Planet Blinkenshell

V for Ven… and Chris Cunningham got fired

2008-10-23T09:01:41+00:00

Yesterday I was watching television, which is a rarity, and actually found something I really wanted to watch. It was not just something to dull my mind for sleep, as I sometimes do. An edited version of V for Vendetta was on! The movie was half way through. I did not want to ruin the graphic novel which I still have not finished to watch a movie which I have not started. However, today, I saw that it was on so I recorded it! Sometime soon I will watch it.

That graphic novel is packed in a box somewhere and is sitting in my garage. Sadly, it has been borrowed for far too long. As soon as it is unpacked it shall be returned to its rightful owner. Sorry for keeping it so long, Noraa.

On a sad note, the man I suspect is truly Chris Cunningham, Josh, has been fired. Currently I do not know why but he did have plans of leaving. One night he invited me to share a pizza with him. It was then that he shared with me his dreams of becoming a diamond miner. He said his uncle, who is already a diamond miner, took a big chunk of raw diamonds and used it as a cereal bowl since it was just the right shape for one. Josh told me that if he became a miner he would look for a piece he could drink out of. All I could picture was a scrawny, pale skinned, caucasian version of Snoop Dog.

For those who have not yet seen it, Noraa has released a third episode of Botopia which you may view below. It is hilarious and I am exitedly thinking (now and then) of ideas for the fourth episode. Noraa, the third episode is amazing!

Reboot 2008-08-17

2008-08-17T09:11:43+00:00

I had to reboot the server this morning. One apache process got stuck in “uninterruptible sleep”, which is pretty bad because it’s impossible to kill it without rebooting. This has happened once before, so I’m starting to think we have some odd bug in the kernel that shows up after a month or so of uptime. I recompiled the kernel with the old SLAB allocator again, instead of SLUB (which is maybe not perfectly stable in 2.6.22).

Edit 2008-09-19: It seems there was a bug in Grsec/PaX that could cause this problem.

The downtime was a bit longer than expected because since I couldn’t kill the process, it was impossible to shut down the system properly. Then I wanted to make sure the filesystem was ok before I started up everything again.

I do not think this problem is related to some connectivity issues that have been reported lately. They are more likely related to some problem at my ISP, maybe rebooting some router or similar (the downtime is usually 2-3 min or something, and it’s happened a couple of times during the last few weeks).

Picture Gallery

2008-08-12T13:30:27+00:00

I’ve been setting up my picture gallery today and are currently working on adding tags, descriptions etc to all uploaded pictures and then adding them to the albums. I will also start uploading pictures more often but I might not add them to my posts, but they’ll be easy accessible from the menu to the right

Another thing I’m also working on is to use more “tags” for my posts. This way images with matching tag will be shown belov that post.

xintron.se on new server

2008-08-11T19:22:01+00:00

I’ve just moved my blog and other xintron.se related pages to a new server, my own Hopefully I’ll have good uptime and bandwidth enough to host this blog and in a few days/weeks other pages as well.

I’m currently working on starting up a free hosting services for stingy swedes. Hopefully this will be appreciated and a good service. I have some more things to do before I can start hosting (I need to create the registration and maybe add a forum etc for communication). And also, register a new domain.

In the future I’m thinking of starting free wordpress hosting as well. But this will be a later project. So, stay tuned for updates

Free wordpress?

2008-08-11T17:30:25+00:00

I just wanted to write a short post. I’ve updated the About page and also added a new page on how to get your own wordpress blog with a xintron.se subdomain. More information can be found here.

That’s all. I’m off to bed now. Good night!

Edit:

This service is disabled for the moment. Will be launced under a new domain in a near future.

2 year anniversary!

2008-08-10T09:42:17+00:00

Today marks the two year anniversary of the domain Blinkenshell.org, which was registered on the 10th of August 2006. I don’t have an exact date for when the signups opened, but this date is a good marker in my opinion

I want to thank everyone who has stuck with us, and helped me build this awesome community!

Not very many free shell providers make it this long, many providers disappear after crackers attacking the service, DoS attacks or general abuse from the members. Blinkenshell has done very well, there has been some issues and some downtime, but we havn’t given up!

Yay for us, and thank you again everyone for being part of this! Go Blinkenshell! \o/

#blinkenshell

2008-08-01T17:40:43+00:00

Our IRC channel #blinkenshell reached 100+ nicks yesterday, and blinkenbot reports having seen more than 1900 different nicknames since it started recording statistics 336 days ago. To help prevent any issues with abuse/spam a few changes has been introduced.

