Convert .bin/.cue to .iso [Mac/Linux]

I dislike .bin/.cue combinations for a few reasons. But the biggest is that Mac doesn’t natively support mounting them. Good thing I have macports to install linux programs.

Firstly lets install bchunk (use your favorite package manager, or macports on the mac)

# Mac Installation
sudo port install bchunk

Then locate your .bin/.cue combinations and CONVERT!

jg_mbp:CBT NUGGETS CISCO CCNA CCENT EXAM-PACK 640-822 ICND1 jgerold$ bchunk agcnccci.{bin,cue} CCENT
binchunker for Unix, version 1.2.0 by Heikki Hannikainen <hessu@hes.iki.fi>
 Created with the kind help of Bob Marietta <marietrg@SLU.EDU>,
 partly based on his Pascal (Delphi) implementation.
 Support for MODE2/2352 ISO tracks thanks to input from
 Godmar Back <gback@cs.utah.edu>, Colas Nahaboo <Colas@Nahaboo.com>
 and Matthew Green <mrg@eterna.com.au>.
 Released under the GNU GPL, version 2 or later (at your option).

Reading the CUE file:

Track  1: MODE1/2352    01 00:00:00

Writing tracks:

 1: CCENT01.iso  338/338  MB  [********************] 100 %
jg_mbp:CBT NUGGETS CISCO CCNA CCENT EXAM-PACK 640-822 ICND1 jgerold$ ls
CCENT01.iso     agcnccci.bin    agcnccci.cue
# ^Yay a new .iso

bchunk makes .bin/.cue > .iso conversion EASY!

OpenVZ with Archlinux (back in business)

Linux smsitraining 2.6.26.8-OVZ26-gogol.1 #1 SMP Thu Jan 28 15:49:59 PST 2010 x86_64 Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5520 @ 2.27GHz GenuineIntel GNU/Linux

Success! I’ve been working all day on a working OpenVZ kernel on my dev machine. 2.6.18, 2.6.24, 2.6.18rhel5; all borked out on the machine (either mid compile, or crapped out at boot) Anywho I setup a PKGBUILD for 2.6.26 Gogol & made a few modifications, and BAM everything is golden.

I’ve updated git & uploaded the package to AUR: http://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=34116

BTW, I just found out that an online friend of mine (Wonder) that is heavily involved in ArchLinux has created an Arch template for OpenVZ. Previous to this wonderful contribution OpenVZ has been without an Arch Linux template (that is updated), and it’s been a real drag. You can find the template on the standard templates page:

http://wiki.openvz.org/Download/template/precreated

Flickr with Linux

Flickr is the best. All it takes is $24 a year, and you can back up all the images you want, and you get a nifty web interface too. The wonderful thing about flickr is that they provide an API so that a bunch of talented programmers can make interfaces that work well with flickr. Many people have taken advantage of the API, and have made some excellent programs. The problem being is that it’s difficult to find great programs. Ones that aren’t glitch prone, out-dated, or just plain useless. I’ve gone on a gigantus search for the creme-de-le-creme, and here are my results.

Lets start out with the Flickr Web Uploader:

Access the uploader here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/upload

To upload photos it’s a simple 2 – 3 step process depending if you would like to add a description/tags to your uploaded photos.

Step 1 (Select photos):

My image capture program kinda crapped out, but you get the idea. Click the large black box, and multi-select the files you would like to upload.

Step 2 (Verify files & upload):

It’s pleasant that there is a verification page so you can add/remove files at your leisure.

Step 3 Finished (Add more info by clicking “add a description”):

Pros:

• It’s very simple, and works as advertised.
• Multi-Select is a bonus
• Has nice looking effects

Cons:

• Bogs down web browser substantially when uploading
• Couple minor visual glitches on my system

Summary:

The Flickr web uploader features a hassle free approach to uploading your photos, and requires no setup, or install of anything. I use the web uploader all the time, and just hate that it pretty much prevents me from browsing the web when I’m uploading files. The uploaded definitely cripples my web browsing experience, and that’s annoying…

——

Lets move onto something more dedicated… Desktop-Flickr-Organizer (aka dfo)

If you are an Arch Linux user, then go and grab my PKGBUILD in the AUR here: http://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=12069

If not, then look into your local package repositories for dfo.

