euxneks.com yōō’nĭks

Compiling Ivy Generator for Ubuntu 8.10 64bit

I stumbled upon this site:
http://graphics.uni-konstanz.de/~luft/ivy_generator/

And thought it warranted a closer look. Downloaded it and tried running the binary only to find that it couldn’t find some of my libs, so I decided to compile it instead - because it looks like that might have been compiled for 32 bit.

Here’s the steps on how to do it:

Download and extract the files somewhere you like to work, I usually just do it on ~/Desktop but you can mkdir your own tmp in $HOME.

To start, make sure you’ve got the right qtlibs, I had to run this (intrepid ibex):
sudo apt-get install libqt4-opengl-dev libqt4-dev
This installs some development files needed for compiling qt4 programs.

Next, we need to make sure that the project file is modified so it can actually use OpenGL, edit src/src.pro, adding this line:

QT += opengl

I put it after the INCLUDEPATH directive if you have troubles placing it elsewhere, kudos to “jacek” at the qtcentre.org forums for having the answer to that (I googled and found this: http://www.qtcentre.org/forum/archive/index.php/t-7914.html )
Next, make sure you remake your make file with qmake-qt4 (the project is qt4)
Then type make. This will make an application in the src directory called src
mv src ../bin/IvyGenerator if you want, then go to the bin directory and run it!
Here’s a picture of it running on my 64 bit Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex:

UPDATE: Here’s a shot of it with some vines on some terrain I found online:

Tags: compiling, development, IvyGenerator, libqt4, linux, ubuntu

How to start a specific virtual Machine using VirtualBox in ubuntu

I use VirtualBox in Ubuntu (8.10) regularly, mainly because I can now pass my iPod through to a virtualized Windows XP, and I found a neat little way to automatically start windows XP instead of having to go through VirtualBox’s main window.

If you run VirtualBox --help, you’ll get some friendly advice on how to do this, which is like so:

VirtualBox -startvm <vmname|UUID>

If you’re adventurous, you can find the UUID of your virtual machine but I’m lazy so all I do is this:

VirtualBox -startvm "Windows XP"

“Windows XP” is the virtual machine name that I run the most. I’ve made a link on the desktop for my Fiancée so it starts automatically. I love computing.

Tags: ubuntu, virtual machine, virtualbox, windows xp

How to encode videos for iPod in Intrepid Ibex

Simple. It’s probably the easiest thing in the world.

Get podencoder from here:

http://code.google.com/p/podencoder/
Download and save to somewhere in your path, /usr/bin might be a good place, then:
sudo chmod +x /path/to/podencoder

Next, Install the medibuntu repository:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Medibuntu
then, open up a terminal:
sudo apt-get install mencoder
Find your file in the terminal and then:
podencoder <your file>

To make it even easier, place it in ~/.gnome2/nautilus-scripts/ and you’ll have it in your right click menu in nautilus - Mark Pilgrim, the generous developer of podencoder, already developed with zenity, which allows for gnome status dialogs. w00t!

This goes well with the virtualbox post I did a while ago - now you can batch process a bunch of files all at once, then load them up in virtualbox and you’ve got yourself some videos to watch when you’re bored!

Tags: iPod, linux, mencoder, mplayer, podencoder, ubuntu

Virtuality on Ubuntu

The virtual machine I use is free and is called VirtualBox.

It’s pretty quick but I’ve never installed vmware so I don’t really have a reference point

http://www.virtualbox.org/

If you have Intrepid Ibex (Ubuntu 8.10) installed on your computer, you can install the OSE version (no usb passthrough plus some other goodies) by issuing this command:
sudo apt-get install virtualbox-ose
or by searching for “VirtualBox” in System>Administration>Synaptic Package Manager (this is a good way to find other packages too)

If you would like to have USB passthrough, and aren’t afraid of proprietary software stuffs, you can add this:
deb http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/debian intrepid non-free
to your System>Administration>Software Sources
then run:
wget -q http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/debian/sun_vbox.asc -O- | sudo apt-key add -
then:
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install virtualbox-2.0

If you want to get an iPhone or an iPod touch working with virtualbox, you need to follow the directions on this page:
http://www.huanix.com/2008/11/03/fixing-usb-on-virtualbox-to-allow-iphone-sync-with-an-ubuntu-host-running-windows-xp/
You can see the list of supported guest OSes for VirtualBox here:
http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Guest_OSes

Edit:
To transfer your music or videos from your host Linux machine to the windows XP virtual machine, all you need to do is add a Shared Folder (Devices>Shared Folders><Ins>), with write permissions if you want to modify MP3 id tags (this includes setting album art).

Tags: iphone, ipod touch, ubuntu, virtual machine, virtualbox, windows xp

Installing CVL from source

Installing CVLview from source I had a couple of errors that were easily diagnosed through google, except for this one:

configure: error: Qt4 not fully functional

Looking at the config.log I found this gem:

configure:32158: "$CXX" -o qt4conftest qt4conftest.o moc_qt4conftest.o rcc_qt4conftest.o $QT4_LIBS $LIBS
/usr/bin/ld: cannot find -lQtOpenGL

Well it looked like there was something missing so I searched through some packages and found out that libqt4-opengl-dev wasn’t installed. Crappeh.

I installed libqt4-opengl-dev and configure spat out no errors. Looking at cvlview again I realized it’s not the one I wanted, Oh well.

Anyway, if you found this helpful I’m glad - I couldn’t find any reference to this online so I decided to put it up here.

Tags: configure, cvl, cvlview, libqt4-opengl, ubuntu

How to install skype on Ubuntu 64 bit

Ubuntu 64 bit does have some drawbacks, namely, some proprietary vendors won’t make a 64 bit package for ubuntu.  However, all is not lost, you can generally install ia32-libs and get some 32 bit programs to work natively in your 64 bit ubuntu.

I needed skype specifically and I found some directions for it here:

http://macprolinux.blogspot.com/2007/10/skype-on-64-bit-gutsy.html

There are a couple of commands you need to use sudo, and I use hardy, but it’s a nice walkthrough.

Tags: free voip, linux, skype, ubuntu