Firstly, we now have three new helpops in the channel. They will help keeping things in order, and they can kick and ban people who misbehave. Please welcome the new helpops: djweezy, billnye and InDigo176!

Sencondly, blinkenbot has a new feature which lets blinkenshell members vote to kick people in the channel. You can use the command !votekick <nickname> to vote to kick someone. Three votes are required. The command only works if you are connecting from the shell server titan. Do not abuse this command, abuse will get you kick+banned from the channel!

I believe this will help stopping abuse and/or spam as the channel grows further, it’s very important that it remains a place where you can talk and have fun without being interrputed by spammers etc. Happy hacking!

My New Employment makes Me Sick

2008-08-01T15:39:41+00:00

    Since starting my new job at Hardee’s, a fast food restaraunt, I have started eating vegan. Not for the aspect of protecting animals but for health reasons. Working there has actually stifled any urges to go back to eating meat. The smell of the meat all days gives me a stomach ache and headache. Seeing it go from frozen slabs to greasy, oil slabs has ever dispelled me of the cravings of a burger.

    This sounds a little outlandish. Let me explain. In order to get the loan for my house, my wife and I had to get jobs as soon as possible. Where we will soon be living is in a small town. There is not much employment available. Needless to say, I will be quiting soon.
    The reason I have started eating vegan, along with my wife and her parents is because we have all been reading this book called The China Study by Dr. T. Colin Campbell and Thomas M. Campbell II. It goes into detail on the authors’ findings from studying the effects of eating mainly animal proteins (anything with animal based ingredients) compaired to eating only plant proteins. There have been many other studies and tests done which compliment their findings which the book describes. Some of the other studies were done in the 1960’s and re-produced in the 1980’s (I think the 80’s) with the same results.
    The findings in these studies show that changing your diet from mainly animal proteins to plant proteins can reverse cancer and heart disease and prevent them. The results have been shown in rats and humans. It is very intriguing. If you are concerned about your health or just are interested in being healthy, this is definitely something you should read.

Well, now I am off to help people clog their arteries with huge burgers that will kill you.

Compiling SDL_gfx (2.0.17) on Visual Studio 2008 (VS9)

2008-07-11T23:47:07+00:00

IMPORTANT: Turns out I was wrong about why SDL_gfx doesn’t compile - thanks to sweetlilmre for pointing it out.

I strongly suggest using his suggestions for steps 2 and 8, whereas step 4 merely is a matter of preference. You should probably skip step 10 as well, since static_cast() is not C, but C++.

Sadly there are no officially provided binaries for SDL_gfx (unlike most other SDL_* libraries), and so I had to compile it myself. SDL_gfx, however has just about no documentation telling you how to do this - and the methods provided doesn’t even work.

Since it took me a while to get this working, so I thought I’d write it down for future reference.

1. Download and unpack the source package.
2. Rename *.c to *.cpp. This is to solve what seems to be this bug, that supposedly was fixed in VS6.
3. Extract sdlgfx.vcproj from ‘Other Builds\VisualC7.zip’ into the source directory and open it, and go through the Conversion Wizard.
4. Remove the source files from the project, and then add the *.cpp files and the *.h files to the project. This is needed because the paths in the original project file are incorrect.
5. Change target to Release.
6. Add SDL.lib to Linker -> Input -> Additional Dependencies in the project properties.
7. Add BUILD_DLL to C/C++ -> Preprocessor -> Preprocessor Definitions.
8. In SDL_gfxPrimitives, replace
#ifdef WIN32

__inline long int
lrint (double ftl)
{
int intgr;
_asm
{
fld flt
fistp intgr
};
return intgr;
}

#endif

with



#define lrint(x) (floor(x+(x>0) ? 0.5 : -0.5))

(As per this site)
9. Compile, and save the solution somewhere when asked to.
10. There should be 4 compilation errors, all of which can be solved by using static_cast<>():
SDL_rotozoom.cpp (Line 501) becomes:
pc = static_cast<tColorRGBA*>(dst->pixels);
SDL_rotozoom.cpp (Line 657) becomes:
pc = static_cast<tColorY*>(dst->pixels);
SDL_gfxPrimitives.cpp (Line 3105) becomes:
sab = sqrt(static_cast<double>(a2 + b2));
SDL_gfxPrimitives.cpp (Line 4289) becomes:
currentFontdata = static_cast<const unsigned char*>(fontdata);
11. Compile. The project should now compile correctly, and you will find sdlgfx.dll and sdlgfx.lib in the Release sub-folder of your source directory.

