http://shlomif.livejournal.com/ Tech Tip: Finding CPAN Distributions that only have a Build.PL http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_tech/28615.html A few times in the past, I wanted to find perl 5 CPAN distributions that only had a <a href="http://search.cpan.org/dist/Module-Build/">Module-Build</a>-based Build.PL file and not a fallback Makefile.PL file. Yesterday, after some trial and error, I was able to formulate <a href="http://search.yahoo.com/">Yahoo Search</a> query, to do just that. Here it is - the shortened URL with a hyperlink to the full one: <a href="http://search.yahoo.com/search;_ylt=A0geusbSektKDlEAwnJXNyoA?p=%22Build.PL%22+%22This+Release%22+%22CPAN+Testers%22+-%22Makefile.PL%22+-%22create_makefile_pl%22&y=Search&fr=sfp&vm=p&vs=search.cpan.org&vf=all&fr2=sb-top&sao=0">http://xrl.us/bezbkx - Yahoo Search to find Build.PL only distributions</a> It works by looking for specific phrases in the /dist pages, looking for "Build.PL" and specifically excluding "Makefile.PL". I hereby place this URL and whatever associated techniques under <a href="http://creativecommons.org/license/zero">CC0 / Public Domain</a>. Enjoy! shlomif@iglu.org.il (Shlomi Fish) search tip tech building tech tip extutils-makemaker build.pl perl build module-build yahoo cpan http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_tech/28615.html http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_tech/28615.html Wed, 01 Jul 2009 15:27:35 GMT Introducing CPANHQ and a Response to Limbic Region's "Improving search.cpan.org (Advanced Search)" http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_tech/28209.html Limbic Region recently wrote a post on his use Perl journal titled <a href="http://use.perl.org/~Limbic+Region/journal/39132">"Improving search.cpan.org (Advanced Search)"</a>. The post concludes by saying that "Feel free to add your own [ideas] - I know someone who may actually be motivated to implement some of them as an alternate to search.cpan.org is reading :-)". Since I talked with L~R about CPANHQ, a seacrch.capn.org alternative in question, that I have been contributing to, I can assume meant me. Before I reply to L~R's points, let me introduce <a href="http://github.com/bricas/cpanhq/tree/master">CPANHQ</a>. As documented in <a href="http://wiki.github.com/bricas/cpanhq">the first and only wiki page it has so far</a> (which I wrote two days ago), "CPANHQ aims to be a community-driven, meta-data-enhanced alternative to such sites as <a href="http://search.cpan.org/">http://search.cpan.org/</a> and <a href="http://kobesearch.cpan.org/">http://kobesearch.cpan.org/</a>. Currently, the functionality is very basic, but we have great ambitions." I learned about CPANHQ by overhearing a conversation on Freenode's #perl channel. I joined the effort, and made several enhancements to the <a href="http://www.catalystframework.org/">Catalyst</a> and <a href="http://www.perlfoundation.org/perl5/index.cgi?dbix_class">DBIx-Class</a>-based code, which was a useful learning experience. The functionality is still very basic, and there's a lot of work to do, so any help would be appreciated. Just fork the github repository ( or <a href="http://github.com/shlomif/cpanhq/tree/master">my repository</a>, which I tend to keep somewhat more up-to-date ), and play with the code. Now back to L~R's suggestions. At first I was a bit sceptical of them and they seemed like an overkill, and not really useful. When I'm using search.cpan.org to search for a distribution, either I know the name of the module that I'm looking for and just perform a search to be directed to the location of the exact page, or I usually find the order of the search sufficient for my needs. However, on a second reading, it seems like what Limbic suggests (like being able to sort results by Kwalitee, creation date, number of downloads, last update date, rating, etc., providing a code search, or recommendations) actually has some merit and should be considered. One thing I'm sure about is that the default CPAN search should remain simple, while only giving an option for an advances search using a different form, where it might be possible to formulate a more complex query using a specialised language. Otherwise, if we complicate the existing search, it could prove confusing to many users. L~R's suggestions remind me of my <a href="http://perl.net.au/wiki/Finding_a_Module_on_CPAN/Module-Rank">CPAN Module-Rank</a> thought experiment, that aimed to define an automatically calculated metric for the relevance of CPAN modules. L~R later referred me to <a href="http://perlmonks.org/?node_id=773093">a post to Perlmonks.org titled "Advanced CPAN Search?"</a> where someone asks a similar question. To sum up, please consider monitoring or even contributing to CPANHQ if you want to improve the future of finding stuff and interacting with CPAN. It seems that some people have issue with the current CPAN search state-of-the-art, and would like to see it improved. We'd be happy to hear what you think. shlomif@iglu.org.il (Shlomi Fish) search limbic region dbix-class cpanhq catalyst region kobesearch perl search.cpan.org limbic github cpan http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_tech/28209.html http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_tech/28209.html Sun, 28 Jun 2009 11:58:28 GMT Maintenance Freecell Solver 2.32.1 Release http://fc-solve.blogspot.com/2009/06/maintenance-freecell-solver-2321.html Hot on the heels of <a href="http://fc-solve.berlios.de/">Freecell Solver</a> 2.32.0, there's now a 2.32.1 maintenance release available from <a href="http://fc-solve.berlios.de/download.html">the download page</a>. This release fixes several important build bugs, especially on Windows, but also on UNIXes. Please test it to see if any other problems remain. <div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/96099636168698788-1943224766083000855?l=fc-solve.blogspot.com'/></div> shlomif@iglu.org.il (Shlomi Fish) version freecell msvc maintenance release building cmake solving solver 2.32.1 tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-96099636168698788.post-1943224766083000855 Fri, 26 Jun 2009 10:41:00 +0000 2009-06-26T03:42:20.672-07:00 Freecell Solver 2.32.0 was Released http://fc-solve.blogspot.com/2009/06/freecell-solver-2320-was-released.html <a href="http://fc-solve.berlios.de/">Freecell Solver</a> version 2.32.0 has been released. It is available in the form of a source tarball from <a href="http://fc-solve.berlios.de/download.html">the download page</a>. This version features a large code cleanup which also resulted in a substantial speed boost. The code cleanup was guided by <a href="http://svn.berlios.de/viewcvs/fc-solve/trunk/fc-solve/source/scripts/find-ids.rb?view=log">a script</a> that was written to list all occurences of identifiers with the same name, in order to find uncommon identifiers. There were several bug-fixes done to the <a href="http://www.cmake.org/">CMake</a>-based build system, and there's now suppot for <a href="http://code.google.com/p/google-perftools/">Google's tcmalloc</a> and hidden internal identifiers in the DLL/shared-library. The inline keyword for definining inline functions is now supported on more compilers and more functions or macros have been converted to inline functions. We hope you enjoy this release. <div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/96099636168698788-7325001057906480073?l=fc-solve.blogspot.com'/></div> shlomif@iglu.org.il (Shlomi Fish) gcc dlls optimise release solving 2.32.0 version games optimisation freecell cmake inline solver tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-96099636168698788.post-7325001057906480073 Wed, 24 Jun 2009 13:36:00 +0000 2009-06-24T06:37:36.798-07:00 Tel Aviv FOSS Meeting on 28-June-2009: Programming Red Flags http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_tech/28073.html The <a href="http://www.cs.tau.ac.il/telux/">Tel Aviv Open Source Club</a> will host <a href="http://wiki.osdc.org.il/index.php/Tel_Aviv_Meeting_on_28_June_2009">a talk by Yaron Meiry ("Sawyer") about "Programming Red Flags")</a> on 28-June-2009. The meeting will take place at Tel Aviv University, at the Schreiber Maths&CS building, room 008 on 18:30. So mark your calendars. More information can be found <a href="http://wiki.osdc.org.il/index.php/Tel_Aviv_Meeting_on_28_June_2009">on the wiki page for the meeting</a>. Attendance is free, it is not necessary to RSVP and everyone are welcome. With any other problems, feel free to <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/me/contact-me/">contact me</a>. Abstract Some programming habits should be avoided at all costs; some should be considered with care and some are just divine. Red flags tell us what to try and avoid and what to inspect more closely. They are a sign of code that might become problematic or straightforwardly dangerous. The talk will be Perl-oriented (with Perl examples) but the programming practices are generic and can be applied to most programming languages, so if you program in Ruby, Python, PHP or other languages, this talks to you as well. Hopefully by the time we're done, you'll be able to write cleaner, more maintainable, less error-prone, and better code. If not, your money back guarantee! shlomif@iglu.org.il (Shlomi Fish) php open source software ruby telux programming red telfoss meeting foss free perl club sawyer flags python http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_tech/28073.html http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_tech/28073.html Sun, 21 Jun 2009 11:14:44 GMT New Release of HTML-Widgets-NavMenu - 1.0300 http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_tech/27843.html Just for the fun of it, I decided to join <a href="http://www.enlightenedperl.org/ironman.html">the Iron Man Blogging Challenge</a>, so here's my first post. I recently released a new version (1.0300) of <a href="http://web-cpan.berlios.de/modules/HTML-Widgets-NavMenu/">HTML-Widgets-NavMenu, my CPAN module for generating navigation menus</a>. This release fixes a bug in the "HeaderRole" type of navigation menus (which I believe