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Viewing category "Computers"

First motorcycle driving lesson!

2009-01-15 18:19:13

Hi all!

I'm very aware that it's been quite some time since my last post, but I just don't feel like blogging about every day stuff all the time. Sorry for that... Winking icon

Anyway, today has been quite interesting since I took my first motorcycle lesson and I very much liked it! So I'm definitely going to continue with it and hopefully have my license soon. For those interested, I've driven a Honda CBF 500, but obviously I can't really put up an opinion about it since I've nothing to compare it with... Razz icon

On the more computer side of things, there are some nice things too. Mostly related to QtMPC though. Roeland has been working on integrating last.fm support (context information and scrobbling) into QtMPC and I've been working to get KDE support in. KDE 4 support that is... Winking icon I must say, everything is turning out quite nicely. If you want to see what it looks like, grab the latest svn checkout, since the screenshots on the website are heavily outdated.

I could talk about Qt being available under LGPL and all that stuff, but other people have already done that, so I'll leave it at this Winking icon

Posted in:

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	"id" => "176",
	"created" => "2009-01-15 18:19:13",
	"title" => "First motorcycle driving lesson!",
	"body" => "<p>Hi all!</p>

<p>I'm very aware that it's been quite some time since my last post, but I just don't feel like blogging about every day stuff all the time. Sorry for that... ;)
</p>

<p>
Anyway, today has been quite interesting since I took my first motorcycle lesson and I very much liked it! So I'm definitely going to continue with it and hopefully have my license soon. For those interested, I've driven a Honda CBF 500, but obviously I can't really put up an opinion about it since I've nothing to compare it with... :P
</p>

<p>
On the more computer side of things, there are some nice things too. Mostly related to QtMPC though. Roeland has been working on integrating last.fm support (context information and scrobbling) into QtMPC and I've been working to get KDE support in. KDE 4 support that is... ;) I must say, everything is turning out quite nicely. If you want to see what it looks like, grab the latest svn checkout, since the screenshots on the website are heavily outdated.
</p>

<p>
I could talk about Qt being available under LGPL and all that stuff, but other people have already done that, so I'll leave it at this ;)
</p>"
),
	array(
	"id" => "175",
	"created" => "2008-10-28 15:00:51",
	"title" => "QtMPC 0.4.0 released!",
	"body" => "<p>Hi all, just a quick promotion for QtMPC since it's been quite a while since there was something new to tell about it and besides, this blog has some advantages (planet... ahum)... ;)</p>

<p>Anyway, last weekend version 0.4.0 has been released with some rather nice improvements leading to better performance. Just as a reminder, QtMPC is a front-end for MPD.</p>

<p>For further information, have a look here: <a href="http://lowblog.nl/2008/10/26/qtmpc-040-released/">http://lowblog.nl/2008/10/26/qtmpc-040-released/</a></p>"
),
	array(
	"id" => "174",
	"created" => "2007-12-31 15:25:06",
	"title" => "QtMPC",
	"body" => "<p>
Hi all,
</p>

<p>
Just wanted to let you all know about a little project I've been working on. After using my media pc for a couple of days I figured the webinterface was way too demanding because it's creating a new connection every second. Not that the media pc is too slow to handle it, but if it's not really necessary than why not use something better right?
So I started looking for non-webbased gui clients and found some nice ones. But neither of them really made me want to use it on the long term. So I decided to write my own client since I hadn't been programming in Qt for a while and I really enjoy doing that. QtMPC was born...
</p>

<p>
A friend of mine and myself decided we could also set up a website containing all (future) projects of ourselves, though currently it only contains QtMPC.
</p>

<p>
You can get the source by using subversion, for more details read: <a href="http://lowblog.nl/category/qtmpc/">http://lowblog.nl/category/qtmpc/</a>
</p>"
),
	array(
	"id" => "173",
	"created" => "2007-12-22 18:42:53",
	"title" => "Media PC",
	"body" => "<p>Hi all!</p>

<p>First of all, I want to wish everyone reading this a Merry Christmas!</p>

<p>So what's happened? Nothing special really, just busy working on projects for university, preparing for tests and so on...</p>

<p>There's one thing I don't want to keep from you though, especially since I finally have time to set this thing up. A couple of weeks ago I ordered the parts for my media pc. It's a via epia based system, with an optical audio out. More specific:</p>

<ul>
<li>Procase Noah case (black)</li>
<li>VIA EPIA EX10000EG</li>
<li>1GB memory</li>
<li>Fujitsu MHV2160BT 160 GB, 4200 Rpm, 8 MB, 2.5"</li>
</ul>

<p>
The hard drive is basically for a notebook, but serves its purpose well in this system since it retrieves the actual music files from the server.
</p>

<p>
I'm currently installing Gentoo on this system and just finished adding another network cable to my room... ;) Hopefully I can at least finish bootstrapping and emerge -e system before the end of the evening and start playing around with <a href="http://mpd.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page">mpd</a> tomorrow. I'll keep you posted and I'll try to make some pictures tomorrow.
</p>"
),
	array(
	"id" => "172",
	"created" => "2007-11-10 13:42:25",
	"title" => "New laptop",
	"body" => "<p>
Hi all,
</p>

<p>
Yesterday I became the proud owner of a new Dell Vostro 1500 and what's the best way to celebrate this? Right, install Gentoo... ;)</p>

<p>
So after some thinking I decided to go for the no-multilib amd64 install, since if I'm desperate to see, for instance, a flash movie, I can still use my old laptop. Anyway, it seems that open source flash alternatives are getting better each day, so that might solve the problem eventually. Yesterday I did the stage 1 + 2 part and installed a kernel so it could boot properly without the livecd. (yes, I still like to bootstrap... :D) Today I installed xorg and I'm now busy compiling all the KDE packages I want. So that pretty much leaves me waiting for it to finish.</p>

<p>To end this post, here are the specs:</p>

<ul>
<li>Intel Core 2 Duo T7500 (2.2GHz, 4MB)</li>
<li>2GB RAM</li>
<li>160GB 5400rpm hd</li>
<li>Nvidia 8600GT 256MB</li>
<li>15.4" TrueLife screen (1280x800)</li>
<li>Some other stuff, NIC, Wi-fi etc. which is less important</li>
</ul>

