Older blog entries for asmodai (starting at number 61)

FreeBSD, p0f, and USB pcap

If, like me, you had a working FreeBSD system with amavisd-new and p0f set up, you might find that p0f suddenly stopped working at some point. The cause for this is that it tries to use pcap on the USB bus, which it cannot do. The solution is to put hw.usb.no_pf=1 in your /boot/loader.conf.

Syndicated 2012-11-02 09:53:44 from In Nomine - The Lotus Land

The rendering equation

The rendering equation, the keystone of computer graphics rendering:

\(L_o(x, \vec w) = L_e(x, \vec w) + \int_\Omega f_r(x, \vec w’, \vec w) L_i(x, \vec w’) (\vec w’ \cdot \vec n) \mathrm{d}\vec w’\)

(This is at the same time also a test for MathJax support on my weblog in order to provide correct mathematical typesetting using proper typography instead of some lame pixelated image.)

Syndicated 2012-08-06 11:50:48 from In Nomine - The Lotus Land

Detecting keyboard layout used on Windows

//Pseudo C/C# code:

int localeId = GetKeyboardLayout(0);

// The low word contains a Language Identifier for the input language
// and the high word contains a device handle to the physical layout
// of the keyboard.
localeId &= 0xffff;    // mask off high word to get the locale
                       // identifier

switch (localeId) {
    0x040c:
    0x080c:
    0x1009:
        useAzertyMapping();
    default:
        useQwertyMapping();
}

Relevant links:
GetKeyboardLayout()
Default Input Locales
Locale IDs assigned by Microsoft

Syndicated 2012-08-06 11:11:55 from In Nomine - The Lotus Land

JetBrains IntelliJ IDEA and Monokai

I’m a fan of the Monokai colour scheme for my source code editing and thus set up it whenever I can in the IDEs I use.

For JetBrains’ IntelliJ IDEA I use Long Cao’s Monokai colour scheme. Grab the XML file and drop it, on Windows, in your %HOMEPATH%\.IntelliJIdea11\config\colors directory. Restart IDEA and the Monokai colour scheme ought to be present in the dropdown box under File » Settings » Editor » Colors & Fonts » Scheme Name.

Syndicated 2012-08-06 09:10:23 from In Nomine - The Lotus Land

Setting up Eclipse 4.2 as I like it

Download Eclipse 4.2 Classic 64-bits version from the Eclipse website. Extract the contents to a location, such as C:\Eclipse. Adjust the eclipse.ini in that directory according to my post in order to pin it to the taskbar.

Next, within Eclipse, go to Window » Preferences » Install/Update » Available Software Sites » Add... and add the following URL under something like “4.2-M builds”: http://download.eclipse.org/eclipse/updates/4.2-M-builds. After adding you can hit Reload to reload the information from the website. Exit all windows through pressing OK. Then follow up by going to Help » Check for Updates and you will most likely get an Eclipse SDK update right away. Accept the licensing terms and wait until it downloaded and installed everything and restart Eclipse.

Go to Help » Install New Software... » Work with, select the Juno entry and from the resulting list of software select General Purpose Tools » Marketplace Client followed by Next » Next, accept the license and Finish. Restart Eclipse when done. Now under Help is an entry called the Eclipse Marketplace.

Open the Eclipse Marketplace and search for and install the following: “code recommenders”, “MercurialEclipse”, “mylyn” (not selecting the Bugzilla connector). It might ask if it is OK to install unsigned content, acknowledge it.

Syndicated 2012-08-02 10:52:50 from In Nomine - The Lotus Land

Pinning Eclipse to the Windows taskbar

I pin programs that I use frequently to the taskbar of Windows. So I was a bit surprised to see that the newer version of Eclipse, Juno, doesn’t seem to support this by default. After some searching I find out that you can force this by adjusting the eclipse.ini by starting the file with something akin to:

-vm
C:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.7.0_05\bin

Then after starting Eclipse with this in place, you can, once fully loaded and past the splash screen, pin Eclipse to the taskbar.

Syndicated 2012-07-24 17:32:26 from In Nomine - The Lotus Land

Steam indefinite update paused

So recently I had an issue with Steam where the Witcher 2 update got stuck at 99% and the status “Update Paused”. No matter what I tried with the pause/resume button, I couldn’t get it to budge from this status and actually update.

After a while I grabbed Process Explorer from the Microsoft website and checked the files that were being opened when I toggled this state. I noticed a reference to Steam\steamapps\downloading\20920\CookedPC\pack0.dzip. Then I also noticed a file reference to Steam\steamapp\logs\content.log. Upon checking that file I found a notice that it was trying to preallocate about 11 GB for this pack0.dzip. Checking my drive status, I saw that this particular drive letter only had about 9 GB left. Freeing up some space allowed the update process to actually start and finish, after which I got even more space back, since it seems Steam downloads these files and then replaces them, deleting the temporary one. So I guess the lesson learnt is that you should always have enough disk space free as the single largest file in any of your games.

Syndicated 2012-05-14 08:12:32 from In Nomine - The Lotus Land

Adding android.support.v4 to your Android application in IntelliJ IDEA

You can enable support for certain forward version features via the android.support namespace. In order to accomplish this you need to start the Android SDK Manager and make sure that under the Extras heading you select and install the Android Support package.

Once done you go into the directory extras/android/support/v4 and copy the android-support-v4.jar to your own project’s libs directory. Next go within IntelliJ IDEA to File » Project Structure and under Project Settings go to Modules, make sure your application is selected in the middle pane, then on the right side select the Dependencies tab. In the window below click the plus-icon and select Jars or directories. From the resulting window browse to your libs directory and select the android-support-v4.jar and press OK to close the window and add the jar-file to the dependencies of the project. Close the Project Settings by pressing the OK button.

Syndicated 2012-02-26 15:14:56 from In Nomine - The Lotus Land

Android Galaxy S2 Skin and AVD

What I did to get the Galaxy S2 skin to work with the Android Virtual Device (AVD) was:

1. download the skin from the Samsung Developer website, it’s under the Add-on SDKs,
2. extract to a Galaxy_S2 directory,
3. put the entire directory in the [Android-SDK directory]/platforms/android-10/skins directory,
4. edit the manifest.ini and change api=9 to api=10,
5. restart AVD Manager,
6. under skin in the device configuration you should see Galaxy_S2 in the dropdown.

Syndicated 2012-02-22 11:55:11 from In Nomine - The Lotus Land

Small touches that inspire

It’s the littlest of things that can really brighten my mood when I notice them. In this case I was watching Fallout: New Vegas’ DLC trailer for Honest Hearts. In the trailer you see the player with a pistol and on one side of the pistol at least is written: “καὶ ἡ σκοτία αὐτὸ οὐ κατέλαβεν”. This is Greek and refers to the second part of the verse of John 1:5 in the New Testament of the bible, meaning in English: “and the darkness did not comprehend it”. In my opinion a great way to bring enlightenment by the bullet.

Syndicated 2011-05-14 20:22:03 from In Nomine - The Lotus Land