Ruminations on Technology (July 2014)

[Tue Jul 22 10:18:55 CDT 2014]

My ex came up with an interesting idea: embedding the personal contact information for the kids in a QR code and giving it to them to keep in their backpacks, so that they can be scanned in case of emergency. I'm not sure that, when needed, whoever sees the code will know what it is or will even think of scanning it to see if it contains relevant information. However, it's one of those instances where there is nothing to lose and something to win, right? {link to this entry}

[Mon Jul 21 16:49:26 CDT 2014]

A coworker recently explained that he was experiencing some issues while using rdesktop to connect to a remote Windows session in a Citrix environment. According to his explanation, the rdesktop window was somehow "sucking" the keyboard events and not letting him use the usual Alt+Tab hotkey combo to switch between open windows. Apparently, this is a known issue with, as it turns out, an easy fix. Apparently, if you press the key twice, rdesktop will "ungrab" the keyboard after the first press, so that the second one will work. In any case, the link also contains a patch for the keymap.c file that will remove that feature altogether. Gotta love open source! {link to this entry}

[Tue Jul 15 09:44:36 CDT 2014]

Here is another interesting tool I recently ran into. It's called xdotool, and it allows you to automate X11 events, such as key press and even mouse events. Sort of neat. {link to this entry}

[Mon Jul 14 13:49:49 CDT 2014]

Linuxaria carries an article about a very nifty little tool called inxi to provide overall system information. What's interesting about it is that this is a simple bash shell script which, obviously, relies on other commands to obtain the information and display it on the terminal. Yet, it does so in a very quick, useful and clean manner. Here are a few sample runs:

# inxi -v 4
System:    Host: uvmid7-sys Kernel: 3.0.101-0.29-default x86_64 (64 bit gcc: 4.3.4) 
           Console: tty 0 Distro: SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 
Machine:   System: Intel product: Stoutland Platform v: 1.0
           Mobo: N/A model: N/A
           Bios: SGI.COM v: 2.20 UEFI2.10 PI1.0 X64 date: 2013-09-20
CPU(s):    4 Deca core Intel Xeon E7- 8837s (-HT-MCP-SMP-) cache: 98304 KB
           flags: (lm nx sse sse2 sse3 sse4_1 sse4_2 ssse3 vmx) bmips: 213332 
           Clock Speeds: 1: 1064 MHz 2: 1064 MHz 3: 1064 MHz 4: 1064 MHz
           5: 1064 MHz 6: 1064 MHz 7: 1064 MHz 8: 1064 MHz 9: 1064 MHz
           10: 1064 MHz 11: 1064 MHz 12: 1064 MHz 13: 1064 MHz 14: 1064 MHz
           15: 1064 MHz 16: 1064 MHz 17: 1064 MHz 18: 1064 MHz 19: 1064 MHz
           20: 1064 MHz 21: 1064 MHz 22: 1064 MHz 23: 1064 MHz 24: 1064 MHz
           25: 1064 MHz 26: 1064 MHz 27: 1064 MHz 28: 1064 MHz 29: 1064 MHz
           30: 1064 MHz 31: 1064 MHz 32: 1064 MHz
Graphics:  Card: Matrox Systems MGA G200e [Pilot] ServerEngines (SEP1)
           bus-ID: 04:00.0
           Display Server: X.org 1.6.5 driver: N/A
           tty size: 80x42 Advanced Data: N/A for root out of X
Network:   Card-1: Intel 82576 Gigabit Network Connection
           driver: igb v: 4.1.2-k ports: 2020 Root bus-ID: 01:00.0
           IF: eth0 state: up speed: 1000 Mbps duplex: full 
           mac: 08:00:69:15:c0:bc
           Card-2: Intel 82576 Gigabit Network Connection
           driver: igb v: 4.1.2-k ports: 2000 Root bus-ID: 01:00.1
           IF: eth1 state: down mac: 08:00:69:15:c0:bd
Drives:    HDD Total Size: 300.0GB (21.3% used)
           ID-1: /dev/sda model: ST9300603SS size: 300.0GB
Partition: ID-1: / size: 55G used: 6.4G (13%) fs: ext3 dev: /dev/sda7 
           ID-2: swap-1 size: 60.00GB used: 0.00GB (0%) fs: swap dev: /dev/sda9 
Info:      Processes: 233 Uptime: 4 days  2:38 Memory: 464.3/48227.0MB 
           Init: SysVinit runlevel: 3 Gcc sys: 4.3.4 
           Client: Shell (bash 3.2.511) inxi: 2.1.28 

# inxi -N
Network:   Card-1: Intel 82576 Gigabit Network Connection driver: igb
           Card-2: Intel 82576 Gigabit Network Connection driver: igb