<p>So far I'm very happy with it!</p>"
),
	array(
	"id" => "170",
	"created" => "2007-10-16 15:36:34",
	"title" => "Samba 3.0.25 and kernel 2.6.23",
	"body" => "<p>
Hi people, here's just a quick reminder for something that caused me some trouble. I just switched to the fresh 2.6.23 linux kernel and already had samba 3.0.25 running on my server for a while. Certainly I couldn't mount any samba shared folders on my clients anymore and <i>dmesg</i> gave some weird error messages. Finally I found a topic on the gentoo forums which stated that you have to emerge mount-cifs if you're running this software combination.
</p>

<p>
So, just to let you all know and maybe save some trouble... ;)
</p>"
),
	array(
	"id" => "169",
	"created" => "2007-10-11 16:18:29",
	"title" => "Dream Theater",
	"body" => "<p>
Last Tuesday I went to the Dream Theater concert in Ahoy (Rotterdam). Unfortunately cameras weren't allowed and I had to leave my camera behind at the entrance, but I still took some pictures with my phone. They're not quite good though... Apart from that, the concert was absolutely great! :P They made practically no mistakes, at least as far as I can tell and they simply rocked big time. They mostly played songs from their 3 latest albums but also some older songs from the "Scenes From A Memory" album for instance. Jordan Rudess also had a portable mini keyboard which he used for some solos,  which is good because usually only John Petrucci shows off big time... ;) Anyway, I guess I don't have to tell you all that I enjoyed it very much. Let's hope they come again soon.
</p>

<p>
As for Octave, I've been able to compile it but the dependencies it has really are impossible to figure out. They have their own buildsystem which really doesn't make sense to me and quite frankly I don't feel the need to spend that much time on it. Especially now I have the linux version of matlab... :P
</p>"
),
	array(
	"id" => "168",
	"created" => "2007-09-28 10:22:19",
	"title" => "Octave",
	"body" => "<p>Hi all,</p>

<p>Since I need a matlab or at least matlab-compatible environment for a course at university I figured it wouldn't really be a problem since there is Octave. Unfortunately, the version in the main portage tree is heavily outdated and thus not really usable since I need it to be as compatible with matlab as possible and this seems to have improved in the latest releases.</p>

<p>
I can hear you say: so, make your own ebuilds! Yes, that's what I'm (trying) to do right now. After recompiling gcc with fortran support I modified the latest ebuild in the tree to work with the latest and greatest release of Octave but soon found out that it has some dependencies on libraries which are outdated as well and actually didn't even compile on my system. So basically I'm currently trying to get things to work from bottom to top. I'm currently testing the (updated) ebuilds for the libraries (blas-atlas, lapack) and later on I'm going to try to compile Octave again.
<p/>

<p>
If there's anyone interested in an overlay, let me know. I'll see if I can make one. Or if you just want to test/try the ebuilds, let me know too, I'll just mail them to you.
</p>"
),
	array(
	"id" => "167",
	"created" => "2007-09-14 14:12:31",
	"title" => "New server trouble...",
	"body" => "<p>
My old homeserver was getting a bit slow, especially when you consider that it's a Via Epia system that runs at 600Mhz and has 256MB of memory. This particular feeling got even stronger when I uploaded my pictures of my last holiday (about 500) and it had to create thumbnails for every picture and everything.
</p>

<p>
Since the server is in my room and I look my room to be quiet when I sleep I immediately started looking for a more modern Epia system and eventually the Epia LN with a Eden CPU at 1Ghz got my attention. I ordered it together with 1GB of memory and a 320GB HD (the old one was 80GB). Everything fine until then.
</p>

<p>
The new parts were delivered at my house and of course I wanted to try it out right away. So I unpacked it, assembled it and put it into the case. I connected the power supply and even could see the leds of the network card burning... But, that's about the only thing it would do. When I switched the whole thing on the power led burned for an instant and after that the whole board was dead. Even the network card didn't produce any light anymore... I tried a whole lot of things until I realized the power supply possibly couldn't produce enough power and thus I used the power supply of my used-to-be desktop system. Guess what, everything worked fine! Since the power supply was as big as the whole system this wasn't an ideal situation and therefore I ordered a PicoPSU from the same shop which can deliver more power than the old one. It arrived today and now everything works smoothly.
</p>

<p>
So I almost spent a whole week figuring out the problem and waiting for new parts. Why can't things just work straight away? Well, at least I'm happy with the improved performance... ;)
</p>"
),
	array(
	"id" => "149",
	"created" => "2007-02-24 23:28:09",
	"title" => "knopperdisk 0.4.0",
	"body" => "<p>Just a short message to tell you that knopperdisk 0.4.0 is now officially released. For more info take a look at: <a href="http://knopperdisk.knopper.tk">http://knopperdisk.knopper.tk</a>.
</p>

<p>
I'd say, let's give it a go... ;)
</p>"
),
	array(
	"id" => "148",
	"created" => "2007-02-18 13:51:33",
	"title" => "knopperdisk 0.4.0 pre-release",
	"body" => "<p>Hi all,</p>

<p>I would like to announce it here first before adding the release at <a href="http://knopperdisk.knopper.tk">http://knopperdisk.knopper.tk</a>, which could use a facelift by the way, but that's for later... ;)
</p>

<p>I've just made a shiny new release which features the latest software available in the Gentoo portage tree. The best part though, is that the medium containing knopperdisk is now detected automatically. I don't know if there are any old users of knopperdisk reading this, but previously you had to enter the block device containing knopperdisk during boot time. This is now all taken care of. It also includes a fairly recent kernel (2.6.19.1 with some Gentoo patches). I already know some people who are going to test this, but I'd like to invite everyone to give it a test as well and report in this blogpost as comment or using any other method (contact form...). I will post it on the official site after a few days.</p>

<p>
It's available for download here: <a href="http://www.knopper.tk/kdisk/knopperdiskusb-0.4.0.tar.bz2">http://www.knopper.tk/kdisk/knopperdiskusb-0.4.0.tar.bz2</a>.
</p>