Now, this is all good, but I would really prefer either official binaries, *or* fixes to the code problems, and instructions that are actually up to date.

Since there was interest I’ve now uploaded my binaries as well. It’s SDL_gfx-2.0.17 compiled against SDL-1.2.13, and can be downloaded here.

Chipped Wi

2008-07-11T12:08:48+00:00

I got my Wii chipped yesterday. So far I’ve only got CoD3 running (I need to buy some more DVD’s to burn on) and it works perfect

I got the D2Pro chip which I’ve heard is one of the newest on the market. It’s updatable etc and I can’t wait until I start using the full potential of this chip, with homebrews and so on.

For now I’ll just settle with CoD3 and play that game (at least until I’ve got new DVD’s) and then, who knows? There are so many games out there so I don’t know where to begin. I’ve got Mario and Sonci at the olympic games laying around, waiting for a DVD, as well as Super Mario Galaxy. Will get Zelda later on and other big games or all games I can get my hands on This is going to be a Wii summer!

Lunged into left Brain thinking

2008-07-03T00:39:17+00:00

By nature I am mainly a right brain thinker but am very logical. Maybe I am a good mix, who knows. Lately I have been feeling as though the back left of my brain is developing a little more. Although, after some top of the iceberg research I found that that part of the brain handles vision. According to my Phrenology model this part of the brain handles such emotions as Marriage, Conjugatity and Constancy which are, sort of, the things I am dealing with now. The scary thing is that most of the feeling is located where the model reveals to me where the brain deals with vitative feelings. Yoga-tuh-boga!

Wife and I are closing on our house at the end of this month but all of my dealings with, what seem to be, left brained people is making the left side of my brain tingle a little.

If anyone has some more info on the use of the back left of the brain please give me some input. I have no time to research things lately.

On the subject of brains take a look at this video interview of the former world’s highest IQ holder who is a bouncer at a bar. The current record holder is Kim Ung-yong.

Python programming

2008-06-25T12:25:07+00:00

Now it’s time to really learn Python. To start with I’m going to try and write an application for a textbased webgame which will help people playing the game to get as much as possible out of the game.

But for now I’ll just try and get a good working login CLI and then I’ll develope from there

FRA demonstration

2008-06-24T18:37:06+00:00

This Saturday (28/6) there are demonstrations in Sweden against the new FRA-law. These demonstrations will take place in Stockholm, Göteborg, Malmö, Umeå and probably some other cities in Sweden. The demonstration will begin 12.00 CET so get your ass over there and make your voice heard!

There might be someone wondering what the FRA-law is about and basically it allows the government to analyze and go through all internet traffic that passes the Swedish borders (telephone, sms, email, chats etc). More on this can be found (in Swedish) here: http://www.stoppafralagen.nu/.

If you want to help out and spread the word about this demonstration there are posters to print and setup wherever you want. One poster that’s been made for this reason can you find here. As I said, more information on http://www.stoppafralagen.nu/ and discussions on this topic can be found on flashback.info (also in Swedish).

PHP Framework

2008-06-23T19:53:43+00:00

I know shit about this subject but I’m making one anyway. From what I’ve understand it’s common with MVC’s but atm I’ll skip that. It will just be an easy “replace” framework to begin with, but this can (if I manage to do what I want) help new people to make pages with PHP quick without being to complicated.

Since I’ll try and keep it simple (very simple to begin with) and create the framework as I would want it (without no actual knowledge about frameworks) it will be very limited. But hopefully a release will give me feedback and suggestions on what to do next. If so, I’ll try to fit the needs of the users (if any :/ ) and hopefully get something out of this, people using it and when coding it I’ll evolve myself.

Into the Wild

2008-06-22T16:59:38+00:00

This movie directed by Sean Penn is one of the best movies I’ve seen for a long time! Just the nature scenes are amazing.

The movie is based on the life of Christopher McCandless. The “lonely” life he chosed after graduation when he left everything and went away. When he gave up love and friendship and tried to become one with the nature. The movie is based on the Christpher’s own diary notes and from his sister Carine.

The first thought I got when seeing this movie was “I want to do that”. Just go away, without anything except a tent and some other survival things. But I just wanted to do this for about a month or two and that’s why I wondered, what made Christopher go one instead of returning home after a while?

There is little insight in what’s going on inside Christopher’s head in the film. Into the Wild is a very artistic movie. There are lovely nature scenes from Alaska and all the places Chris visits.

Emile Hirsch plays Christopher and is perfect for the role. It’s easy to symphazie with Chris in the movie and I can’t say anything else than thumbs up for Emile!

