My Technophilic Musings

Worried about someone breaking into your house in your absence? Or just need to keep a tab on who enters your room while you are away? Well, all you need is a webcam, a linux PC/laptop and a twitter account. And you are set for real time updates through twitter about all that goes on at your abode behind your back (can even receive a text message/sms on your phone). Keep reading for the very simple setup you need.

1.) Download and install "motion" on your computer. For ubuntu users, this is as simple as running

2.) Setup your motion configuration file. (Usually at /etc/motion/motion.conf). There are quite a lot of options available. You might want to tweak it a lot according to ur needs later on but the most important ones that you can begin with are (leave the rest untouched for now):

2a.) Add/edit the option "target_dir" to point to the directory where you want to save the images of the event when motion is detected.

2b.) Add/edit the option "locate" and set it to "on" so that you get a nice square box around the detected moving object/person.

2c.) Add/edit the option "webcam_port" and set it to, say, "8000". Motion includes a mini http server so now, you can use it to view the actual images of the happening when you get the update and check for false alarms.

3.) Now, comes the most important part, about getting the update. Continue reading »

written by Shantanu Goel \\ tags: fun, linux, motion, motion detection, real time updates, sms, thieves, Twitter, ubuntu, webcam

Did you know that instead of installing special software to view your webcam video, you can simply use mplayer for the same purpose, and with a lot of fine control. e.g. try running the following command with your webcam attached to your computer.

And you can use mencoder to capture and encode video from your webcam:

Have fun playing with the huge number of options available. You could even cat the test.avi file into a folder of your web server and have instant streaming video .

written by Shantanu Goel \\ tags: fun, linux, mencoder, mplayer, stream, video, webcam

Some of you might know that I was in the hunt for a decent mspaint alternative recently. Note that I didn't go for GIMP / Inkscape etc because they were overkill for what I wanted to do. Many a times, I just wanted to touch up a screenshot or make a simple flow image by drawing a few boxes, use a few pointing arrows, and add some text here and there. All this could be done with the previous mentioned programs as well but took a bit more steps than I wanted (stroking the selections / paths for lines, boxes, circles, and even then, no arrows). I didn't find an adequate replacement at the time but got it now, so thought of writing about it. Basically I came across 4 apps: tuxpaint, gpaint, kolourpaint and mtpaint. Won't discuss tuxpaint here cuz I found it a little too kiddish.

• gpaint: (Available in Ubuntu repositories) gpaint is a very simplistic program that has a mspaint look and feel but feels a bit lacking. It can do basic procedures like basic shape selections, lines, boxes but that's it. No polygon selections, brush, color picker, etc, and yeah no arrows. Moreover, it saves only in pngs.

• kolourpaint: (Available in Ubuntu Repositories) kolourpaint is very close to mspaint. Infact it does a bit more than mspaint. It has all the things that I mentioned as missing in gpaint, plus has basic image manipulation effects as well. I liked it quite a bit, but it had 2 drawbacks for me, still no arrows, and it depends on KDE/Qt libraries.

• mtpaint: (Available in Ubuntu Repositories from Gutsy onwards. Rest of the folks can search for a package on net, or find a suitable package or source here) This is the software that got me most excited. It is actually a kind of lower-intermediate package that lies somewhere between mspaint and a very basic, poor man's GIMP. It has all the features ok kolourpaint, (plus arrows at last ), a small smattering of basic effects (gaussian, edge detection, blur, embossing), can work with gifs also (handles transparency and animation quite well). So, this is the one I would be sticking to for now.

I am using mtpaint now for my basic needs. Hope the article benefitted you as well. If I missed out on some package, then do let me know.

written by Shantanu Goel \\ tags: GIMP, gnome, gpaint, Gutsy, Inkscape, KDE, kolourpaint, linux, mspaint, mtpaint, tuxpaint, ubuntu, windows

Disclaimer Notes:

1. I wrote this because these things just came into my mind today while I was reading about the impending “Hardy Heron” release related things and saw that there is a lot of FUD being spread still. So, thought of jotting down my likes/dislikes and not making it a linux v/s windows campaign. Though at a few places, it might be necessary to compare the two just to put things into perspective.
2. These are reasons why “I” like/dislike Linux and not why others might like/dislike it although you might find common patterns.
3. Most of my recent experience is with Ubuntu these days, so most examples would be from it as well.
4. These reasons are purely from an end-user’s perspective and not from a linux developer’s perspective. So, I’m not taking into factor that I can change the kernel (or most other things’) source code because “generally” I don’t.
5. This post is quite long. And if you have a flame to send out my way (which you are most welcome to do), please read it in its entirety before doing so, because many things I say at some point have some caveats covered at another point.

