No Fixed Point

A little over a year ago, I did an impromptu Linux browser roundup. Today, I decided to revisit the wide world of Linux web browsers, and do a flash update on what is currently on (and off) my system.

• Konqueror: Off. Status and reasons unchanged (henceforth referred to as SaRU).
• Rekonq: Off. SaRU.
• Arora: Off. SaRU.
• Uzbl: On. After playing around with the config file a bit (adjusting the key bindings, adding search engines), I have found this browser to be a delight to use. The only thing that I am still trying to find, is a method by which to enable and disable javascript at whim.
• Midori: Off. SaRU. I did try it again, and as before I hardly used it, so off it went.
• Opera: Off. SaRU.
• Chromium: Off. SaRU.
• Epiphany: Off. SaRU.
• Firefox: Off. SaRU.
• Seamonkey: On. What I previously referred to as a Hummer, has found its way back onto my system, and I am not at all surprised by this. Though Seamonkey has more features than I need, it is a solid, stable browser, and handles just about anything thrown at it (except Mevio—but I think my troubles there have more to do with the plugins and extensions I use). And through the use of the OverbiteFF extension, it provides non-lynx Gopher access. I just wish that Pentadactyl was available for Seamonkey.
• Dillo: On. SaRU
• Links: On. SaRU
• Kazehakase: Off. While the native Gopher support was nice, extended use resulted not just in the browser crashing, but in X locking up as well. Thus Kazehakase as been consigned to the uninstall heap.
• Lynx: On. SaRU.
• Elinks: On. SaRU
• Icecat: Off. It was not any operational failing of Icecat that lead to it getting the boot, rather it was the update lag brought on by Firefox’s switch to a rapid release cycle. I like having the latest and greatest, so being a version (or two) behind the source material for an extended time (weeks, or months) is not acceptable.)
• Vimprobable2: On. SaRU.

So, compared to a year ago, not much has changed. The browsers that remained uninstalled, were so for the same reasons as previously stated. I still have seven browsers installed, and Vimprobable2 is still my primary browser. But Kazehakase and Icecat have been left by the wayside, replaced by Uzbl and Seamonkey, which now my secondary and tertiary browsers, respectively.

Now I shall start the countdown clock, and in 365 days, we will see what changes (if anything).

Today I learned that Scroogle.org had shut down permanently some time ago (late February 2012). It has been some time since I used Scroogle for web searches, but it was the search engine that first alerted me to the pervasive tracking people are under while on-line, and piqued my interest in on-line privacy; for that, I am grateful.

Scroogle’s shuttering prompted me to see what other privacy-oriented search engines were available, and while there are alternatives, the list is thinner than I would like.

Once again, the bi-annual time manipulation ceremony has been completed (for the most part), and all that is left to do is await the formal arrival of that most pointless of bureaucratic exercises: daylight saving time.

The last bastion of sane time-keeping is (as usual) my computer, which uses a custom time-zone file. It may be an impotent gesture of weak rebellion, but it keeps the dream alive. The dream of one day living in a world without this accursed stupidity.

After reading the latest news out of Greece, I wonder if the Euro-zone countries are setting up the Greeks to take a massive, devastating economic fall so that the EU bureaucrats can turn to Portugal, Italy, Ireland, and Spain and say:

“Greece didn’t do exactly as we said; look at what became of her. Now be silent; do as we tell you, and things will be as they should—and you will like it, or else.”

It is terrible to watch a country spiral towards self-destruction. It is even worse when the orders to destroy it are coming from foreigners, and are being blindly (almost enthusiastically) implemented by a corrupt oligarchy. It would not surprise me if some combination of military coup and popular uprising ousted the government of Greece, and sent the foreign bankers packing at gun-point.

After almost a year of inactivity, I decided to pull this site from the back of the top shelf, dust it off, and play around with it a bit. This turned out to be a tad more involved than I had anticipated, for with a year’s worth of stasis, came a year’s worth of spam postings, all waiting for moderation.

For the first two- or three-hundred, I scrolled through the comments awaiting my judgement, diligently searching for actual content. But this wore thin quickly, and I decided to purge everything that was pending. In total, that came to about 4250 comments that never needed to be made in the first place.

