Older blog entries for baruch (starting at number 14)

Finally got around to work on volnorm, did the sound compression filter part, any audio techy who can verify I did it correctly? Basically I just define a cutoff point and a divider and calculate:

  if (sample > cutoff)
    sample = cutoff + (sample-cutoff)/divider;

I now need to implement saving the calculated gain, I already got a patch for it, but it wasn't complete, so I'll apply it and work from there.

Development snapshot was released, see projects homepage.

LyX

Did some work on LyX too, need to complete it though, release of 1.2.0 is closing and I want my contribution to be a part of it.

Webware

Donated a bit of code there so that the password will be changed upon installation. This will avoid a bugtraq entry for "All webware installations have 'webware' as password by default". If the admin doesn't provide a password on install, one is chosen in random.

Life

N/A

Finally switched to Debian, there are still some problems that I'm trying to overcome and some things that I still need to setup.

One missing thing is setting up Hebrew fonts for TeX. This is not trivial, though it shouldn't be hard, I remember someone intended to do a package for it, this will make it easy enough.

Another missing thing that I fixed is xmmsctrl, this is a small command line program to control XMMS, I use it to control XMMS from the "Multimedia" keys on the keyboard. I've actually made a Debian package for it, I'm now in a need for someone in Israel to sign my key so I can start the process of becoming a Debian package maintainer.

Another package I intend to work on is rp3, this is RedHats PPP frontend for wvdial, I like it so much that I want it on Debian too, but they use stuff that is tied to RedHat specific configuration. Will have quite a bit to work on it. For now I setup a sudo permission to use wvdial from the command line, I'm fine with it, my significant other prefers the GUI.

I'm now using Galeon and Mozilla from Debian packages since I'm suddenly unable to compile Mozilla from sources due to some /bin/sh problem in nspr, weird!

University

I'm learning for two tests in this week, Physics 1m (Mechanics and relativity) and Real Analysis, next week I have Introduction to Operating Systems and that will be all for this semester. All I'll have after that is a summer semester for the remaining two physics courses (2m - Electricity and Magnetism, 3h - Quantum physics).

After this summer semester (ends mid September), I'll be free as a bird - to be chained to some chair in some office to do some (hopefully interesting) programming and development work. Anybody cares to offer an interesting job?

Life

Life? What's that?!

I've hardly done anything really productive lately, I mostly did small things like a small patch for Galeon, changing the look of my website, nitpicking on my resume and doing the usual steps in a job search.

In between I'm learning for my tests and working on my project course (Wavelet Image Compression)

LyX has switched to use some funky construct with templates from the Boost project so now I cannot compile the code from CVS, which also means I cannot work on LyX until I upgrade my compiler (currently egcs 1.12). I postpone this since I intend to switch to Debian unstable which already has gcc 3.0, hopefully this will make sure that nothing Lars will throw in LyX will kill the compiler.

But switching a distribution is such a tedious job, I'll need to find those things that I take for granted and make sure they are installed on the new distribution. I've done most of my preperations by now, I switched /home to another partition (on ext3) and have Debain unstable installed already though it needs updating, but that last mile of actually telling lilo to boot as a default to debian instead of redhat is not so easy to do, mentally mostly.

I'll get around to this, promise!

I've switched to using Mozilla some time ago, much better than Netscape 4.7x. I then switched to Galeon since it was even better than using Mozilla directly, even though it misses some features of Mozilla (parts of the Password Management don't work and changing style sheets is impossible), I'll try to tackle this sometime.

The best work I do on Open-Source/Free-Software projects is when it scratches an itch, when everything is perfect for me I have less inclination to do anything.

Finally I can post in hebrew on websites (specifically on The Reading Moose). Until some time ago I used Netscape 4.7x as my browser, until it was rumored that Mozilla has Bidi support for logical hebrew (most hebrew sites are visual hebrew, which is the only thing supported in NS 4.7x), I've installed Mozilla from CVS and got myself a nice BiDi capable browser. Only problem was that is was slow as hell.

Enter galeon.

I've installed Galeon the other day and got myself a Bidi capable browser that runs at a decent speed, as a bonus I got tabbed browsing which is great.

The last step involved a short research into the xkb mysteries and finding the tricks that are needed to get it to use an hebrew keyboard mapping, and now I can post in hebrew!

This replaces a hackish script I wrote in Python to post a text file to the website.

One problem though, to install Galeon I needed to upgrade to Gnome 1.4, I now have problems with PowerShell, it's terminals get locked! Anyone knows a cure?

Got myself a MP3 CD Player, the Pine SM200C. A pretty cool thing though I'm not really sure it fits into my budget (full time student), for my defense I claim it was an impulse buy.

This thing has 40 seconds shock protection time when playing mp3s of 128kbps, this is the thing that sold me since I mainly bought it for listening in the gym when running on the treadmill, something that usually means a bumpy ride. It's pretty slow to switch songs and when it's in random playing mode, pressing next-song key will go to the next sequential song and not the next random song. But overall it's a pretty good thing.