is not widely used) and also cleans up the internals. Instead of <tt>my ($self, %args) = @_;</tt>, there's now <tt>my ($self, $args) = @_;</tt>, which is cleaner and should also be a little faster. You can see HTML-Widgets-NavMenu in action on <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/">my homepage</a>. By going to various pages, you can see the navigation menu expands or unexpands in certain places, and the breadcrumbs' trail and next/previous/up links updated. The story of how I created this module is interesting. It started with a lot of ugly and crufty <a href="http://thewml.org/">Website Meta Language</a> logic that evolved to generate my homesite's navigation menu. I didn't really like it so I look for an alternative. I looked for one on the CPAN and found two modules that didn't seem too inviting. Then when I mentioned my quest on <a href="http://www.perl.org.il/">Perl-Israel</a>, a fellow Perler said he created a hack based on his module for generating JavaScript menus to do just that and uploaded it to CPAN. That module seemed to have the most user-friendly interface, so I decided to use it. However, I patched it, inherited from one of its classes, and created a lot of code of my own. Eventually, I ended up with only original code, and so I wrapped things up, licensed it under the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIT_License">MIT/X11 licence</a> and uploaded it to CPAN. Since then, it was improved to some extent, including adding 100% Automated Test coverage at one point (which didn't prevent the HeaderRole bug). So far I received <a href="http://cpanratings.perl.org/dist/HTML-Widgets-NavMenu">two five star reviews of the module on CPAN Ratings</a>, and also heard from other people using the bug tracker and on E-mail. As a result, I believe this module is moderately popular, and fills a nice niche. If you're looking for a module to generate navigation menus for your site, then please take a look at it. And if you have ideas for improvements, I'll be glad to hear from you. shlomif@iglu.org.il (Shlomi Fish) html-widgets-navmenu wml web language design menus css perl navigation website meta html cpan www http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_tech/27843.html http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_tech/27843.html Sun, 14 Jun 2009 14:03:24 GMT Freecell Solver's Subversion Repository's 2,000'th Revision http://www.flickr.com/photos/shlomif/3622652030/ <a href="http://www.flickr.com/people/shlomif/">shlomif2</a> posted a photo: <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/shlomif/3622652030/" title="Freecell Solver's Subversion Repository's 2,000'th Revision"><img src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3611/3622652030_3973c2d2d3_m.jpg" width="240" height="185" alt="Freecell Solver's Subversion Repository's 2,000'th Revision" /></a> A Screenshot of Firefox showing Freecell Solver revision at 2,000. shlomif@iglu.org.il (Shlomi Fish) tag:flickr.com,2004:/photo/3622652030 Sat, 13 Jun 2009 09:42:57 -0700 Freecell Solver 2.30.0 was Released http://fc-solve.blogspot.com/2009/06/freecell-solver-2300-was-released.html <a href="http://fc-solve.berlios.de/">Freecell Solver</a> version 2.30.0 has been released. It is available in the form of a source tarball from <a href="http://fc-solve.berlios.de/download.html">the download page</a>. This release adds the run-time presets "gooey-unknown-thing", "sand-stone" and "slick-rock" that aim to minimise the average lengths of the resultant solutions. (as opposed to minimising the time it takes to solve). It also adds support for using any of the tree imlpementation supplied by <a href="http://www.stanford.edu/~blp/avl/">libavl version 2</a> for both the positions storage and the stacks storage. There's a bug fix in the fc-pro range solver for a bug that caused the Freecell Pro compatible moves to be mis-calculated. Moreover, the code has experienced a substantial re-organisation and the Makefiles for the different compiler were merged into one (which was later fixed). There are also new compile-time options to exclude various functionality that may not be needed. Download it while its hot! <div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/96099636168698788-7784316368620976391?l=fc-solve.blogspot.com'/></div> shlomif@iglu.org.il (Shlomi Fish) patience trees release balanced solving libavl avl version games 2.30.0 freecell binary solitaire solution cmake length solver tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-96099636168698788.post-7784316368620976391 Sun, 07 Jun 2009 11:02:00 +0000 2009-06-07T04:04:12.498-07:00 Recent Hacktivity http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_tech/27619.html Before I start with the entry itself, I should note that <a href="http://leto.net/dukeleto.pl/2009/05/recent-hacktivity.html">someone copied my "Recent Hacktivity" meme</a>. So I am going to tell my team intimidating lawyers to send him a "Cease and Desist" letter for Copyrights/trademarks/patents/trade-secrets/whatever violation. (Just kidding) OK, I did a lot of work on <a href="http://perl-begin.org/">Perl-Begin</a>. I went over all the pages and updated all the out-of-date information I could find, and then also implemented a decent "Testimonials" sidebar instead of the half-assed "These companies/projects are using" Perl that there was there earlier. Next, I plan to have to create a tools/IDEs/etc. section. I also did <a href="http://better-scm.berlios.de/news/changes-2009-05-19/">some work on the Better-SCM site</a>. Most of it was done by going over the emails in my relevant folder and implementing their suggestions. I did a lot of work on Freecell Solver. I implemented <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simple_Simon_(solitaire)">Simple Simon</a> support in Games-Solitaire-Verify, and verified all the FCS-generated Simple Simons solutions up to PySol deal No. 5,000. I also <a href="http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/fc-solve-discuss/message/983">prepared updated Simple Simon statistics</a>. I also <a href="http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/fc-solve-discuss/message/980">did some Perl and PDL work on creating a meta-scan that minimises the average solutions' lengths generated by the solver</a>. This worked out pretty well. Finally the code in the Freecell Solver trunk <a href="http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/fc-solve-discuss/message/984">is now worth over a million U.S. Dollars</a> (at least according to SLOCCount by David A. Wheeler). I did some extensive work on refactoring and cleaning up <a href="http://web-cpan.berlios.de/modules/Statistics-Descriptive/">the Statistics-Descriptive CPAN module</a>, and released version 3.0000 to the CPAN. Next I'd like to create a perltidy theme to correspond with my personal style, so I'll be able to reformat the code there properly. At the moment, a lot of it is still using 2-whitespace-wide indentation levels, which is annoying. Next I tended to <a href="https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=183022">this akregator bug, where the "Copy Link Location" did not copy to the middle-mouse button paste</a>. Fixing it was pretty easy because there was a line doing it commented-out. The patch was accepted and is now in both KDE-4.2 and KDE-trunk. I helped sort out <a href="http://www.perlfoundation.org/perl5/index.cgi?mailing_lists">the Perl-related mailing lists page at the Perl 5 Wiki</a>. The effort was started by szabgab, and I did most of the sorting. In the process, I learned about many interesting mailing lists, and of many almost dead ones. After I was through, I did not know what to do with the rest of my life. I ran into <a href="https://qa.mandriva.com/show_bug.cgi?id=51121">this bug with Amarok 2.x on my system</a>, which I fixed, by removing some weird junk from the end of <tt>/etc/fstab</tt>. The fact that I could not use Amarok irritated me a lot, and I was glad that I resolved it. I released a new version of the Config-IniFiles CPAN module with some fixes and a t/pod.t and t/pod-coverage.t files to prevent POD problems. Finally, one evening after an intensive biking session, I worked on forward-porting my <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/open-source/bits.html#amarok">Amarok per-song-volume script</a> to Amarok 2.x. Now, the original Perl script could not be used because running arbitrary UNIX process scripts is no longer supported by Amarok 2.x, which now requires all scripts to be written in JavaScript using QtScript. Porting it took all evening, but I had it working eventually. I still resent the Amarok developers for only allowing JavaScript there now, which I don't hold in high esteem. shlomif@iglu.org.il (Shlomi Fish) meme per-song-volume perl-begin pysol begin akregator bug lists beginners freecell javascript cpan recent hacktivity bugs simple simon hacktivity log better-scm szabgab leto statistics log recent hacktivity perl solver mailing sloccount wiki amarok testimonials http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_tech/27619.html http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_tech/27619.html Mon, 01 Jun 2009 19:23:46 GMT An Eventful Day. http://shlomif.livejournal.com/58549.html Two days ago I had an eventful day. During the second walk I took that day (in the afternoon), there was a car that passed through the roundabout at a big speed, shortly after I crossed the road there. Then, at the park with the many cats in it, there was this woman who found a lost kitten. She held him in her hand and said he had many fleas. Nearby, there was also the corpse of a dead cat, which I had seen in earlier days, and we also discused it. This woman was not from the neighbourhood and was looking for the lady who was feeding the cats. Anyway, there was little I could do and so I walked away, and on the way back, in a different park I saw a pretty girl walking in the opposite direction from me. Later that day, I decided to go biking, and this time took my longer ride through "Park Hayarkon". There were many people on the streets which was expected