I’m not usually rating my reviews, however, I have to rate this one. Even though the movie is two and a half hour the time is worth it! I’m giving this 5/5 and I know I’m going to see this movie many times in the future!

Coding alone

2008-06-21T08:44:19+00:00

It seem like I’m on my own on my PHP project. The other guy that I was suppose to work with haven’t done shit. He got an easy task, creating the register page and he’s been working on that for a few weeks now without getting done. Therefor I have to tell him that I’m going to do this page alone.

This time it’s not about my game. I wouldn’t dream about coding that game together with someone else since I’ve always wanted to make a game by myself! No, it’s about a different page. It’s not a “great” idea and it’s not a big site. But it can be very usable when it’s done.

As most times I don’t really want to say too much about the idea since there might be someone “copying” the idea and creating their own page. But think “memory bank” or “people contact database”. That’s all I can say for now.

As I said before, it’s not a big page and it should not take long to create. However, the parts I’m coding atm are taking very long but there’s a reason for this. I’m learning JavaScript and AJAX (or to be precisely, I’m learning to use jQuery for this page). That’s why the coding is going so slow. The PHP coding and everything around that is flowing as it should, but as soon as I’m done with something, I want to make it nicer and easier for the users to use and therefor I start making it accessible in easy ways using js. But it shouldn’t be too hard to get it to work as I want

Earn money on your blog

2008-06-20T21:48:56+00:00

It’s possible to earn money on your blog. All you have to do is to write posts from time to time and if you’re lucky, you’ll get a few bucks or so

I’ve been blogging for about 5 months now. During this time I’ve earned $1.74 from Google AdSense ads. That’s not much since it was over 5 months! However, yesterday I had 274 page views and one click on the ads. That generated $1.34, not bad imo. Don’t take me wrong, I don’t blog to earn money but I don’t say no to the money either

I started blogging because I felt that it was amusing, just writing my thoughts etc. Then this evolved to a few help guides which has been much popular. However, the basic idea is still to blog about what I feel like. I could blog about stuff that I know would give me a bigger audience but why? Sure, that might generate more money but do I really want to blog about stuff that doesn’t interests me? Of course not!

That’s why I continue like this instead. Blogging about what ever comes to my mind, wasn’t that what blogging was all about when it was first introduced? I don’t think they people starting blogging did it to earn money, it was more like a digital diary.

Well, if you found this post through a search engine (like Google) and thought that I would give you tips on how to earn money, too bad. I just wanted to write that it feels good to get a few dollars for doing something I like without the intention to actually earn money. That’s just a big+!

FireFox World Record - The Result

2008-06-19T17:30:15+00:00

Congratulations to Mozilla that got over 8 millions (8,000,000) downloads in 24 hours on their FireFox 3 release! The Guinness judges are reviewing this record attempt but there shouldn’t be much doubt that this is a new world record. So, again, congratulations!

While at it, there are more information about the FireFox release. When Mozilla shipped FireFox 2 the IE-team sent them a cake. When shipping FireFox 3 the IE-team continued the tradition and sent a cake this year as well. A nice response would be for the Mozilla team to send a cake back to the IE-team with a recipe on how to bake a cake

The FF3 was a success, wasn’t it? Well, Tipping Point found a bug after about five hours of using the new FF-release. They didn’t want to say what the bug was concerning but they stated that it was a serious bug. There are still no response from Mozilla about this bug.

Even if there was a bug found it doesn’t change the fact that the FF3 release reached over 8 million downloads in 24 hours. It’s amazing if you think about it. No wonder Mozilla’s servers crashed the first hour. Already after a few minutes there were over 14 000 downloads per minute and that was too much for Mozilla’s servers to handle. It took little over 2 hours to get the servers running normally again.

More or less, FireFox is one of the best application out there today (if not the best) and I wish them all the best and I hope to see them gaining more and more users and hopefully become the biggest browser on the market (since it is without doubt the best browser out there!).

Bathing?

2008-06-19T15:09:45+00:00

Well, I don’t mind taking a swim in the ocean when it’s warm outside, but then it has to be so warm so I can’t stand it anymore and the last resort is to take a swim. But my girlfriend on the other hand doesn’t feel the same way as I do

So, she took a swim today, in Åhus. It wasn’t even sunny outside but she didn’t care. I don’t know how anyone can love swimming as much as she does. Is it good bathing when it’s cold in the water? I wouldn’t do that but that’s just me

Instead of taking a swim, I got myself an ice cream (well, Emilia got one as well) And damn, after eating that ice cream I was full. You really get much ice cream, too bad I didn’t take a picture so I could show how big it was (and it was a medium, they have larger ).

