.

* Nếu bạn tìm được niềm vui và điều yên tịnh, người chung quanh bạn sẽ ghen tị. Cứ giữ niềm vui đó luôn luôn.

* Những gì tốt bạn làm hôm nay có thể không ai nhớ ngày mai. Cứ làm tốt luôn luôn.

* Hãy cho thế giới điều tốt nhất bạn có và chảng bao giờ đủ. Cứ cho điều tốt nhất luôn luôn.

* Đến lúc cuối, bạn sẽ thấy chỉ giửa bạn với Chúa. Chẳng bao giờ bạn với những người kia luôn luôn.

-- Mẹ Teresa

Nếu bạn không thích bài này, cứ thử Lời Hay Ý Đẹp luôn luôn.

Howto explore files on your Blackberry

2011-03-11T14:10:00.007-05:00

Have you ever wanted to just explore files on your Blackberry?
The short answer is Media -> Menu -> Explore.
The long answer with screenshots is:

1. Navigate to your "Media" folder
2. Click the "Blackberry button" or menu button, or the button the is usually to the left of your trackpad or trackball
3. Then select "Explore"

You should get this menu below, which let's you choose between your SDCard and your on device memory:

Hope that helps.

PrimeFaces rocks ...

2011-03-11T11:43:00.005-05:00

Location aware PrimeFaces mobile maps works fine on this BlackBerry OS 6 browser:

Read more about it here. By the way, the location above is Downtown Disney.

Dictionary - Từ điển (cập nhật)

2011-03-07T14:44:00.018-05:00

Chắc nhiều người biết một trang web tiện dụng cho dịch một ngôn ngữ, nhưng tôi quyết định cập nhật cái trang web này đặc biệt cho các trình duyệt web di động được cho người nào chóng dịch một vài từ nhanh hoặc từ tiếng Anh sang tiếng Việt hoặc tiếng Việt sang tiếng Anh bằng Google Translate. Xin vui lòng với.

Many folks probably have a handy page for translating some language, but I decided to update this web page specifically for mobile browsers to allow folks to quickly translate a few words from either English to Vietnamese or Vietnamese to English using Google Translate. Enjoy.

This one is one for Vietnamese:
http://lightcloud.verns.net/mobile/vi/index.html

Here is one for Spanish also:
http://lightcloud.verns.net/mobile/es/index.html

Page rendering using iPhone (photo taken with a BlackBerry Bold 9700 :-)

Page rendering using BlackBerry OS 6.0.0.448 (photo taken with an android phone):

I didn't even bother posting a picture taken with an iPhone ... it was just too sad.

X and such ...

2011-03-03T14:07:00.023-05:00

So the other day, a gentleman that I respect sent several of us an email stating:

Ok, so remember now, next week we are going to do "X and such" ...

I thought about his email and replied to him asking, "Thank you so much for the timely reminder. And could you also explain for me, why it is that we are going to do 'X and such'?" Shortly there after, I received an emotional email in alternating Caps Lock, explaining:

Well! EVeRY year wE do "X and such"! And ... we have already anNOUNced it. We have announced bEFORe hand that we will do "X and such"!

So I thought this would make a great Monty Python skit, as follows:

John Cleese: Ok. Today we will commence with beating our faces against the wall with all our might. All ready now? And ... G! go? ..."

(interrupted)

Idiot: Excuse me. Excuse me! But what is this about beating your heads against the wall with all your might? I mean, why should we all be doing this?

John Cleese (Incensed): W(H)ell! Every year ... Every year! We beat our faces against the wall with all our might. And ... And we've announced it already. We have announced that we will be beating our faces against the wall with all our might. We ALWAYS announce before hand that we are about to do this, so that there is no question about our intentions.

(pause)

Now then! If there are no more questions about it ... let us commence immediately with the beating of our faces against these hallowed walls with all our might.

Several folks that I've related this story to have asked, "What is 'X and such'"? Or, "Who was this?"

Does it really matter what "X and such" is? or who it is that requires "X and such"? Isn't it reasonable sometimes to ask why?

What do you think?

X11 error: BadAlloc (insufficient resources for operation)

2011-02-26T20:13:00.020-05:00

If you have gotten this error, or maybe just a blue screen with mplayer or a black window with no video in vlc, just try changing the video output driver:

$ mplayer -vo x11 some_video.wmv
or
$ vlc --vout x11 some_video.wmv

You can also use "mplayer -vo help" to get a list of available video output drivers, if you think x11 is not right for you, as follows:

$ mplayer -vo help
MPlayer SVN-r31628-4.4.4 (C) 2000-2010 MPlayer Team
Available video output drivers:
   vdpau       VDPAU with X11
   xv          X11/Xv
   gl_nosw     OpenGL no software rendering
   x11         X11 ( XImage/Shm )
   xover       General X11 driver for overlay capable video output drivers
   sdl         SDL YUV/RGB/BGR renderer (SDL v1.1.7+ only!)
   gl          OpenGL
   gl2         X11 (OpenGL) - multiple textures version
   dga         DGA ( Direct Graphic Access V2.0 )
   fbdev       Framebuffer Device
   fbdev2      Framebuffer Device
   matrixview  MatrixView (OpenGL)
   aa          AAlib
   caca        libcaca
   dxr3        DXR3/H+ video out
   v4l2        V4L2 MPEG Video Decoder Output
   xvidix      X11 (VIDIX)
   cvidix      console VIDIX
   null        Null video output
   xvmc        XVideo Motion Compensation
   mpegpes     MPEG-PES to DVB card
   yuv4mpeg    yuv4mpeg output for mjpegtools
   png         PNG file
   jpeg        JPEG file
   gif89a      animated GIF output
   tga         Targa output
   pnm         PPM/PGM/PGMYUV file
   md5sum      md5sum of each frame

Hope that helps.