5 Reasons why I like Linux:

These reasons aren’t listed in any particular order. All of them are quite important for me.

1. Light on Resources: I must say that Linux is what still keeps my more than 3 years old laptop running in a prim condition with the latest and greatest of everything from technology stand-point as well as eye-candy stuff. An example: With almost every effect of Compiz Fusion turned on, hordes of screenlets and AWN enabled, an Apache/MySQL/PHP based server running, and a dozen of other applications (firefox, nautilus, terminal, GIMP, RhythmBox, Open Office Word Processor, VLC player, etc) open, my setup consumes around 500 MB of RAM. While on the other hand, if I was using Vista, It’d have demanded atleast 1 GB of RAM just to run Aero, forget about the rest of the things.

2. Cost: This is a big factor for me. Almost everything is free or atleast has a free alternative available. Most of the times I’ve found these free software to be much better than commercial software in terms of feature sets as well as stability. But even otherwise, when there are cases where the free alternative a bit lagging as compared to the commercial one (e.g. GIMP v/s Photoshop), I haven’t felt that my needs have ever outgrown the free software.

3. Ease of Use: Doing “stuff” on linux is just so easy. By “stuff”, I mean everything from doing some normal day chores, downloading files, customizing things, automating routine tasks, etc. The backbone for this is “the terminal” (not the movie :P). I can do almost anything I want from the console. It not only saves me time and frustration in executing a program, waiting for the GUI to load and then go through a series of clicks but also allows me to batch up everything into one pretty little command. Moreover, every thing has so many options that I can configure to my liking. (More on the “options” later below)

4. Getting Software: Getting software couldn’t be more easy.

• It generally involves typing in “sudo apt-get install <software>”, pressing enter, and that’s it. The latest version is ready to roll on your machine.
• Reboots are minimal. Even after thinking for quite long, it’s very hard to recall any time when I had to “log-off” my system (let alone reboot) after installing a software (or even a driver)
• Updates are automatic, and not just for the OS or a few core components, but for all the software that I installed through repositories (but not for the ones which I installed from my local deb’s or compilations, which is understandable of course)
• The latest fixes/patches are available very quickly. Moreover, the revision cycle for most distros lies between 6–12 months and hence, even a complete desktop upgrade is quickly available as well (as compared to the 7 year period after which Vista came out). You can even “upgrade” to the latest distro revision without having to wipe everything, though I generally prefer a clean install.

5. Security:Now, I agree with everyone that the reason why we don’t see many viruses for linux is because the user base is very less as compared to other OS’s but I also believe that this is not the “only” reason.

• The thing is that since most of the software is open source, so exploits are found quite quickly and patched and released rapidly. While in a closed source environments, even if a white hat reports it, the exploits go on un-noticed, un-worked upon by the developers (A good example is the recent falling of Vista during the “Pwn to Own” contest because of a known but unpatched vulnerability by Adobe, not a fault of Vista in this case though but you get my drift).
• The security model otherwise is also quite tight and its very hard for someone to exploit it till the time you use common sense along with it. (A linux virus can easily wipe ur “/home” without acqurining root permissions).

5 Reasons why I dislike Linux

These reasons irk me the most but aren’t enough for to make me move away from Linux. I mention them because getting them right would make my Linux expereince that much more joyful and probably others feels the same too. Moreover, this is not a gripe and is not a command/order to “the Linux guys” out there to fix it, because linux is of, by and for the community. And being a part of this community, I share the burden of this equally and would like to help out in making it better in whatever ways possible, developing, testing, suggesting things.

