Happy New Year!

Sugeng Warso Enggal 2012!
Selamat Tahun Baru 2012! 

How to make PyGimp Portable

There are become more and more plugins being implemented in python right?
This was explained two years ago in my older post here
Here is the small patch (applicable for gimp-2.7.4 too)

After build Gimp, we need to adjust the following files
lib\gimp\2.0\environ\default.env :
add the following line and remove any existing PATH declaration
#add binpath in non hardecoded way
PATH=${gimp_plug_in_dir}/../../../bin
PATH=${gimp_plug_in_dir}/../../../python

lib\gimp\2.0\environ\pygimp.env (there should be a blank line in the end) :
; PYTHONPATH=${gimp_plug_in_dir}/python

OpenEXR with MinGW

I'm planning on updating my largest compile endeavor of err GTKGraphics Suite 2.0 however inkscape 0.49 seems take a bit more time (they are waiting for cairo 1.10.3?) obviously I'm reluctant to make inkscape 0.48.x build as it was the slowest before 0.49 (refactoring release). Then I'm thrilled that nip2 finally can directly open exr without crashing (no need to manually convert into .v image first).

However I wonder why openexr can't use pthreads under MinGW (note: I'm using pthread-win32 2.9) which I follow this build guide previously. Have a look at the following headers on IlmBase 1.0.1 (also in 1.0.2):
IlmThread.h, IlmThreadMutex.h, IlmThread and IlmThreadSemaphore.h

Clearly there is #ifdefs discrepancies..

FFMPEG with AoTuV win32 binary

Combining the best audio encoder: AoTuV (http://www.geocities.jp/aoyoume/aotuv/) and FFMPEG
With aotuv we can use low bitrates ~48-64Kbps ogg vorbis (still in good quailty, at least I could say 64K is similar to 128K VBR LAME) which is not available in regular libvorbis. It should beat Apple's AAC too.

Happy encoding!

Changelog:

Mar 4, 2012
Version 0.10 (for Core2 - i7 processor) build with MinGW-W64 GCC 4.6.2
ffmpeg-0.10.exe  6.87MB
optional:
frei0r video FX plugins
ladspa audio FX plugins
timidity GUS pats (for MIDI support, currently sounds weird)
jack-1.9.8
ffmpeg-0.10-docs (ffmpeg's command options are changed overtime, be sure read this first)
ffmpeg-0.10-dev-docs

configuration: --enable-gpl --enable-version3 --enable-libgsm --enable-libopencore-amrnb --enable-libschroedinger --enable-libspeex --enable-libvpx --enable-libmp3lame --enable-libtheora --enable-libvo-aacenc --enable-libvo-amrwbenc --enable-libvorbis --enable-libx264 --enable-libxvid --enable-libxavs --enable-libcelt --enable-libmodplug --enable-libutvideo --enable-zlib --enable-bzlib --enable-avisynth --enable-libass --enable-libfreetype --enable-frei0r --enable-ladspa --enable-libsox --enable-libflite --enable-libcdio --enable-openal --enable-gnutls --enable-librtmp --enable-pthreads --enable-runtime-cpudetect --enable-small --disable-debug --disable-outdevs --disable-encoder='vorbis,aac' --disable-decoder='amrnb,dirac,gsm,gsm_ms,vp8'

- merged with sastes-ffmpeg
- enabling: ladspa, sox, jack (using static libjack) and flite
- force ffmpeg to accept negative value (quality), previously ffmpeg will reset (sorry)
- porting hundreds of ladspa plugins
- build experimental jack-1.9.8 for win32
- shrink frei0r plugins size by using gcc 3.4
- bundling timidity gravis GUS

Feb 10, 2012
Version 0.10 (for Core2 - i7 processor) build with MinGW-W64 GCC 4.6.2
This installer will extract ffmpeg.exe ffplay.exe and ffprobe.exe then create console-less version of the three with "w" suffix and then compress the executables with UPX. All in one go

Dec 20, 2011
Version 0.9 (for Core2 - i7 processor) build with MinGW32 GCC 4.6.2
ffmpeg with jackaudio and openal 1.1 input support (untested, explicitly require them to be installed):

configuration: --enable-gpl --enable-version3 --enable-zlib --enable-bzlib --enable-libvo-aacenc --enable-libvo-amrwbenc --enable-libvorbis --enable-libvpx --enable-libx264 --enable-libxvid --enable-libgsm --enable-libtheora --enable-libschroedinger --enable-libspeex --enable-libcelt --enable-libxavs --enable-libopencore-amrwb --enable-libopencore-amrnb --enable-libmp3lame --enable-libutvideo --enable-libmodplug --enable-libopenjpeg --enable-libass --enable-avisynth --enable-libfreetype --enable-frei0r --enable-openal --enable-libcdio --enable-librtmp --enable-gnutls --enable-runtime-cpudetect --enable-small --enable-pthreads --disable-w32threads --disable-debug --disable-outdevs --disable-encoder='vorbis,aac,jpeg2000' --disable-decoder='gsm,gsm_ms,vp8,dirac,jpeg2000,amrnb,amrwb' --extra-libs='-ldl -lstdc++' --prefix=/local/ffmpeg

avconv_nostd.exe
 3.88 MB
avconvw_nostd.exe 3.88 MB
ffmpeg_nostd.exe 3.89 MB
ffmpegw_nostd.exe 3.89 MB
ffmpeg.exe 3.89 MB
ffmpegw.exe 3.89 MB
avconv.exe 3.88 MB
avconvw.exe 3.88 MB
ffplay.exe 2.64 MB
ffplayw.exe 2.74 MB
ffprobe.exe 2.21 MB
ffprobew.exe 2.21 MB
ffmpeg_shared.7z

