https://chris.iluo.net/blog/ Recent content on Coding and Stuff Hugo -- gohugo.io en Copyright ©, Chris Pilkington; all rights reserved. Sat, 28 Oct 2023 10:26:27 +0000 https://chris.iluo.net/blog/2023/10/28/openglmm_shaders-verlet-integration/ Sat, 28 Oct 2023 10:26:27 +0000 https://chris.iluo.net/blog/2023/10/28/openglmm_shaders-verlet-integration/ I’ve been working on verlet integration lately in my OpenGL 3.3 library and libopenglmm_shaders test. Source Verlet Integration is a way of simulating some physical interactions. This is not a serious physics engine like ODE/Bullet/Box2D/etc. I’m sure verlet integration can be used for serious stuff, I’ve just used it as a way to get a basic fun physics simulation, focusing on speed and simple coding. There is a famous paper on verlet integration and many discussions about it online. https://chris.iluo.net/blog/2023/10/03/migrating-from-wordpress-to-hugo/ Tue, 03 Oct 2023 20:26:27 +0000 https://chris.iluo.net/blog/2023/10/03/migrating-from-wordpress-to-hugo/ For the last few years I’ve been intrigued by the idea of switching from WordPress to a statically generated blog such as Hugo mainly to reduce the attack surface of my web server (I’ve always been a bit paranoid of WordPress). There are a number of benefits: No PHP or javascript No WordPress and associated vulnerabilities Reduced attack surface Quicker page requests (Not really an issue for my hobbyist blog) Potentially slightly more resilient to high traffic from slashdot/reddit or a DDOS attack (Again not really an issue for this blog) Version controlled in git Could be built and deployed with Continous Integration (I’m not doing this yet) Reproducable, if the server is lost or I move hosts I should be able to get up and running again in an hour Themes (Not as many themese, and not as easy to switch themes as WordPress, but not bad) The main downsides are: https://chris.iluo.net/blog/2022/11/21/replacing-vscode-and-vscode-remote-with-vscodium-and-open-remote-ssh/ Mon, 21 Nov 2022 23:40:56 +0000 https://chris.iluo.net/blog/2022/11/21/replacing-vscode-and-vscode-remote-with-vscodium-and-open-remote-ssh/ VSCode with the VSCode Remote plugin make for an awesome Windows client for connecting to a remote Linux machine to do the real development. It’s seamless, once connected to the remote it feels like you are just working on a Linux machine. In the background it connects via SSH to a Linux host, installs a server daemon, and from then on commands are handled by the VS Code Server plugin, from the client you can open files, edit them, create new terminals, navigate, install packages, build, all as if you are directly working on the remote. https://chris.iluo.net/blog/2022/07/08/logging-structured-data-from-an-application/ Fri, 08 Jul 2022 23:52:11 +0000 https://chris.iluo.net/blog/2022/07/08/logging-structured-data-from-an-application/ What is structured data? Structured data is data formatted in a structured manner so that the sender can clearly communicate to the receiver each field/property/part of each message without confusion or ambiguity about where the message starts/stops, and what each field represents and it’s value. We usually represent structured data with fields or key value pairs. The data can even be represented in a tree such as in JSON or XML. https://chris.iluo.net/blog/2021/01/13/creating-a-linux-container-in-c-/ Wed, 13 Jan 2021 00:34:47 +0000 https://chris.iluo.net/blog/2021/01/13/creating-a-linux-container-in-c-/ I love Linux containers. You get a degree of separation from the host and other machines without hosting a full VM and without requiring a whole second OS. What are containers? A process or group of processes that are running on the same kernel as the host but in isolation via namespaces, cgroups and images Why would you do this? Share resources (3 web servers in containers on one physical server for example) Less overhead and quicker to spin up than a VM To experiment in Linux without modifying the host OS settings or filesystem To run software or use libraries that cannot or shouldn’t be run on the host (Mismatched versions, tries to