Monthly Archives: March 2008

/usr, Linux, Mathematics

Open Office Latex plugin

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Most Mathematicians use Latex for their documents on the other hand most ‘normal’ people use some sort of word processor.

The Open Office Latex plugin is the compromise.

Basically the only reason you would use it over Latex is…..

You can share an open office file with your non Latex converted friends, you know those statistics students who are doing other degrees not maths and you are forced to do group work with them.

Other reasons yeah.. OOo has a spell checker … it’s easier to insert pictures.

Anyway installation: go grab the file from http://ooolatex.sourceforge.net/ save and download.

Install using the install extensions tool in open office. Installs just like a Firefox extension.

yeah next part is configuring it.

Open Office latex plugin

Frankly the instructions on the website where lacking at this part of the process.

I couldn’t find the config section because I didn’t notice the new bar underneath file.

And no suggestions where the binaries for Latex and ghostscript would be except for a mac screenshot. But since this is my ubuntu box it was easier solved with locate:

/usr/bin/

For both binaries.

Next thing was having a play.

Using the “equation” button, you are presented with a fairly confusing screen, working out things like when you select inline in the equation menu you don’t need to put in the $ $ and selecting emf as the output image format didn’t work so I used png, took some trial and error.

Basically the plug-in has no polish.. only experienced computer and latex users should give it a go.

/dev/random, Movies

Bella

Ok this blog is rarely anything but technical “this is what my computers have been made to do this week” sorta blog, so today’s post is out of the ordinary.

Today I went to see the movie “Bella” Australian Website

This movie was sorta recommend by some people from church, well they haven’t seen the movie but there was a segment on ewtn which caught their eye.

With tag lines on the site like “A love story that goes beyond romance” I figured I’m probably not really going to like this movie as it look abit to well…. sappy girlish etc..

Actually by the end of the film I didn’t feel like I just saw a film just to make my girlfriend happy. The story is well interesting, it follows the stories of people which, aren’t over the top, a brother who is too concentrated on the business to care about anyone else. The main character who had his life changed and appears to never have recovered from the guilt, and a girl which is struggling to stay above water and is pregnant.

The pregnant part is where the sorta Christian part comes in, the film is defiantly pro-life but not militant anti-abortion. It conveys it message with a sense of realism that the women who consider abortion do feel trapped and that it does look a serious option not just that abortion is murder end of story.

It all ends with you feeling a bit well weird, slight feeling of an unfinished story but I’ll leave it for you to decide.

All in all it’s worth see if you like off the beaten track films, or your looking for something well different. If your Catholic you’ll like the odd little references, other Christians will enjoy it too as long as your not really anti-Catholic. If your not religious at all the film still has quality.

Hockey

Maitland Hockey Club Website

I really didn’t like their website and I assume most of you will agree with me: http://www.maitlandhockeyclub.org.au/

So I decided they needed a new design.. There is no point complaining as well, they are hockey players not techies.. so I made a new design. http://hockey.noronha.id.au/ (deleted) as you can see it’s still abit rough around the edges but I think it’s enough to demo and show them how a website should look act and feel.

So what’s next. Now I have to convince them that it’s worth the effort and that the new site will be easier to maintain that the old one. The main thing is they want to retain control and I think I should have addressed that by using wordpress.

Once I’ve done this I plan on pushing hard on making them using mailman mailing lists to contact players instead of a huge to list of email address’s but one step at a time..

/usr, Linux, Mathematics

Installing JMP on ubuntu

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In order to do my stat2000 labs i need to use JMP, the university gives out copies of JMP out to students on some sort of site licences, the instructions where to go down to uprint and pick up a disk for a small fee ($5). I went down got my disk took it home, and too my disappointment it was only the windows version. JMP is multi-platform as shown by the System Requirements

A couple emails later to lecturers then he emailed desktop services, i got a email saying that they have a license file for me and a disk with the Linux installer.

Which brings the next problem the linux installer really is only a Red Hat installer. And my linux of choice is of course ubuntu.