Optional files
frei0r.7z 3.84 MB (place frei0r folder alongside ffmpeg executables)
ffmpeg_docs_presets.7z 9.00 MB
ffmpeg_deps.7z 3.31MB (static library and headers of ffmpeg dependencies in dwarf2 mingw32 binary, for rebuild/updating ffmpeg)

Notes:
- I'm aware that due to intense UPX packing, some incompetent heuristic AV might report them as virus but I don't care...
- Executables with 'w' suffix means it wont show console dialog (mute), they maybe useful in some circumstance. Redirecting stdout to a file still works of course.
- I didn't go for performance when compiling so they might a bit slower but certainly smaller.
- GCC graphite auto-parallelism is enabled to most of external encoders. This may turn out good or bad
- Currently tested for usage with .mod, .ogg, .mp4(x264), mp3 and utvideo files.

Yuk ngenet carane wong kere?

Piye tjuk lagi bokek? ra duwe duit? namung pengen fesbukan? Halah! ndeso...

Yen jenengan waos berita sa'niki, ngertos mboten soal "curi pulsa" sing tekan milyaran iku?
Nah iki dudu ngajari ben jenengan koyo ngono tjuk, cuma rada memper utawa "cara aluse"

Sa'umpamane jenengan kere mende tapi duwe kompie lan saged ngragati 'nggo tumbas modem cdma lan kertu perdana sing 7000an, kan kuwi ora larang banget tho tjuk? paling 'ntek satusan ewu ra nganti rongatus... Lah saiki jenengan pikir yen duit sakmono iso nggo ngenet sak puas'e?

PyGTK 2.24.0 GTK+-2.24.8 AIO 64bit

Portable minimal 64bit PyGTK 2.24.0 with numpy (download the unoptimized one) support, without freetype, without libglade (don't confuse it with gtkbuilder) and without libffi. This one bundled with GTK+ 2.24.8 with new icons and cairo patch. Built using mingw-w64 gcc 4.6.2.

To install just extract to site-packages folder of python 2.6.x 64bit and you're ready to go.

pygtk-2.24.0-win64-AIO-minimal.7z

enjoy!

A call to MyPaint 64-bit users

Hi all,

This is my second attempt to port 64-bit MyPaint. There still a problem with either my tablet or 64-bit GTK that trigger startup crash (mypaint died when gdk load wintab32.dll)

Therefor I need your reports :-)
1. Whether pressure works or not, because no pressure = your tablet treated as mouse = no fun
2. Overall impression, how it compared to 32-bit version and such

Please mention your tablet name, thanks
download here http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2554170/mypaint-1.0.0-win64.7z released : )

MSYS/MinGW Porting Kit

What I use to build most binaries here? MSYS+MinGW, yet I rarely post something specific about it...

Tonight I cleaned up my toolchains and dump everything into one kind of integrated package, a porting kit I would say. Formerly it just a small set of MSYS and TDM's GCC, slowly it grew up by adding some tools for packaging/deployment. Recently I even build my own GCC (i686-w64-mingw32 multilib) based on 4.6.2 version due to TDM's GCC multilib have default 64bit target which not so parallel with the spirit of 32-bitness of this blog fu fu fu... so I compile GCC multilib that do the opposite (32-bit by default and optionally targeting 64-bit). Furthermore as with  MinGW-W64 get matured but not fully compatible with MinGW32 I made alternate GCC mimicking official MinGW32 which migrated to dwarf2 based exceptions and switch between them as needed.

Cdrtools mingw binary

This is 32-bit cdrtools binary package, probably best known in Windows world for its mkisofs, the most widely used free ISO mastering software. Although its popularity in Linux world a bit declining due to license issue in version 3, that doesn't seems affect most of Windows users anyway : )

Note that I only tried mkisofs since its cdrecord a bit weirdo to my liking it maybe working too, I would burn the ISO using alcohol or Windows' built-in burning. The binary is statically linked a.k.a standalone executables so you can pick only what you need. And don't given up to its --help, it does takes time to understand all those command options : ) just be patient.