of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shavuot">a holiday</a>. When I passed through the southern end of Tel Aviv university, I saw the grey-and-white cat (which I <a href="http://shlomif.livejournal.com/39551.html">told this blog about earlier</a>) sitting on the fence, and stopped by. It was in a friendly mood and I was able to pet it, and it even rubbed my foot. When I returned home, I bathed and ate and was in a good mood, then I decided to finally get to the task of forward-porting <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/open-source/bits.html#amarok">my Amarok per-song-volume script</a> to Amarok 2.x. This took a lot of trial and error and took me the rest of the evening, but I now have it written and it works nicely. Hopefully, I'll tell more about it in <a href="http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_tech/">my tech-blog</a>. shlomif@iglu.org.il (Shlomi Fish) http://shlomif.livejournal.com/58549.html http://shlomif.livejournal.com/58549.html Sun, 31 May 2009 19:24:59 GMT Tech Tip: Perl Debugger: Preserving the History Between Invocations http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_tech/27187.html One thing that always bothered me about <a href="http://debugger.perl.org/">the Perl debugger</a> is the fact that it didn't rememeber / preserve the GNU readline command history from previous sessions like a shell does for example. Today I discovered how to enable the preservation of the command history from previous sessions of the debugger. To do so, add something like the following the the file "~/.perldb" (under your home directory): <pre> &parse_options("HistFile=$ENV{HOME}/.perldb-history HistSize=5000"); </pre> I explictly set the history size to a large value, but this is optional. You can also set the path to the history file to a different value. Now when you start perl -d it will recall all the latest values from previous invocations. shlomif@iglu.org.il (Shlomi Fish) tip perl preserving tech debugger history tech tip http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_tech/27187.html http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_tech/27187.html Sun, 31 May 2009 13:23:08 GMT Adventures in Compiling http://fc-solve.blogspot.com/2009/05/adventures-in-compiling.html I've generally been using <a href="http://gcc.gnu.org/">GCC (= The GNU Compiler Collection)</a> exclusively for compiling <a href="http://fc-solve.berlios.de/">Freecell Solver</a> under Linux for its constant development. For a time, I used to compile the Windows binaries using Microsoft Visual C ("cl.exe") and a really hideous batch file I wrote for the purpose (so it would work on the Technion's computers). Lately, however, I've switched to compiling using <a href="http://www.mingw.org/">MinGW</a> on Windows, which is gcc based. A few weeks ago, I decided to try out other compilers and see what they had to offer. I downloaded the proprietary <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_C%2B%2B_Compiler">icc (Intel's C Compiler)</a>, which is gcc-compatible and has a Linux trial version. It was a huge download and ended up occupying a lot of space on the hard-disk. At first, I could not get it to emit working code, but after messing a little with my makefiles, I was successful. It is about the same speed as gcc for compiling my ANSI C program (maybe a bit slower), and generates somewhat faster code. . icc kept emitting many of the so-called "remarks" which I eventually took upon myself to eliminate. This improved the quality of my code. But it worked properly with these many remarks being emitted. After installing icc, msec (the Mandriva security mechanism) complained about world-writable files in the icc installation, so I reported it on the Intel forum. The next compiler I tried was <a href="http://bellard.org/tcc/">tcc, the Tiny/Turbo C Compiler</a>. The version in the Mandriva repositories was old and did not yield a working binary, and so I tried upgrading to version 0.9.24 and then to the git version, but none of them worked either. I <a href="http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/tinycc-devel/2009-05/msg00032.html">reported this attempt to the tcc mailing list</a>. I also tried icc's -fast flag, which is supposed to make the output faster, but it actually made the binaries slower (much slower than even gcc). However, later on, after cleaning up my makefile, tcc produced perfectly working binaries. I don't know what the problem was, but it was solved. (I reported that in a reply). Compiling with tcc is much faster than with gcc, but the resulting code is much slower than gcc's, and occupies more space on the disk. The next compiler was <a href="http://www.tendra.org/">TenDRA</a>. Now the homepage a 403 (and still does) and so I went on Freenode and asked. I eventually did: <pre> $ svn co http://svn.tendra.org/trunk/ </pre> Only to discover that <a href="http://svn.tendra.org/trunk/tendra/INSTALL">http://svn.tendra.org/trunk/tendra/INSTALL</a> is empty except for a reference to the Trac web-site (which was also off-line). So I needed to use the guidance of the people from Freenode's #tendra to build it. In the process, I had to install <a href="http://www.crufty.net/help/sjg/bmake.html">bmake</a>, because that's the only make that would compile TenDRA. The ./configure in the standard distribution failed to work here, but I was able to find an .src.rpm which compiled and installed fine. The TenDRA boot process also complained about one of my system's header which had a list or enum with a trailing comma, and I had to manually fix the code. But I was able to build TenDRA and install it, and it was able to compile a working program. Before it did, though, I had to fix many compilation errors it reported, as TenDRA is stricter than gcc. It also didn't recognise my use of strdup, and I had to specify -Ysystem for it to work (the previous -Y's I tried did not work properly). But then it worked. TenDRA generated larger and slower executables than gcc but it worked. I failed to get <a href="http://www.cs.princeton.edu/software/lcc/">lcc (which isn't strictly open source )</a> and <a href="http://pcc.ludd.ltu.se/">pcc (which is open source )</a> to either compile or produce working code. Seems like neither of them are ready for prime time - at least not here on Mandriva Linux Cooker. So after a lot of frustration, my experiments with different compilers were mostly successful. As a result, my code is more strict, and better tested. So I guess it was worth it. <div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/96099636168698788-5863435541892256733?l=fc-solve.blogspot.com'/></div> shlomif@iglu.org.il (Shlomi Fish) compilers gcc lcc compilation intel gnu tcc freecell tendra icc compiler compile pcc solver ansi c tinycc tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-96099636168698788.post-5863435541892256733 Fri, 29 May 2009 14:22:00 +0000 2009-05-29T07:23:35.494-07:00 Tech Tip: Kopete: Recalling Previous Messages http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_tech/26928.html When using <a href="http://kopete.kde.org/">Kopete</a>, a unified instant-messaging client for the KDE desktop environment, one can recall previous messages using Ctrl+Up and Ctrl+Down. A friend, who is a KMess developer, told me it was also a <a href="http://kmess.org/">KMess</a> feature. This wasn't very discoverable, and I discovered it only by accident. But it seems useful. shlomif@iglu.org.il (Shlomi Fish) tip tech messages tech tip kde down kopete up recall http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_tech/26928.html http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_tech/26928.html Thu, 28 May 2009 10:33:02 GMT Toggle Squares Game, A New Privacy Policy, and Other Updates http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_hsite/11232.html The <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/MathVentures/toggle-squares/">Toggle Squares game</a> whose link was broken, and non-functional, was restored and placed on the main site, as a pure-JavaScript game. A method for solving it <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/MathVentures/toggle_squares.html">is explained</a> in the MathVentures section. <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/meta/privacy-policy/">A privacy policy</a> has been added to the site. I'd like to thank a friend who is also a webmaster for allowing me to borrow and adapt his privacy policy. The <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/open-source/anti/apple/">Anti-Apple Page</a> now contains 99 items with links. <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/open-source/anti/">other pages against bad software</a> were also updated. <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/bits/Mastering-Cat/">The page about the "Mastering Cat" book</a>, which proved to be very popular has been updated with "Thanks" and "Coverage" sections. There are new <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/fortunes/">Fortune Cookies in the collection</a>: <blockquote> Well, it's not a threat - it's a warning, and he won't be harmed much by acting against my advice. A threat is something like "Stop posting political posts or I will burn your house, rape your wife and daughters, banish you to the middle of Antarctica, convert all your Perl code to PHP, and then post it on thedailywtf.com." </blockquote> <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/me/resumes/">My Resumés</a> have been enhanced and updated. There is a new version <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/rwlock/">of the First-Come First-Served Readers/Writers Lock</a>. shlomif@iglu.org.il (Shlomi Fish) fortunes toggle privacy warning humour policy fish fcfs cv shlomif cat squares mastering maths shlomi mastering cat linear algebra threat rwlock apple resume mathematicas links game http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_hsite/11232.html http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_hsite/11232.html Mon, 25 May 2009 14:43:00 GMT Meeting your Blog Readers' Expectations http://shlomif.livejournal.com/58360.html Recently, a