Francos Blog

Messing with Dates in Drupal

Dates and how they are used in drupal is a PITA.

this snippet of code helps to remember the easy way of moving dates back and forth in and out of timestamp format

$today['raw string'] = '2010-03-09 13:00:00';
$today['unix']=strtotime($today['raw string']);
$today['array']=getdate($today['unix']);
$today['YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS']=date("Y-m-d H:i:s",$today['unix']);
$today['drupal-default']=format_date($today['unix']);
dpm ($today);

Categories: Blogs

Importing MythTV Recordings into MythTV (Or restoring your files and putting them back into MythTV)

Simple enough,
copy the mpg files intot the recordings folder and run the mythtv-rebuilddatabase.script but first:

In my case I had install the time component. I did this by first running cpan
cpan
then from the cpan prompt:
install Time::Format
On my backend (chip) i modified the password param ($pass) to reflect then from the recovery dir
sudo ./myth.rebuilddatabase.pl --dbhost 192.168.80.246 --ext mpg --dir /media/temprec

Categories: Blogs

Ubuntu Shortcut keys

This is by no means a comprehensive list:
nautilus / gnome:
Ctrl-Alt-L - Lock screen
ctrl-h : show hidden files
ctrl-t : move to trash WARNING SEE FIREFOX
f9 : toggle side-pane
alt-home : jump to home folder
alt-enter : file / folder properties
alt-f1 : launch applications menu
alt-f2 : launch "run application" dialogue
ctrl-alt - right/left arrow : move to the next virtual desktop
ctrl-alt-shift - right/left arrow : take current window to the next virtual desktop
ctrl+a – select all
ctrl+n – new window
ctrl+shift+n – new folder
f2 – rename

read more

Categories: Blogs

How to determine how many processoers your Linux Box has and How fast.

It may seem silly but it is a simple command:

less /proc/cpuinfo

Categories: Blogs

Doing Geolocation with HTML5 (Feb 2010)

A great article on Geolocation in HTML 5.
It reads great in any browser, but works best and supports the example scripts in FF3.5
http://diveintohtml5.org/geolocation.html

Categories: Blogs

Making the BELL Turbo Stick work on Ubuntu

Yes, it works in the NWT! to get it to work I simply did this:
sudo gedit /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-cd.rules
find the line that contains "Novatel_Mass_Storage" and append the following to it:
RUN+="/usr/bin/eject %k"

My thanks to DATABIT for this post which solved my problem:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1002262

Categories: Blogs

ART: A portrait of my love

This was an attempt to retry a technique I used about 10 years ago with a kids disney tablet. back then I managed to get as far as to sketch a face and that was it, this time, using the "Bamboo" I went all the way, I seem to have color and flesh tone issues, which may be related to my color blindness....
This is a portrait of Heidi. Inspired by a photo of her at a party. Most of my time was spent on eyes, fleshtone and jawline.
-

-

-

-

-

Categories: Blogs

ART: River Bank Camp

This piece was a result of a desire to try and paint a scene like those used in maps in World of Warcraft and many other games, where perspective is shown but no attentions to distance is paid, the result is a game-like unrealism.
-

-

-

-

Categories: Blogs

ART: Creamsicle Mountains

This piece was inspired by an amazing video footage captured by CBC making the Wild China Series for "The Nature Of Things" The scene was inspired by shots of sand mountains in the deserts of China, covered by snow.

-

-

-

Categories: Blogs

ART: Sunset on Germain Lake

Inspired by a scene burned into my mind standing on the dock fishing walleye after walleye all night long during the midnight sun at Germain Lake NWT.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-

Categories: Blogs

ART: Fleeting Ice

After watching a documentary on climate change impacts in the Arctic and Antarctica, the idea to try and digitally paint icebergs and glaciers hit me, this was the result.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-

read more

Categories: Blogs

Getting back into digital art - Bob Ross in "The Gimp"

Over the pre-christmas season, Heidi and I watched a lot of Bob Ross videos. For those unfamiliar with Bob Ross, He uses a wet oils on wet canvas technique that makes painting landscapes really easy and his techniques unlock potential in budding painters. After purchasing his kits for Heidi for christmas and getting excited about when waiting for them to arrive, I decided that some of his wet on wet blending techniques could be realized in some form in the digital realm.

read more

Categories: Blogs

Uninstall Google Chrome

Google chrome is my browser of choice but if you need to uninstall it for some reason, this is how I do it.

If you grabbed the unstable deb then uninstall as:
sudo apt-get remove google-chrome-unstable

If it was beta, then use
sudo apt-get remove google-chrome-beta

It has been noted that unstable is the only way to go if you want bookmark syncing in UNR Karmic.

Categories: Blogs

Setting up a new Ubuntu

For the record, my OS of choice is Ubuntu 9.10 aka Karmic Koala. I use Ubuntu Netbook Remix 9.10 on laptops and netbooks, Desktop 9.10 on desktop machines, Server 8.10 on Servers and Mythbuntu 9.04 on my home theater PCs.

To start I install Ubuntu, then do system updates.
When I set up a new Ubuntu, there are a few things i do right away to get it set up correctly, this them:
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install mc htop openssh-server
From there I can remote in from another machine and continue configuring the system...

read more

Categories: Blogs

Fort Smith, NT - The black hole of shipping destinations

Ok, For the most part I set up this blog as an educational and Information storage and dissemination tool. I never ever considered using it for my own pulpit to preach the word of whatever I was feeling at the moment, but today I have had enough. I will start with todays sotry and maybe elaborate.

A few weeks ago I ordered a package from Parallax Robotics and when my package came, parts were missing, this happens all the time to folks and most firms are quasi-good about making good, Parallax, however stands above the rest. They Decided to fly the parts to me at top speed next day to me prepaid, in Fort Smith, NT Canada, this most likely cost parallax more than the total cost of the initial package. So on the 17th of the month, parallax priority air-shipped the package to my address. And so it begins...

read more

Categories: Blogs

Uber Admin Tip: Instant SOCKS proxy.

Ok, so you have an SSH account back at school on your ubuntu computer and you set up apache on port 80, but forgot to config your firewall to let port 80 traffic in and drove the 50 minutes through traffic home only to find you forgot and may have to drive back to school. What to do? Thanks to OpenSSH you can create a down and dirty SOCKS Proxy over an encrypted SSH connection from your home computer.

No Really, this is literally a one liner! Here is what we will do:

First we will create an SSH connection to our machine back at school, while redirecting a local port over the SSH connection.
ssh -D 9999 yourlogin@lab2.yourschool.edu -p 22

read more

Categories: Blogs

Whats going on on my network?

The following command will open you Network Interface and report every packet that it ses go by. Very useful when you are wondering where your bandwidth is going.... From the Ubuntu Shell
sudo tcpdump -i wlan0

Now assuming that is in fact your active network device, most times you will be targeting eth0 if you are hardwired.

Categories: Blogs