Binary complete package (including docs and patch)
download

If you want the Unix way of cdrtools go to http://www.student.tugraz.at/thomas.plank
If you want the Windows way look no further than http://cdrtfe.sourceforge.net

Brief instructions to build from sources

Extract using WinRAR (or anything that understand symlinks) or just use tar command line

apply patch

To compile type:
make all
*just ignore the spurious moans and warnings during compile, if you know what I mean :))

Modded GTK2_Prefs for portable apps

This is the stripped down  source (already autoconfigured) of gtk2_prefs originally by Alexander Shaduri which more suitable for portable GTK-based apps. Somehow I lose it and provide binary only previously,  now here is the modified source:

gtk2_prefs-0.4.1.7z

the reason why I do this
the unofficial binary

GTK+ 2.24.8, Finally a proper successor to 2.16.6

Finally a bright future for MyPaint! (as well as Gimp and Inkscape I believe), a major bugfixes release has landed. See datails here http://ftp.acc.umu.se/pub/gnome/sources/gtk+/2.24/gtk+-2.24.8.news

All (most?) dreaded GUI and behavior issues have been swept :) tablet issues such as pressure and tilt also fixed. Hopefully they will bring GTK+ 3.x to the same level for Windows too.

MyPaint will use GTK+ 2.24.8 for the upcoming and long awaited 1.0 release! yay!

Building PyGTK for MyPaint

Continued from here. MyPaint require that PyGTK (GDK) to support numpy otherwise mypaint won't run. The debate is people said that the proper way to build python module is by using MSVC compiler since that's what python windows used with. While there is officially a library for GCC named libpythonXY.a some argue how stable a mixed build is.

IMHO gtk binding is bridging python and GTK, so what's the point using MSVC if GTK Runtime was build with GCC(MinGW)? Nah that's just my excuse because I don't know how to build it with MSVC :)

I've tested that I can use MinGW's pygtk with MSVC's pygobject with MinGW's GTK with MSVC's Python 2.6 and MinGW's MyPaint.... errr

Alright lets make it all MinGW's except for python shall we:

Building GTK2 for MyPaint Windows

This post explain more detailed Windows port of MyPaint situation. I hope my english is understandable :)


MyPaint, the package

• In windows mypaint use py2exe for bootstrapping and bundling with minor change in favor mypaint's builtin logging.
• Mypaint is currently targeted only for win32, win64 is in experimental stage
• Mypaint consist of a small portion of C++ library (which is why it need to be compiled) and the rest is in pure python. Mypaint require pygtk (with numpy support), numpy, GTK and optionally a particular version of psyco (a python accelerator)
• Mypaint is squeezed! I kind of proud with this :) I have made mypaint stay around 8MB since version 0.7. All executable is packed with UPX at brute level. Furthermore brushes preview images have been pngcrush'ed.
• Mypaint installer use NSIS with solid lzma compression. I believe this should be changed to msi

Windows 8 DP, too soon isn't it?

Woah I must be a stonehead living in a cave using XP playing freecell! Windows 8 developer review? its migration should be smooth though with competitor remain to be the dying XP (if it released before XP support ended) Oh does it drop 32-bit support too? wow I should change my blog title to survive...

The future is tablet pc, there is no point of making another resource-hog generation of Vista, they should make XP-like with NT 6 kernel! And make one same Windows for all devices (says 32bit for mobile and 64bit for desktop/server)

One funny thing, M$ has confusing versioning, they said 7 but actually NT 6.1 and 8 when it's NT 6.2 but they keep Server version with year version. However the build revision does relate a.k.a 7600 for 7 then  8x00 for 8 so they are analogue to Macintosh versioning where minor version update is a "new" mac (don't forget that 10 is mac major version).

GTK 3.2 still not quite there...

In my last quick review GTK seems take major change from 2.x (or it was just old windows specific bugs?). With version 3.2 from last September, things a little bit sketchy and raw now which I do not even dare to post a screenshot. Some issues that I quickly spot (from gtk3-demo):

- It's surprising that Glib 2.30's "make check" fail in almost all tests using GCC 4.3 but build successfully with GCC 4.6.
- Pango's win32 module (2.29.4) is broken so we got no text.. umm no glyph
- GTK native win32 theme still broken too (oh yeah that's important aesthetic aspect)
- DnD not working
- Problem with clipboard? pasting empty data trigger crash...
- The dreaded gdk window toplevel issue is still there.. So I doubt if tablet is working.. too bad for MyPaint

I'm not sure if most of them were windows specific or not...

The good news is gobject introspection (1.30) is almost there, I can build it but I'm stuck with gir generation. This is cool! ever since pygi merged in pygobject, the new win32 pygobject is meaningless cause pygi isn't there. With pygobject 3.0 and proper pygi in near future (hopefully) we can finally say goodbye to pygtk and other bindings and bring python 3.x too. But right now it's not quite there...

SMS-an Gratis saka Gmail

Aku wis njajal sms-an nggo akun gmail, enak tjuk! pertama nganggo 'ntuk jatah 50 sms gratis, ra mung kuwi tapi yo 'ntuk nomer cantik cuma 'nem digit (rung ngerti yen iku di-share po ra sih).