Speaking about the gym, I now have Calcaneal Spur from running on the treadmill, got some pills from the doctor and switched from the treadmill to the crosstrainer. The ride is less bumpy now.

I still haven't coded anything for a while, between school chores and a bit of rest.

I will finish my studies this semester, with a worst time estimate of October, and optimistic estimate of August. And I've started to think about getting a job, the reason it came up is a job fare that is scheduled for next week.

With the short time I've started drafting my resume, the initial version is here. The english version is a translation of the hebrew one so it's rather badly done.

Up until now I didn't had any "real" interview, for my first job I had a small chat with the Teaching Assistant, and then a small chat with the Professor in charge and I got the job. In my second work I got the job mostly based on the recommendation of a friend who already worked there, so the interview was also pretty short and simple. The third time I did a freelance job and managed to convince my client based solely on a job my friend (the same one) did, and delivered it. Now I'll probably need to go through the usual hoopla of several interviews and various tests and tricky questions.

I hate this stuff, I believe I'll do good there but I still don't like these tests and puzzles. It makes me reconsider my decision to go to work instead of continuing to an advanved degree. But it seems like I have far less inclination to continue formal studies now than hate of wierd tests.

Well, sometime I'll need to do this anyway, so it's probably better I do it now and get over with it.

Update: Changed the url due to rearranging the site.

I'm pretty much stuck with it now, I'm unable to find either source code for the wavelet transform I need (Gabor Wavelet Transform) or a clear explanation of the method to implement it. I've learned the math behind it pretty well, however this deals with the mathematical analysis of its convergence and invertiness, it has nothing on how do I go about doing the implementation. My friend picked up a book by Mallat and is reading it, I'll take it near the weekend and read it too. I hope it has something to hint about the implementation.

I've finally succeeded in embedding Python into LyX, it was pretty simple in the end, However I found out that LyX doesn't have a simple way to export various queries, it has an export for actions like "word-forward" and "file-new" but nothing like "character- insert".

Anyhow, Lars (the LyX project overlord) decided that since LyX is kinda destabilized, he doesn't want to integrate this work or to continue working on it until LyX is stablizied for it's 1.2.0 release. I probably better get back to finish the InsetGraphics widget I was working on so far (the widget is mostly finished, the support stuff isn't).

There were cuts in various high-tech companies here in Israel, big companies not the usual funky-dot-com failures. I'm a student yet, but I'm about to finish by October and starts to get uneasy about the prospects of getting a good job in what seems to become a crowded market. Oh well, I'll deal with it when it comes.

I've updated to XFree86 4.0.3 hoping that it will have an updated SiS 6326 driver that will work with accleration, apparently, it doesn't. I'm still stuck with a lousy video card that can do no accleration. How annoying!

I've started looking into embedding Python into LyX, It appears to be a non-trivial task and I haven't figured yet how to do what is needed. Basically I want to be able to call a Python method in whatever file it is for some keyboard shortcut, I'll then need to give some hooks to Python to access LyX methods to be able to do something usefull.

I've found that it's not going to be easy and I found no real example on how to do this (the example in the python 2.0 distribution is ridicoulsly simple), so I've dropped the idea for now. I don't have enough time to invest in this.

I'm pretty stuck with the wavelet project, I'm unable to find a clear explanation on how to implement the 2D Discrete Wavelet Transform, Specifically I need to implement the Gabor Wavelet Transform. I'm trying to chase references and articles but so far, I found nothing.

Today I've setup the compile box for the LyX project, this is intended to help alleviate the "commit broke compile" problem, or at least to warn when it happens so it can be fixed asap.

I've considered using Tinderbox or guilty, but Tinderbox is just too big for my needs and guilty is not completely suitable. So I set down to create my own stuff, basically the idea right now is that upon receipt of an e-mail notifying the commit to CVS, the compile box will schedule a compile.

Now I need to work on it to update a web page to notify if something is broken, and then I'll need to send an e-mail to the last commiters when a compile breaks to notify them of the compile break, so they can try to fix their own mess.

I've been interested lately in the this topic and I've found that there is a law in making to allow the collection of credit information on peoples, this includes negative and positive information. I'm troubled by such a law since I rememeber remotely several horror stories from the USA regarding a similar law there.

Now I'm a search frenzy for information on this topic, what laws there are in various countries (I'd like to read the law text itself or a layman summary) and the experiences in the various countries.

One reason that this law is being pushed, supposedly it's reason of inception, is that this will allow financial institution to be able to give loans to those who are not regular customers of them, that is so that if I'm the customer of Bank A and I go to Bank B in the current system they cannot know if I'm any good at returning my lowns or not, this law is supposed to give them this information and so to be able to give me the lown if I'm any good.

The problem is, that this law will allow everyone, every store to check up on me to see if they are willing to accept my check. This seems like a very big privacy hole!

Did I say I'm worried about this?!

One request I have, if you have any such information or you know of a site that collects related information, please let me know. Thanks!