<p>
A known issue is that /mnt isn't mounted tmpfs yet, so you can't add custom mountpoints there unless you do so manually with: mount -t tmpfs none /mnt
</p>

<p>Have fun with it!</p>"
),
	array(
	"id" => "147",
	"created" => "2007-01-14 16:21:04",
	"title" => "QDiveLogger",
	"body" => "<p>Dear readers,</p>

<p>
The moment is there, again... I'm starting another attempt at creating a program which allows you to store info about scuba dives you've made on the computer. I know I know, I've been starting this for quite some times now. First in php-gtk, then Qt3.x and now finally in Qt4.2.
</p>

<p>
I must say, I really feel confident about it this time, Qt has really improved and so have I actually... ;) My skills are somewhat improved and although I'm really having a hard time crawling through the Qt API documentation sometimes it really feels good. The MVC pattern implemented in Qt4 is really cool and the QDataWidgetMapper is just divine. So I'm really having a lot of fun creating the program this time, while previous times I was mostly irritated and annoyed.
</p>

<p>
The program uses an sqlite database as back-end and (obviously) Qt as toolkit, version 4.2 to be specific. I don't use any KDE specific libraries so when the functionality has improved it should be able to run just fine on Windows and MacOSX as well. Of course the source code will be made available since I'm using a GPL licensed version of Qt. That's not a problem at all though, actually I like it that way.
</p>

<p>
So, I'll just continue working on it and let you all know when it's in a useable state.
</p>"
),
	array(
	"id" => "146",
	"created" => "2007-01-07 17:00:00",
	"title" => "New mp3 player",
	"body" => "<p>
Unfortunately my iPod mini started to produce a very bad sound quality with a lot of noise and it got worse every day. It turned out that the headphone connector of the iPod somehow managed to get a bit loose and thus causing a lot of trouble.
</p>

<p>
So I looked around a bit, see if I could get something better. Not necessarily an iPod again. Finally I came up with the Cowon iAudio M5 after thinking about an X5 of the same brand for some time. The only difference is that the X5 has a color display and the M5 does not. I quickly came to realize that I really don't wanna play movies or view pictures on my mp3 player and the 50 Euros saved by choosing the M5 are earned pretty easily... So the M5 it is. Here's a <a href="http://www.cowonglobal.com/product/product_M5_feature.php">link</a> with some more info about the player.
</p>

<p>
As with everything, the new player has some advantages and disadvantages. The advantages are very good sound quality, it really sounds a lot better than the iPod used to and it's fully supported by Linux. Even upgrading the firmware is as easy as copying the new firmware file into a folder of the player, restart the player and you're done. Whereas with the iPod I had to go to a Windows computer and download the updater (executable).
</p>

<p>
The main disadvantage is the menu, in particular how the songs are ordered and categorized. The iPod had a database where the iAudio simply has a "file browser" in which the files are sorted in alphabetical order, not in the order in which they appear on the album. So you have to create playlists, which I really don't like, but what can you do... Anyway, the sound really makes up for it.
</p>"
),
	array(
	"id" => "145",
	"created" => "2007-01-03 16:13:28",
	"title" => "Gentoo/FreeBSD",
	"body" => "<p>So, I just finished installing Gentoo/FreeBSD, well, at least the base system. I've been trying to get this to work for a couple of days now along with some other things and it really started to irritate me that the thing wouldn't boot. I got a nice hex dump scrolling on and on whenn I loaded /boot/loader or /boot/kernel/kernel.</p>

<p>
Now, here's the solution, at least for me... The motherboard (Asus A8N-VM) is known for having a bad ACPI implementation and some other things which I found out after several hours of googling and trying things... :( So, as always, the solution is pretty simple, Asus has a beta bios available on their site which I used to flash the bios and the thing just works like a charm now.
</p>

<p>
I'm now compiling x.org and will compile KDE later on. I must say, it feels pretty nice to work with FreeBSD in combination with Gentoo. I've installed vanilla FreeBSD some time ago and sort of liked it, but not enough and so I switched back to Gentoo. There's still a lot to explore though, as I'm still pretty much a *BSD noob, but that's good :P
</p>"
),
	array(
	"id" => "141",
	"created" => "2006-10-16 18:26:50",
	"title" => "Autumn break, not really...",
	"body" => "<p>
So, it's been a while since my last post and certain interesting things have happened. I'm currently having a week off of school so we can prepare for the exams next week. I've to make exams for "Operating Systems and Networks" and "Computer Graphics and Lineair Algebra". The latter one basically involves a lot of matrix calculations... ;) Not really something I like doing but the results (the graphics in this case) are pretty cool which makes up for it.
</p>

<p>Further I've been looking for an apartment in Amsterdam the last couple of weeks and had a look at some. There are currently 2 favorites which we'll probably look at again, but this time with my Dad. A friend from university wants to stay in the apartment as well so it's going to be pretty nice. I save about 3 hours a day travelling, so I guess it's worth it.</p>

<p>
And if this wasn't enough, I'm also involved in a pretty nice web application project. Essentially it's an online learning environment. It's already written by another company but they didn't deliver what they promised. I'm not going to give away any details, but trust me, the code (php) looks horrible. This is one of those applications which makes PHP look like a language for amateurs, while in fact it depends on the programmer. Anyway, I'm very satisfied with the work I did so far. One part in particular was making the database consistent again. I can assure you, that sucks... :D But after some scripting it was quite straight forward, just checking for non-existing foreign keys. Those references now have been made explicit by converting the tables to InnoDB which makes things a little easier to manage. There's still a lot to do though, which is good! :P</p>"
),
	array(
	"id" => "140",
	"created" => "2006-09-16 18:53:17",
	"title" => "Misc computer stuff",
	"body" => "<p>A few weeks ago the motherboard of my main desktop system decided to get fried. It didn't smell nice, trust me.. ;) Anyway, after some thinking I decided not to buy a new system right away but wait instead. Wait on what? Well, basically I'm waiting what the future will bring us regarding AMD vs. Intel. I used Intel cpu's until the p3 and then switched to AMD because their quality/price ratio was pretty good at the time. But at the moment the difference between them isn't that big anymore (in my opinion) and although I'm tended to choose for the underdog (AMD) I'm really not that sure because of the latest creation of Intel, obviously I'm talking about the Conroe. After reading some reviews and tests it's clear that the Conroe pretty much beats the Athlon. I'm just not in a buying mood at this moment I guess. I've got my laptop which I'm using pretty intensive lately (duh...) and I'm pretty happy with it. Just to give it some more breath I bougth 2GB memory recently and disabled the hard disk swap. After all this I hardly notice any difference in speed compared to my desktop, except for the hard disk performance. I'm not really bothered by that though.</p>