Umpamane dewe'e sms sepisan (nomer Indonesia: indosat, telkomsel, three) jatahe kelong siji, yen dibales 'ntuk jatah 3, yen ra tau dibales nganti 'ntek jatahe dienteni ae 24jam (sedino) ngko bakal mbalek dadi 50 meneh. Enak tho? Namung yaiku kudu ol terus tjuk!

Citranipun ngene (saka perambah chrome):

URL leeching with turboupload.com

I have use it for about 2 weeks now, and found it very useful for me (men with 128Kbps). First, it is (as this writing) the only one that offer free 999MB (yeah) of space and bandwidth/day (free registration needed for url leeching).

Goodies:
- While its autogenerated link is tied to your IP and limited for 8 hours, it does a *resumable link*. Meaning you could use curl or wget or other download manager to continue download with the a renewed link.
- Fast leeching! I don't know what most people say about 500KB/s in average but I'd say that's fast!
- Your account isn't tied to IP or any kind of that mechanism. Meaning you can operate multiple turboupload accounts from each browser you have simultaneously.

Cons:
- No executables allowed. Hmm.. actually that could be a showstopper :(

Usecase:
- You need to download a (supposedly big) tar snapshot from a git server like gitorious or github (aka non resumable download)
- Says it's about time for you to inquire some stuff from slow underground ftp sites you found at proisk.ru
- Your connection can't keep with the hourly changing file update like MSSE

Some tips for downloading wiki using WinHTTrack

I'm on my way updating several chm release now: Sketchup 8, Blender 2.5 and others. I use WinHTTrack rather than wget to download more complex sites like wiki pages. Here some important scan rules to get relatively clean offline wiki site:

+*.css +*.js -ad.doubleclick.net/* -mime:application/foobar -*title=* -*Category:* -*Org:* -*Meta:* -*Talk:* -*User:* -*Special:* -*File:* -*action=* -*section=* -*Dev:* -*Help:* -*Template:*

It's important to make sure you don't have "+*.png" or any other image types scan rule! instead use "Get non-html files related to a link" option in links tab to get images. Wiki is known use fake link to image file which actually a html file which confuse the spider.

Edit: since we don't download the intermediate html file, a regex like this could be used to clean the broken link on all images:
 <a href="http://.*?>(<img.*?)</a>  replace with $1

Offline download for gtalk labs edition

GTalk Labs Edition http://dl.google.com/googletalk/labsedition/1.0.267.233/GoogleTalkLabsEdition.msi

Url seems keep updated/changed though so better use a sniffing tool (nah no need wireshark to do this, smartsniff should be enough) to spot that url inside network packets... yeah I hate these crap nowadays "download an web-installer that download full installer during which sometime embed another installer (internet toolbar thingy anyone?)". What a pile of **** just give us clean msi please!

EDIT:
discontinued?

Portable IBM Lotus Symphony 3 Fixpack3

Update 26 May 2012:
- now if somehow symphony stopped working (not started), deleting 'IBM' folder will reset settings
- revert to use soffice.bin since some featured hardcoded to this, thus do not run openoffice with symphony
- in 64-bit windows symphony didn't quit cleanly, fixed
- workaround for path with spaces 

Update 12 May 2012:
Apparently IBM has discontinued Lotus Symphony, what a shame :( (last version is 3.0.1)  so I decided to update this:
Portable Lotus Symphony 3.0.1 fixpack 1 All languages 194 MB or
Launcher only (to run pre-installed symphony 3.0.1 unmodified in portable mode) 678KB

Notes:
- Although this was less than half smaller of original installer (570MB), it is really full version :)
- All jars and zips were unpacked so you may experience slightly better responsiveness
- Startup (as older version) also has been tweaked, it should be significantly faster than the original, especially after first run
- Although IBM has offered Symphony to Apache OpenOffice as open source, do note that this download remain illegal except the launcher download


A continuation of my guide here, I made small launcher (basically a 7-zip SFX) to make Lotus Symphony a little more portable. This is based on version 3 with fixpack 3, the SFX installer will extract to PortableSymphony3 folder from there run launcher.exe (symphony.exe.bak - the original launcher- has been renamed as I don't use it).

Unlike the original Symphony this one will kill soffice.bin (file has been renamed to prevent conflict) after exit to make it usable in removable drive. One caveat: don't run multiple instance of it... but that shouldn't be an issue as it was a multitabbed office anyway.

If you wish you could manually extract it with 7-zip

Portable Lotus Symphony 3 125 MB
md5: 8c85538e10d804136e4d394f6b8a93cb

How To Try OpenVMS under ES40 Emulator

After reading some information about mainframe I'm directed to an opensource emulator for Alpha system called es40, which unfortunately halted. The main developer move to commercial project called Charon-AXP which also offer Personal Alpha (freeware but limited in performance). I'm quite interested with OpenVMS and it's possible similarities with Windows NT (remember Dave Cutler?). It would great to run this super reliable "relic" on plain XP :)

Steps:

1. Download es40 first here (you can pick last release or the snapshot in preferred variants)
2. Get your free DECUServe membership:
  - Start > Run > telnet (make sure you don't disable telnet service)
  - Inside telnet console, type decuserve.org and enter
  - You will greeted with username: prompt, now type REGISTRATION and enter

How to get latest VT-12 Modem driver

Many manufacturers make modem based on Huawei data card including well known brand. This bring possibilities of generic driver use provided by Huawei but mostly manufacturer may specifically use particular version (maybe their hardware don't posses feature in newer driver?)