prominent <a href="http://use.perl.org/">use.perl.org</a> blogger (and a <a href="http://perl-begin.org/">Perl</a> contributor) started posting many political posts to his blog, which I found annoying and disturbing. After commenting to him about it, it started a conversation and I ended up <a href="http://use.perl.org/comments.pl?sid=42958&cid=68552">writing a comment about the importance of meeting your blog reader's expectations</a>. I'd like to copy it here: <blockquote> You say you only want to have one blog where you'll post about everything, including political posts. In that case, let me tell you a story from my own experience. I used to have only one blog - first at Advogato and then <a href="http://shlomif.livejournal.com/">at LiveJournal</a>. I posted everything I wanted there whether technical or non-technical. At one point <a href="http://shlomif.livejournal.com/39551.html?thread=32639#t32639">I received some important input</a> in which that particular reader said that they were not interested in my technical posts (like vim tips, Linux bugs, etc.), and would rather have them separated. I commented (later in the link) that I agreed, and so <a href="http://shlomif.livejournal.com/41970.html">started a separate blog for technical matters</a>. I also mention (in the previous link) the fact that a blog I used to read and enjoy deteriorated after its owner became a mother, and started posting exclusively about her motherhood experiences. As a result, I unsubscribed from that blog's feed. This separation of my blogs proved fruitful afterwards, because several planets have opted to syndicate only the technical blogs (or in the case of Perlsphere, only the Perl subset of them). Moreover, when I discussed blogging with a certain famous blogger, he said that he reached the conclusion that specialisation of blogs was the key to success, and that people will only subscribe to blogs that concentrate on topics that interest them. My point is that in blogging, you need to meet your readers' expectations. I am subscribed to the feed of all of use.perl.org's blog entries, because I'm interested in reading what Perl enthusiasts say. I don't mind the personal posts (or otherwise posts that are tangential to Perl) but I find political posts disturbing and annoying and would rather not read them. So far your blog has received no special treatment as I read it along with all the rest of the posts. But if you don't guarantee that you're not going to post political posts here anymore, I will filter it out, and stop reading everything you have to say, including the Perl-related, and other non-political posts. So you'll lose me as a reader and possibly some other people who will opt not to read your blog. It's your blog and you can post what you want to it, but I hope you understand that your subscribers may opt out of it, if they feel your blog no longer meets their expectations. </blockquote> I received quite a lot of heat in that discussion, in what seemed to me like an innocent intention on my part to warn someone of an unpleasant trend in their blog, before I unsubscribe. Eventually, he didn't take my advice, and as a result, I <a href="http://use.perl.org/~Shlomi+Fish/journal/38969">wrote a script to filter posts from use.perl.org based on the author</a> and am now filtering out his posts from the feed I'm reading. I unsubscribed from some blogs that started not to meet my expectations before, but this was the first time I tried to warn the blog owner about a bad trend. I should note that once, before blogs became popular, I was subscribed to a mailing list, where I've written many posts. At one point, I had written many posts of a similar theme, only to have learned later from someone else, that many people disliked them, and as a result decided to filter out all of my posts to the list, while receiving the posts of anyone else (using mail filters). I felt offended by this fact, and wished they would have told me (or the list in general) how they felt. Unsubscribing from a blog is probably less of an issue due to the technological nature of web feeds, but I still think that if a blog that you used to like has deteriorated in some respect, you should let the blog owner know, and I hope to continue in doing this. shlomif@iglu.org.il (Shlomi Fish) http://shlomif.livejournal.com/58360.html http://shlomif.livejournal.com/58360.html Thu, 21 May 2009 13:28:30 GMT Freecell Solver 2.28.0 was Released http://fc-solve.blogspot.com/2009/05/freecell-solver-2260-was-released.html <a href="http://fc-solve.berlios.de/">Freecell Solver</a> version 2.28.0 has been released. It is available in the form of a source tarball from <a href="http://fc-solve.berlios.de/download.html">the download page</a>. This version contains several significant optimisations. Now the "freecell-only" preset can solve the first 32,000 Microsoft Freecell deals at 286 deals per second with gcc, and 301 deals per seconds with <a href="http://software.intel.com/en-us/intel-compilers/">Intel's icc.</a> (on a Pentium 4 2.4GHz computer). There are many other internal cleanups, build system tweaks, and new makefiles to build using some alternative C compilers. The source archives from now on will be distributed as tar.bz2 instead of tar.gz which gives better compression, and a faster download. <div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/96099636168698788-7868619768627350983?l=fc-solve.blogspot.com'/></div> shlomif@iglu.org.il (Shlomi Fish) patience 2.28.0 release optimization solving version games optimisation freecell gzip bz2 solitaire cmake solver tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-96099636168698788.post-7868619768627350983 Sun, 17 May 2009 16:48:00 +0000 2009-05-17T12:57:25.364-07:00 New Coldplay Record Available for Download Today http://shlomif.livejournal.com/57900.html <a href="http://www.coldplay.com/">Coldplay</a> have a new record called "Left Right Left Right Left" available for download on their site only today. So head over, and download it. I'm not sure if this record is legally freely redistributable in the <a href="http://creativecommons.org/">Creative Commons</a>-sense. I downloaded it and listened to it and like it very much. The "Viva La Vida" track is especially good. shlomif@iglu.org.il (Shlomi Fish) http://shlomif.livejournal.com/57900.html http://shlomif.livejournal.com/57900.html Fri, 15 May 2009 13:46:26 GMT Source for the "E Text Editor" Was Released http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_tech/26837.html Apparently, <a href="http://e-texteditor.com/blog/2009/releasing-the-source">the source for E Text Editor, a multi-platform Textmate clone was released under a not-entirely-open-source licence</a>. This is good news despite the fact that it is not a fully-open-source licene, because now Textmate-like functionality is available for Linux and other platforms, and not only on <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/open-source/anti/apple/">the Mac</a>. I'm still sticking with <a href="http://www.vim.org/">Vim</a>, though, which is fully cross-platform, open-source and even GPL-compatible. shlomif@iglu.org.il (Shlomi Fish) apple file e text editor open source editors text macintosh linux textmate source vim http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_tech/26837.html http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_tech/26837.html Thu, 14 May 2009 10:04:52 GMT Meta: Script to Filter the Master use.perl.org Blogs' Feed http://use.perl.org/~Shlomi+Fish/journal/38969?from=rss As expected from the latest trend in the Perl blogosphere this post will be about Roles. And Moose! And Roles in Moose! And Moose in Roles! And Roles outside Moose… Seriously now, this is a post about <a href="http://svn.berlios.de/svnroot/repos/web-cpan/XML-Feed/trunk/filter-use.perl.org/">a completely non-Moosey and non-Roley script I wrote to filter the use.perl.org master journals' feed</a>. What this script does is fetch the Atom feed of all the use.perl.org journals' posts, and filters out the entries of the use.perl.org authors that the invoker specified. Here is out to use it. First of all: <tt>svn checkout</tt> it (or otherwise fetch it using HTTP). Then you can simply use: <blockquote><div> <tt>perl filter-use-perl-journals.pl -o everything.atom</tt></div> </blockquote> Then you can serve <tt>everything.atom</tt> with a web-server to read it using your web feeds' aggregator. To simply create a non-filtered copy of the feed. Now let's say you want to get rid of posts from my journal (because it sucks). In that case, say: <blockquote><div> <tt>perl filter-use-perl-journals.pl -o non-shlomif.atom \     --blacklist="Shlomi Fish"</tt></div> </blockquote> Now, let's say you also want to get rid of <a href="http://use.perl.org/~Ovid/journal/">Ovid's</a> posts. I have no idea why you'd want to do that, because his journal is great, but it's just for the sake of the example. In that case, do: <blockquote><div> <tt>perl filter-use-perl-journals.pl -o non-shlomif-and-ovid.atom \     --blacklist="Shlomi Fish" --blacklist="Ovid"</tt></div> </blockquote> Finally, there's the <tt>--rand</tt> flag which is useful in case you're running the script with cron. What it does is wait for a period of time of random length, before fetching the feed, so the HTTP server would not be overloaded at regular periods. This requires a working <tt>/dev/urandom</tt> for the time being. The script is made available under <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIT_License">the MIT/X11 Licence</a> so its use is completely unencumbered. I wrote this script today, because I have a personal use for it, but other people may find it useful too. It requires a recent version of Perl (5.8.x should be enough I think) and <a href="http://search.cpan.org/dist/XML-Feed/">XML-Feed</a>. shlomif@iglu.org.il (Shlomi Fish) פגישת קוד-פתוח-תל-אביב: יישומי הקוד הפתוח של פרינג http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_tech/26463.html <div dir="rtl" align="right"> <a href="http://www.cs.tau.ac.il/telux/">מועדון הקוד הפתוח התל-אביבי (תלוקס)</a> ייפגש שוב כדי לשמוע את <a