nvlc - ncurses vlc

Last week I discovered nvlc installed on one of my Debian laptops. It was in fact installed in all my Debian boxes. I scratched my head at first because I didn't remember ever having installed it and what is more, I discovered that it isn't even a package. It comes with vlc player.

Well, I played with it for a while just to find out that with nvlc you can do almost everything you do with vlc. It can for instance, write to the framebuffer so you can watch video. What is more, having a curses interface makes it easy to use. It was nice and that was it. However today I thought about a great use that I can give to it.

I'm right now sitting at my eeepc *yumi*, but my music collection is in my main desktop *odd*. From here I ssh into the box and launch *nvlc*. Then I can select the songs I want to listen to, raise the volume and do other things, as if this small netbook were  a remote.

Awesome isn't it?. nvlc, welcome to my pool.

Here is a screenshot:

Minimal desktop.

This weekend I have been configuring a rather small, relatively minimal desktop using openbox. I have also installed a bunch of applications to work with this gorgeous window manager. Among them: gmrun, wbar, tint2, conky ... I have also set Midori as default browser. In my first tests I installed rox-filer, but since I intend to thoroughly try rox desktop someday I removed rox-filer and I left the good old midnight commander as file manager.

I need to remember (for future reference):

• Openbox: create .config/openbox/autostart file (nm-applet and all other apps. Launch wbar -pos < top >)
  
• Edit wbar /usr/share/wbar/dot.wbar (icons and commands)
  
• gmrun: Edit openbox keybindings in .config/openbox/rc.xml
  
  

   <keybind key="A-F2">
      <action name="Execute">
      <command>gmrun</command>
       </action>
    </keybind>
  

Here is a screenshot for you to sneak a peek (Screenshot taken with scrot):

New gpg key.

My current gpg key (hosted on a pgp server) expires tomorrow. I created if for a year because I didn't know if I was going to use it at all or not.

To tell you the truth. I have never used it, at least that I remember. Anyway, I think that having a key is very handy and it does not do any harm. I think I should start using it in my e-mails.

This new key does not expire and it is hosted at

hkp://keys.gnupg.net

You can also find it in my Profile

pharc v 2.0 released.

Today I released pharc 2.0. pharc is a script that organizes your phlog posts on a yearly basis.

pharc is based on mkphlog written by octotep. The reason for releasing v 2.0 is that mkphlog has been updated to v.0.2 so I needed to adapt my script to the changes.

You can read my phlog post on the release of mkphlog v.0.2 in my phlog here (gopher link)

You can read my phlog post on the release of pharc v.2.0 in my phlog here (gopher link)

pharc is version controlled using git. You can find the script v.2.0 here

If you're interested in the .deb package it is available in two places:

a. In my gopher hole (gopher link)
b. here: pharc 2.0-1 all.deb


The changelog is:

• Updating for mkphlog v.0.2
• Adding version number 2.0
• Adding license (2012)

Enjoy!!!

To .deb or not to .deb, that's the question...

Hey, what did you expect? I'm a poet, not a coder

This short blog post is just to inform you that I am writing a new tutorial on how to build a .deb package in just five minutes with equivs

My first .deb

\o/ Today I built my first debian package or .deb

I wrote the source code of the package myself. You can find the main script here. It is a simple script to archive phlog (gopher blog) posts on a yearly basis. I called it pharc which stands for phlog archiver. It is based on the mkphlog script, written by octotep, that I use to build my own phlog

It takes a little bit of work, then

    $ debuild -us -uc

And voilà! you can find the package here:

pharc 1.0-1 all.deb

Important: This package was built for learning purposes only. It has some limitations I am perfectly aware of. Just to name a few:

• The script assumes that you have a link in your $HOME/gopher to your gopher server. And that all your posts are in directories named $(date +%m-%d-%y)
  
• The makefile is ridiculous. It only has seven lines! I wrote it in 25 seconds just to experience quick success. Now if you're really curious I can paste it here or somewhere else.
  
• The complete list of files is not available online. They are stored on my server but if you want them you can ask for them. Here is the list:
  
  pharc_1.0.orig.tar.gz
  pharc_1.0-1_i386.changes
  pharc_1.0-1_i386.build
  pharc_1.0-1_all.deb
  pharc_1.0-1.dsc
  pharc_1.0-1.diff.gz
  
• Who uses gopher or keeps a phlog anyway?

'pharc' a phlog archiver.

I write my phlog using a script called mkphlog. It creates each phlog post in the form of a directory using the following variable: entrydate=date +%m-%d-%y
I started my phlog in October so there were not many posts. However, reaching the end of the year made me realize that I had to devise a way to archive all the posts on a yearly basis. Doing it by hand took me approximately 10 minutes. It basically means copying a bunch of directories into a single directory and editing the gophermaps so that the servers know where to look for files once the links are clicked.
But as you can imagine I am a busy person and I just can't add any more thing to my todo. So I decided to write a script to do the work for me automatically every year. Isn't that fantastic? Well it didn't take long to write a first functional version of the script. However, like all scripts, it was open for improvement.
This afternoon I have improved it a bit and I have committed what I imagine is the final version as of now. You can see it here
By the way, the title of this post is self explanatory enough. I called it pharc which stands for "phlog archiver". It would be very nice that someone tested it and found it useful.