As I was doing this, I noted that the demographics of the spam posts changed around September 2011. From that month until now, the posts were dominated by a single title:

Where to buy Premier and Stitched <insert team name> jerseys ??…

Whereas prior to September 2011, the comments were a mixed bag, with three themes—rather than any particular title—rising above all others:

• Escorts (particularly London escorts)
• Bed bugs and
• Phillips lighting

I don’t know, maybe the London escorts where trying to find help in getting special Phillips light-bulbs to ward off a city-wide infestation of bed-bugs. Maybe they succeeded. Or maybe London is now the capital of the Bed-bug Empire. Perhaps a Londoner might one day tell me what happened there in September of 2011.

Regardless, now I am left with fending off the Jersey Spam until its desperate originator finally finds a place to buy “premier and stitched <insert team name> jerseys.” I wish him the best of luck in his quest, for truly, life is not worth living without an <insert team name> jersey!

It took three days (or so), but the task has been completed. Today I deleted my one millionth, one hundred and thirteen thousandth, nine hundred and seventy fifth Koran. To celebrate, here is the Reason Train kicking dogmatic, vile, vitriolic, superstitious ass!

Choo choo…

I first came across tiling window managers with Wmi. I was looking for a light-weight window manager that could be driven with the keyboard, and it was (literally) the first one I found, and I stuck with it—until Wmii came out a couple months later. Wmii remained on my system for a couple years (with occasional breaks for ratpoison, ion, scrotwm, and—others, that I can not remember), until I found Xmonad.

Initially, I was uncertain about installing Xmonad due to the size of its dependencies (now 600+ Mb), but after reading a slew of positive reviews, I decided to give it a try. I liked it—more than any of the other window managers I had tried—but not enough to switch. So back to Wmii I went—until its next release (repeatedly) failed to compile properly on my system.  Not being a patient fellow, I decided to give Xmonad another go (despite its dependency bloat), and this time it stuck (probably more out of necessity than anything else).

Xmonad remained on my system for the better part of two years, until yesterday, when I found Subtle. This was a quick switch for me, as it was light on dependencies (its total installed size is 19 Mb), and could be made to almost exactly replicate Xmonad’s environment (once I figured out how to properly use the configuration file). The only real adjustment that I have had to make is that Subtle has strict tagging, and so programmes will only open in views with the appropriate tag, rather than in the current view.

Importing (if it can be called that) my Xmonad setup required some trial and error editing of Subtle’s configuration file, so I copied the default config file (subtle.rb) from /etc/xdg/subtle to ~/.config/subtle and got down to work.

Under “Options” I changed the border size from 1 pixel to 0 pixels (borders are for the weak).

#
# == Options
#
# Border size in pixel of the windows
set :border, 0

Under “Screen” I got rid of the default panel entirely by commenting it out, and adding in an empty referrer for the “top” panel.

#
# == Screen
#

screen 1 do
  top    [ ]
# top    [ :views, :title, :spacer, :keychain, :spacer, :tray, :sublets ]
  bottom [ ]
end

Next came the key-bindings. I had to edit these since the default setup relied heavily upon a user having a keyboard with a Windows key, and I no longer have one of those. I have a 102 key buckling-spring monstrosity that can be alternately used to beat burglars into submission, and annoy cubicle-mates to the point of homicidal insanity. It is wonderful.

So I modified the key-bindings to as closely resemble those of Xmonad as possible, added “grab”s (key-bindings) for dmenu and the five additional views I was going to create shortly thereafter, and changed the default terminal emulator to lxterminal.

#
# == Grabs
#
# ==== Mouse buttons
#
# [*B1*] = Button1 (Left mouse button)
# [*B2*] = Button2 (Middle mouse button)
# [*B3*] = Button3 (Right mouse button)
# [*B4*] = Button4 (Mouse wheel up)
# [*B5*] = Button5 (Mouse wheel down)
#
# ==== Modifiers
#
# [*A*] = Alt key
# [*C*] = Control key
# [*M*] = Meta key
# [*S*] = Shift key
# [*W*] = Super (Windows) key
#

grab "A-p", "dmenu_run"

# Jump to view1, view2, ...
grab "A-S-1", :ViewJump1
grab "A-S-2", :ViewJump2
grab "A-S-3", :ViewJump3
grab "A-S-4", :ViewJump4
grab "A-S-5", :ViewJump5
grab "A-S-6", :ViewJump6
grab "A-S-7", :ViewJump7
grab "A-S-8", :ViewJump8
grab "A-S-9", :ViewJump9