read data from your home folder, tries to mess around with other processes, spams syslog, tries to phone home or query the network, or talk to Linux kernel modules) Consistent behaviour (Developers can run wildly different machines but develop within identical containers, consistent continuous integration, simulate end users’ machines for debugging) Run a collection of containers that can talk to each other but can’t talk to the rest of the network (Local testing, integration testing, load testing, mess around with network configurations and firewall rules without endangering the host) Run a collection of containers that can talk to each other but only one or two of them are public facing (LAMP stack, ELK stack, a cluster, etc. https://chris.iluo.net/blog/2021/01/11/minecraft-server-cross-platform-compatibility/ Mon, 11 Jan 2021 22:06:07 +0000 https://chris.iluo.net/blog/2021/01/11/minecraft-server-cross-platform-compatibility/ Note: The legacy consoles essentially cannot connect outside their own platform References https://www.reddit.com/r/Minecraft/comments/crlnzp/what_versions_of_minecraft_are_crosscompatible/ https://www.minecraft.net/en-us/store/minecraft-xbox-360 https://minecraft.gamepedia.com/Xbox_360_Edition https://github.com/GeyserMC/Geyser With GeyserMC and the Java and Bedrock editions there seems to be quite good cross platform compatibility, but alas, I was hoping to connect Xbox 360 to a Java or Bedrock server which I do not think is possible. Protocol “The programming language and game engine have little to do with incompatibilities; rather, it is because of differences in various data formats like IDs; for example, in the PC edition each type of wooden fence uses its own block ID*, while in PE they use data values so only one ID is used (the same as oak fences in PC). https://chris.iluo.net/blog/2017/10/05/basic-html5-soundboard/ Thu, 05 Oct 2017 22:56:43 +0000 https://chris.iluo.net/blog/2017/10/05/basic-html5-soundboard/ I made a thing. It has other people’s giant images and audio that I haven’t bothered resizing or compressing so it can take maybe 20 seconds to load as you click through the sounds. I made it as something my kids can play with on a tablet and because I’ve always thought it would be a great use for the new audio APIs in HTML5. The source code is here. https://chris.iluo.net/blog/2017/02/26/stop-watch-and-time-out-classes/ Sun, 26 Feb 2017 23:16:08 +0000 https://chris.iluo.net/blog/2017/02/26/stop-watch-and-time-out-classes/ I have a passing interest in stop watch and time out type classes. Keeping track of elapsed time, remaining time. They are very basic classes, but I find them interesting. GetTimeMS function The stop watch and timer classes use this function to get the system time, we actually return the system time minus the application start time to get a time relative to the application start time, starting at 0. This is not necessary, return the system time is fine, returning the time the application is running is usually just easier to think about than the time since 1970, which is kind of arbitrary. https://chris.iluo.net/blog/2016/09/13/colour-picker-added-hex-and-float-conversions/ Tue, 13 Sep 2016 00:22:08 +0000 https://chris.iluo.net/blog/2016/09/13/colour-picker-added-hex-and-float-conversions/ Colour picker hex and float entry. The colour pickers I see never have conversions from RGB uint8_t (255, 255, 255) to RGB float (1.0f, 1.0f, 1.0f), so I added it to mine. HSL, HSV and YUV are also shown. There is one bug when typing in a text colour if no single RGB component dominates then the colour palette look up fails, picking full white. It’s in JavaScript, so as usual I am surprised by how quickly and relatively easy this was to implement. https://chris.iluo.net/blog/2016/04/19/some-simple-regexes-for-finding-if-statements/ Tue, 19 Apr 2016 22:37:31 +0000 https://chris.iluo.net/blog/2016/04/19/some-simple-regexes-for-finding-if-statements/ I know almost nothing about regexes, these are just some useful ones I created for checking code style, if statements specifically. Find single line if statements (Useful when your coding style requires adding curly braces to everything): /^ *if \(.