I had VT-12 CDMA usb modem for 3 years now on XP and seems a bit working in Mac too. Now it bugged me when I plugged this on Server 64bit (Win 2003) machine and can't install. I tried to find on manufacturer's site but there is no update (gone actually) and their last vista64 driver isn't signed. Time to check the main vendor!

1. Go to http://www.huaweidevice.com/worldwide/downloadCenter.do?method=index

When Windows 2003 Datacenter x64 can't play audio

Surprise! it seems M$ assumed that admin shouldn't listen to music at work or noone should be around of a datacenter iron hence "no music" ooor they forgot to include this files: hdaudbus.inf

That's all you need to make this *particular* Windows to recognize your HDA Sound card driver.
Make sure you get the amd64 inf version though, then point that unknown yellow PCI device to that files then install your manufacturer driver as usual.
Done

7zsfx with dirid

I build custom 7zip SFX with complete DIRID <-> CSIDL conversion
binary is based on 1.500.2100 beta branch, browse here -> http://svn.7zsfx.info

with this conversion (see stickies here) I can use for example:
proper registry injection:
reg add HKLM\bla\bla /v configfile /t REG_SZ /d "%16412%\something.txt"
service creation:
sc create daemon binpath= %11%\something.sys type= kernel start= boot DisplayName= blablabla
or any proper file operation... therefore could no longer rely on inf script

Oh no I'm the admin

It's complete BS if one said linux is much^2 secure than windows. I remember clearly when I use Linux as root it took only few hours to render it unworkable and later unbootable, it was 10 years ago when Linux at its infancy. Few years ago many "friendly" distro started to ban root account usage with the rising popularity of sudo practice.

Linux as desktop/workstation OS?

Root usage
Linux IT guy: man you do it the wrong way
Me: But Windows worked that way
Linux IT guy: Windows is flawed and ignorantly user friendly
Me: But most people are flawed and ignorant too
This explain why Linux adoption is slow for desktop, now that NT 6 is adopting the Linux way.. things getting harder for Linux to convince people.
Lesson? the one that ignorant is OS with no ignorant user (noob) awareness, Windows' system did give lot of safety measurement even for reckless administrator! need more? practice LUA (this rendered as UAC in NT 6) if you're still on NT 5 like me

How to enable DWG import in SketchUp 8 Free

As an architect living in Indonesia I (and many others) faced one same dreaded problem in my workflow: DWG dependency.
I've post list of applications that I use before, though I must share this info too (a bit too late actually).

So how to enable DWG Import in your Free SketchUp 8?

We all know Google stop supporting DWG Import feature starting from SketchUp 8 (free). The last one (7.1) have additional add-on http://dl.google.com/sketchup/gsu7/AllowDWGImportInSketchUp7.msi to enable it.

Then another way is: You can install SketchUp 8 Pro trial for 8 hours of usage if you want a temporary solution.

Or.. you can just stick with SketchUp 7.1 and ask your partners to downgrade save as sketchup 7 format for file exchange. Which is what I choose, after all there are not much important features in version 8.

Now.. do you know that actually there is no difference between both version?

How to make IBM Symphony 3 portable

OK not that portable actually... Let's do it quick

Download it first http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/downloads/ls/symphony/index.html
Don't forget the fixpack
Install...

- get yourself to %USERPROFILE% a.k.a C:\Documents and Settings\[username] or C:\Users\[username]
- copy folder "IBM" to your Symphony 3's installation directory (where symphony.exe reside)
- navigate to framework\rcp there you'll find rcplauncher.properties
- open it with notepad (your should be an admin)
- replace rcp.data's value with IBM/Lotus/Symphony/ -> rcp.data=IBM/Lotus/Symphony/
- save it
- now copy the whole Symphony folder to your removable drive and use symphony.exe to run it. Your settings and preferences should stored in IBM\Lotus\Symphony\

caveat: soffice.bin process will stay at background when you quit Symphony's tray icon so you can't eject your drive unless kill the process first
note: Lotus Symphony 3 is an intuitive but a bit slower version of OpenOffice 3

Offline M$ Security Essential Installer

With my 128Kbps connection it seems I would never ever able to complete initial update after installation of MSSE. Why? Well looks like the virus definition update took place faster than the time I need to complete the download so the file keep changed before I even finished one. That just plain sucks! that's why I hate git so much too!

Here is the link of relatively up-to-date definition installer that *do not* frequently changed.
http://mirror.ufs.ac.za/ms_Sec/mpam-fe.exe

2D CAD and Open Source, will it ever works?