<p>So we'll see what happens.. or not.</p>

<p>Further university started of course, the courses are pretty interesting (Operating Systems and Networks, Graphics, Algorithms and Complexity and some more). The group has become smaller though, it's really a shame there aren't any more people who choose to study computer science. The year I'm in currently consists of 10 people, which is obviously not much.</p>

<p>That's all for now :P</p>"
),
	array(
	"id" => "133",
	"created" => "2006-08-13 14:00:40",
	"title" => "Do you trust 'em?",
	"body" => "<p>For Dutch people, but other people might be interested as well: <a href="http://www.wijvertrouwenstemcomputersniet.nl/">http://www.wijvertrouwenstemcomputersniet.nl/</a> </p>

<p>Do you trust computers or those who made them? :P</p>"
)
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	"title" => "First motorcycle driving lesson!",
	"body" => "<p>Hi all!</p>

<p>I'm very aware that it's been quite some time since my last post, but I just don't feel like blogging about every day stuff all the time. Sorry for that... ;)
</p>

<p>
Anyway, today has been quite interesting since I took my first motorcycle lesson and I very much liked it! So I'm definitely going to continue with it and hopefully have my license soon. For those interested, I've driven a Honda CBF 500, but obviously I can't really put up an opinion about it since I've nothing to compare it with... :P
</p>

<p>
On the more computer side of things, there are some nice things too. Mostly related to QtMPC though. Roeland has been working on integrating last.fm support (context information and scrobbling) into QtMPC and I've been working to get KDE support in. KDE 4 support that is... ;) I must say, everything is turning out quite nicely. If you want to see what it looks like, grab the latest svn checkout, since the screenshots on the website are heavily outdated.
</p>

<p>
I could talk about Qt being available under LGPL and all that stuff, but other people have already done that, so I'll leave it at this ;)
</p>"
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View::render() - CORE/cake/libs/view/view.php, line 419
Controller::render() - CORE/cake/libs/controller/controller.php, line 913
Dispatcher::_invoke() - CORE/cake/dispatcher.php, line 207
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Notice (8): Undefined index:  Category [APP/views/categories/view.ctp, line 30]Code | Context        }

        echo $html->link($post['Category'][$y]['name'], '/categories/view/' . $post['Category'][$y++]['id']);
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$posts	=	array(
	array(
	"id" => "176",
	"created" => "2009-01-15 18:19:13",
	"title" => "First motorcycle driving lesson!",
	"body" => "<p>Hi all!</p>

<p>I'm very aware that it's been quite some time since my last post, but I just don't feel like blogging about every day stuff all the time. Sorry for that... ;)
</p>

<p>
Anyway, today has been quite interesting since I took my first motorcycle lesson and I very much liked it! So I'm definitely going to continue with it and hopefully have my license soon. For those interested, I've driven a Honda CBF 500, but obviously I can't really put up an opinion about it since I've nothing to compare it with... :P
</p>

<p>
On the more computer side of things, there are some nice things too. Mostly related to QtMPC though. Roeland has been working on integrating last.fm support (context information and scrobbling) into QtMPC and I've been working to get KDE support in. KDE 4 support that is... ;) I must say, everything is turning out quite nicely. If you want to see what it looks like, grab the latest svn checkout, since the screenshots on the website are heavily outdated.
</p>

<p>
I could talk about Qt being available under LGPL and all that stuff, but other people have already done that, so I'll leave it at this ;)
</p>"
),
	array(
	"id" => "175",
	"created" => "2008-10-28 15:00:51",
	"title" => "QtMPC 0.4.0 released!",
	"body" => "<p>Hi all, just a quick promotion for QtMPC since it's been quite a while since there was something new to tell about it and besides, this blog has some advantages (planet... ahum)... ;)</p>

<p>Anyway, last weekend version 0.4.0 has been released with some rather nice improvements leading to better performance. Just as a reminder, QtMPC is a front-end for MPD.</p>

<p>For further information, have a look here: <a href="http://lowblog.nl/2008/10/26/qtmpc-040-released/">http://lowblog.nl/2008/10/26/qtmpc-040-released/</a></p>"
),
	array(
	"id" => "174",
	"created" => "2007-12-31 15:25:06",
	"title" => "QtMPC",
	"body" => "<p>
Hi all,
</p>

<p>
Just wanted to let you all know about a little project I've been working on. After using my media pc for a couple of days I figured the webinterface was way too demanding because it's creating a new connection every second. Not that the media pc is too slow to handle it, but if it's not really necessary than why not use something better right?
So I started looking for non-webbased gui clients and found some nice ones. But neither of them really made me want to use it on the long term. So I decided to write my own client since I hadn't been programming in Qt for a while and I really enjoy doing that. QtMPC was born...
</p>

<p>
A friend of mine and myself decided we could also set up a website containing all (future) projects of ourselves, though currently it only contains QtMPC.
</p>

<p>
You can get the source by using subversion, for more details read: <a href="http://lowblog.nl/category/qtmpc/">http://lowblog.nl/category/qtmpc/</a>
</p>"
),
	array(
	"id" => "173",
	"created" => "2007-12-22 18:42:53",
	"title" => "Media PC",
	"body" => "<p>Hi all!</p>

<p>First of all, I want to wish everyone reading this a Merry Christmas!</p>

<p>So what's happened? Nothing special really, just busy working on projects for university, preparing for tests and so on...</p>