+\).*(;)/igm regex101 Find multiple line if statements (Useful when your coding style favours less lines): /^ *if \(.+\).*({)/igm regex101 Regex101 is really impressive. You can paste a regex and check it against some test inputs. https://chris.iluo.net/blog/2015/08/18/openglmm_shaders-test-20150817/ Tue, 18 Aug 2015 00:54:48 +0000 https://chris.iluo.net/blog/2015/08/18/openglmm_shaders-test-20150817/ Here is a video demo of my OpenGL 3.3 library libopenglmm. Source Materials: Lambert shading (Mirror’s Edge style) Fog Cube mapping Multitexturing Normal mapping Car paint (Slighty broken, I think a texture look up is incorrect) Glass mixed with dirty metal texture (Similar to an old rusty/broken mirror) Cel shading Smoke particle system with lambert lighting with 4 normals that very roughly approximate a sphere (I think something is wrong with the depth texture look up) Post render effects: https://chris.iluo.net/blog/2015/05/30/colour-picker-released/ Sat, 30 May 2015 00:50:45 +0000 https://chris.iluo.net/blog/2015/05/30/colour-picker-released/ I created a colour picker in JavaScript, then I created 3 variations that simulate the common colour blindnesses. They are all linked so that when you select a colour in one it picks the “same” colour in the others. I mainly just created it out of interest. I realise there are similar colour blind simulator tools, but I hadn’t seen any that used linked colour pickers like this. I don’t normally use JavaScript, but I had fun doing this. https://chris.iluo.net/blog/2013/09/21/diesel-photo-manager-0.1-released/ Sat, 21 Sep 2013 15:09:45 +0000 https://chris.iluo.net/blog/2013/09/21/diesel-photo-manager-0.1-released/ I couldn’t find a photo browser for Linux that also imported my photos in the folder format I wanted so I created my own. This is the first release and it has these features: Simple interface Thumbnail grid mode Single photo mode Import and sort photos into folders based on the date Convert files to dng Show the background thread progress on the statusbar Check for updates via version.xml Default to dark theme (Can be overridden with the –light command line parameter) Still to come: https://chris.iluo.net/blog/2013/09/21/medusa-music-player-0.9-released/ Sat, 21 Sep 2013 12:12:14 +0000 https://chris.iluo.net/blog/2013/09/21/medusa-music-player-0.9-released/ I’ve release a new version of Medusa music player with these features: Simple interface Last.fm support Date added and a full file path column Drag and drop from the file manager Moving files to the trash folder Move files to a particular folder and remember the last 5 folders Extra columns Show the background thread progress on the statusbar Import playlist from Rhythmbox and Banshee Autoplay at last track at startup Web server for controlling playback, volume and deleting tracks remotely Check for updates via version. https://chris.iluo.net/blog/2013/06/13/medusa-music-player-0.8-released/ Thu, 13 Jun 2013 00:58:27 +0000 https://chris.iluo.net/blog/2013/06/13/medusa-music-player-0.8-released/ I’ve release a new version of Medusa music player with these features: Simple interface Last.fm support Date added and a full file path column Drag and drop from the file manager Moving files to the trash folder Move files to a particular folder and remember the last 5 folders Extra columns Show the background thread progress on the statusbar Import playlist from Rhythmbox and Banshee Autoplay at last track at startup New: https://chris.iluo.net/blog/2012/08/12/medusa-music-player-0.7-released/ Sun, 12 Aug 2012 01:44:58 +0000 https://chris.iluo.net/blog/2012/08/12/medusa-music-player-0.7-released/ I’ve release a new version of Medusa music player with these features: Simple interface Last.fm support Date added and a full file path column Drag and drop from the file manager Auto play last track at startup Moving files to the trash folder Move files to a particular folder and remember the last 5 folders New: Extra columns Show the background thread progress on the statusbar Import playlist from Rhythmbox and