pacman: like, +1, upvote, digg, …

i have been a quite happy archlinux user for a few years now. one of the reasons is surely pacman and, today, i have turned a little bit happier about it.

quite often, when working on a project, i have to install several packages and libraries that, most certainly, i’ll never use again after the project is done, so i need to remember to remove them. what i usually did was:

  1. install the packages as dependencies (pacman -S –asdeps) and then,
  2. later, when project is done, check my database for all installed packages that depended on no other explicitly installed package (pacman -Qdt).

the thing is that, over time, and many simultaneous projects, the listing gets crowded, and mixed up with optional dependencies for packages that i use (i install them as dependencies so they get removed when i remove the main package (pacman -Rncs)).

what i needed was a feature to “mark this installation with a reason: this project”. no, pacman does not support that, afaik. but it does support something perhaps better: meta-packages! for example, for the odtone project (my thesis depends on), i created the odtone-meta package that depends on all the packages that are needed, and has no particular source! thus, all i need to do is install the package, all dependencies are managed automatically! the PKGBUILD:

pkgname=odtone-meta
pkgver=001
pkgrel=1
pkgdesc="This package depends on all necessary packages for odtone"
arch=('any')
url="http://helios.av.it.pt/embedded/odtone/index.html"
license=('LGPL')
depends=('boost' 'boost-libs' 'rasqal' 'raptor' 'redland' 'redland-storage-sqlite')

this way, when the project is finished, i just remove the odtone-meta package, and everything that isn’t a dependency for another package is just removed!

neat!!

unintended (dis)honesty

this morning i slipped to my boss/coordinator/teacher that i don’t have aspirations of going too far in my professional career. well, given some thought, that’s sort of a lie. what i usually mean by this is that i don’t want to be the head of something too large to handle on the nine to five schedule! for as long as i’ve known myself, i always felt great for being complimented. i often get that for being good at what i do, so i’ll keep trying!

for the next “year”, the big thesis road, my mind is more or less settled on working on top of odtone. maybe you laptop-owner-linux-user will read my name in a few manpages in the future! =)

my own hdr tutorial

in the past, before owning a camera, i’d seen some samples of hdr art. everyone likes it, there’s something about all that fake colors that makes us dream.

well, but it seemed a hard and tough result to achieve, i had read some tutorials for photoshop and gimp, and it looked like a pain in the arse. well, not anymore. i’m going to guide you through a few easy steps in order to achieve those amazing results! Continue reading

but not for long

it was just a few days ago that i complained about not being able to spend big to get big. well, it’s been about 6 years now, and i finally bought a real camera. browsing for prices this weekend i ended up on the mediamarkt.pt shitty website, which advertised a sale for today: no vat! i couldn’t resist, it had to be now. and it was. and i’m glad!

23%, thanks jose socrates, means that i bought the d7000 + 18-105mm kit, and get a few hundred bucks left. these will be spent there on a 35mm f/1.8, plus a memory card and we’ll see what else. probably a bag!

i didn’t want the 18-105 anyway, i don’t fancy the plastic bayonet, but no body-only option was available. i take it as a good thing, though, being forced to buy a general purpose zoom lens. buying just the 35mm could be a bad option since i don’t want to spend any more money on this any time soon. besides the card and the bag, i still need a polarizing and nd filter, and a tripod, and i’m done for years to come!

many thanks, unknowingly, go to ken rockwell and florian freundt! of course, dpreview as well.

stuck

for a long time i have assumed, as one of my most best kept qualities, that i’m capable of deferring gratification. well, i’m certainly capable of it, but i actually thought that it was an internal wiring of my decisions! :p

recently, though, i’ve come to think that this is perhaps not the case. i have something wired, but it no longer looks like delayed gratification.

it behaves more like a disappointment paralysis! Continue reading

looking back into the future

now i’m more than happy about my last laptop purchase. the computer really owns up to everything i mentioned, and the only thing keeping me back was the desire from a better 13 inch macbook pro. well, the better 13 inch macbook pros came out just yesterday, cost the same as my machine, now becoming 4 months old, and is still worst: overall, and particularly on every aspect. thunderbolt? sure, i’ll buy a d4 to go with it right away =)

artificial

this strip has kind of been very inspirational to me since the week it was released. it’s something funny and interesting to think of, i believe, and i think i’ve solved my view of the puzzle.

in a nutshell, and like i’ve always studied in school, nature has a nice way of being. rule of thumb: it regenerates itself, it is self-sustainable, its systems are cyclic!

we, humans, and the systems that we come up with, on the other hand, rule of thumb: are not! that’s what’s artificial to me. and no, humans weren’t created to invent plastic! =D

problemacia descontornável

numa tentativa infantil de erradicar os problemas da minha ligação adsl durante a noite, vi-me forçado a configurar novamente o mutt e msmtp para enviar mensagens periódicas aos serviços de apoio da sapo e pt.

o problema, efectivamente, tem a ver com quebras de ligação a todo o minuto a partir das 18 horas, por exemplo, e até ser hora de deitar. na verdade a ligação não cai com frqeuência, é mais ao contrário. fica frequentemente desligada e liga-se momentaneamente. como não conseguem garantir-me os débitos de uns miseros 4MB a ligação tenta ressincronizar a uma taxa inferior, mas volta a falhar de qualquer modo. no ano passado baixaram-me o downstream para 3MB, mas este ano a ligação conseguiu ficar ainda pior.

if you ask me, someone has ever more clients, but no hardware upgrade concerns.

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crisis of a middle-class citizen

it hasn’t always been the case, but le’me say that i regard myself as an intelligent, handsome guy. back in grade school my intelligence meant that teachers enjoyed setting my goals up high, and my handsomeness meant that people wouldn’t always account for my intelligence. what my intelligence therefore meant was that my anticipation of the future was one of a hard-working man, most devoted to his professional success, and what my handsomeness therefore meant was that people disappointed me for discarding my ability to attract and delight, inside as much as out.

i thankfully never fully embraced these ideas, though.

Continue reading