href="http://wiki.osdc.org.il/index.php/Tel_Aviv_Meeting_on_31_May_2009">הרצאתם של אלכס נרסט ומיכל גבע אודות יישומי הקוד הפתוח של פרינג</a>. ההרצאה תערך ביום ראשון, 31 במאי 2009, בשעה 18:30, בחדר 008 של בניין שרייבר (למתמטיקה ומדעי המחשב) באוניברסיטת תל אביב. פרטים נוספים ניתן למצוא <a href="http://www.cs.tau.ac.il/telux/">באתר</a> <a href="http://wiki.osdc.org.il/index.php/Tel_Aviv_Meeting_on_31_May_2009">ובויקי</a>. הנוכחות בהרצאה היא חינמית ולא נדרשת הרשמה מראש. בהרצאה זו נכסה את הדור הבא של פיתוח יישומים לטלפונים ניידים. פרינג היא יישום לטלפונים ניידים וקהילה עם מיליוני משתמשים ברחבי העולם שמאפשרת למפתחים לבנות יישומים ניידים באמצעות יכולות פיתוח הווב שלהם (כמו PHP, Java וכו). אנו תמיד מחפשים מרצים שיתנדבו לתת הרצאות בנושאים שונים הקשורים לקוד-פתוח ולמחשבים. במידה שאתם מעוניינים לתת הרצאה, או יש לכם הצעה להרצאה שמעניינת אתכם, נשמח לשמוע ממכם. </div> shlomif@iglu.org.il (Shlomi Fish) may announcement mobile activities open source israel telux telfoss meeting foss linux fring tel aviv phones cellphones http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_tech/26463.html http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_tech/26463.html Tue, 12 May 2009 18:07:49 GMT Recent Hacktivity http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_tech/26136.html I worked a lot on <a href="http://fc-solve.berlios.de/">Freecell Solver</a>, doing refactoring and optimisations. On my Birthday (5-May, Tuesday) I tried to do several optimisations, and most of them did not work, so it was a bit frustrating. But some of them did work, and at least I know not to repeat the other ones. After using it for Freecell Solver, I had decided to adopt the <a href="http://search.cpan.org/dist/Statistics-Descriptive/">Statistics-Descriptive</a> CPAN module, and eventually got the necessary permissions. I uploaded version 2.7 which featured some bug fixes, cleanups and a conversion to Module-Build. This release still failed some CPAN Testers tests, mainly on 64-bit architectures, due to rounding problems, so I uploaded a new release - 2.8 - yesterday, with more robust tests and a few other improvements. I worked a bit on <a href="http://perl-begin.org/">the Perl Beginners' Site</a>, fixing some broken links, adding more external links, and fixing some other problems. While working on it, I found a validation problem caused by <a href="http://web-cpan.berlios.de/modules/HTML-Widgets-NavMenu/">HTML-Widgets-NavMenu</a>, which I corrected on its trunk, but did not upload to CPAN yet. One day, I did not have a lot to do, so I decided to convert <a href="http://web-cpan.berlios.de/modules/Test-Run/">Test-Run</a> from the old and deprecated NEXT.pm to <a href="http://search.cpan.org/dist/MRO-Compat/">MRO::Compat</a>. I ran into a few problems because my inheritance graph was incompatible with the C3 guidelines, but <a href="http://www.trout.me.uk/">mst</a> helped me (again). Thanks! So I ended up uploading Test-Run along with all of its plugins with the converted code. I also worked on <a href="https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=159251">a solution for this KMail bug</a> that a friend referred me to. It took me a lot of experimentation to get a Perl script to be able to properly filter the Postfix outgoing e-mail, and after everything seemed to work, my ISP's email-server rejected the message. Either I'm doing something wrong, or I need to use a different outgoing SMTP server. Happy Hacking and happy birthday to <a href="http://alanhaggai.org/#home">Alan Haggai Alavi</a>! shlomif@iglu.org.il (Shlomi Fish) html-widgets-navmenu perl-begin testing mro-compat statistics-descriptive cpan testers test-run smtp inheritance qa freecell cpan birthday email hacking tap c3 kmail log recent hacktivity perl fcs postfix solver http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_tech/26136.html http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_tech/26136.html Sun, 10 May 2009 08:59:42 GMT Several Vim Tips http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_tech/26010.html I have collected several <a href="http://www.vim.org/">vim</a> tips in the past weeks, so here they are: <ol> <li> One can use <a href="http://vimdoc.sourceforge.net/htmldoc/windows.html#:sp">the :sp(lit) command</a> to split a window into two. <tt>:new</tt> splits and starts editing a new buffer. Finally, both of these commands followed by a filename stats editing the specified file in the new viewport. </li> <li> This tip is long overdue. You can make Vim behave more like a Windows-like editor by adding <a href="http://vimdoc.sourceforge.net/htmldoc/gui_w32.html#mswin.vim">source $VIMRUNTIME/mswin.vim</a> to your <tt>.vimrc</tt>. Reportedly, it causes many problems and is not recommended, but I still like to use it, afer all these years. </li> <li> One can <a href="http://vimdoc.sourceforge.net/htmldoc/pattern.html#/\_">match any char including newline using \_.</a>. The "\_" construct works for other character classes, and allows you to match all of them as well as newline. It took me a long time to find that, back when I did, so I'm documenting it here. </li> <li> After one <a href="http://vimdoc.sourceforge.net/htmldoc/change.html#shift-left-right">indents or unindents several lines using "<", ">", "<<", ">>", etc.</a> and the indentation level needs to be promoted or demoted further, one can use the "." (= repeat) command to repeat the shifting again (and again) until it is right. I discovered this trick by accident, but immediately found it useful. </li> </ol> Hope all Israelis had a nice <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yom_Ha%27atzmaut">Independence Day</a>. Happy Vimming! shlomif@iglu.org.il (Shlomi Fish) tip text tech tip indent windows-like tips new window tech mswin editing newline editor split vim any char repeat http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_tech/26010.html http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_tech/26010.html Thu, 30 Apr 2009 10:00:19 GMT Freecell Solver 2.26.0 was Released http://fc-solve.blogspot.com/2009/04/freecell-solver-2260-was-released.html <a href="http://fc-solve.berlios.de/">Freecell Solver</a> version 2.26.0 has been released It is available in the form of a source tarball from <a href="http://fc-solve.berlios.de/download.html">the download page</a>. This version contains several significant optimisations (up to the point where the "freecell-only" preset can solve the first 32,000 Microsoft Freecell deals in 200 deals per second.), and improvements to the build system (including the elimination of compiler warnings). Finally, the test suite now builds correctly inside the source distribution. We have more ideas for optimisations and other enhancements, and this is just an intermediate release (but one which should be perfectly usable). <div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/96099636168698788-438448153293326271?l=fc-solve.blogspot.com'/></div> shlomif@iglu.org.il (Shlomi Fish) version games patience optimisation freecell 2.26.0 solitaire release cmake optimization solving solver tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-96099636168698788.post-438448153293326271 Mon, 27 Apr 2009 11:59:00 +0000 2009-04-27T05:00:01.299-07:00 Tech Tip: using iotop to monitor the disk activity. http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_tech/25706.html Today I discovered <a href="http://guichaz.free.fr/iotop/">iotop</a> ( <a href="http://freshmeat.net/projects/iotop">on Freshmeat</a>). It's a (Linux-only) tool to find which processes are doing the most hard-disk activity at present. Useful for the cases where your hard-disks' LED is active and you don't know why. The 0.2.1 version (which is the latest) is available in the Mandriva Cooker repositories, and it was a single urpmi command away from installation. I assume installing it on Debian, Ubuntu, etc. should be just as easy. I learned about iotop in <a href="http://ilsh.info/?p=1471">this blog post (in Hebrew) by Ilan Shavit</a>, which I read today. Thanks Ilan, for the tip! shlomif@iglu.org.il (Shlomi Fish) tip iotop tech hard disk tech tip activity top linux i/o http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_tech/25706.html http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_tech/25706.html Sat, 25 Apr 2009 19:04:15 GMT No Wiki Spam Lately http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_tech/25425.html I'm administrating several instances of <a href="http://www.mediawiki.org/">MediaWiki</a>. Up to several months ago, it had been the case that every few days, there was a spam attack on one or more of them, which required my attention. Lately however, they haven't been spammed at all. So I wonder why. The anti-spam measures we employ are: <ol> <li> We do not allow anonymous commits, and instead require registration. Nevertheless, the registration does not require an E-mail-handshake, which means it can be implemented more easily by pure-HTTP bots. </li> <li> We utilise the <a href="http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:SpamBlacklist">MediaWiki SpamBlacklist plugin</a>, which blacklists edits based on URLs matching certain regular expressions. We use both the Wikimedia-maintained blacklist and our own blacklist, where we add URLs that we were spammed with. Lately, our custom blacklist has not been updated, since we didn't encounter any spam. </li> <li> All external URLs in the wikis are using <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nofollow">rel="nofollow"</a> to make sure they do not gain page rank. This did not prevent wiki spam, but it makes sure that spammers don't benefit from spamming. </li> </ol> Possible explanations to why there was no wiki spam lately is that the wikimedia-blacklist has been more promptly maintained and prevented most spam, or that spam-bots check for the rel="nofollow" attribute and in case they find it, do not spam. That, or something changed in the configuration of the wikis, which I wasn't made aware of. I'm happy that I have less work to do to combat the spam, but am worried that I may become negligent. But I guess I should enjoy it while it lasts. shlomif@iglu.org.il (Shlomi Fish) wiki spam