ShrimpWorks

OK so not much is going on… Thought I might as well pass along some general knowledge.

Changing the resolution of a Linux console is a fairly simple task (and requires a reboot) and is generally a nice thing to do if you intend using the console a lot.

Start off by logging in as root, and open your Grub menu file (mine is in /boot/grub/menu.lst). Next, find the option that would normally boot your Linux system (probably looks something like the following):

kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.8-1-386 root=/dev/hda3 ro

Now, simply append to the end “vga=788″, so it ends up looking something like this:

kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.8-1-386 root=/dev/hda3 ro vga=788

The “788″ is a code which tells the console to be 800×600 with a 16bit colour depth. Check out a table ot codes for all resolutions and colour depths by clicking the “read more” link below this post.

Save the file, reboot, and enjoy :-).

For reference, here are some VGA codes:

   Colors ( depth) 640x480 800x600 1024x768 1280x1024 1600x1200
   ---------------+-------+-------+--------+---------+---------
   256    ( 8 bit)| 769    771     773      775       796
   32,768 (15 bit)| 784    787     790      793       797
   65,536 (16 bit)| 785    788     791      794       798
   16.8M  (24 bit)| 786    789     792      795       799

Comments (13)

I thought that it’s about time I messed around with proxies, so yeasterday I set up Squid on my server, xan.

The configuration looked like a bit of a mission for a first-timer such as myself :P, so I whipped out Webmin and slapped on the Squid module. I’ll take a look at the config options it generated some other time and do it by hand in future.

I must say the veriety of options available is quite impressive. The access control lists are particularly exciting too, there’s a helluva lot that can be done with this stuff.

It’s only being used for HTTP at the moment, and is doing an excellent job. I’ve managed to get AWStats to do some basic reporting for it, so I can see who’s using how much bandwidth, viewing how many pages, what file types are being accessed, etc. I’m a bit of a stats junkie :P.

Overall I’m pretty impressed…

Comments (2)

Seems I’ve spent most of today writing Dosage (http://slipgate.za.net/dosage/) modules - managed to find a whole load of comics, and ended up making 10 new modules.

It’s surprising how many comics have their main images sliced in half somewhere midway through the image (so it ends up being 2 images which Dosage obviously won’t handle), I found some that even have each panel in a seperate HTML table cell :-/.

Not sure if it’s bad web design or whatever, but it’s a pity since they’ll never make their way into Dosage…

Comments (1)

I’ve put my Python POP3 MailBox class up, it may be of some use to someone… Read the comments and stuff within the script for full details.

Download: http://shrimpworks.za.net/filemgmt/singlefile.php?lid=3

Comments (0)

Well as expected, my little wxPython dict client is finished.

I decided to install the File Managment plugin to let me put this stuff on here somehow… So check out pyDict in the “Files” link on the top-right of the site.

Or simply go here: http://shrimpworks.za.net/filemgmt/index.php

The ReadMe explains the basics of how it works and stuff…

Comments (1)

Well I installed dictd on xan (this server) yesterday, and it seems to be working great for Nooblet (my IRC bot, powered by Supybot - http://sypybot.com/) since my ADSL is capped. Accessing it over the LAN and internet works great as well, though I have been hunting for a decent Windows dict client - they don’t seem to exist.

Anyway, so I’m creating a quick little client in Python/wxPython with the dictclient module (http://erwin.complete.org/devel) . Not intended to be a great big feature packed client, it just needs tolook up words after all
Should be done in a few hours…

Comments (1)

So I thought I’d try out the highly praised Ubuntu Linux. I thought to myself, what better way to try than with their LiveCD - no need to mess up any existing setups.

Anyway so I downloaded the ISO, and after burning the CD, noticed it had a Windows auto-run feature. So I ran it, and was presented with a nice little winow asking if I’d like to install Windows versions of OpenOffice.org, AbiWord, Audacity, Gimp, PDFCreator, Thunderbird or Firefox. That struck me as rather odd for a CD that’s supposed to be convincing you Linux is better (”Hey! No need to convert to Linux, just check out all this cool Windows software!”).