<p>There's one thing I don't want to keep from you though, especially since I finally have time to set this thing up. A couple of weeks ago I ordered the parts for my media pc. It's a via epia based system, with an optical audio out. More specific:</p>

<ul>
<li>Procase Noah case (black)</li>
<li>VIA EPIA EX10000EG</li>
<li>1GB memory</li>
<li>Fujitsu MHV2160BT 160 GB, 4200 Rpm, 8 MB, 2.5"</li>
</ul>

<p>
The hard drive is basically for a notebook, but serves its purpose well in this system since it retrieves the actual music files from the server.
</p>

<p>
I'm currently installing Gentoo on this system and just finished adding another network cable to my room... ;) Hopefully I can at least finish bootstrapping and emerge -e system before the end of the evening and start playing around with <a href="http://mpd.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page">mpd</a> tomorrow. I'll keep you posted and I'll try to make some pictures tomorrow.
</p>"
),
	array(
	"id" => "172",
	"created" => "2007-11-10 13:42:25",
	"title" => "New laptop",
	"body" => "<p>
Hi all,
</p>

<p>
Yesterday I became the proud owner of a new Dell Vostro 1500 and what's the best way to celebrate this? Right, install Gentoo... ;)</p>

<p>
So after some thinking I decided to go for the no-multilib amd64 install, since if I'm desperate to see, for instance, a flash movie, I can still use my old laptop. Anyway, it seems that open source flash alternatives are getting better each day, so that might solve the problem eventually. Yesterday I did the stage 1 + 2 part and installed a kernel so it could boot properly without the livecd. (yes, I still like to bootstrap... :D) Today I installed xorg and I'm now busy compiling all the KDE packages I want. So that pretty much leaves me waiting for it to finish.</p>

<p>To end this post, here are the specs:</p>

<ul>
<li>Intel Core 2 Duo T7500 (2.2GHz, 4MB)</li>
<li>2GB RAM</li>
<li>160GB 5400rpm hd</li>
<li>Nvidia 8600GT 256MB</li>
<li>15.4" TrueLife screen (1280x800)</li>
<li>Some other stuff, NIC, Wi-fi etc. which is less important</li>
</ul>

<p>So far I'm very happy with it!</p>"
),
	array(
	"id" => "170",
	"created" => "2007-10-16 15:36:34",
	"title" => "Samba 3.0.25 and kernel 2.6.23",
	"body" => "<p>
Hi people, here's just a quick reminder for something that caused me some trouble. I just switched to the fresh 2.6.23 linux kernel and already had samba 3.0.25 running on my server for a while. Certainly I couldn't mount any samba shared folders on my clients anymore and <i>dmesg</i> gave some weird error messages. Finally I found a topic on the gentoo forums which stated that you have to emerge mount-cifs if you're running this software combination.
</p>

<p>
So, just to let you all know and maybe save some trouble... ;)
</p>"
),
	array(
	"id" => "169",
	"created" => "2007-10-11 16:18:29",
	"title" => "Dream Theater",
	"body" => "<p>
Last Tuesday I went to the Dream Theater concert in Ahoy (Rotterdam). Unfortunately cameras weren't allowed and I had to leave my camera behind at the entrance, but I still took some pictures with my phone. They're not quite good though... Apart from that, the concert was absolutely great! :P They made practically no mistakes, at least as far as I can tell and they simply rocked big time. They mostly played songs from their 3 latest albums but also some older songs from the "Scenes From A Memory" album for instance. Jordan Rudess also had a portable mini keyboard which he used for some solos,  which is good because usually only John Petrucci shows off big time... ;) Anyway, I guess I don't have to tell you all that I enjoyed it very much. Let's hope they come again soon.
</p>

<p>
As for Octave, I've been able to compile it but the dependencies it has really are impossible to figure out. They have their own buildsystem which really doesn't make sense to me and quite frankly I don't feel the need to spend that much time on it. Especially now I have the linux version of matlab... :P
</p>"
),
	array(
	"id" => "168",
	"created" => "2007-09-28 10:22:19",
	"title" => "Octave",
	"body" => "<p>Hi all,</p>

<p>Since I need a matlab or at least matlab-compatible environment for a course at university I figured it wouldn't really be a problem since there is Octave. Unfortunately, the version in the main portage tree is heavily outdated and thus not really usable since I need it to be as compatible with matlab as possible and this seems to have improved in the latest releases.</p>

<p>
I can hear you say: so, make your own ebuilds! Yes, that's what I'm (trying) to do right now. After recompiling gcc with fortran support I modified the latest ebuild in the tree to work with the latest and greatest release of Octave but soon found out that it has some dependencies on libraries which are outdated as well and actually didn't even compile on my system. So basically I'm currently trying to get things to work from bottom to top. I'm currently testing the (updated) ebuilds for the libraries (blas-atlas, lapack) and later on I'm going to try to compile Octave again.
<p/>

<p>
If there's anyone interested in an overlay, let me know. I'll see if I can make one. Or if you just want to test/try the ebuilds, let me know too, I'll just mail them to you.
</p>"
),
	array(
	"id" => "167",
	"created" => "2007-09-14 14:12:31",
	"title" => "New server trouble...",
	"body" => "<p>
My old homeserver was getting a bit slow, especially when you consider that it's a Via Epia system that runs at 600Mhz and has 256MB of memory. This particular feeling got even stronger when I uploaded my pictures of my last holiday (about 500) and it had to create thumbnails for every picture and everything.
</p>

<p>
Since the server is in my room and I look my room to be quiet when I sleep I immediately started looking for a more modern Epia system and eventually the Epia LN with a Eden CPU at 1Ghz got my attention. I ordered it together with 1GB of memory and a 320GB HD (the old one was 80GB). Everything fine until then.
</p>

<p>
The new parts were delivered at my house and of course I wanted to try it out right away. So I unpacked it, assembled it and put it into the case. I connected the power supply and even could see the leds of the network card burning... But, that's about the only thing it would do. When I switched the whole thing on the power led burned for an instant and after that the whole board was dead. Even the network card didn't produce any light anymore... I tried a whole lot of things until I realized the power supply possibly couldn't produce enough power and thus I used the power supply of my used-to-be desktop system. Guess what, everything worked fine! Since the power supply was as big as the whole system this wasn't an ideal situation and therefore I ordered a PicoPSU from the same shop which can deliver more power than the old one. It arrived today and now everything works smoothly.
</p>