ITC's intelliCAD or ODA's Teigha? They are open but to their alliance/members not to common public which left only OpenCASCADE. However OpenCASCADE is more suitable for 3D parametric modeling not general 2D drafting, in fact it looks like an attempt by "the big player" to promote their base foundation (against the mighty Autodesk of course). Why I said that? cause their development in recent version is really lacking of interest and motivation!

AutoCAD LT's clone invasion
To the blatant monopolistic attitude of Autodesk (almost as worst as old-day M$) competitors still not give up to give users "freeware" of 2D drafting package in a hope that they might ditch DWG or -more recently- AutoCAD LT. The release of DoubleCAD XT and DraftSight certainly an appealing offer to me who have separate 2D and 3D package for the workflow. DraftSight from Dassault Systemes, the less nagging (but has annoying yearly online activation) of the two is using QT as their GUI and both use ODA's Teigha for DWG compatibility. I see these kind of lure won't recede anytime soon even after Autodesk lawsuit to ODA in 2006 for DWG infringement. All I can say there is no real interest in open source community whatever the big player do.

Makedict xdxf to stardict converter

I'm looking for newest jargon dict for stardict, I'm sure have seen it sometime ago on the net but somehow I can't find it anymore. But there is jargon in xdxf format which Stardict should supported already? But stardict (3.0.3) can't loaded it strange...

Then I got this converter called makedict (0.4) from the maker of XDXF but without windows binary.. CMake and build.. so here is:
makedict-0.4.1 or
makedict.exe (static glib)
codecs (need python, extract to where makedict reside)
type "makedict --help" in your command prompt for options
to avoid name conflict please at least use: makedict -d [somewhere exists]
where [somewhere exists] is path to where converted dicts created

SeaMonkey 2.1 is MoFo next arsenal?

Mozilla Foundation need SeaMonkey to keep competitive, at least in the near future...

Long time ago when Netscape spawn Mozilla (the browser), Firefox spawned as optimized, streamlined and brand new (avoiding Navigator image) version of Mozilla. Add it's cool name, people have no hesitation to migrate and yet it was the first succesful open source browser to gain so much userbase. Later Mozilla renamed to SeaMonkey probably because it become more like a "stepchild" (in term of popularity) of MoFo thus confuse users if named after the maker. That time I tried SeaMonkey 1.x and still not impressed (lack important compatibility and feature from it's sibling) but appreciate the stability. With Firefox 3.0 I start annoyed by it's bloatness and lead me to use K-Meleon for a while only to found that XUL is one of the culprit in Firefox. Then I move to Opera 10 cause it's more faster, neater and slim, I also use Chrome on occasion though. Chrome browser really know how to treat a noob, too bad I'm not, afterall it getting bloated too quick for a 4 year old browser. After more than a year with Opera I personally doesn't like how it render ftp page or how it freeze too often (though not crashed). To summarize:

This year IndosatM2 decide to be pretentious

*censored*

GTK+ 3.0 Win32, not quite there

While GTK+ 3.0 has been around for almost 2 months it lacked many bugfixes from GTK+ 2.22. As a result it looked more like GTK+ 2.18 with new packed features. Below is the not so new feature  (GTK+ 2.21?) of tool palette, actually there is a lot more but most aren't available in demo yet.

flickering issue in GTK+ 3.0 Win32

First facial sketch

Friday MyPaint Sketch #3

My first attempt to sketch a random face. Not much to show, but I started learn many tricks. Maybe next time I should depict a model photograph?

Some Unicode Fonts for Windows XP

My reference here is displaying wikipedia in near perfect. http://www.wikipedia.org
Font preference is based on license: SIL OFL, LGPL, GPL with font exception, other free to use and distribute license and the last: plain GPL.

For Windows XP SP3
wangdi (Tibetan) made by Bhutan government under free to distribute and use like license
phetsarath (Laos) LGPL
utkal (Oriya, India) GPL
khmer busra (Cambodia) SIL OFL
padauk (Myanmar) SIL OFL
LKLUG (Sinhala, Srilanka-India) GPL
abyssinica (Ethiopia) SIL OFL
MPH 2B Damase (various languages) Public Domain
oskiwest, oskieast (native americans) GPL

download

notes:
- AFAIK Windows 7 users only need MPH 2B Damase and padauk
- plain GPL means: font embedding = GPL infection

The Bullshit of Mega Tsunami Documentary

Hard Evidence vs Marketing Mumbo Jumbo
So the movie made by western and the research "presumably" took place only at Mediterranean sea (in oddly prehistoric timeline). The claim (computer generated prediction) is brave too!

I just watch it by now, a post 2004 Aceh tsunami documentary movie production to remind the recently Japan tsunami. The first time I heard the words "prehistoric mega-tsunami happened in Mediterranean sea" is like RETARDED. Of course it doesn't *sounds* nicer if they say ahem Pacific right? I meant who's the audience anyway. This similar to err the super volcano from US documentary instead of the more scientifically provable Toba super volcano. Then I think, so what cause that mega tsunami? wait there is no significant moving seabed there! so if it's not tectonic then volcanic? (still on my mind) of.... ETNA?!