# Switch current view
grab "A-1", :ViewSwitch1
grab "A-2", :ViewSwitch2
grab "A-3", :ViewSwitch3
grab "A-4", :ViewSwitch4
grab "A-5", :ViewSwitch5
grab "A-6", :ViewSwitch6
grab "A-7", :ViewSwitch7
grab "A-8", :ViewSwitch8
grab "A-9", :ViewSwitch9

# Select next and prev view */
grab "A-S-Right",      :ViewNext
grab "A-S-Left", :ViewPrev

# Move mouse to screen1, screen2, ...
grab "C-A-1", :ScreenJump1
grab "C-A-2", :ScreenJump2
grab "C-A-3", :ScreenJump3
grab "C-A-4", :ScreenJump4
grab "C-A-5", :ScreenJump5
grab "C-A-6", :ScreenJump6
grab "C-A-7", :ScreenJump7
grab "C-A-8", :ScreenJump8
grab "C-A-9", :ScreenJump9

# Force reload of config and sublets
grab "A-C-r", :SubtleReload

# Force restart of subtle
grab "A-C-S-r", :SubtleRestart

# Quit subtle
grab "A-S-q", :SubtleQuit

# Move current window
grab "A-B1", :WindowMove

# Resize current window
grab "A-B3", :WindowResize

# Toggle floating mode of window
grab "A-S-f", :WindowFloat

# Toggle fullscreen mode of window
grab "A-space", :WindowFull

# Toggle sticky mode of window (will be visible on all views)
grab "A-C-s", :WindowStick

# Raise window
grab "A-S-r", :WindowRaise

# Lower window
grab "A-S-l", :WindowLower

# Select next windows
grab "A-Left",  :WindowLeft
grab "A-Down",  :WindowDown
grab "A-Up",    :WindowUp
grab "A-Right", :WindowRight

# Kill current window
grab "A-S-c", :WindowKill

# Cycle between given gravities
grab "A-KP_7", [ :top_left,     :top_left66,     :top_left33     ]
grab "A-KP_8", [ :top,          :top66,          :top33          ]
grab "A-KP_9", [ :top_right,    :top_right66,    :top_right33    ]
grab "A-KP_4", [ :left,         :left66,         :left33         ]
grab "A-KP_5", [ :center,       :center66,       :center33       ]
grab "A-KP_6", [ :right,        :right66,        :right33        ]
grab "A-KP_1", [ :bottom_left,  :bottom_left66,  :bottom_left33  ]
grab "A-KP_2", [ :bottom,       :bottom66,       :bottom33       ]
grab "A-KP_3", [ :bottom_right, :bottom_right66, :bottom_right33 ]

# Exec programs
grab "A-S-Return", "lxterminal"

Next came the tags. This took me the longest to figure out, but once it was clear, it was stupidly simple. The basic setup is: tag "<view tag>", "<programmes>".  It tells Subtle under which “View” a programme should be added.

#
# == Tags
#
# Simple tags
tag "terms",   "lxterminal"
tag "browser", "uzbl|opera|firefox|navigator|seamonkey|vimprobable2"
tag "ink",     "inkscape"
tag "libreo",  "libreoffice|lowriter|localc"
tag "gnuo",    "abiword|gnumeric"
tag "pdf",     "epdfview|lyx"
tag "xine",    "xine"

Finally, there was the “View” section, which I edited concurrently with the “Tags” section. The basic setup here is: tag"<view name>", "<view tag>". The “View Name” is—well, the name of the given “View”, and is also what would show up on the panel if I had one displayed. The “View Tag” refers back to the “Tags” entry, and tells Subtle what programmes can be displayed in a particular “View”.

#
# == Views
#

view "terms",   "terms"
view "www",     "browser"
view "gimp",    "gimp_.*"
view "ink",     "ink"
view "libreo",  "libreo"
view "gnuo",    "gnuo"
view "pdf",     "pdf"
view "xine",    "xine"
view "default", "default"

Terry Jones is a sad little man, and a troll to boot. On 11 September 2010, he was going to conduct a book burning, for which the kindling was going to be a copy of the Koran. This resulted in a huge media shit-storm, with everyone from world leaders, straight on down to the local hobo under the overpass, having some kind of opinion on the matter, and collectively working themselves into a frenzied lather. Prophecies of impending doom came from all corners: from Muslims, from sycophants and apologists, from the aforementioned world leaders, and from everyone on the internet—times two.

But when the day came, there was no burning—the troll seemed to have misplaced the gas, or something—and all those who cowered in fear of offending, breathed a collective sigh of relief, and the world went about its business, and everyone forgot the whole, pathetic affair.