Anyhow, here are some pictures

[Show as slideshow]

FireFox World Record

2008-06-16T18:43:36+00:00

Do you want to be a part of setting a Guinness World Record for most software downloaded in 24 Hours? Well, tomorrow is your chance! FireFox 3 will try to take that record and they need your help.

So, tomorrow the 17th of June during those 24 hours the record will be broken (I don’t think it will be to hard to break, but you can never be sure). Participate and help spread (imo) the best browser out there, I will! Also, version 3 is much faster and uses less memory than the previous version.

Firefox 3 Download Day, June 17, 2008

Graduation

2008-06-15T16:14:19+00:00

Graduation is now over! I’m a free man (if you can say so?). So, now I got this feeling, I have to get a job to be able to pay rent for my apartment in Växjö :/ But I will hopefully get one quite easy so I can stay there and continue training in Växjö as well (which is better than in Kristianstad).

As I stated in my last post, I would add pictures in this post, so here the are

About Krullis, he got the best result you can have when graduating so now he can basically continue study wherever he wants. Congratulations! I know that someone probably wonders about my grades, they were more than ok I’m happy at least, but sure, they could have been better.

Flash cycler

2008-06-14T23:22:14+00:00

Since I had a some time on my hands I decided to make a web page that cycles through a collection of flash movies and shows each one for a specified amount of time.

It should work in most modern browsers - I’ve verified with Opera and Firefox (Internet Explorer doesn’t work).

You can find the source of the page here, and a sample of it in use here.

Official ChaCha Guide

2008-06-12T00:57:35+00:00

NOTE: If you are interested in becoming a guide and have questions email me, and feel free to us my email for the person who referred you. My email is

I’m officially a ChaCha guide. I’m making 20 cents per question. Some of them are quite easy but others are very hard such as one I received today: how many Milky Way candy bars does it take to reach from the surface of the earth to the surface of the moon? It was 200 thousand something or 2 Million something, I cannot remember. Other ones, that are more simple are simply asking for jokes, which I can easily provide because I am full of them. That’s about all I have to say today. I will be devoting some more of my precious time to ChaCha and answering questions coming from around the nation.

Good night. listen

P.S. I had to calculate how many Milky Way bars for that answer myself… it was fun.

It’s over!

2008-06-11T11:02:28+00:00

There, I’ve graduated and school is over! I can’t even begin to describe how wonderful it is! At the moment I don’t have much more to write about this, a longer version will be posted this weekend with pictures from my graduation and so on. Until that time I’ll just keep on party everyday and celebrate this as much and as good as I can

Köszönöm

My first blog post using Jott

2008-06-08T14:53:59+00:00

This is my first blog post using jott. It is an online service, a telephone service actually, also you can use to make notes to yourself or email friends or text message them. You can even post to your blog or to Twitter using this. I just wanted to share this with you all. It’s at Jott.com. Check it out. listen

*** Begin Typed Part of Entry ***

That was my first test using Jott. I am very impressed. It only took about two minutes to process. At the moment I am not sure whether it is a person who transcribes the message or if it is done by voice recognition software. The actual text was just a little off but if you listened to the actual recording you can hear that I just woke up and my sentence flow fortifies the chaos theory.

Google 411

Recently, I found out about a few helpful voice services. Each one is FREE! I heard of 1-800-GOOG-411 some time ago but did not believe it was actually free! It is and very helpful. It is certainly much easier then texting Google and reading the response. Plus you cannot text while driving a car… well you can… and I did once. Nothing happened but it was stupid of me. I recommend Google 411.

Cha Cha

There is another one that I think would come in handy now and then, maybe in a dispute over some menial fact with a friend, like, Who is the smartest person in the world? In a situation like this Cha Cha would probably return an answer like: Marilyn vos Savant, an American magazine columnist, author, lecturer and playwright who rose to fame through her listing in the Guinness Book of World Records under “Highest IQ”.

Cha Cha is easy to use. Simply dial 1-800-2-ChaCha and ask your question. A few minutes later you will receive a text message with the answer. The questions are recorded and played back to someone who searches for the answer online. So there is some room for error but for the most part the answers seem to be spot on.

One thing I did not like is that you receive three text messages. One confirming that your question has been submitted, another confirming that it has been submitted and that other charges may apply (I am unsure what the other charges are) and finally the third one answering your question. If you are like me and do not have text messaging plan, this could add up quickly if you use Cha Cha often.