1. Getting Software: I had mentioned about how easy it is to get software from most distros’ repositories with a single command. However, getting and installing software is also a challenge that many people face in linux. After sometime your particular version of the distro stops updating the software and will include only security fixes and such. Now, there are many good people who would backport software for your version but not all the time. You can download pacakges off the internet (debs’ for ubuntu) but they might not work because of too many inter-mingled dependencies. Compiling is another option but many times, it can spiral out of hand. I hope we can better softwares like GDebi that could make this much more easier.

2. Options: Earlier I listed having so many options as one of my reasons to like Linux. But, sometimes, too many options tend to get to my head. This gets even more difficult when you have too many choices but no clue about what means what and which one is the best. However, the community is continously trying to make this right. A lot of documentation projects are going on, and the mailing lists, IRC networks and other forums also give out a lot of information. Especially for Ubuntu, I find a huge community based support system which always helps me out. (PS – The Ubuntu Forums are the nicest forums you’ll ever come across. I am yet to come across a post that contains words like “RTFM” or “n00b”)

3. Ease Of Use: Some times, just some times, the lack of a GUI for common things irks me and I wish in respect of a few things (read wi-fi) that things could “just work”. But I guess this is a trade-off that I can live with, and moreover this situation is also improving especilly due to the efforts taken by Ubuntu, Mandriva, Fedora, GNOME and KDE. (Special thanks to nm-applet ). Moreover, Hardy Heron, b43 and the latest linux kernels promise to solve the wi-fi setup issues.

4. Browsing: The browsing experience on linux isn’t too great. But this is not a fault of Linux as such. This is due to companies providing adequate linux support (e.g. java plugins for 64 bit) and too many sites optimizing their code for IE. But again, there is hope for this as we can already run IE on linux (IEs4Linux) plus SUN has promised a 64 bit java firefox plugin with the next JRE.

5. Drivers: This is again due to companies not giving proper linux support for their hardware and not even releasing their hardware details for the OSS community to develop their own drivers. However, I can understand that giving out hardware details might not be an option for these companies considering the competition, and also proper software support might be a bit unfeasible due to a smaller consumer base. But again, more and more companies are seeing the light now and releasing proper drivers for linux, with Nvidia and ATi taking the lead (When will Creative listen?). And a special thanks to the OSS community for making working drivers despite all this.

So, this is it. After reading back through what I just wrote, I am dead sure that I will stick to Linux as the trade-offs are too meagre for me. Will you?

written by Shantanu Goel \\ tags: aero, apt-get, compiz fusion, dislikes, drivers, ease of use, firefox, gui, IE, installation, java, latest, likes, linux, linux v/s windows, reasons, reboot, resources, security, Software, terminal, ubuntu, Vista, windows

Update: Modified the “Oxios Hibernate” app as well on public demand. Please redownload the below mentioned package. It now has Oxios Close as well as Oxios Hibernate.

Oxios developed a very useful tool for Windows Mobile (WM2003/5/6/6.1) called “Oxios Memory” sometime ago. On running it, it’ll flush your RAM (kind of) and recover substantial amounts of memory that can be used by the currently program. It is so good at this that many people run it regularly on their phones, and most of them want to run it in an automated mode (through a scheduler or a script). But the problem (so far) was that it generates a Message Box at the end for which the user has to press “OK” button to make it go away. There is no known way of disabling this message box and many attempts to work around it by scripting the “press OK” action have been very unreliable at best. Hence, it took it upon me today to remove this nagging problem and 5 minutes later we have a “clean” Oxios Memory.

Yes, no more nagging prompts

Download it here: Oxios Memory Hacked By Shantanu Goel

(Feel free to spread the message but please don’t hotlink to the file as it is anyways disabled. Provide a link to this page instead)

If you like it, then DIGG IT by clicking here or choose your favourite submission engine from the links below the post

written by Shantanu Goel \\ tags: Hack, Oxios Close, Oxios Hibernate, Oxios Memory Cleaner, Remove Message Box Prompt, Windows Mobile, WM2003, WM5, WM6, WM6.1

Updated my WordPress plugin shantz-wp-qotd to version 1.2.2 today.

Introduction: Shantz WP QOTD is a plugin to add quotes to your wordpress blog in a few easy clicks. It adds quotes to your posts and your sidebars with a multitude of options for sources and customization.