# inxi -b
System:    Host: uvmid7-sys Kernel: 3.0.101-0.29-default x86_64 (64 bit) 
           Console: tty 0 Distro: SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 
Machine:   System: Intel product: Stoutland Platform v: 1.0
           Mobo: N/A model: N/A
           Bios: SGI.COM v: 2.20 UEFI2.10 PI1.0 X64 date: 2013-09-20
CPU(s):    4 Deca core Intel Xeon E7- 8837s (-HT-MCP-SMP-) clocked at 1064 MHz
Graphics:  Card: Matrox Systems MGA G200e [Pilot] ServerEngines (SEP1)
           Display Server: X.org 1.6.5 driver: N/A
           tty size: 80x42 Advanced Data: N/A for root out of X
Network:   Card-1: Intel 82576 Gigabit Network Connection driver: igb
           Card-2: Intel 82576 Gigabit Network Connection driver: igb
Drives:    HDD Total Size: 300.0GB (21.3% used) 
Info:      Processes: 232 Uptime: 4 days  2:48 Memory: 459.8/48227.0MB 
           Init: SysVinit runlevel: 3 Client: Shell (bash) inxi: 2.1.28 

# inxi -C
CPU(s):    4 Deca core Intel Xeon E7- 8837s (-HT-MCP-SMP-) cache: 98304 KB 
           Clock Speeds: 1: 1064 MHz 2: 1064 MHz 3: 1064 MHz 4: 1064 MHz
           5: 1064 MHz 6: 1064 MHz 7: 1064 MHz 8: 1064 MHz 9: 1064 MHz
           10: 1064 MHz 11: 1064 MHz 12: 1064 MHz 13: 1064 MHz 14: 1064 MHz
           15: 1064 MHz 16: 1064 MHz 17: 1064 MHz 18: 1064 MHz 19: 1064 MHz
           20: 1064 MHz 21: 1064 MHz 22: 1064 MHz 23: 1064 MHz 24: 1064 MHz
           25: 1064 MHz 26: 1064 MHz 27: 1064 MHz 28: 1064 MHz 29: 1064 MHz
           30: 1064 MHz 31: 1064 MHz 32: 1064 MHz

# inxi -f
CPU(s):    4 Deca core Intel Xeon E7- 8837s (-HT-MCP-SMP-) cache: 98304 KB 
           Clock Speeds: 1: 1064 MHz 2: 1064 MHz 3: 1064 MHz 4: 1064 MHz
           5: 1064 MHz 6: 1064 MHz 7: 1064 MHz 8: 1064 MHz 9: 1064 MHz
           10: 1064 MHz 11: 1064 MHz 12: 1064 MHz 13: 1064 MHz 14: 1064 MHz
           15: 1064 MHz 16: 1064 MHz 17: 1064 MHz 18: 1064 MHz 19: 1064 MHz
           20: 1064 MHz 21: 1064 MHz 22: 1064 MHz 23: 1064 MHz 24: 1064 MHz
           25: 1064 MHz 26: 1064 MHz 27: 1064 MHz 28: 1064 MHz 29: 1064 MHz
           30: 1064 MHz 31: 1064 MHz 32: 1064 MHz
           CPU Flags: acpi aperfmperf apic arat arch_perfmon bts clflush cmov
           constant_tsc cx16 cx8 dca de ds_cpl dtes64 dtherm dts epb ept est
           flexpriority fpu fxsr ht ida lahf_lm lm mca mce mmx monitor msr
           mtrr nonstop_tsc nopl nx pae pat pbe pcid pdcm pdpe1gb pebs pge pni
           popcnt pse pse36 rdtscp rep_good sep smx ss sse sse2 sse4_1 sse4_2
           ssse3 syscall tm tm2 tpr_shadow tsc vme vmx vnmi vpid x2apic
           xtopology xtpr

# inxi -I
Info:      Processes: 232 Uptime: 4 days  2:49 Memory: 454.3/48227.0MB 
           Init: SysVinit runlevel: 3 Client: Shell (bash) inxi: 2.1.28

Simply run inxi -h to see all available options. The project's homepage can be found on Google Code. {link to this entry}

[Sun Jul 6 16:23:34 CDT 2014]

If you are the type of person who likes to print articles most of the time so you can read them at home, you may want to consider downloading and configuring the ecofont on your system. This short entry explains how to install it on Ubuntu and Debian, in case you are running those other operating systems. It's a free font. {link to this entry}

[Sun Jul 6 16:16:35 CDT 2014]

Here's something that I've been wondering about lately: Who's the genius who came up with the idea to have Windows 7 unexpectedly install all available updates on shutdown? I mean, really, when I want my laptop to shutdown... well, I want it to shutdown, you know? I don't expect it, precisely at that point, to show a message that it's downloading update 36 of 67 available updates while telling me to be patient and not turn off the computer. If I remember right, Apple laptops may do this too, or perhaps they did it at some point in the past but then they learned from their own mistakes. In any case, it truly is annying and not very user friendly. I haven't run Windows 8, but hopefully it's one of the things they changed in that release. And yes, I suppose there must be some setting in the preferences that I could change so it doesn't do this, but that's beyond the point. My question is why would anybody even think that using this behavior as the default setting makes any sense whatsoever? {link to this entry}