<p>
So I almost spent a whole week figuring out the problem and waiting for new parts. Why can't things just work straight away? Well, at least I'm happy with the improved performance... ;)
</p>"
),
	array(
	"id" => "149",
	"created" => "2007-02-24 23:28:09",
	"title" => "knopperdisk 0.4.0",
	"body" => "<p>Just a short message to tell you that knopperdisk 0.4.0 is now officially released. For more info take a look at: <a href="http://knopperdisk.knopper.tk">http://knopperdisk.knopper.tk</a>.
</p>

<p>
I'd say, let's give it a go... ;)
</p>"
),
	array(
	"id" => "148",
	"created" => "2007-02-18 13:51:33",
	"title" => "knopperdisk 0.4.0 pre-release",
	"body" => "<p>Hi all,</p>

<p>I would like to announce it here first before adding the release at <a href="http://knopperdisk.knopper.tk">http://knopperdisk.knopper.tk</a>, which could use a facelift by the way, but that's for later... ;)
</p>

<p>I've just made a shiny new release which features the latest software available in the Gentoo portage tree. The best part though, is that the medium containing knopperdisk is now detected automatically. I don't know if there are any old users of knopperdisk reading this, but previously you had to enter the block device containing knopperdisk during boot time. This is now all taken care of. It also includes a fairly recent kernel (2.6.19.1 with some Gentoo patches). I already know some people who are going to test this, but I'd like to invite everyone to give it a test as well and report in this blogpost as comment or using any other method (contact form...). I will post it on the official site after a few days.</p>

<p>
It's available for download here: <a href="http://www.knopper.tk/kdisk/knopperdiskusb-0.4.0.tar.bz2">http://www.knopper.tk/kdisk/knopperdiskusb-0.4.0.tar.bz2</a>.
</p>

<p>
A known issue is that /mnt isn't mounted tmpfs yet, so you can't add custom mountpoints there unless you do so manually with: mount -t tmpfs none /mnt
</p>

<p>Have fun with it!</p>"
),
	array(
	"id" => "147",
	"created" => "2007-01-14 16:21:04",
	"title" => "QDiveLogger",
	"body" => "<p>Dear readers,</p>

<p>
The moment is there, again... I'm starting another attempt at creating a program which allows you to store info about scuba dives you've made on the computer. I know I know, I've been starting this for quite some times now. First in php-gtk, then Qt3.x and now finally in Qt4.2.
</p>

<p>
I must say, I really feel confident about it this time, Qt has really improved and so have I actually... ;) My skills are somewhat improved and although I'm really having a hard time crawling through the Qt API documentation sometimes it really feels good. The MVC pattern implemented in Qt4 is really cool and the QDataWidgetMapper is just divine. So I'm really having a lot of fun creating the program this time, while previous times I was mostly irritated and annoyed.
</p>

<p>
The program uses an sqlite database as back-end and (obviously) Qt as toolkit, version 4.2 to be specific. I don't use any KDE specific libraries so when the functionality has improved it should be able to run just fine on Windows and MacOSX as well. Of course the source code will be made available since I'm using a GPL licensed version of Qt. That's not a problem at all though, actually I like it that way.
</p>

<p>
So, I'll just continue working on it and let you all know when it's in a useable state.
</p>"
),
	array(
	"id" => "146",
	"created" => "2007-01-07 17:00:00",
	"title" => "New mp3 player",
	"body" => "<p>
Unfortunately my iPod mini started to produce a very bad sound quality with a lot of noise and it got worse every day. It turned out that the headphone connector of the iPod somehow managed to get a bit loose and thus causing a lot of trouble.
</p>

<p>
So I looked around a bit, see if I could get something better. Not necessarily an iPod again. Finally I came up with the Cowon iAudio M5 after thinking about an X5 of the same brand for some time. The only difference is that the X5 has a color display and the M5 does not. I quickly came to realize that I really don't wanna play movies or view pictures on my mp3 player and the 50 Euros saved by choosing the M5 are earned pretty easily... So the M5 it is. Here's a <a href="http://www.cowonglobal.com/product/product_M5_feature.php">link</a> with some more info about the player.
</p>

<p>
As with everything, the new player has some advantages and disadvantages. The advantages are very good sound quality, it really sounds a lot better than the iPod used to and it's fully supported by Linux. Even upgrading the firmware is as easy as copying the new firmware file into a folder of the player, restart the player and you're done. Whereas with the iPod I had to go to a Windows computer and download the updater (executable).
</p>

<p>
The main disadvantage is the menu, in particular how the songs are ordered and categorized. The iPod had a database where the iAudio simply has a "file browser" in which the files are sorted in alphabetical order, not in the order in which they appear on the album. So you have to create playlists, which I really don't like, but what can you do... Anyway, the sound really makes up for it.
</p>"
),
	array(
	"id" => "145",
	"created" => "2007-01-03 16:13:28",
	"title" => "Gentoo/FreeBSD",
	"body" => "<p>So, I just finished installing Gentoo/FreeBSD, well, at least the base system. I've been trying to get this to work for a couple of days now along with some other things and it really started to irritate me that the thing wouldn't boot. I got a nice hex dump scrolling on and on whenn I loaded /boot/loader or /boot/kernel/kernel.</p>

<p>
Now, here's the solution, at least for me... The motherboard (Asus A8N-VM) is known for having a bad ACPI implementation and some other things which I found out after several hours of googling and trying things... :( So, as always, the solution is pretty simple, Asus has a beta bios available on their site which I used to flash the bios and the thing just works like a charm now.
</p>