After you install go ahead and click Flickr > Connect

This will go and grab all your photos, and import them into dfo. Once everything is imported, your sets will show up. At this point it’s a snap to add new sets, upload photos, and download photos. It’s just a matter of clicking the right buttons. And there aren’t that many buttons, so it is difficult to screw up.

I would upload some pictures, but the program is uber buggy, and all I can do right now is build my image database. Hopefully I can do other things when that’s done.

Pros:

• Clean UI
• Speedily Grabs Pictures
  

Cons:

• Uber buggy
• No longer Maintained (or at least it seems that way)

Summary:

DFO would be a great app if it wasn’t one of the buggier programs in my selection. The developer of flickrfs built & maintains dfo, and it seems like both projects had a wonderful start, and then they both dropped off the deep end. No longer to be updated, or work without epic bugs.

——

Another wonderful program called flickrtouchr written by Colm MacCárthaigh is dedicated to downloading your flickr photos/sets/everything. His version was made to sync with an ipod touch. Yet I found a version that downloads the whole images, and was pretty close to what I needed out of the box. I found it here on Dan Benjamin’s site and modified a couple things so that it works better

You can download my version via github here: http://github.com/fsk141/fsk141-flickrtouchr

[fsk141@Scribbly ~/fsk141-flickrtouchr]$ ls
README  bak  flickrtouchr.py
[fsk141@Scribbly ~/fsk141-flickrtouchr]$ ./flickrtouchr.py bak
./flickrtouchr.py:27: DeprecationWarning: the md5 module is deprecated; use hashlib instead
import md5
Download Mode (1=Collection, 2=Set, 3=All): 3
Flickr_Upload ... in set ... 2009-Flickr_Linux
Flickr_Upload_2 ... in set ... 2009-Flickr_Linux
Flickr_Upload_3 ... in set ... 2009-Flickr_Linux
Flickr-Connect ... in set ... 2009-Flickr_Linux
...

Pros:

• Simple CLI
• Fast
• No frills awesomeness

Cons:

• Not perfect code, but pretty darn close (could use improvements)

Summary:

I love this program for downloading off flickr. It’s one of the simplest programs to use. Other than the couple of modification I made, it suits my needs very well for downloading.
——

I’m still on the lookout for programs that aren’t as buggy as dfo, and do what I need. I’m planning on trying flickcurl, frupple, and frogr. I’ll write up any interesting features that I find when I find them.

——

On a side note, I think http://www.seoishard.com/seo-tool/flickr+manager+2.8 << is a scam. I believe that it’s entering hidden links in my website when I add flickr images. I’m going to look for little bugs in the code. It epically blows, cause I know a lot of people prolly use this plugin because it “works.” Well not only does it work, but it’s scamming all over the internet. eh

The quest for the perfect panel

Pics to follow on the next post (this is a quickie). I’m in search for a panel for my openbox desktop. I’m used to the dwm top bar, and wish I could have something simple like that, but haven’t found anything yet. As of now I’ve tried all the popular panels (xfce4-panel, gnome-panel, tint2, pypanel, fspanel, bmpanel) and I’ve liked tint2 (what I’m using now), and xfce4-panel was alright. I think I might try bmpanel again. This is all foreign to me, since dwm has been my only WM for a long time. The only reason I’m moving to something else is because I have a tablet PC, and I need a little mouse support. Also it’s a major bummer that Cell Writer doesn’t work with dwm. Meh…
——

^ tint2 panel ^

On a side note openbox sucks, well unless you configure it. And I’ve configured it a little, but I would like it to emulate dwm, with Ctrl-Alt-Shift (Move Windows), and a few other dwm specific things.

——

I’m using pytyle to get the whole tiling wm’ish feel, but it’s not anything like the real thing. I really miss dwm, and am pissed that I bought this Lenovo X200 Tablet, and am having issues finding a good WM for it

Linux | Firefox 3.5.2 Google Finance Fix

Recently I tried to edit the settings in my google finance portfolio to no avail. I have the newest version of Firefox. Ie. Shiritoko 3.5.2. Come to find out google finance was disabling the features because of the UserAgent that was specified in about:config. To fix, open up about:config and enter the following for the User Agent

Preference Name:
general.useragent.extra.firefox

Value:
Firefox/3.5.3pre

This will make everything work how it should.

