June 2009
1 post
Building my own Desktop Manager →
Follow my journey as I write my own Desktop Manager on top of the Linux/GNU operating system. I attempt to write a beautiful, fast, lightweight, modern, and feature-rich wm written using various libraries such as: X11 (xlib), opengl, cairo, etc..
May 2009
1 post
Using dmenu to access your delicious.com account
I really like dmenu. It’s like Quicksilver or GNOME DO, but much smaller, faster, and easier to extend!
The common dmenu command to quickly run a program from your path would be something like:
dmenu_path | dmenu
The dmenu_path command quickly fetches all programs from your $PATH and sends the list (newline-separated) into dmenu for user-selection.
Because of the great de-coupled design...
April 2009
4 posts
Formulae for getting the point co-ordinates for a...
Here’s how to get the co-ordinates of a given point in a circle…
NOTE: this code is written in C#
Point GetPointPos(int numofpoints, int pointNum, int radius, int offset)
{
double angle = 2*Math.PI * ((double)pointNum / numofpoints);
double x = radius * Math.Cos(angle) + offset;
double y = radius * Math.Sin(angle) + offset;
return new Point((int)x, (int)y);
}
With this...
OpenGL programming on Ubuntu (8.10 Intrepid)
Installing all dependencies
sudo aptitude install mesa-common-dev libgl1-mesa-dev libglu1-mesa-dev freeglut3-dev libglut3-dev
Mesa is an open-source implementation of the OpenGL spec.
NOTE: freeglut3-dev is only required if you wish to use GLUT for your creating your hosting windows and handling user input.
NOTE: (If you wish to use apt-get instead of aptitude, you will also need to specify...
My Perfect Desktop (or.. How to create a...
So now I have the perfect minimal OS running (as explained in my previous article), we need to add some components and start making a beautiful desktop!
The first thing we are going to need is a UI for handling our X11 Sessions and logging in. The mainstream choices are GDM and KDM.
As I’m more of a GNOME man so I went for GDM. I will install this together with my Window Manager (which we...
My Perfect Desktop (or.. How to create a...
For Linux beginners there is no denying that Ubuntu is the weapon of choice at the moment. I think the main reason I believe that is because of APT and how up-to-date and complete their default repositories are.
I really enjoy using Ubuntu as installing a program is as simple as installing it from Synaptic and then launching it! Sometimes building stuff from source can get you into a...
March 2009
4 posts
Installing VirtualBox Guest Additions 2.1.4 on...
This can be a bit of a pain. The first time I attempted to run the installer I got the following message:
Please install the build and header files for your current Linux kernel...
Here are the steps required to get VirtualBox Guest Additions installed on Fedora 10. They begin with a freshly installed version of Fedora.
Run a system update. Make sure you have the lastest version of Fedora.
...
Multithreading in C++ using POSIX Threads Tutorial
As C++ doesn’t have any native multi-threading support, you will need to rely on a system APIs to achieve multithreading. M$ has their own APIs, but I want to concentrate on the POSIX threading library as it is more widely compatible.
The Theory
So what does the POSIX threading APIs look like then? Well a bit of bad news first of all to C++ developers; these are C functions (doh!), the main...
Using the new OSD Notification system in Ubuntu...
Wanna add the new OSD Notification system to your C++ (gtkmm) program, but don’t know where to start? Noticed all the tutorials on wiki.ubuntu.com are in C, Python, and C#?
Have no fear, uncle Tom is here with a quick-start guide to getting libnotifymm running on your system!
Installing libnotifymm and it’s prereqs
Open up Synaptic Package Manager and install the following packages...
How to programmatically create GNOME start menu...
This will probably work with operating systems (and desktop managers, such as KDE) other than Ubunutu & GNOME as the schema is a standard one (http://www.freedesktop.org/). However directories may vary slightly; so I can only confirm this works with Ubuntu 8.10…
There are .menu files which create the menu structure. Your current logged-in user’s local .menu files can be found at:...
January 2009
1 post
My Recent Projects web-site →
Keeps track of all my recent projects and web-sites. Also contains a copy of my CV.
December 2008
1 post
iDvd Error during rendering/encoding of the...
You might get this error constantly in iDvd for one of these reasons:
Do have less than 25Gb memory left on your primary partition
Your movies have inconsistent ratios (Widescreen/Standard/Phone)
The movie was initially referenced from one hard-disk and now lives on another
One of the movies now cannot be found
The Media browser version of one of the movies now cannot be found
Feel free to...
November 2008
1 post
New site I am working on: www.groopi.co.uk →
I built Groopi as there is currently a real lack of decent sites out there for bands to collaberate, create, promote, and share all in one, integrated place.
Groopi is completely free, so feel free to create an account!
August 2008
1 post
A new site I just finished writing: Pga-Lessons →
July 2008
4 posts
CSS - Have DIV fill remaining space in IE
It will come to no-ones surprise when I say that IE sucks when it comes to CSS. Apparently I’ve been well informed that IE8 will finally be CSS 2.1 compliant (but no CSS 3 at all)?!
A huge problem on the web, is people wanting to have a number of DIV elements with a fixed pixel height, and another which fills the remaining page like the image below:
IE makes this almost impossible due to...
New Site Developed: YoungGolf (Barry Young PGA... →
This is my latest creation. A web site for PGA Golf Professional Barry Young. Barry gives tuition to players of all capabilities in the
Woking Surry UK area.
Explore MobileMe on Vista (in Windows Explorer!)
Here are some steps to get MobileMe working inside Vista (even works on the 64bit version.. unlike most apps!)
Download & Install the webDAV KB fix from Microsoft
Start > Computer
Click Map Network Drive
Enter in the address box (replacing USERNAME with your MobileMe username): http://idisk.me.com/USERNAME
You should get an authentication challenge box appear, enter your MobileMe email...
Flash just got better than Silverlight... →
All links and text in Adobe Flash content can now be indexed by Yahoo and Google search engines! The business decision to choose Silverlight over Flash just got more unlikely!!
June 2008
1 post
April 2008
2 posts
Your Password Must Be at Least 18770 Characters... →
Now that’s a secure pass-phrase!! :P
Email is an obsolete form of Communication →