<p>
I'm now compiling x.org and will compile KDE later on. I must say, it feels pretty nice to work with FreeBSD in combination with Gentoo. I've installed vanilla FreeBSD some time ago and sort of liked it, but not enough and so I switched back to Gentoo. There's still a lot to explore though, as I'm still pretty much a *BSD noob, but that's good :P
</p>"
),
	array(
	"id" => "141",
	"created" => "2006-10-16 18:26:50",
	"title" => "Autumn break, not really...",
	"body" => "<p>
So, it's been a while since my last post and certain interesting things have happened. I'm currently having a week off of school so we can prepare for the exams next week. I've to make exams for "Operating Systems and Networks" and "Computer Graphics and Lineair Algebra". The latter one basically involves a lot of matrix calculations... ;) Not really something I like doing but the results (the graphics in this case) are pretty cool which makes up for it.
</p>

<p>Further I've been looking for an apartment in Amsterdam the last couple of weeks and had a look at some. There are currently 2 favorites which we'll probably look at again, but this time with my Dad. A friend from university wants to stay in the apartment as well so it's going to be pretty nice. I save about 3 hours a day travelling, so I guess it's worth it.</p>

<p>
And if this wasn't enough, I'm also involved in a pretty nice web application project. Essentially it's an online learning environment. It's already written by another company but they didn't deliver what they promised. I'm not going to give away any details, but trust me, the code (php) looks horrible. This is one of those applications which makes PHP look like a language for amateurs, while in fact it depends on the programmer. Anyway, I'm very satisfied with the work I did so far. One part in particular was making the database consistent again. I can assure you, that sucks... :D But after some scripting it was quite straight forward, just checking for non-existing foreign keys. Those references now have been made explicit by converting the tables to InnoDB which makes things a little easier to manage. There's still a lot to do though, which is good! :P</p>"
),
	array(
	"id" => "140",
	"created" => "2006-09-16 18:53:17",
	"title" => "Misc computer stuff",
	"body" => "<p>A few weeks ago the motherboard of my main desktop system decided to get fried. It didn't smell nice, trust me.. ;) Anyway, after some thinking I decided not to buy a new system right away but wait instead. Wait on what? Well, basically I'm waiting what the future will bring us regarding AMD vs. Intel. I used Intel cpu's until the p3 and then switched to AMD because their quality/price ratio was pretty good at the time. But at the moment the difference between them isn't that big anymore (in my opinion) and although I'm tended to choose for the underdog (AMD) I'm really not that sure because of the latest creation of Intel, obviously I'm talking about the Conroe. After reading some reviews and tests it's clear that the Conroe pretty much beats the Athlon. I'm just not in a buying mood at this moment I guess. I've got my laptop which I'm using pretty intensive lately (duh...) and I'm pretty happy with it. Just to give it some more breath I bougth 2GB memory recently and disabled the hard disk swap. After all this I hardly notice any difference in speed compared to my desktop, except for the hard disk performance. I'm not really bothered by that though.</p>

<p>So we'll see what happens.. or not.</p>

<p>Further university started of course, the courses are pretty interesting (Operating Systems and Networks, Graphics, Algorithms and Complexity and some more). The group has become smaller though, it's really a shame there aren't any more people who choose to study computer science. The year I'm in currently consists of 10 people, which is obviously not much.</p>

<p>That's all for now :P</p>"
),
	array(
	"id" => "133",
	"created" => "2006-08-13 14:00:40",
	"title" => "Do you trust 'em?",
	"body" => "<p>For Dutch people, but other people might be interested as well: <a href="http://www.wijvertrouwenstemcomputersniet.nl/">http://www.wijvertrouwenstemcomputersniet.nl/</a> </p>

<p>Do you trust computers or those who made them? :P</p>"
)
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$post	=	array(
	"id" => "176",
	"created" => "2009-01-15 18:19:13",
	"title" => "First motorcycle driving lesson!",
	"body" => "<p>Hi all!</p>

<p>I'm very aware that it's been quite some time since my last post, but I just don't feel like blogging about every day stuff all the time. Sorry for that... ;)
</p>

<p>
Anyway, today has been quite interesting since I took my first motorcycle lesson and I very much liked it! So I'm definitely going to continue with it and hopefully have my license soon. For those interested, I've driven a Honda CBF 500, but obviously I can't really put up an opinion about it since I've nothing to compare it with... :P
</p>

<p>
On the more computer side of things, there are some nice things too. Mostly related to QtMPC though. Roeland has been working on integrating last.fm support (context information and scrobbling) into QtMPC and I've been working to get KDE support in. KDE 4 support that is... ;) I must say, everything is turning out quite nicely. If you want to see what it looks like, grab the latest svn checkout, since the screenshots on the website are heavily outdated.
</p>

<p>
I could talk about Qt being available under LGPL and all that stuff, but other people have already done that, so I'll leave it at this ;)
</p>"
)
$y	=	0
include - APP/views/categories/view.ctp, line 30
View::_render() - CORE/cake/libs/view/view.php, line 723
View::render() - CORE/cake/libs/view/view.php, line 419
Controller::render() - CORE/cake/libs/controller/controller.php, line 913
Dispatcher::_invoke() - CORE/cake/dispatcher.php, line 207
Dispatcher::dispatch() - CORE/cake/dispatcher.php, line 171
[main] - APP/webroot/index.php, line 83

| Comment ()

QtMPC 0.4.0 released!

2008-10-28 15:00:51

Hi all, just a quick promotion for QtMPC since it's been quite a while since there was something new to tell about it and besides, this blog has some advantages (planet... ahum)... Winking icon

Anyway, last weekend version 0.4.0 has been released with some rather nice improvements leading to better performance. Just as a reminder, QtMPC is a front-end for MPD.

For further information, have a look here: http://lowblog.nl/2008/10/26/qtmpc-040-released/

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QtMPC

2007-12-31 15:25:06

Hi all,

Just wanted to let you all know about a little project I've been working on. After using my media pc for a couple of days I figured the webinterface was way too demanding because it's creating a new connection every second. Not that the media pc is too slow to handle it, but if it's not really necessary than why not use something better right? So I started looking for non-webbased gui clients and found some nice ones. But neither of them really made me want to use it on the long term. So I decided to write my own client since I hadn't been programming in Qt for a while and I really enjoy doing that. QtMPC was born...

A friend of mine and myself decided we could also set up a website containing all (future) projects of ourselves, though currently it only contains QtMPC.