Guess what next they mention it!

The nearly invisible menu GTK in Win7

Annoyed? Irritated?
Well, not that I'd care about it :P (I use XP not 7sins)

Here is the patched libwimp.dll (overwrite yours) so the text wont highlighted.

And the issue in msw_style.c (only in version 2.16.x?)

/* Prelight */
sys_color_to_gtk_color (XP_THEME_CLASS_TEXT,
get_windows_version () >= VISTA_VERSION ? COLOR_MENUTEXT : COLOR_MENUTEXT,
&fg_prelight);


PMing Python binding for libMing

Ming, a free open source SWF (Flash) creation library.

This is win32 binary of mingc (PMing) python binding (using ming-0.4.4dev). See shape.py for example, path creation is similar to cairo.

mingc-0.4.4.win32-py2.7.exe
mingc-0.4.4.win32-py2.6.exe
mingc-0.4.4.win32-py2.5.exe
License: LGPL 2.1

shape.py:

from ming import *

Ming_setScale(1.0)

s = SWFShape()
s.setLine(40, 0x7f, 0, 0)
s.setRightFill(s.addFill(0xff, 0, 0))
s.movePenTo(200, 200)
s.drawLineTo(6200, 200)
s.drawLineTo(6200, 4600)
s.drawCurveTo(200, 4600, 200, 200)

m = SWFMovie()
m.setDimension(6400, 4800)
m.setRate(12.0)
m.add(s)
m.nextFrame()

m.save("test.swf")



The Midship Wont Land

Friday MyPaint Sketch #2
Style? newform, proportion and composition (3 basic things I learn from my university days)
it's still far from finished as this drawing have infinite expansion possibilities.

Petals

Friday MyPaint Sketch #1

A Book That Shape the Meaning of Happiness

Whew this month seems about personal stuff at all.

This time I want to share a book (& essays) from Andi Carloff, his weblink is in the left links pane (top). While it's not too obvious where the happiness is, this book surely draw the line of life principles which somewhat compatible with mine. Thus help me how I define happiness in my life. The book contains many raw truth of life that often washed out by common public opinion, talk about the norm and hypocrisy.

Maybe this book is not everyone's taste but after watch the whole middle-east revolution recently, I've come to realize more the importance of freedom and how any individual should know early on what they had by default. These encouraged me to share it so anyone who can't afford the internet could enjoy Andi Carloff's work at home.

I've asked his permission months ago to reproduce his website as chm e-book. Here is:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2554170/punkersloot.chm (38.7 MB)
this book is a copyleft 

Good Music Good Instrumental

Sometime music is just great without lyrics/vocal in it, which is pretty much how my taste described. Here is some great tunes of mainstream instrumental music on my winamp.

Guitar-oriented (Yeah I'm Satch's big fan):
Joe Satriani - The Forgotten
Joe Satriani - Bamboo
Joe Satriani - Always With Me, Always With You
Joe Satriani - Love Thing
Joe Satriani - What Breaks A Heart
Joe Satriani - Why
Joe Satriani - Searching
Joe Satriani - Andalusia
Joe Satriani - The Bells Of Lal
Joe Satriani - Banana Mango
Joe Satriani - Speed Natives
Joe Satriani - Crystal Planet
Joe Satriani - One Robot's Dream
Joe Satriani - Devil's Slide
Joe Satriani - Crushing Day
Joe Satriani - Belly Dancer
Joe Satriani - Cool #9
Joe Satriani - Killer Bee Bop
Al Di Meola - Flesh On Flesh
Al Di Meola - Nena
Al Di Meola - Dark Eye Tango
Al Di Meola - Beijing Demons
Al Di Meola - Kiss My Axe
Al Di Meola - Calliope
Al Di Meola - July
Al Di Meola - Electric Rendezvous
Al Di Meola - Passion, Grace & Fire
Al Di Meola - Race With Devil On Spanish Highway
Al Di Meola - Suite - Golden Down
Al Di Meola - Al Di's Dream Theme
Al Di Meola - Perpetual Emotion
Steve Vai - For the Love of God
Steve Vai - The Blood & Tears
Steve Vai - Bledsoe Bluvd
Steve Vai - Whispering A Prayer
Eric Johnson - Cliffs Of Dover
Eric Johnson (Electromagnets) - Blackhole
Eric Johnson - Magnetized
Eric Johnson - East Wes
Eric Johnson - A Song For Life
Eric Johnson - Manhattan
Pink Floyd - Marooned