Changelog:

Version 1.2.2

• Fixed a bug because of which quotes were blank some times. Thanks to Thom for reporting it.

For more details and download, go to Shantz WordPress QOTD Home Page

written by Shantanu Goel \\ tags: plugin, QOTD, shantz-wp-qotd, version 1.2.2, wordpress, WP

Many people ask me why are people crazy about Open Source, or why does it even exist. After all if your code is out there, you can’t make money off it, right? Well, yes and no. Now, I ain’t no open source guru, but I do my part for it. Generally my explanations are either too complex, too full of extra details or mostly just described badly for a layman that I end up on square one, i.e., not convincing the sophomore who asked the question, looking towards me for the answer. Well, lets leave it for the experts to do the hard work, eh :-). Tristan Rhodes has explained the grand scheme behind it all in terms that would even make my grand mother under stand it.

Hit the link if you are interested in knowing more about open source or are just like me, looking for something to advocate open source to all in easy terms.

Why do people make software for free?

written by Shantanu Goel \\ tags: open source, open source advocacy, Tristan Rhodes

pidgin is everybody’s favourite IM client. Lifehacker includes it in its list of top 5 IM clients. Obviously I use it too, but one drawback of being lazy and not switching over to Gutsy Gibbon was that I was stuck with version 2.2.0 for a long time. But recently I began a new journey towards d-bus programming and chose pidgin as my companion. Found out that 2.2.0 has some serious d-bus issues on amd64 that were fixed in 2.4.0. Hence, installed all the dependencies, compiled the latest version today from source and installed it. Just thought of putting it out for my fellow Feisty users who are looking to upgrade as well but don’t want to go through the mess of compiling from source.

So download it from the below given link. However, since it is a relatively big package (around 8.5 MB), I might pull it if the bandwidth usage becomes too much, so download soon.

Download pidgin 2.4.1 amd64/x86_64 for Ubuntu Feisty Fawn

You can install it by:

1. Either using “gdebi” – A nice deb package installer that will also try to resolve dependencies for you.
2. or by running “dpkg -i pidgin_2.4.1-1_amd64.deb” on command line.

Let me know if you have any issues with it.

written by Shantanu Goel \\ tags: d-bus, feisty fawn, Gutsy Gibbon, pidgin 2.2.0, pidgin 2.4.1, ubuntu

Have been in the hunt for a good basic paint program for linux for so long. I’m running a Ubuntu Feisty Fawn (amd64) box (yeah, yeah I didn’t upgrade to Gutsy because it sneaked up too quickly onto me and the impending loom of LTS goodness of Hardy was also there). Have been suggested various things so far like GPaint, Kolourpaint, tuxpaint etc but none of them cuts it.

Don’t get me wrong, I love GIMP but its an overkill when I have to go through 2 menus, a dialogue box and several clicks, just to make a silly rectangle, but I don’t hold anything against it cuz afterall its an “Image Manipulation” program, not a painting one.

So, what do you use/recommend when you have to draw a few basic shapes, connect them through lines and arrows, put in a mashup of few silly pics and colorize it a bit with basic effects? And are there any gnome native ones or do I ultimately have to give in to install KDE dependencies?

written by Shantanu Goel \\ tags: draw, feisty, GIMP, gnome, gpaint, Gutsy, Hardy, KDE, kolourpaint, linux, paint, tuxpaint, ubuntu

ShantzTodayChanger is a little tool written by me for your Windows Mobile based phones (WM5/WM6) which will cycle ur today background or theme after a set interval of time. It has a lot of features and options and you can even use it to achieve something other than changing wallpapers as well (e.g. running applications at set times) but that depends on your imagination.

Changes in this version:

1.53 - 23-March-08 -> RECOMMENDED UPDATE
i)Theme Color Detection has been improved a lot. Should work much more accurately now.

For more information about this tool, queries, feature requests, updates and downloads, please visit ShantzTodayChanger Home Page.

written by Shantanu Goel \\ tags: cycle themes and wallpapers, extensible application, interval based cycling, run applications at set times, ShantzTodayChanger, themes, Wallpapers, Windows Mobile, WM5, WM6