Before:

After:

Take controll of your keyboard with xbindkeys

For avid linux enthusiasts xbindkeys is the ideal program to master your keyboard and assign commands to key combinations. Desktops and laptops alike; xbindkeys helps you use those unmapped keys, and put them to good use. For example, when you install a fresh distro on your shiny new laptop… A lot of new laptops have a bunch of extra keys that don’t always work out of the box. Some Desktop environments such as kde and gnome have gui configuration utilities to help you out. But if your like me and use dwm then gui tools aren’t really for you.

To better understand Xbindkeys I’ll plot up my laptop scenario… I have an IBM X61 that has a few keys that don’t work quite how I would like them to work. These include my volume up & down, menu, page left & right.

There a couple ways that one can create an ~/.xbindkeysrc file. The manual and automatic way…

Automatic: (Creates lot of comment flac )

$touch ~/.xbindkeysrc

3. Click new at the bottom, add a name, get the key combo, and set the command.
4. Either hit File > Save, or Edit > View generated rc & copy to .xbindkeysrc

Manual: (My choice)

——

xev is the only tool that I know that gives you all the information you need easily. Lets start with the Volume Down key, and add it to the ~/.xbindkeysrc file:

KeyPress event, serial 27, synthetic NO, window 0xa00001,
root 0x10b, subw 0xa00002, time 192787373, (40,35), root:(41,51),
state 0x0, keycode 122 (keysym 0x1008ff11, XF86AudioLowerVolume), same_screen YES,
XLookupString gives 0 bytes:
XmbLookupString gives 0 bytes:
XFilterEvent returns: False

This might look just like a jumble of letters and numbers, but it’s easy to find what we need and adapt it to a simple template for the config.

# Template

# Key/Action Label
"command"
m: state (aka modifier key) + keycode # (in our case m: 0x0)
keycode_name (optional in some cases, sometimes won't work without)

So if we add everything up we get something like the following:

#~/.xbindkeysrc

#Volume Down
"amixer set PCM 1+"
m:0x0 + c:122
XF86AudioRaiseVolume

5. Finish by typing the other keys into xev, and add them to your ~/.xbindkeysrc

——

If you would like to take a look at my X61 xbindkeysrc please check it out in my git backup On Github

Happy Launching…

What’s new?

I would love to post some pictures of my new little toy (nokia n810) , but I’m too busy using it to type type this entry I’ve reprogrammed the darn thing over twenty times, and I’ve had it less than a week. I’ve flashed it with mer, poky, android, and of corse diablo. I’m probably not making much sense, but Im too lazy to post links atm. I plan on posting some pictures/videos of the device and how to flash. I just realized that I have a lot of new posts that I need to… um. post

I just love ramdisks

Lately with all this kernel work I have taken full advantage of the wonderful ramdisk. Since the kernels are compressed and that takes a bunch of disk I/O’s it’s great to shave off minutes in uncompressing by using a ramdisk.

Here is a simple way to setup a ramdisk:

sudo mkdir /mnt/ramdisk
sudo mount -t tmpfs none /mnt/ramdisk

The possibilities are endless, and it helps a ton when you need a bunch of disk I/O, and have the memory to spare.

Free year of Linux Journal (Digital Version)

I’m not a fan of gimmicks, yet Linux Journal is giving away a free digital subscription to *everyone* that sends in the correct letters from the short tip videos. I watched the first video here:
http://www.linuxjournal.com/video/upgrading-ubuntu-cutting-edge and realized it’s not much of a task to watch the short tip to get the three letter tidbit you need from the video (‘AWK’).

Here are the Rules

Here are a couple links to make it easier:
HTTP Video Page
Video RSS Feed

Vim Tabs

I just found out something really neat via one of my new favorite sites: Command-line-fu

http://www.commandlinefu.com/commands/view/1256/vim-edit-in-tabs

I made a little video to show off vim tabs in action^^
Basic things to remember :tabn & :tabp

Also check out linux.com entry for vimtabs:
http://www.linux.com/feature/59533