Electronics/Beats/Trance (may contain minor vocal):
Chick Corea - Vulcan Worlds [extended version]
Teebee - Tsunami
Calyx - Illusion
Calyx Feat. Gridlok -  Dead Ringer
Serge - JooS!
Serge - Del-8 me
Safri Duo - Rise
Ill Skillz - Be There 4 U
Jamiroquai - Destitute Illusions
Fatboy Slim - Kalifornia
DJ Sylvan - Guitar Spell
Blue Man Group - Drumbone
Aphex Twin - Heliosphan
Aphex Twin - Xtal
Daf Punk - Around the World
Maksim - Huljic: Croatian Rhapsody
Maksim - Procession Of The Sardar
ATB - Tristan Da Cunha
Aquasky - Blue Thunder
Aquasky - Manmade Symphony
Arkimed  - L'Ultimo Dei Mohicani
The Chemical Brothers - Loops Of Fury
The Chemical Brothers - Saturate
The Chemical Brothers - Star Guitar
The Chemical Brothers - Freak Of The Week
Veracocha - Carte Blanche
Robert Miles - Children
Various Artists - Breakbeat Bass (Aquasky Non-Stop Remix)
Ed Rush - Pacman RMX RAM Trilogy

Reminder: Sampit Massacre 2001

Ten years ago this month, ethnic war between Madura and Dayak commenced (19-28/02/01). I (and family) was living for a year at Sampit as Javanese newcomer 10 years before the event took place. What could be worse than a discrimination that repelled by lawless genocide (at least hundreds victims) How come this happened in 21st century. Shame on me

Let the photographs remind us:
part 1
part 2
part 3
part 4
warning: real gory images 

Building WebkitGTK on Windows

update Mar 2014: The issue regarding mingw-w64 winapi no longer valid as tried with version 3.1.0 and webkitgtk 1.10.2

brief instruction for 1.6.1:
Download source from here file: mingw32-libwebkitgtk-1.6.1*.rpm (opensuse's patch included)
With 1.6.1 we can use msys-perl 5.8.8 instead of strawberry's and none of my patches below except datadir.patch applicable. At maximum configuration (without geolocation) we can use:

configure --enable-mathml --enable-link-prefetch --enable-animation-api --enable-register-protocol-handler --enable-web-timing --enable-datagrid --enable-page-visibility-api --enable-3d-rendering --enable-image-resizer --enable-touch-icon-loading --prefix=/c/GTKDEVEL --with-gtk=2.0 --with-target=win32 --with-unicode-backend=glib


which require additional gstreamer, in my brief test it gain score: 100 on ACID3 and 296 on http://html5test.com. However there are some regressions: annoying text/image flickering and several widget misplaced also plugins still not implemented yet. Best gtk to use with is probably 2.24.8.

  To shrink the runtime dll size to around 40% smaller, force the use of -Os flag (need to manually edit Gnumakefile) or disabling SVG/video will reduce size significantly.

VipsCC Python, an Alternative to PIL

Taken from their wiki:
libvips is a fully demand-driven, threaded image processing library with no image size limits and with good support for colour. It is mature and documented.

Comparison with other imaging package also available

Though not so pythonic their binding is fully featured and comparable with C command-line version. Personally I use it to manipulate HDR image (exr) and NASA Blue Marble Imagery but unfortunately whenever I build it with direct OpenEXR support, vips become broken. Though other HDR format available (radiance) the later is more widely used in scientific field than in multimedia world. As a workaround vips can utilize ImageMagick (as image import) which recent version support OpenEXR though arguably limited to 16bit whereas exr theoretically could support up to 32bit.

Make a proper free GM set

OLPC project has it! http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Sound_samples (Another gigantic well worth downloads)
Studios and professionals kindly donate it to OLPC and OLPC give it to the public under CC 3.0 BY.

As no one tried to make a GM set in SoundFont or GUS format yet I'm interested to make one as alternative to the improperly licensed freepats project which is under vague GPL. Surprisingly this is seems the only free GM set around since Eric Welsh originating it circa 90s! and went through various license changes.

First I'll use Viena to build SoundFont version then convert it to GUS using unsf? so project like timidity and wildmidi could use it. OPM donated samples was the potential candidate to be a GM though Dr. B said there will a true GM set released soon.

Conservative All in One PyGTK Installer

!!OBSOLETE WARNING!! This one looks very promising instead, I might update this pack or maybe not... since it would be pointless. Anyone who like to build pygtk python bindings may read my post here. It's for mypaint but relevant

BIG PyGTK Packages to keep you busy before migrating to GTK-3, PyGI and Python 3. Or are you want to try PyGI PyGobject try my experimental build 13 February 2013 here

22 April 2012
pygtkaio.7z
Alternate download for people who hate installer :-)
no changes except it doesn't include extras and have updated libcairo

22 July 2011
headers.7z (7.86 MB)
Just in case you're C developer and interested to use this runtime... (note that I build all from scratch even things like zlib, so it's completely unofficial)
headers only  (may contain unnecessary headers), import lib and static lib are too huge for me to upload
I'll assume you can use dlltool to make implib

pyliblzma win32 build

Ah so there are two 7zip python bindings: pylzma and pyliblzma, anyway I use the latter.
pyliblzma-0.5.3.win32-py2.6.exe
pyliblzma-0.5.3.win32-py2.7.exe