Banshee Add autoplay at last track at startup Still to come: https://chris.iluo.net/blog/2012/06/05/medusa-music-player-0.6-released/ Tue, 05 Jun 2012 00:36:01 +0000 https://chris.iluo.net/blog/2012/06/05/medusa-music-player-0.6-released/ I’ve release a new version of Medusa music player with these features: Simple interface Last.fm support Date added and a full file path column New: Drag and drop from the file manager Auto play last track at startup Moving files to the trash folder Move files to a particular folder and remember the last 5 folders Still to come: Easy tag editing for multiple files at once Download for Linux https://chris.iluo.net/blog/2012/05/18/java-gotchas/ Fri, 18 May 2012 23:38:03 +0000 https://chris.iluo.net/blog/2012/05/18/java-gotchas/ Everything is a pointer that initially points to null. Every non-POD type must be newed (I forget this one a lot) The POD types (int, float, enum, etc.) behave just like their C++ counter parts. The boxed versions (Integer, Float) and String in Java are more like a pointer to the POD value. For example: String a = "chris"; String b = "chris"; if (a == b) System.out.println("The strings are the same"); This test will always fail because operator== for pointers (Instances of anything derived from java. https://chris.iluo.net/blog/2012/03/24/medusa-music-player-0.5-released/ Sat, 24 Mar 2012 16:54:03 +0000 https://chris.iluo.net/blog/2012/03/24/medusa-music-player-0.5-released/ I’ve been working on a music player for Linux. What I really wanted was foobar2000 for Linux but nothing on Linux is quite like it. There are lot of iTunes clones (Amarok, Banshee, Songbird, Rhythmbox, etc) but they are all too complicated or make copies of your music or show you lyrics and Wikipedia articles and include a web browser. I just want a simple music player. I can list the features I want one hand (I’ve only implemented the struck through items so far): https://chris.iluo.net/blog/2012/03/23/debugging-101/ Fri, 23 Mar 2012 20:34:08 +0000 https://chris.iluo.net/blog/2012/03/23/debugging-101/ Tips to help you find bugs. Turn the warning level up and turn on warnings as errors I know, it can be a pain, but it works. It helps you produce more rhobust, forward compatible, portable code that is syntactically correct on more compilers. Use assert… Assert will help you find errors before you even knew there was a problem. It is 100x better if your application tells you exactly where problems are and breaks into the debugger than for your application to crash for the customer. https://chris.iluo.net/blog/2012/03/17/pimp-my-code-part-2/ Sat, 17 Mar 2012 17:59:12 +0000 https://chris.iluo.net/blog/2012/03/17/pimp-my-code-part-2/ char szPassword[255]; GenerateRandomPassword(szPassword, 16); char szText[255]; sprintf(szText, "User: %s, ID: %d, Password: %s", szUser, int(userid++), szPassword); Don’t increment and use a variable on the same line. We know, you’re very tricky, you saved a line. You also made sure that beginners to C++ don’t know what the result will be. Keep it simple stupid. Create the simplest most readable code possible, it makes skimming over code and debugging code much easier. https://chris.iluo.net/blog/2011/12/22/pimp-my-code-part-1-redux/ Thu, 22 Dec 2011 22:06:07 +0000 https://chris.iluo.net/blog/2011/12/22/pimp-my-code-part-1-redux/ Not exactly a redux, but very similar to last time: bIsNotEmpty = false; if (vNests.GetSize() != 0) { if (vNests[0]->vEggs.GetSize() != 0) bIsNotEmpty = true; } First of all we don’t actually care about the size, we just care that we have (Or don’t have) a nest with eggs in it. Depending on the container GetSize may or may not be a variable look up. IsEmpty is always a variable lookup: https://chris.iluo.net/blog/2011/12/17/pimp-my-code-part-1/ Sat, 17 Dec 2011 09:41:26 +0000 https://chris.iluo.net/blog/2011/12/17/pimp-my-code-part-1/ inline bool IsSpecial(const char* szValue) { // Returns true if this is a special value if (stricmp(szValue, "MySpecialValue") == 0) { return true; } return false; } I see this sort of thing all the time. For boolean functions that call boolean functions