You can get the source by using subversion, for more details read: http://lowblog.nl/category/qtmpc/

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Media PC

2007-12-22 18:42:53

Hi all!

First of all, I want to wish everyone reading this a Merry Christmas!

So what's happened? Nothing special really, just busy working on projects for university, preparing for tests and so on...

There's one thing I don't want to keep from you though, especially since I finally have time to set this thing up. A couple of weeks ago I ordered the parts for my media pc. It's a via epia based system, with an optical audio out. More specific:

Procase Noah case (black)
VIA EPIA EX10000EG
1GB memory
Fujitsu MHV2160BT 160 GB, 4200 Rpm, 8 MB, 2.5"

The hard drive is basically for a notebook, but serves its purpose well in this system since it retrieves the actual music files from the server.

I'm currently installing Gentoo on this system and just finished adding another network cable to my room... Winking icon Hopefully I can at least finish bootstrapping and emerge -e system before the end of the evening and start playing around with mpd tomorrow. I'll keep you posted and I'll try to make some pictures tomorrow.

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New laptop

2007-11-10 13:42:25

Hi all,

Yesterday I became the proud owner of a new Dell Vostro 1500 and what's the best way to celebrate this? Right, install Gentoo... Winking icon

So after some thinking I decided to go for the no-multilib amd64 install, since if I'm desperate to see, for instance, a flash movie, I can still use my old laptop. Anyway, it seems that open source flash alternatives are getting better each day, so that might solve the problem eventually. Yesterday I did the stage 1 + 2 part and installed a kernel so it could boot properly without the livecd. (yes, I still like to bootstrap... Biggrin icon ) Today I installed xorg and I'm now busy compiling all the KDE packages I want. So that pretty much leaves me waiting for it to finish.

To end this post, here are the specs:

Intel Core 2 Duo T7500 (2.2GHz, 4MB)
2GB RAM
160GB 5400rpm hd
Nvidia 8600GT 256MB
15.4" TrueLife screen (1280x800)
Some other stuff, NIC, Wi-fi etc. which is less important

So far I'm very happy with it!

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Samba 3.0.25 and kernel 2.6.23

2007-10-16 15:36:34

Hi people, here's just a quick reminder for something that caused me some trouble. I just switched to the fresh 2.6.23 linux kernel and already had samba 3.0.25 running on my server for a while. Certainly I couldn't mount any samba shared folders on my clients anymore and dmesg gave some weird error messages. Finally I found a topic on the gentoo forums which stated that you have to emerge mount-cifs if you're running this software combination.

So, just to let you all know and maybe save some trouble... Winking icon

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Dream Theater

2007-10-11 16:18:29

Last Tuesday I went to the Dream Theater concert in Ahoy (Rotterdam). Unfortunately cameras weren't allowed and I had to leave my camera behind at the entrance, but I still took some pictures with my phone. They're not quite good though... Apart from that, the concert was absolutely great! Razz icon They made practically no mistakes, at least as far as I can tell and they simply rocked big time. They mostly played songs from their 3 latest albums but also some older songs from the "Scenes From A Memory" album for instance. Jordan Rudess also had a portable mini keyboard which he used for some solos, which is good because usually only John Petrucci shows off big time... Winking icon Anyway, I guess I don't have to tell you all that I enjoyed it very much. Let's hope they come again soon.

As for Octave, I've been able to compile it but the dependencies it has really are impossible to figure out. They have their own buildsystem which really doesn't make sense to me and quite frankly I don't feel the need to spend that much time on it. Especially now I have the linux version of matlab... Razz icon

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Octave

2007-09-28 10:22:19

Hi all,

Since I need a matlab or at least matlab-compatible environment for a course at university I figured it wouldn't really be a problem since there is Octave. Unfortunately, the version in the main portage tree is heavily outdated and thus not really usable since I need it to be as compatible with matlab as possible and this seems to have improved in the latest releases.

I can hear you say: so, make your own ebuilds! Yes, that's what I'm (trying) to do right now. After recompiling gcc with fortran support I modified the latest ebuild in the tree to work with the latest and greatest release of Octave but soon found out that it has some dependencies on libraries which are outdated as well and actually didn't even compile on my system. So basically I'm currently trying to get things to work from bottom to top. I'm currently testing the (updated) ebuilds for the libraries (blas-atlas, lapack) and later on I'm going to try to compile Octave again.

If there's anyone interested in an overlay, let me know. I'll see if I can make one. Or if you just want to test/try the ebuilds, let me know too, I'll just mail them to you.

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New server trouble...

2007-09-14 14:12:31

My old homeserver was getting a bit slow, especially when you consider that it's a Via Epia system that runs at 600Mhz and has 256MB of memory. This particular feeling got even stronger when I uploaded my pictures of my last holiday (about 500) and it had to create thumbnails for every picture and everything.

Since the server is in my room and I look my room to be quiet when I sleep I immediately started looking for a more modern Epia system and eventually the Epia LN with a Eden CPU at 1Ghz got my attention. I ordered it together with 1GB of memory and a 320GB HD (the old one was 80GB). Everything fine until then.

The new parts were delivered at my house and of course I wanted to try it out right away. So I unpacked it, assembled it and put it into the case. I connected the power supply and even could see the leds of the network card burning... But, that's about the only thing it would do. When I switched the whole thing on the power led burned for an instant and after that the whole board was dead. Even the network card didn't produce any light anymore... I tried a whole lot of things until I realized the power supply possibly couldn't produce enough power and thus I used the power supply of my used-to-be desktop system. Guess what, everything worked fine! Since the power supply was as big as the whole system this wasn't an ideal situation and therefore I ordered a PicoPSU from the same shop which can deliver more power than the old one. It arrived today and now everything works smoothly.

So I almost spent a whole week figuring out the problem and waiting for new parts. Why can't things just work straight away? Well, at least I'm happy with the improved performance... Winking icon

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knopperdisk 0.4.0

2007-02-24 23:28:09

Just a short message to tell you that knopperdisk 0.4.0 is now officially released. For more info take a look at: http://knopperdisk.knopper.tk.

I'd say, let's give it a go... Winking icon

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