linux open source israel mediawiki spam wiki foss http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_tech/25425.html http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_tech/25425.html Sat, 25 Apr 2009 10:18:09 GMT My Review of The Perl Review, Winter 2008 Issue http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_tech/25219.html For all those who are interested, I have written <a href="http://wiki.perl.org.il/index.php/Book_Review_-_The_Perl_Review_-_Winter_2008_-_reviewed_by_Shlomi_Fish">a review of the Winter 2008 issue of the journal "The Perl Review"</a> on the Israeli Perl Mongers wiki. I was given a copy of this issue as a present by <a href="http://szabgab.com/">szabgab</a> in one of the recent <a href="http://www.cs.tau.ac.il/telux/">Tel Aviv Open Source club</a> meetings, and felt that I should review it. shlomif@iglu.org.il (Shlomi Fish) journal open source bdfoy the perl review telux review brian d foy perl magazine book review http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_tech/25219.html http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_tech/25219.html Mon, 20 Apr 2009 19:56:37 GMT The Linmagazine Events Calendar Has Become Unreliable http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_tech/24941.html This is a small warning for open-source enthusiasts in Israel not to rely on the <a href="http://linmagazine.co.il/event">Linmagazine Events Calendar</a>. It's no longer actively maintained, and my two submissions of <a href="http://wiki.osdc.org.il/index.php/OSDClub">Tel Aviv Open Source Club</a> meetings were not published. For one of them, I sent a request to the editor to accept my event via Drupal's messaging mechanism, and he didn't. For alternatives you may consider the <a href="http://www.whatsup.org.il/">Whatsup.org.il</a> post calendar ( available on the front page) and hopefully we'll be able to arrange an aggregated Google Calendar/iCalendar for FOSS events in Israel soon. But if you've relied on Linmagazine.co.il's calendar alone - you shouldn't. shlomif@iglu.org.il (Shlomi Fish) events open source israel telux foss linmagazine open tel aviv source meetings http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_tech/24941.html http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_tech/24941.html Mon, 20 Apr 2009 18:52:47 GMT Freecell Solver 2.24.0 was Released http://fc-solve.blogspot.com/2009/04/freecell-solver-2240-was-released.html <a href="http://fc-solve.berlios.de/">Freecell Solver</a> version 2.24.0 was released today. It is available in a source archive from <a href="http://fc-solve.berlios.de/download.html">the download page</a>. Windows command-line binaries should be available momentarily. This version contains some fixes to crashes and memory leaks when using the <tt>-opt</tt> with a range of boards (or otherwise when a solver instance is recycled), a new "freecell-solver-fc-pro-range-solve" executable (built by default, but not installed), which runs a range of deals using the solver and outputs the number of FCS moves, the number of FC-Pro moves, and the FC-Pro moves in standard notation. For developers, this release also contains a build type for profiling, many cleanups to the code, and a makefile to generate <a href="http://llvm.org/">LLVM</a> bitcode. <div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/96099636168698788-2824828636272187726?l=fc-solve.blogspot.com'/></div> shlomif@iglu.org.il (Shlomi Fish) version optimization scan freecell cleanups release solving solver refactoring profiling 2.24.0 llvm range tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-96099636168698788.post-2824828636272187726 Sat, 18 Apr 2009 15:02:00 +0000 2009-04-18T08:03:50.214-07:00 Recent Hacktivity http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_tech/24631.html This is another log of my (= Shlomi Fish) hacktivity. <ol> <li> xine-lib patch got applied <a href="http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_tech/23482.html">I mentioned my xine-lib patch for fixing the MOD/S3M/XM/IT/etc. mime types</a>, and after pinging the mailing list discovered <a href="http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/forum.php?thread_name=200903252055.59889.shlomif%40iglu.org.il&forum_name=xine-devel">that it has been applied, and later on corrected</a>. After one of the recent Mandriva updates, I can now listen to Module files on Amarok 2.x comfortably. Thanks to the Amarok developers for applying and correcting my patch. </li> <li> Building the KDE 4.x trunk - I decided to try the <a href="http://www.kde.org/">KDE</a> 4.x-trunk to help with the wallpaper-per-virtual-desktop feature that was incorporated there. It took me quite a long time to build it, because I did it wrong and the KDE build process did not warn me about it. Here's the executive summary of how to do it right: you need to build the following modules from trunk (in order): kdesupport, kdelibs, kdepimlibs, and kdebase, using a script such as the following: <pre> #!/bin/bash k4d="/opt/kde4-trunk" k4sd="$k4d/share" k4bd="$k4d/bin" PATH="$k4bd:$PATH" test ! -e build && mkdir build cd build rm -f CMakeCache.txt export CMAKE_PREFIX_PATH="$k4d:$CMAKE_PREFIX_PATH" cmake -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX="$k4d" \ -D"PYTHON_SITE_PACKAGES_DIR:PATH"="$k4d/lib" \ -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=debugfull \ .. </pre> In kdebase, you may see that "make install" tries to install some python files under <tt>/usr</tt>. I workarounded it by editing the appropriate .cmake files and deleting the installation instructions for them, but there's a patchset in the works for that. </li> <li> KDE trunk bug - In any case, I noticed a few bugs in kde4-trunk (as expected) and <a href="https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=188751">reported a bug about the picture names in the wallpaper selection</a>. I spent the rest of the day searching the code and running it under the debugger, in order to try to fix the bug, and was eventually able to supply a patchset for that (in the bug report). The patches were not committed yet. </li> <li> First-Come First-Served Readers/Writers Lock - A Chinese programmer contacted me by email and reported the fact that <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/rwlock/">the First-Come First-Served Readers/Writers Lock</a> did not implement the _destroy() function, which was documented there. He was right, and it was funny because I haven't touched this code for many years (2002 according to Freshmeat), and didn't expect it to contain any problems. Apparently, they were one of the first to want to use it in production. So I went to work. I converted the build system to CMake, because GNU Autohell gave me a weird error (again), that I couldn't care to fix. I fixed this problem, and also fixed some more issues with the code and API. Then I uploaded a new version and published it on Freshmeat. I guess Murphy was right by saying that every computer programme contains one more bug than has been discovered so far. </li> <li> CPAN - In the <a href="http://search.cpan.org/dist/XML-RSS/">XML::RSS</a> realm, I applied a patch that Simon Wistow sent me for a test file, and corrected it for style, and then uploaded a new version (1.44) to the CPAN on 1-April-2009. I also corrected some bugs in <a href="http://search.cpan.org/dist/HTML-Links-Localize/">HTML-Links-Localize</a> and <a href="http://search.cpan.org/dist/WWW-Search-MSN/">WWW-Search-MSN</a>. </li> <li> Freecell Solver - I investigated <a href="http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/fc-solve-discuss/message/927">a build problem of recent Freecell Solvers with CMake-2.6.2</a>, and discovered that it was a bug in CMake-2.6.2, which was corrected in 2.6.3. I also <a href="http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/fc-solve-discuss/message/932">applied some cleanups to the code</a>, and extracted some incredibly complicated C-preprocessor-macros into functions, and afterwards wrote a makefile for targetting <a href="http://llvm.org/">LLVM bitcode</a>, and <a href="http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/fc-solve-discuss/message/933">implemented a working "profile" CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE</a>. </li> <li> GUI for a Ruby Library - as an exercise in learning the Ruby programming language, I started writing a library, and then I needed a GUI to visualise it. My first thought was using wxRuby, but Mandriva didn't have a package for it. After contemplating on using gtk+, I decided against it, and started prepared an .src.rpm for wxRuby, while trying to adapt an existing wxPerl GUI to use the Ruby library using <a href="http://gitorious.org/projects/inline-ruby">Inline::Ruby</a>. I discovered that the CPAN version was incredibly broken and completely non-functional on recent perl's, but looking at the rt.cpan.org bug-report, I found a <a href="http://gitorious.org/projects/inline-ruby">an up-to-date version on gitorious</a>, which I was able to use. So I started adapting the wxPerl library to use the Ruby code. It worked very nicely at first, but then I ran into a strange crash. I reproduced this with a simple non-GUI Perl Inline::Ruby script that used my code, while the equivalent Ruby script ran flawlessly. So I reported this as a bug in the gitorious Inline::Ruby. Meanwhile, wxRuby failed to build, and I have some bugs to report. I realised I needed to write the GUI in Ruby, and so, decided to use QtRuby. I started from the final tutorial example, and now have a mostly working code. All of this wasted a lot of time that could otherwise be invested on the library itself. But at least I uncovered some bugs. </li> </ol> shlomif@iglu.org.il (Shlomi Fish) rwlock ruby kdelibs programming fcfs kdebase bug llvm gtk freecell module files bugs hacking inline-ruby hacktivity patch xine mod gui wxwidgets kde c preprocessor macros cpan qt cmake log kde 4 recent perl fcs solver s3m xm amarok http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_tech/24631.html http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_tech/24631.html Tue, 14 Apr 2009 13:12:56 GMT Alphabets http://shlomif.livejournal.com/57637.html First of all, happy <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passover">Passover</a> to everybody. If you're Jewish - have a happy Seder today. We once showed <a href="http://he.wikipedia.org/">writing in the Hebrew alphabet</a> to an English IM-friend of ours, and she called it "Tetris". As a result, the nickname stuck and our circle of friends keeps referring to the Hebrew alphabet as "Tetris". One day we were discussing <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackal">Jackals</a>, and someone linked to <a href="http://ta.