the if and return statements are usually superflous, we can use the return value of (stricmp(szValue, “MySpecialValue”) == 0) itself: // Returns true if this is a special value inline bool IsSpecial(const char* szValue) { return (stricmp(szValue, "MySpecialValue") == 0); } If it were up to me I would also use a string class and keep as much of the code as possible in the string “realm” (This makes the code a lot simpler and easier to read): https://chris.iluo.net/blog/2011/12/15/converting-pentax-pef-files-to-png/ Thu, 15 Dec 2011 07:46:15 +0000 https://chris.iluo.net/blog/2011/12/15/converting-pentax-pef-files-to-png/ Ufraw is a fantastic utility to convert raw camera formats. You can install it via (And you may as well get the plugin for gimp while you are at it): sudo yum install ufraw ufraw-gimp OR sudo apt-get install ufraw gimp-ufraw There is a great tutorial on using ufraw from a bash script here, my only recommendation is converting to PNG but it is entirely up to personal preference. PNG version: https://chris.iluo.net/blog/2011/07/02/eclipse/ Sat, 02 Jul 2011 00:49:23 +0000 https://chris.iluo.net/blog/2011/07/02/eclipse/ Last time I tried Eclipse (10 years ago?!?) it was incredibly slow. JVMs and Eclipse have both improved remarkably in that time, and Eclipse is now just as fast as KDevelop. There are many nice features that I haven’t seen in other IDEs yet such as a warnings and errors panel that compiles your project in the background. The special feature here is that for every warning and error, Eclipse will offer a few possible solutions to solve it, for example “import java. https://chris.iluo.net/blog/2011/06/22/java/ Wed, 22 Jun 2011 09:41:24 +0000 https://chris.iluo.net/blog/2011/06/22/java/ I’ve been getting back into Java in my spare time recently, as I think about possibly making a few Android games. These are some notes about the differences between Java and C++. In Java (almost) everything is an object. Strings, Floats and Ints are first class types. In C++ we usually don’t have to stress too much about performance. We can usually afford to do extra processing, create and pass around as many temporaries as we like, use extra ram and hold onto large amounts of ram. https://chris.iluo.net/blog/2011/04/21/version-control-2.0/ Thu, 21 Apr 2011 00:26:27 +0000 https://chris.iluo.net/blog/2011/04/21/version-control-2.0/ GitHub is a pleasure to work with. In 10 years I created 5 or 6 projects on SourceForge, I’ve already created 3 new projects in less than a year on GitHub because they are just so easy to setup. An early design decision for SourceForge was to make deleting projects hard. The idea was that a project should never die, just “retire” until a new maintainer comes along. I don’t think I have users of my libraries or applications let alone prospective maintainers (Actually, I have had a few emails and bug reports for GetFree and it has had quite a few downloads, but that was when it was new and exciting). https://chris.iluo.net/blog/2010/11/29/no-root-file-system-is-defined/ Mon, 29 Nov 2010 09:55:36 +0000 https://chris.iluo.net/blog/2010/11/29/no-root-file-system-is-defined/ On the weekend I was installing the new version of Mythbuntu (More interesting screenshots here) and I had a weird error, “No root file system is defined”. At first I thought it must have been something to do with failing to recognise the existing partitions or possibly they were corrupt. “fdisk -l” worked, returning sda, sda1-sda4, which was correct however “mount” would always fail. It turned out that it was just our old friend dmraid was breaking in new and unexpected ways. https://chris.iluo.net/blog/2010/11/27/how-to-automatically-download-all-of-your-youtube-favourites/ Sat, 27 Nov 2010 18:04:17 +0000 https://chris.iluo.net/blog/2010/11/27/how-to-automatically-download-all-of-your-youtube-favourites/ FireFox add-ons such as 1-Click YouTube Video Download are good but one must visit every video and manually save it. I have a lot of favourites and I wanted to back them up with as little effort as possible. Here is how. You will need youtube-dl. It is available via