gabriel@ubuntu1:/media/cdrom$ ls -la
total 506854
dr-xr-xr-x 10 root root 4096 2008-03-06 12:07 .
drwxr-xr-x 5 root root 4096 2008-03-13 16:57 ..
-r--r--r-- 1 root root 10 2008-03-06 12:07 cd.id
dr-xr-xr-x 2 root root 2048 2008-03-06 12:07 fonts
dr-xr-xr-x 2 root root 2048 2008-03-06 12:07 java
-r--r--r-- 1 root root 29142815 2007-09-29 04:46 jmp-base-al-7.0.1-1.i686.rpm
-r--r--r-- 1 root root 54675183 2007-09-29 04:46 jmp-lang-deDE-7.0.1-1.noarch.rpm
-r--r--r-- 1 root root 54591039 2007-09-29 04:46 jmp-lang-enUS-7.0.1-1.noarch.rpm
-r--r--r-- 1 root root 54693795 2007-09-29 04:46 jmp-lang-frFR-7.0.1-1.noarch.rpm
-r--r--r-- 1 root root 119767152 2007-09-29 04:47 jmp-lang-jaJP-7.0.1-4.noarch.rpm
-r--r--r-- 1 root root 92146971 2007-09-29 04:47 jmp-lang-koKR-7.0.1-3.noarch.rpm
-r--r--r-- 1 root root 106242682 2007-09-29 04:47 jmp-lang-zhCN-7.0.1-4.noarch.rpm
-r-xr-xr-x 1 root root 5241003 2007-09-29 04:48 jmp-setup
-r--r--r-- 1 root root 2477691 2007-09-29 04:48 jmp-setup-al-1.2-3.i686.rpm
dr-xr-xr-x 2 root root 2048 2008-03-06 12:07 media_data
dr-xr-xr-x 3 root root 2048 2008-03-06 12:07 order_data
dr-xr-xr-x 3 root root 2048 2008-03-06 12:07 product_data
-r--r--r-- 1 root root 11536 2007-09-29 04:45 ReadMe.html
dr-xr-xr-x 8 root root 2048 2008-03-06 12:07 Resources
dr-xr-xr-x 3 root root 2048 2008-03-06 12:07 tools
dr-xr-xr-x 2 root root 2048 2008-03-06 12:07 unixODBC

So we have a random binary jmp-setup and some rpms.

So we start with the rpms i think. Start be installing alien
sudo apt-get install alien

The next setup is moving the files off the cd-rom on to the hard drive as alien needs to be run where you have read write access.

We convert the following rpms.

sudo alien jmp-lang-enUS-7.0.1-1.noarch.rpm
sudo alien jmp-setup-al-1.2-3.i686.rpm
sudo alien jmp-base-al-7.0.1-1.i686.rpm

Install your new debs using dpkg

sudo dpkg -i jmp-setup-al_1.2-4_i386.deb
sudo dpkg -i jmp-lang-enus_7.0.1-2_all.deb
sudo dpkg -i jmp-base-al_7.0.1-2_i386.deb

I located JMP in my /opt/SAS/JMP7 folder.

I ran sudo ./jmp and yay it showed up in well outdated qt goodness..3.3.8 but the next problem was the license file, i copied and pasted it over from the email i was sent and added it but apparently it’s invalid. Of course having to run jmp as root isn’t ideal but it’s better than rebooting to windows.

Edit:

After reading the License file again there where 2 lines which looked odd 32 and 33, they started the line with a * instead of a space like all the other lines. i deleted these leading *’s and what do you know the file worked fine i now have a working version of JMP installed on ubuntu.

No Problems found yet but i haven’t started my assignment.

Linux

University of Newcastle wireless update

The documentation is now at a stage that’s it is in a readable usable fashion for all users.

It’s still heavly favours ubuntu users but there is some comments about the EeePC unfortunately Xandros/Asus didn’t think you would ever want to connect to a 802.1X connection with a Eeepc so they left wpa_supplicant out and didn’t include the handlers in the madwifi driver.

If you came here looking for help go here: wiki.newcastlelug.org

Another useful tool i’ve found is that firefox has a nice extension called Foxy Proxy which allows me to change proxy settings in firefox by just clicking on the tool bar. it also has a quick guide to how to change proxies based on your ip address But you need to write a pac file to do this so it’s another days job.

Problems outstand:

  • Can’t connect to POP3 at uni
  • Can’t connect to irc on wireless can at terminals
  • Haven’t worked out how to get ssh access back to home.

aside note google is taking it’s sweet time to find the wiki on the website so it may be awhile before people find the documenation. 🙁

Kymoie, Linux

Steps to getting my (Kym’s) Dual Digital 4 card working

Trial x+1 on getting my TV tuner card to work after kernel updates.

following the “How to install DVB devices”

then at step 2 switching to Chris Pascoe’s notes after “At step 2”

or if reinstalling:

sudo rm -r xc-test
to remove old source files if you have them

hg clone http://linuxtv.org/hg/~pascoe/xc-test/
cd xc-test
make
sudo make install
sudo init 6

NOTE: do not do ‘sudo make’, or ‘sudo make && make install’ it doesn’t work.

for some reason (either updating envy, 2.6.22-14-generic kernel, or chris has updated something) my nvidia drivers worked this time (169.09)