So I’m thinking oooookay, so I decide to try out the Linux bit of the disc. Everything boots up nicely, nice little GUI boot loader with a couple of options presented in easy-to-use menus, nice splash image hiding all the auto-detection of hardware and genreral stuff that goes on at boot time (pressing Esc kills the splash image so you can check that everything’s okay in the background). Once it booted up into Gnome, everything looked cool. Nice default desktop setup, theme, etc. I realised at this point that my router had DHCP disabled, so Ubunto had me offline. There’s a ‘Network Setup’ option in the “Actions” menu, which presented me with a nice little wizard for IP, DNS, gateway, etc options. Upon completeing this wizard and closing the application however, nothing would work at all. Icons on the panel did not launch applications, and neither did anything in the application menu. I’d have restarted X, but with LiveCDs, they seem to terminate and reboot as soon as X shuts down.

So anyway, I restarted the whole thing, but with the router’s DHCP enabled. Everything worked cool, the applications on the CD all worked as expected. At some point I entered the Network Setup again and needed another reboot though. Seems as soon as that is run it kills the setup…

It’s a very minimal system though, nothing really useful on it beyond OpenOffice.org - and who uses a LiveCD to do their general word processing. It even had Synaptic - but it prevents you from installing software or even updating the packages list.

I also tried Gnoppix, which is based off the Ubuntu LiveCD, but it suffered the same network configuration application problem, as well as lacking any interesting software. It also included all the Windows software Ubuntu had. In fact the only real difference I saw between Gnoppix and Ubuntu was the boot up splash image. Most of Gnoppix is still ‘branded’ as Ubuntu.

I think if they dumped the Windows software from these CDs, they’d be able to load on a LOT of extra Linux software to impress potential users more, as well as making it more useful as a general-use LiveCD.

The only thing that would make me want to install a proper Ubuntu system at some later date at the moment would be the fact that it’s a full desktop installation out-the-box, with the ability to install anything else on demand thanks to it’s Debian base.

For the moment I’ll be sticking to Knoppix when I need Linux-on-the-go, which it loaded with tons of useful and fun stuff (pity about KDE, though).

Comments (0)

Heh, I’m feeling sort of blank lately…
Finally my Naruto collection is up-to-date thanks to |sAvAgE|, and he’s filling in the missing parts of the Full Metal Alchemist series too. So I’ve started watching FMA from the beginning again.

Something is REALLY wrong with the IS FTP server. I think they must be doing shaping for non-IS customers propery now :(. Updated a bunch of xan’s (this server) packages last night and it took an age to download just 27mb.

Comments (0)

How kewlies is that - UnWheel has taken it’s rightful place as the #1 voted driving mod of 2004 (across all games supported by modDB). Hehehehe.

Might as well list all UnWheel’s achievements to date for the fun of it
Make Something Unreal Contest - Phase 2 (UT2003):
- 1st place, Best Non-FPS Mod
- 1st place, Best Vehicle
- 1st place, Best use of Karma Physics

Make Something Unreal Contest - Phase 3 (UT2004):
- 3rd place, Best Non-FPS Mod
- 2nd place, Best Vehicle
- 1st place, Best use of Karma Physics

Make Something Unreal Contest - Phase 4:
- 7th place, Best Non-FPS Mod (can’t win em all ;-))

Make Something Unreal Contest - Grand Finals:
- Finalist (results pending)

Bundled as one of 11 mods in the retail Unreal Tournament 2004: Editor’s Choice Edition.
1st place in ModDB’s Mod of the Year - Driving category.
Awarded PC Zone UK’s Essential Choice, and featured on cover DVD twice (Sept + Oct 2004).
Featured Mod on FilePlanet’s homepage (EC/MSU Phase 4 version).
Featured on several magazines’ cover disks throughout the world, including UK PC Gamer (Dec 2004).

Not too shabby, hey?

Comments (0)

Here’s something that’s been keeping me quite entertained recently. Outer Space is an online multiplayer space game where you try to explore and colonise as many systems as possible while forming alliances with other players to try to keep alive.

Sounds pretty simple… But throw in a huge tech tree that you can research to improve your production, research, population, ships, etc, and things become complicated pretty quickly.

The game is turn based, and each turn lasts an hour, so you need only check up on your empire once an hour. Or if you build up production, research and fleet order ques, you can check in even less often if you like.

Check it out: http://www.ospace.net/

Requires Python and PyGame

Comments (0)