yum/apt-get however the version provided may be quite old (In Fedora 14 it did not support -playlist-start and -playlist-end). Create a new playlist and add all the videos from your favourites (Note: A playlist can only contain 200 videos if you have more than than this you will have to make multiple playlists and repeat this process for each one). https://chris.iluo.net/blog/2010/01/10/malloc-double-free/non-aligned-pointer-being-freed-set-a-breakpoint-in-malloc_error_break-to-debug/ Sun, 10 Jan 2010 10:00:22 +0000 https://chris.iluo.net/blog/2010/01/10/malloc-double-free/non-aligned-pointer-being-freed-set-a-breakpoint-in-malloc_error_break-to-debug/ malloc: *** error for object 0x3874a0: double free ***set a breakpoint in malloc_error_break to debug malloc: *** error for object 0x18a138: Non- aligned pointer being freed *** set a breakpoint in malloc_error_break to debug So basically something in your code is screwing around with memory. Either releasing something that has already been released: int* x = new x[10]; delete [] x; delete [] x; Or releasing something that is not pointing to the start of an allocated block of memory: https://chris.iluo.net/blog/2009/11/16/cannot-open-/dev/sda1-device-or-resource-busy/ Mon, 16 Nov 2009 22:23:19 +0000 https://chris.iluo.net/blog/2009/11/16/cannot-open-/dev/sda1-device-or-resource-busy/ After an update (Upgrade?) a while ago I couldn’t boot into Fedora, it had the text mode bar graph and after getting to 100% it failed with this error message: Cannot open /dev/sda1: Device or resource busy It turned out that this was a dmraid problem. It would appear that something changed when updating and added or enabled dmraid. So I had to find a way to remove or disable it, the simplest solution I found that worked was disabling it via the arguments to the kernel in GRUB. https://chris.iluo.net/blog/2009/09/26/when-good-customers-go-bad/ Sat, 26 Sep 2009 09:36:47 +0000 https://chris.iluo.net/blog/2009/09/26/when-good-customers-go-bad/ class Customer; class CustomerEx; // Added 20.03.2006 class CustomerEx2; // Added 05.10.2006 class CustomerEx2B; // Added 13.07.2008 https://chris.iluo.net/blog/2009/09/26/how-to-find-and-remove-folders-recursively-in-linux/unix-because-i-always-forget-this/ Sat, 26 Sep 2009 09:33:04 +0000 https://chris.iluo.net/blog/2009/09/26/how-to-find-and-remove-folders-recursively-in-linux/unix-because-i-always-forget-this/ # Recursively search for folders called .svn and delete them (Even if not empty) find . -name .svn -type d -print | xargs rm -rf # Recursively search for files called *~ (gedit creates these for temporarily saving to) and delete them find . -name \*~ -print | xargs rm -rf # Recursively search for files called *.h or *.cpp and print them find -name '*.h' -o -name '*.cpp' -print https://chris.iluo.net/blog/2009/09/12/blender-export-obj-python-script/ Sat, 12 Sep 2009 15:50:42 +0000 https://chris.iluo.net/blog/2009/09/12/blender-export-obj-python-script/ First of all I’d like to state that I’m definitely a Blender n00b and I have never touched Python in my life. Baby steps, textured sphere loaded from an obj file In my game engine I basically have this sort of layout: sphere/ sphere.obj sphere.mat sphere.png The .obj points to the .mat file which points to the .png file. So in Blender I would set the material name to “sphere” and ideally in the . https://chris.iluo.net/blog/2009/08/30/i-love-the-idea-of-a-new-smart-phone/ Sun, 30 Aug 2009 21:04:31 +0000 https://chris.iluo.net/blog/2009/08/30/i-love-the-idea-of-a-new-smart-phone/ The list of awesome phones: HTC Phones OpenMoko Palm Pre However, a new hotness has just been born. The Nokia n900. 