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%AE%95%E0%AF%81%E0%AE%B3%E0%AF%8D%E0%AE%B3_%E0%AE%A8%E0%AE%B0%E0%AE%BF">the page about them on the Tamil wikipedia</a>. Then she said that Tamil "looked like a drunk spider walked across the page!". Then I asked her to nicname it in a similar manner to "Tetris" and she said she would call it "curly wurly". And the obligatory media recommendations: I really enjoyed listening to <a href="http://www.magnatune.com/artists/albums/costlow-woods/">Rob Costlow's "Woods of Chaos" album on Magnatune.com</a>. Costlow plays the piano, and he has very moving and original melodies, with excellent quality. Magnatune is a music publisher that publishes freely distributable music, and you can listen to the album online. And I also recently became addicted <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4WAapKx2TvM">to this song by Rihanna</a> (which isn't free), so you may enjoy it too. Happy Passover! shlomif@iglu.org.il (Shlomi Fish) http://shlomif.livejournal.com/57637.html http://shlomif.livejournal.com/57637.html Wed, 08 Apr 2009 11:51:10 GMT azuki-broth http://www.flickr.com/photos/shlomif/3419217176/ <a href="http://www.flickr.com/people/shlomif/">shlomif2</a> posted a photo: <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/shlomif/3419217176/" title="azuki-broth"><img src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3612/3419217176_58f5b1907e_m.jpg" width="240" height="180" alt="azuki-broth" /></a> Broth made out of Azuki (or what we call "Red Lubyah" - "Red Black-eyed Peas") that my mother prepared. License is Public Domain, but an attribution or a donation will be appreciated. shlomif@iglu.org.il (Shlomi Fish) tag:flickr.com,2004:/photo/3419217176 Mon, 06 Apr 2009 12:46:46 -0700 Escaping Special Characters in MySQL Regular Expressions http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_tech/24326.html MySQL sports the <a href="http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/en/regexp.html">REGEXP</a> to enable search using a regular expression pattern. However, it does not contain a built-in function (such as Perl's <a href="http://perldoc.perl.org/functions/quotemeta.html">quotemeta</a>) to escape the special characters in such patterns in order to prevent injecting malicious regular expression code. Some time ago, I needed to search for a string within word-boundaries in MySQL in a PHP site I help maintain. Here's the solution I came up with for constructing this search: <pre> function enbackslash($matches) { return '\\' . $matches[1]; } $safe_word = $mysqli->real_escape_string( preg_replace_callback('/([^\\w\\s])/', "enbackslash", $word) ); $sql .= "text regexp '[[:<:]]${safe_word}[[:>:]]'"; </pre> Basically what happens is that I prefix a backslash to any non-alphanumeric and non-whitespace character, and then escape the string again using the standard RDBMS-specific escaping function. I would appreciate any ideas for improving upon this code, but it seems to work for me. shlomif@iglu.org.il (Shlomi Fish) tip regexps tech tip rdbms escape regexes expressions php regular characters regex tech chars mysql databases special security http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_tech/24326.html http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_tech/24326.html Sun, 05 Apr 2009 14:00:50 GMT The PONIE Subversion Repository http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_tech/24185.html While cleaning up an old hard-disk, I found a Subversion working copy of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PONIE">PONIE - the Perl 5 port to Parrot</a>, and found out <a href="http://svn.perl.org/ponie/">the URL of its long-lost Subversion repository</a>. Now I see it's the first hit on a Google search for "ponie repository", but still I wondered what it was for a long time. shlomif@iglu.org.il (Shlomi Fish) version control parrot vcs perl 5 rcs svn perl repository ponie scm perl 6 subversion http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_tech/24185.html http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_tech/24185.html Thu, 02 Apr 2009 17:46:53 GMT New Book Coming Soon http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_tech/24014.html <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/bits/Mastering-Cat/"><img src="http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/bits/Mastering-Cat/small-cover.png" alt="Mastering cat" /></a> It's official! I'm going to publish a new book soon, and I placed <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/bits/Mastering-Cat/">a new interview with me about it</a>. Read it so you'll understand why "Mastering cat" would be an essential addition to your collection of technical books. shlomif@iglu.org.il (Shlomi Fish) interview unix shlomifish.org mastering book homesite oreilly cat linux books homepage http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_tech/24014.html http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_tech/24014.html Wed, 01 Apr 2009 05:11:43 GMT New Book Coming Soon http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_hsite/10799.html <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/bits/Mastering-Cat/"><img src="http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/bits/Mastering-Cat/small-cover.png" alt="Mastering cat" /></a> It's official! I'm going to publish a new book soon, and I placed <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/bits/Mastering-Cat/">a new interview with me about it</a>. Read it so you'll understand why "Mastering cat" would be an essential addition to your collection of technical books. shlomif@iglu.org.il (Shlomi Fish) book cat mastering oreilly books interview linux unix http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_hsite/10799.html http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_hsite/10799.html Wed, 01 Apr 2009 05:05:40 GMT Freecell Solver 2.22.0 was Released, Now Under the MIT/X11 License http://fc-solve.blogspot.com/2009/03/freecell-solver-2220-was-released-now.html <a href="http://fc-solve.berlios.de/">Freecell Solver</a> version 2.22.0 is now available for <a href="http://fc-solve.berlios.de/download.html">download from the download page</a>. This release converts from Public Domain "licensing" <a href="http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Licensing_and_Law/public-domain.html">which is problematic for source code</a> to the more explicit and less controversial <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIT_License">MIT/X11 License</a>. (Some source files that had been originated by other parties are still under the public domain). Also in this release is some fixes to the build system (in part thanks to a contribution by Risko Gergely), including the ability to prepare a static library. Happy solving, and enjoy April Fool's Day Tomorrow. <div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/96099636168698788-3090410347377127318?l=fc-solve.blogspot.com'/></div> shlomif@iglu.org.il (Shlomi Fish) version rpm x11 license freecell library 2.22.0 cmake solving solver mit license tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-96099636168698788.post-3090410347377127318 Tue, 31 Mar 2009 19:33:00 +0000 2009-03-31T12:34:46.393-07:00 New Humour Items and Links http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_hsite/10573.html <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/humour.html#wikipedia_has">a new aphorism was added to the humour collection:</a> <blockquote> Wikipedia has a page about everything including the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitchen_sink">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitchen_sink</a> . </blockquote> Recommendations for <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/open-source/favourite/#gdb">GDB</a>, <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/open-source/favourite/#ack">Ack</a> and <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/open-source/favourite/#windows-console">the improved windows console</a>, have been added to the <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/open-source/favourite/">favourite open-source software page</a>. There are new fortunes in the <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/fortunes/">fortunes' collection</a>. New links were added to <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/open-source/anti/apple/">the page about Apple</a>, <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/open-source/anti/mysql/">the one about MySQL</a>, <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/open-source/anti/windows-vista/">to the page about Windows Vista</a>, <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/no-ie/">and to the "Stop Using Internet Explorer!" page</a>. <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/me/">My GnuPG Public Key</a> was updated , and I now link to my Plurk account on <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/me/contact-me/">my contact page</a> page. shlomif@iglu.org.il (Shlomi Fish) gdb humour fish kitchen sink shlomif gpg contact page grep msie console windows shlomi plurk aphorism pgp ack wikipedia http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_hsite/10573.html http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_hsite/10573.html Tue, 31 Mar 2009 11:42:28 GMT Tel Aviv FOSS Meeting on 5-April-2009: Intro to Perl 6 - Part II http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_tech/23557.html The <a href="http://www.cs.tau.ac.il/telux/">Tel Aviv