How to grab the triggers from a SQL Server database

2011-02-16T15:30:00.005-05:00

Have you ever needed to get the script that created a trigger on a table in a SQL Server database?

Try this:

select b.text
from sysobjects a
join syscomments b on a.id=b.id
where xtype='TR'

Hope that helps.

How do I get a list of commit comments from CVS after the given date or change?

2011-01-05T17:48:00.009-05:00

The short answer is ... use subversion or git instead of cvs, and you will get your answer pretty quickly.

You may have made a bunch of changes to a number of files in a project, and made sure that every commit (usually at the file level) was accompanied by a comment of what was changed.

Then you may have asked yourself, is there a way to get a list from CVS of these comments on changes since some particular version?

Well, I had the same problem and here is how I quickly got all of the comments out of cvs from a given revision until the latest:

$ mkdir ~/repo
$ cd ~/repo
$ mkdir cvs
$ cd cvs
$ scp -pr geek@avoid.cvs.org:/cvs/CVSROOT .
$ mkdir -p my/favorite
$ cd my/favorite
$ scp -pr geek@avoid.cvs.org:/cvs/my/favorite/project .
$ cd ~/repo
$ mkdir -p ~/repo/svn/my/favorite/project
$ cvs2svn -s ~/repo/svn/my/favorite/project/src ~/repo/cvs/my/favorite/project/src
$ mkdir ~/work
$ cd ~/work
$ svn checkout file:///home/geek/repo/svn/my/favorite/project/src/trunk ./src
$ cd src
$ # get the comments made from revision 5 until today
$ svn log -r 5:HEAD
$ # get the comments made from 2010-07-03 until today
$ svn log -r {2010-07-03}:HEAD

The basic idea is to just use svn or git instead of cvs :-)
And that can be done by converting the cvs repo to svn or git using cvs2svn or cvs2git, which we should be doing anyway. It got my my answer within about three minutes because I had a small repository.

Hope that helps.

Problems with a Vietnamese character on mobile devices

2011-01-03T00:41:00.025-05:00

Currently I am running version 5.0.0.714 of the BlackBerry OS on my bold 9700, because my carrier has not released the latest version 6 of the OS for my phone. Still version 5 is pretty mature, and so I was surprised to run across this bug with rendering a particular Vietnamese letter.

On my BlackBerry, whether I am using the blackberry browser, gmail, blackberry's messenger, or opera mini, the blackberry renders the character ờ, which is unicode U+1EDD, as the character ớ, which is unicode unicode U+1EDB.

Here is a blown up screenshot of the two _different_ characters "ờ ớ" on the BlackBerry noted above using blackberry's messenger application:
This is the same way that it looks in all of the applications noted above using BlackBerry OS 5.0.0.714.

Curiously, I also found that this same rendering problem is happening on my Android phone for the same email. And the issue is also happening using with Android web browser in pages like this one. So it looks like several mobile platforms are having this issue. And now that I think of it, this blog post would be much harder to understand if you are reading it on a mobile device which has this bug.

On the other hand if I use LogicMail, which is currently the most popular open source email client available for the BlackBerry, and I turn on the "Unicode normalization" feature in the configuration, here is the resulting screen shot from the same email:
What is nice about this feature of LogicMail is that it improves your ability to read Vietnamese emails whether you are running older versions of the OS or not, so anyone whose carrier (or company) has locked them into older versions of the BlackBerry OS, can still get the benefit of LogicMail's unicode normalization option. Open source is great.

I wonder if this is still an issue with BlackBerry OS 6. If it is then these two different characters will look the same: ờ ớ

Maybe you can let us know in the comments below.

Incidentally, this character must be from the same family of characters which appear to be quite popular on reddit.com.

Fedora - Google Earth: /opt/google-earth/libIGGfx.so ... Permission denied

2010-11-30T10:06:00.006-05:00

Your install of Google Earth went fine ...

But then when you try to run Google earth, you get an error something like this:
/opt/google-earth/libIGGfx.so ... Permission denied.