32 GB internal storage Expandable to up to 48 GB with external microSD card 3.5G mobile network Quadband GSM with GPRS and EDGE Data transfers over a cellular network 10/2Mbps Data transfers over Wi-Fi 54Mbps Flash 9.4 support (In your face iPhone users, Nokia loves me) 5-megapixel (2584 × 1938 resolution) digital camera (iPhone is up to 3. https://chris.iluo.net/blog/2009/08/28/moving-from-svn-to-git/ Fri, 28 Aug 2009 09:00:21 +0000 https://chris.iluo.net/blog/2009/08/28/moving-from-svn-to-git/ So I have a few projects on SourceForge, but they’re all hosted via SVN. With all this distributed version control going on I thought I would like to get in on the action. I thought about moving to github, but what happens in 5 or 10 years when I want to move on to another revision control software? The name has a limited life expectancy. Anyway so I wanted to switch so I researched alot, this is the best information I found and this blog entry is basically a rehash specific to SourceForge (Because I didn’t find any good SourceForge specific information). https://chris.iluo.net/blog/2009/08/27/symbols/characters-returned-by-ls-l/ Thu, 27 Aug 2009 10:45:12 +0000 https://chris.iluo.net/blog/2009/08/27/symbols/characters-returned-by-ls-l/ $ ls -l total 24 drwxrwxr-x ... thisisadirectory -rw-rw-r-- ... thisisafile lrwxrwxrwx. ... thisisalink -> /media/data We know what the rwx fields are but what about d, - and l? Ok, those are pretty obvious too, here is a list of the more obscure ones because I always forget. d Directory. l Symbolic link. - Regular file. b Block buffered device special file. c Character unbuffered device special file. s Socket link. https://chris.iluo.net/blog/2009/07/22/libxdgmm/ Wed, 22 Jul 2009 09:46:05 +0000 https://chris.iluo.net/blog/2009/07/22/libxdgmm/ I think the Portland Project from freedesktop.org, is a great idea and everyone should be supporting it in their applications. I’ve just created a very small C++ wrapper (libxdgmm) for accessing XDG more easily. To use it, you need libxdgmm.h and libxdgmm.cpp. Just add these to your project and then use them like so: #include <libxdgmm/libxdg.h> int main(int argc, char** argv) { if (!xdg::IsInstalled()) std::cout<<"XDG is not installed"<<std::endl; else { std::string data; xdg::GetDataHome(data); std::cout<<"data=\""<<data<<"\""<<std::endl; std::string config; xdg::GetConfigHome(config); std::cout<<"config=\""<<config<<"\""<<std::endl; // Obviously these have to exist to work. https://chris.iluo.net/blog/2009/06/04/ahgotopage-doesnt-work-argh/ Thu, 04 Jun 2009 00:14:28 +0000 https://chris.iluo.net/blog/2009/06/04/ahgotopage-doesnt-work-argh/ It looks like AHGotoPage is broken with Mac OS X 10.5.7 and later (It was also broken on 10.3.9 and earlier). Probably the easiest way around this for the moment is to open your help documentation in a web browser using LSOpenCFURLRef instead. Hope this helps someone. https://chris.iluo.net/blog/2009/06/03/upgraded-linux-kernel-not-recognising-ext3-partitions-and-the-solution/ Wed, 03 Jun 2009 00:31:14 +0000 https://chris.iluo.net/blog/2009/06/03/upgraded-linux-kernel-not-recognising-ext3-partitions-and-the-solution/ Unable to access resume device (/dev/dm-1) mount: error mounting /dev/root on /sysroot as ext3: No such file or directory Being a Linux noob, I found this solution Create mkinitrd.new chmod +x mkinitrd.new su cd /boot sudo ./mkinitrd.new -f initrd-2.6.27.24-170.2.68.fc10.x86_64.img 2.6.27.24-170.2.68.fc10.x86_64 https://chris.iluo.net/blog/2009/04/09/error-glxcreatecontext-failed-after-updating-video-drivers/ Thu, 09 Apr 2009 21:18:51 +0000 https://chris.iluo.net/blog/2009/04/09/error-glxcreatecontext-failed-after-updating-video-drivers/ After updating video drivers I couldn’t run 3d applications, for example glxinfo: Error: glXCreateContext failed The following needs to be present in the xorg.conf file: Section "Files" ModulePath "/usr/lib64/xorg/modules/extensions/nvidia" ModulePath "/usr/lib64/xorg/modules" EndSection https://chris.iluo.net/blog/2009/02/25/yearly-update/ Wed, 25 Feb 2009 09:17:01 +0000 https://chris.iluo.net/blog/2009/02/25/yearly-update/ [ Skysytem background, testing wireframe grid, TombRaider MD3 model, testing material boxes, particle systems, frames per second messages, pegs, shocks, all the necessary elements of a Sudoku game. It’s been a while, I have like 20 draft entries in WordPress ranging from 1 paragraph comments up to 10 paragraph full on entries that still need that final once over and edit before going live. Actually it might be cool if there was (There probably is) a