Open Source Club</a> will host the second part of a series of talks by <a href="http://www.szabgab.com/">Gabor Szabo</a> about "Introduction to Perl 6" - on 5-April-2009. The meeting will take place at Tel Aviv University, at the Schreiber Maths&CS building, room 008 on 18:30. So mark your calendars. More information can be found <a href="http://wiki.osdc.org.il/index.php/Tel_Aviv_Meeting_on_05_April_2009">on the wiki page for the meeting</a>. Attendance is free, it is not necessary to RSVP and everyone are welcome. With any other problems, feel free to <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/me/contact-me/">contact me</a>. Abstract Introduction to Perl 6. A series of presentations on learning and using Perl 6 from the ground up to the special features. Many would think that Perl 6 is just a new version of Perl and that it might only be interesting for Perl programmers. However, Perl 6 is in fact a compiled language running on a virtual machine that embraces many new concepts not found in most programming languages. The presentations will be equally interesting for Perl, Java and C# programmers. During the series of talks we will start by learning the basics of the language and will get to various high level concepts. For now we have planned 2 sessions but if we need more time we'll schedule more meetings. Note: After the talk we will go to the café at the main entrance where we can continue the discussion. If people bring portable computers, we can get the off the ground on the spot. VirtualBox images will be provided with everything that is needed for playing with Perl 6 set up inside. So you may opt to bring a computer with VirtualBox installed. shlomif@iglu.org.il (Shlomi Fish) open source szabgab telux meeting foss perl tel aviv perl 6 szabo gabor http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_tech/23557.html http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_tech/23557.html Tue, 31 Mar 2009 10:41:51 GMT Fixing the Amarok 2.x Playback of Module Files http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_tech/23482.html This is a behind-the-scenes story of a patch I worked on. The problem I encountered was that <a href="http://amarok.kde.org/">Amarok</a> ( a KDE-based music player) version 2.x could not play <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Module_file">Module files</a>, such as ".mod", ".s3m", ".xm" or ".it". The symptom was that dropping them in the playlist did not get them enqueued. Talking about it on IRC, I got a lead that led me to investiage the following code in Amarok's <tt>src/EngineController.cpp</tt>: <pre> // Filter the available mime types to only include audio and video, // as amarok does not intend to play photos static QStringList mimeTable = Phonon::BackendCapabilities::availableMimeTypes().filter( "audio/", Qt::CaseInsensitive ) + Phonon::BackendCapabilities::availableMimeTypes().filter( "video/", Qt::CaseInsensitive ); const QString mimeType = item.mimetype(); const bool valid = mimeTable.contains( mimeType, Qt::CaseInsensitive ); </pre> So when I ran it using the gdb debugger, while using <a href="http://websvn.kde.org/*checkout*/trunk/KDE/kdesdk/scripts/kde-devel-gdb">kde-devel-gdb (a set of gdb macros to facilitate debugging KDE applications)</a>, I dumped "mimeTable", and, after grepping it, found that it indeed did not contain the MIME types associated with module files. Then I investigated why I could still select and play module files in KDE 4's Dragon Player, and realised that while it used the mime types list as a file-chooser dialog, it did not enforce a file that was not associated with any of them from being played. Having realised that, I set out to see why the list of mime types was not complete. I first tried to see what is the list that phonon returns as is. So I wrote (or more actually copy and pasted) the following code: <pre> #include <iostream> #include <Phonon/VideoWidget> #include <Phonon/BackendCapabilities> #include <KAboutData> #include <KApplication> #include <KCmdLineArgs> #include <KLocalizedString> static KAboutData aboutData( "test-phonon", 0, ki18n("Dragon Player"), "0.1.5", ki18n("A video player that has a usability focus"), KAboutData::License_GPL_V2, ki18n( "Copyright 2006, Max Howell\nCopyright 2007, Ian Monroe" ), ki18n( "IRC:\nirc.freenode.net #dragonplayer\n\n" "Feedback:\nimonroe@dragonplayer.org"), "http://dragonplayer.org" ); int main(int argc, char * argv[]) { aboutData.setOrganizationDomain( "mpris.org" ); //for DBus aboutData.addCredit( ki18n("David Edmundson"), ki18n("Improvements and polish") ); aboutData.addCredit( ki18n("Matthias Kretz"), ki18n("Creator of Phonon") ); aboutData.addCredit( ki18n("Eugene Trounev"), ki18n("Dragon Player icon") ); aboutData.addCredit( ki18n("Mike Diehl"), ki18n("Handbook") ); aboutData.addCredit( ki18n("The Kaffeine Developers"), ki18n("Great reference code") ); aboutData.addCredit( ki18n("Greenleaf"), ki18n("Yatta happened to be the only video " "on my laptop to test with. :)") ); KCmdLineArgs::init( argc, argv, &aboutData ); KCmdLineOptions options; options.add("+[URL]", ki18n( "Play 'URL'" )); options.add("play-dvd", ki18n( "Play DVD Video" )); options.add("debug", ki18n( "Show Additional Debug Output" )); KCmdLineArgs::addCmdLineOptions( options ); KApplication application; QStringList mimeTypes = Phonon::BackendCapabilities::availableMimeTypes(); QStringListIterator mimeIter(mimeTypes); while (mimeIter.hasNext()) { std::cout << mimeIter.next().toLocal8Bit().constData() << std::endl; } return 0; </pre> It has a lot of KDE verbiage, but I hope you get the idea. The most important lines are at the end. And indeed it did not print the associated mime types. Reading a bit about Phonon, I tried to see what the backend that it was using was. I believed it was <a href="http://www.xine-project.org/home">Xine</a> but wanted to be sure. Eventually, what I did was to read <tt>/proc/`pgrep amarok`/maps</tt> which contains a list of all the shared libraries that it used. A bit afterwards, I discovered that the Phonon backend was configurable from "Settings → Configure Amarok → Playback → Sound System Configuration" and indeed had Xine as the most prioritised backend. After switching it to gstreamer, I realised that Amarok could now play files ending with <tt>.mod</tt>, but not with say <tt>.xm</tt> or other Module files' formats, so it indicated that the problem was with Xine. Looking at the code of the Xine Phonon backend (after some investigation), I found the following: <pre> QStringList Backend::availableMimeTypes() const { if (m_supportedMimeTypes.isEmpty()) { char *mimeTypes_c = xine_get_mime_types(m_xine); QString mimeTypes(mimeTypes_c); free(mimeTypes_c); QStringList lstMimeTypes = mimeTypes.split(";", QString::SkipEmptyParts); . . . } } </pre> So it seemed that Phonon returns its results based on xine_get_mime_types(). Therefore, I wrote the following test program to see what xine returns: <pre> #include <xine.h> #include <stdio.h> #include <stdlib.h> int main(int argc, char * argv[]) { xine_t * xine_h; char * mime_types; xine_h = xine_new(); xine_init(xine_h); mime_types = xine_get_mime_types(xine_h); printf("%s\n", mime_types); free(mime_types); xine_exit(xine_h); return 0; } </pre> And it didn't return the appropriate mime types for the MOD files, either. So the problem was with xine-lib. Next I decided to look at xine-lib and investigate. Searching for the <tt>xine_get_mime_types()</tt> functions yielded a multiplexer that collected the mime types of the various plugins. So I looked at <tt>src/demuxers/demux_mod.c</tt> and found the following: <pre> static const char *get_mimetypes (demux_class_t *this_gen) { return NULL; } </pre> So no wonder no Module files-related mime types are returned. After fixing it by writing <a href="http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/forum.php?thread_name=200903252055.59889.shlomif%40iglu.org.il&forum_name=xine-devel">a patch that just added the mime types as one-big comma-delimited string</a> (as seen in other demuxers), and rebuilding xine-lib, both of my test programs returned the appropriate mime types, and I was able to play files in Amarok. <a href="http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/forum.php?thread_name=200903252055.59889.shlomif%40iglu.org.il&forum_name=xine-devel">I submitted the patch to the xine-devel mailing list</a> after subscribing to it. I have yet to receive a reply, to say nothing of getting my patch applied, but at least I now know the problem has been fixed and I (and others) will be able to play Module files in Amarok to my heart's content. shlomif@iglu.org.il (Shlomi Fish) hacking kde hacktivity patch xine code coding xine-lib story amarok phonon http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_tech/23482.html http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_tech/23482.html Thu, 26 Mar 2009 19:55:52 GMT Freecell Solver 2.20.0 was Released, along with a Windows Installer http://fc-solve.blogspot.com/2009/03/freecell-solver-2200-was-released-along.html <a href="http://fc-solve.berlios.de/">Freecell Solver</a> version 2.20.0 is now available for <a href="http://fc-solve.berlios.de/download.html">download from the download page</a>. The big news is that executables for Microsoft Windows (x86) are now available for it, for the first time since the early 2.8.x releases. And this time, they come in the form of an interactive "Next→Next→Finish" installer based on <a href="http://nsis.sourceforge.net/">the Nullsoft Scriptable Install System (NSIS)</a>. Also in this release are a fix to a crash when using the range solver with the "-opt" flag (and other similar scenarios), a more comprehensive NEWS file and some other fixes. <div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/96099636168698788-6871019008607215475?l=fc-solve.blogspot.com'/></div> shlomif@iglu.org.il (Shlomi Fish) win32 version freecell 2.20.0 windows solving solver nsis executables microsoft installer binaries tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-96099636168698788.post-6871019008607215475 Thu, 26 Mar 2009 15:22:00 +0000 2009-03-26T08:26:53.963-07:00