Or you may find this in your /var/log/messages:
Nov 30 09:49:42 lost setroubleshoot: SELinux is preventing /opt/google-earth/googleearth-bin "execmod" access to /opt/google-earth/libIGGfx.so. For complete SELinux messages. run sealert -l e4e45dc0-14cf-49dc-af60-8c8e7e916bdf

Don't worry, just run as root:

# cd /opt/google-earth
# for file in `ls /opt/google-earth` ; do echo "SeLinux type in " $file; chcon -t textrel_shlib_t $file; done

You may still have problems like I did if you are behind a proxy.

so I added this to the beginning of the command to launch google earth:
env http_proxy=http://my.favorite.proxy.com:8080

so now the launch command is:
env http_proxy=http://my.favorite.proxy.com:8080 /opt/google-earth/googleearth %f

Hope that helps.

Khát Khao Dòng Nước

2010-11-25T01:23:00.003-05:00

Bài này làm tôi yên lòng ...

* Here are the chords and lyrics.
* Lượm lời bài với hợp âm ở đây.

Enjoy.
Hãy vui long hát với à.

PHP Fatal error: Allowed memory size of X bytes exhausted (tried to allocate Y bytes) in /var/www/html/mediawiki/includes/Exif.php

2010-09-08T16:04:00.007-04:00

Have you ever gotten an error like this:

PHP Fatal error: Allowed memory size of X bytes exhausted (tried to allocate Y bytes) in /var/www/html/mediawiki/includes/Exif.php on line 1018, referer: http://my.favorite.wiki.info/mediawiki

Well, do not worry, here is how you can fix it ... Just edit the LocalSettings.php for your wiki, and change the line that says "ini_set( 'memory_limit', '20M' );" to something like "ini_set( 'memory_limit', '32M' );".

Don't you just love magic numbers in your code?

gedit: Segmentation fault

2010-08-20T15:12:00.003-04:00

Do not worry. If you get this error:

Gtk-Message: Failed to load module "atk-bridge": libatk-bridge.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
Gtk-Message: Failed to load module "gail-gnome": libgail-gnome.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

** (gedit:2133): WARNING **: Private typelib 'Gedit-3.0' not found
Segmentation fault

This was only happening briefly between updates of fedora rawhide. The problem occurred when I was using gedit 1:2.31.5-1.fc14 and kernel 2.6.34-20.fc14.i686.PAE. It looks like it is a hiccup with the new switch from gtk2 to gtk3.

After simply running yum update, now gedit 2:2.30.2-2.fc14 is installed. And it is working fine.

Unicode Normalization Forms: Interesting issue with Google Translation services and APIs

2010-08-16T13:25:00.012-04:00

Drawing on my limited knowledge of the ocean of information which is the mashup of the basic multilingual plane (BMP) and Google AJAX Language API, it looks like the Gtranslate callbacks return inconsistent portions of the BMP for Vietnamese.

For example "Hello girl" vs. "Hello grandma" translated into Vietnamese ...

0000000 042 103 150 141 315 200 157 040 143 303 264 042 012
          "   C   h   a 315 200   o       c 303 264   "  \n
0000015

0000000 042 130 151 156 040 143 150 303 240 157 040 142 303 240 042 012
          "   X   i   n       c   h 303 240   o       b 303 240   "  \n
0000020

At first glance, it looks to me like the first one comes back as NFKD and the second one comes back as NFC. It is great that the translator is more polite with Grandma, hence the extra word of deference "Xin", but that is not the difference I am noting here. But rather it is the "à" in the word "chào" that comes back two different ways.

Maybe there is some option somewhere in Google's APIs that allows you to specify the range of unicode characters you want to work from when translating. If anyone knows this, please comment.

Note: Here are two command lines I used to test this:

$ wget -O - "http://www.google.com/uds/Gtranslate?callback=google.language.callbacks.id101&context=22&q=Hello%20girl&langpair=en%7Cvi&key=notsupplied&v=1.0" 2>>/dev/null | cut -d: -f2 | cut -d"}" -f1 | od -bc

$ wget -O - "http://www.google.com/uds/Gtranslate?callback=google.language.callbacks.id101&context=22&q=Hello%20grandma&langpair=en%7Cvi&key=notsupplied&v=1.0" 2>>/dev/null | cut -d: -f2 | cut -d"}" -f1 | od -bc

It looks like this issue is happening in IE7, Firefox, and Android browsers as of this post, but it is not happening on the BlackBerry browser here on my Bold 9700. Looks like the BlackBerry OS is still backward compatible with decomposed forms as well as NFC now. I wonder how it works on the iPhone, but I will not lose any sleep over not knowing.

Dictionary - Từ điển

2010-08-02T19:01:00.014-04:00

Chắc nhiều người biết một trang web tiện dụng cho dịch một ngôn ngữ, nhưng tôi quyết định tạo ra cái này đặc biệt cho các trình duyệt web di động được cho người nào chóng dịch một vài từ nhanh hoặc từ tiếng Anh sang tiếng Việt hoặc tiếng Việt sang tiếng Anh bằng Google Translate. Xin vui lòng với.

Many folks probably have a handy page for translating some language, but I decided to create this one specifically for mobile browsers to allow folks to quickly translate a few words from either English to Vietnamese or Vietnamese to English using Google Translate. Enjoy.

This one is one for Vietnamese:
http://lightcloud.verns.net/mobile/vi/index.html

Here is one for Spanish also:
http://lightcloud.verns.net/mobile/es/index.html