plugin so that people could optionally go to a page on my blog where they can see everything that hasn’t been published yet, like tagged with “draft” or something and comment on which ones I should flesh out and which ones I should ditch before they are even finished. https://chris.iluo.net/blog/2008/12/15/x86_64-linux-c/c-test/ Mon, 15 Dec 2008 16:10:02 +0000 https://chris.iluo.net/blog/2008/12/15/x86_64-linux-c/c-test/ I use: gcc cmake KDevelop RapidSVN Meld However, don’t go the websites, all of these are available in the (Default?) repositories, so you can either install them via yum, PackageKit or apt-get. Also note: RapidSVN and Meld are only needed if you want to use SVN. Even KDevelop is not required if you have another text editor that you prefer such as gedit/vi/emacs. If you want to create your provide your own make file then you don’t need cmake either. https://chris.iluo.net/blog/2008/12/13/linux-x86_64/ Sat, 13 Dec 2008 15:23:12 +0000 https://chris.iluo.net/blog/2008/12/13/linux-x86_64/ I have been dipping my toe into x86_64 waters sporadically over the last couple of years. On each of the previous occasions it always seemed too immature, packages were way to hard to come by (I prefer precompiled binaries), half my hardware didn’t work, strange crashes etc. Seeing as this episode has been 100% successful, I thought this time I would document it. Fedora My favourite distribution is Fedora due to it’s rapid development and ease of use. https://chris.iluo.net/blog/2008/11/23/covers/ Sun, 23 Nov 2008 14:09:15 +0000 https://chris.iluo.net/blog/2008/11/23/covers/ Last night we went to The Pheonix (Where I met Christina almost 3 years ago!) and they had The Ellis Collective playing with two other bands. The girl on the violin was the highlight, reminding Sam and I of Fourplay. It would have been good if there were more violin solos, also the songs on their site just don’t do the violin justice. I heart covers. No wait, I heart covers more than everyone in the world put together. https://chris.iluo.net/blog/2008/11/01/const-int-vs.-enum-vs.-define/ Sat, 01 Nov 2008 14:02:56 +0000 https://chris.iluo.net/blog/2008/11/01/const-int-vs.-enum-vs.-define/ Example A: int GetValue0() { return 10; } int GetValue1() { return 10 + 10; } int GetValue2() { return 10 * 10; } So if all of the values 10 represent a common magic number then you are going to want to extract that value to one location instead of the 5 that it is in at the moment. How do we do this? Say we call the value MAGIC_NUMBER (Of course, in a real life situation you would use a better name than this, wouldn’t you? https://chris.iluo.net/blog/2008/02/02/crank-very-early-testing-of-heightmap-and-basic-physics/ Sat, 02 Feb 2008 08:16:02 +0000 https://chris.iluo.net/blog/2008/02/02/crank-very-early-testing-of-heightmap-and-basic-physics/ This is what I have been working on in my spare time. I think it is going alright. I still have to do: The brakes can’t be locked up at the moment, they always give a little so you can’t for example lean on the front wheel and hold the brakes and expect to stay in the same place. Create the level editor, at the moment the level is just a bunch of sin waves added together. https://chris.iluo.net/blog/2007/12/17/call-of-duty-4-ai-and-difficulty-levels/ Mon, 17 Dec 2007 08:00:53 +0000 https://chris.iluo.net/blog/2007/12/17/call-of-duty-4-ai-and-difficulty-levels/ I started and finished Call of Duty 4 yesterday. Basically it is war themed FPS that tries to capture the feeling of helplessness of being in a war. The standard method for creating each level in a game like this (Quake 1) is to create the “map” that the player will run around in and then manually add a series of points (Spawn points) in the map that represent each bad guy. https://chris.iluo.net/blog/2007/11/23/welcome/ Fri, 23 Nov 2007 18:38:45 +0000 https://chris.iluo.net/blog/2007/11/23/welcome/ Hullo! If you are reading this I have now moved from LiveJournal to my self hosted WordPress blog. I am aiming to post at least one article per month, hardly a challenge, but hopefully I can sustain at least this poor effort.