Now fast forward to 20 March 2011, when Terry Jones finally managed to locate his misplaced fuel, and get down to that all-important task of Koran burning. The world shrugged at the infantile display, having matured infinitely in the preceding sixth months, and Pastor Jones trundled off into obscurity once again.

If only that were true.

Instead, 14 U.N. aid workers were killed in Kabul, Afghanistan on 1 April 2011. All because some troll burned a book.

Many condemn Jones, and blame him for the deaths, rather than placing the blame squarely where it should be: on the shoulders of the cruel, malicious, cretins who did the killing. They had a choice, and they chose violence. What is worse, is that they are enabled by people in the West who are of the opinion that we must tip-toe around Muslim sensibilities for fear of offending them.

Science forbid that ANYONE should EVER be offended.

Well, I have decided to help offend. I have been inspired by the videos of Thunderf00t, and Illuminatiprimus, and am taking part in the first ever ‘Delete a Koran day.’

My first stop was Project Gutenberg, where I obtained a copy of the Koran. Step two, was to create a folder (titled burn), and two sub-folders (titled one, and two). Step three was to cobble together a bash script that repeatedly copies and deletes a file (or files). (I am sure there is a better way to do this, but it suits my needs for now.)

#!/bin/bash
COUNT=0
until [ $COUNT -gt 1000000 ]; do
cp ~/burn/one/*.txt ~/burn/two
rm ~/burn/one/*.txt
        let COUNT=COUNT+1
        echo Value of count is: $COUNT
cp ~/burn/two/*.txt ~/burn/one
rm ~/burn/two/*.txt
        let COUNT=COUNT+1
        echo Value of count is: $COUNT
done

And finally, step four was to set it loose upon the copy of the Koran that was occupying space on the hard drive.

I am pleased to say that, as I write this, it has just finished deleting Koran number 180510. I am hopeful that I can reach 1000000 before the end of the day.

I am a console kind of person. It is not that I object to Xorg, it is more that I object to the mouse (so maybe I am more of an anti-mouse kind of person). I much prefer a keyboard driven interface wherever practical (I concede that gimp needs a pointer, though in its case, I use a stylus instead of a mouse), and that tends to lead me to console programmes, over GUI ones.

It has taken a couple years to gather the current programmes together (it took me until last week to discover moc), and there is  still work to be done—new software to be discovered. But enough with chatter, onto the programmes.

• alpine: email and usenet client
• antiword: a *.doc file viewer
• bashburn: cd and dvd burning
• centerim: IRC and instant messaging
• dvdbackup: for backing up dvd’s
• elinks: web browser
• fbida: an image viewer made up of two programmes, fbi (for the console), and ida (for X)
• fbshot: screen capture tool for the console (in X, I use gimp’s scree capture function)
• lynx: web and gopher browser
• moc: a music player (I have also tried cmus, but it had trouble ‘finding’ some of the songs in my music directory)
• midnight commander: file manager and clone of Norton Commander from days of yore
• mkisofs: create iso files (from cdrkit)
• nethack: a rogue-like dungeon game
• newsbeuter: feed reader
• ranger: a file manager with vim-like key bindings
• rpncalc: a calculator that uses reverse polish notation
• rtorrent: a bittorrent client
• vim: the only text editor
• vms-empire: a two-player war game in the style of C-in-C for the original MacOS
• wcalc: a calcluator

I do not understand why people would support Stephen Harper’s efforts to end subsidies to political parties. Sure—it is not a perfect system of funding, but it is better than the alternative, namely parties bought and paid for by large corporations—just like in the United States.

I would rather pay a small amount of money—less than $2.00 worth of small—than have a government of the rich, by the rich, for the rich. I do NOT want to live in the United States.

That said, if people are really so put out by the party subsidy, I would make a counter proposal: let us eliminate political parties from the equation. Ban them from running campaigns, operating in Parliament, and providing funding to individual candidates. Instead, I suggest a return to the good old days that never really were, where the citizens of a riding voted for an individual, rather than a party, and that individual then went to Ottawa and represented their constituency. Place a time limit on campaigning of three weeks, and a spending limit of $10 000.00, and I think we would have the basis of a reasonable and rational electoral system.

In this fashion, the small and simple minded do not have to worry about some fraction of their $2.00 going to whatever party they hate and despise, and I do not have to worry about living under the best government money can buy. It is win-win.